52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #5

At The Gates – Slaughter of the Soul

(Earache, 1995)

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The second album in a row on the blog with “slaughter” in the title (c’mon metal bands…), and the second band in a row on the Bloodstock 2018 bill. Seeing At The Gates at Bloodstock in 2008, spinning round in a mud pit, is still one of my greatest music memories. While the new material is not up to the standard of Slaughter of the Soul, it’s amazing to see them live when it seemed like it would never happen. The appeal of this At The Gates release over its predecessors is the faultless melding of fun pop brevity and extreme metal sounds. While the melodic death metal movement that At The Gates are credited with spearheading was more palatable than the brutality of outright death from other parts of Sweden, Europe, and America, this is still heavy, heavy shit with some ferocious musicianship. What the band embraced in recording Slaughter of the Soul is that death metal, while messed up and brutal, should be infectious, fun, and fast. No song clocks in over 4 minutes in duration, and this 11-track album is barely 34 minutes long, which is to say that At The Gates obviously liked Iron Maiden, but probably preferred Slayer. While they have influenced metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage, let’s focus on all the sounds that make this album from 1995 stand up so well today.

And let’s start with the first sound: an electrical buzz as if a guitar was being plugged in to an amp. It builds anticipation that increases with each eerily slicing sound effect, culminating in a furious burst of energy. The classically clean production of melodic death metal is infused with thrash-inspired speed that barely relents over the following 30 minutes. “Blinded By Fear” sets the tone sonically and thematically with galloping riffs, smooth lead guitar details, piston drums, and the lyrical creation of hell on earth. At The Gates are preoccupied with a world they see turning on itself, cracking under self-inflicted pressure, and the first of many mentions of suicide is both literal and a metaphor for the self-harming behaviour of humanity as a whole. The pop sensibility I mentioned might seem unlikely at this point but, after the perfectly framed MTV video quality of the opener, title track “Slaughter of the Soul” highlights the band’s focus on immediacy. The opening riff pauses just long enough for vocalist Tomas Lindberg to shout “Go!” and kick everything off in an almost cheap, but undeniably effective, pit-starting moment. Lindberg repeats the trick with a call of “Do it!” just before the pitch perfect solo turning this track into a formidable pop death hit. Don’t be mistaken, the band still embrace the dense and distorted guitar sound, near-permanent double bass pedal, and frosty growl that gives At The Gates such intense atmospherics, but there is a focus on grabbing attention quickly and efficiently. The fact that the Björler brothers, responsible for most of the songwriting on this album, take these elements then do so much with them in such little time is what makes this one of the best heavy metal albums I’ve heard.

They went on to prove their prowess in this regard with several of their releases with The Haunted following the original break-up of At The Gates, but it’s on Slaughter of the Soul where you’ll find their most vital work. “Nausea” is like travelling down river in a barrel: filled with periods of disorienting buffeting and tranquil floating but always thrilling and potentially nauseating. “Need” ups the game, tossing its listeners furiously across the room for little more than 2 minutes. It’s like being accustomed to a gentle jog on the treadmill at the gym then signing up for a HIIT class: it’s hard and fast, but you get so much more done. It’s built on unforgivingly heavy drumming from Adrian Erlandsson, thrashy verse riffs, and typicaly expansive melodic death metal passages that come together to create a bleak yet uplifting plea to “lay your fears to rest”. With all the similes I’ve used in describing these two tracks though, I think the most fitting one for the album as a whole is that it feels like riding a galloping horse through a Mordor-like landscape, dodging arrows, slaying orcs, but every now and again you fall from the saddle, your foot caught in the stirrup, and you are dragged painfully over broken ground. But in a good way.

“Suicide Nation”, “World of Lies”, and “Unto Others” all do this. Each of these tracks has undeniable groove embedded in their opening moments, but the unbridled pace will have you wondering how to get back on your horse. The pop sensibility shows through again at the start of “Suicide Nation” with the shotgun cocking sound effect that ignites the song, but in “World of Lies” it is the album’s biggest and catchiest riff that steals the show. Coming at the perfect moment to reenergise a potentially battered listener for the final few songs, “World of Lies” is brimming with energy and a delightfully bouncing heavy sound that will keep your head banging all day long. “Unto Others” harks back to Terminal Spirit Disease more than any other track here, but its raspy viciousness is the perfect antidote to the giant super groove of “World of Lies” and sends the album in the direction of “Nausea”. On such a focused and brief album, this three-song passage is perhaps the most memorable.

And memorable is exactly what “Cold” and “Under a Serpent Sun”, my favourite tracks here, are. They are arguably the band’s collective shining moment, with sickeningly distorted leads (the solo at the 2-minute mark of “Cold” is insane), absorbing basslines, furious riffing, and some exceptional cymbal and snare work from Erlandsson all clamouring for attention. And they are without doubt Lindberg’s finest tracks as lyricist and vocalist. His delivery of the lines, “I feel my soul go cold/Only the dead are smiling” and “Stricken numb by fear I fall” are two of my favourite things in music and are eternally with me, while his ferocity on “Under a Serpent Sun” is unmatched anywhere in At The Gates’ work. And this is why Slaughter of the Soul means so much to me. That, while it is brutal, obsessed with suicide imagery, and punishing at times, it is so memorable that the songs just appear in my brain at random moments causing me to spit out lyrics like “Under a serpent sun we shall all live as one” while testing the ripeness of avocadoes in the supermarket, or banging my head to a silent beat while walking down a crowded street. All the members of At The Gates probably don’t realise this, but they’re my friends and always in my thoughts. Except Adrian Erlandsson… because I told him.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #18

Entombed – Wolverine Blues

(Earache, 1993)

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With one demon grunt my musical life was changed.  A grizzly bear of a riff and thumping drums suddenly exploded then unexpectedly stopped.  A primal roar burst forth, and the music continued on its destructive path.  The moment was over in four seconds, but it is still one of the most memorable in my listening experiences.  The opening of “Demon” tells you everything you need to know about Entombed’s objective on Wolverine Blues: simple, direct, instinctive, heavy, and hell, even anti-intellectual.  This album is more concerned with making your guts vibrate than firing synapses, more focused on gigantic power chord riffing than duelling solos and Classical-inspired structures, and would rather you fear it than respect it.  Where Death, Carcass, and the emerging death metal mainstream began taking a surgically exact approach to their music, Entombed decided to down tune, fuzz out, and ride a Pantera-inspired wave of groove metal success.  Wolverine Blues has been credited with birthing the sub-genre of “Death ‘n’ Roll”, and in doing so it opened the door for hard rock and heavy metal fans to work their way backward to the oft intimidating world of death metal.  While the album sounds like it wants to kick you in the face, it is actually politely opening doors for you.  How nice of it.

“Demon” is the centrepiece.  It is brash, violent, and lyrically vacuous, but at its pounding heart it only wants to make you stomp your feet and bang your head.  The immediacy of the riffs, the pauses, the wild yells all serve that singular purpose.  The direct approach is maintained by “Full of Hell”, with lyrical insights along the lines of, “I'm organized chaos but don't call me stupid I'm insane”, and “Hollowman” with its punchy riffs and drunken-mate vocals.  The whole thing clocks in at around thirty-five minutes of groove-laden, mid-pace riffs, blues-tinged solos, fat drums, and fatter vocals, but there’s an argument to be made that it should have been even shorter.  While the riffs are always catchy and there is never a "bad" song, the first four tracks do the job of the whole album in less than half the time.  Opener “Eyemaster” is the most musically interesting on the album.  Combining the groovier “death ‘n’ roll” sound with the faster old school death of their first two albums and throwing in some killer solos, the song stands head and shoulders above the rest.  The buzzsaw guitar sound and syncopated riffs on “Rotten Soil” are dirty and broken in the best way, and clearly show the band’s influence on Bloodbath, while title track “Wolverine Blues” is a sludgy monster that balances the thrashier tracks it follows.  Rounded off by “Demon”, Wolverine Blues could have been one of the most legendary EPs of all time.

It may not have aged as well as its Stockholm Sound defining predecessors Left Hand Path and Clandestine, but this album’s influence on me is stronger.  By giving my fearful little mind enough groove to hang on to, family friendly satanic imagery, and that rounded sound of mainstream metal, this album brought me slowly and gently into the death metal fold.  Nuzzling in its big, furry arms I was cradled into the midst of earlier Entombed, Autopsy, and Deicide, but never felt alone or exposed.  It was like having a big brother to take you to the pub for the first time, but this pub was serving pints of blood in hollowed out skulls. you paid with your everlasting devotion, and your brother was a viking warrior.  Wolverine Blues will always be my big metal brother, even if he’s a little past it these days.      

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #22

Meshuggah – Catch Thirtythree

(Nuclear Blast, 2005)

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Catch Thirtythree is a mind-numbing, obstinate, confusing brute.  It’s wilfully bleak, esoteric, repetitive, violent, and it has no concern for your sanity or wellbeing.  Choosing to listen to Catch Thirtythree is like choosing to eat granite for dinner, washing it down with acid, then lying back on a bed of nails to experience the pain in your gut.  Everybody knows you don’t digest well lying down.  Possibly due to the burning darkness inside me, this album instantly jumped inside my brain and has refused to leave ever since.  This appears to be the case for many others as well.  Meshuggah’s popularity/ubiquity (it’s hard to tell) in metal steadily grew with this and next record, Obzen.  Trying to understand why is the purpose of this blog post.

Ostensibly set out as a single suite concept album, the track names that make up the whole piece are little more than signposts along this bizarre journey.  If a listener approaches this album expecting hooks, choruses, or even “songs”, they may very well quit before the end.  Meshuggah give you the bare minimum with which to hold on, pulling out long passages of repetitive “djent” guitar rhythms or eerie atmospheric tracks in between moments of pummelling heaviness which are relieving in their relative catchiness.  The drums are all programmed from samples of Tomas Haake’s actual drumming, and it lends the whole album a punishingly robotic feel.  This is balanced by the sheer demonic power of Jens Kidman’s death growl which is varied, dynamic, and impassioned.  The earth-shattering bass sound on this album doesn’t make it a warmer experience, but definitely contributes to the intimidating size of the sound.  All told, Meshuggah have better albums with better songs on them.

But there is something perspective-altering about the determined and brutal delivery of this concept.  There is a line that can be drawn from the first note through the entire piece to its culmination, around which Meshuggah have created never-ending variations on a theme.  The music never strays from its ultimate mission to surreptitiously pull the listener in to this unforgiving world of paradoxes, so that as the final act of this piece (represented by “Shed”, “Personae Non Gratae”, “Dehumanization”, and “Sum”) plays we are no longer aware of how we got here or why we stayed.  Nothing is what it seems: track beginnings and ends are mostly indistinguishable; dynamics seem to build to imminent catharsis before being discarded unfulfilled; Jens Kidman’s anger is more existential struggle than angst or rebellion; even the drums don’t “exist”. 

Repeated rhythms cast a spell over your mind, pulling you deeper than you could ever expect to go with such unwelcoming music.  It’s like being in a darkened room with a green laser blasting right in to your eye, yet you can’t look away, can’t even turn your head.  Trying to draw out highlights from such an experience is difficult, but the surging pace and riff of the first three tracks, “Autonomy Lost”, “Imprint of the Un-Saved”, and “Disenchantment” are breath-taking, while the sickening breakdown feel of “The Paradoxical Spiral”, “Re-inanimate”, and “Entrapment” is insanely addictive.  The monstrous sounds and robotic soliloquy of “Mind’s Mirrors” are the hinging point of the whole record, before Meshuggah launch themselves head-first in to the hellish explosion of “In Death – Is Life”.  The anticipation alone is enough to survive on, but the song itself is a brilliant standalone track that would not be out of place on Chaosphere.  The protracted hammering of “In Death – Is Death” is a masterwork of controlled dynamics and perfectly sets up the more immediate final act that I discussed above.  But I don’t think that “how good any of the songs is” has anything to do with why I like this album so much.  It’s about its purity of vision.  It’s about the fact that Meshuggah do not care what you expect, or what the rules are.  It’s about having something completely new.  Even if it is sick, disgusting, and completely messed up.  

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52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #37

Opeth – Deliverance

(Music For Nations, 2001)

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Opeth existed at the crossroads between death metal, folk music, prog, and pure evil.* It is easy to imagine Mikael Åkerfeldt, primary songwriter for Opeth and amusing bloke, standing at such a crossroads and signing a contract with the devil to assign him unmatched talents in this field.  The crossroads would have been isolated in a barren landscape, the sole tree, grand yet lifeless, hanging over the road as if waiting to hang a victim.  As the grey clouds closed in, masking any remaining light, the devil would have approached to whisper hell in your ear. 

That’s what listening to Opeth is like: gothic horror in which the lightness of touch only intensifies the darkness of the subject matter.  This is true for all of Opeth’s truly great albums, My Arms, Your Hearse (1998), Still Life (1999), Blackwater Park (2001), and Deliverance.  This was the Opeth album that found me first, and opened my mind to the possibility of brutally heavy death metal that soothes with acoustic guitar, wandering passages of musical exploration, and satanic lullabies.  Ironically, this is Opeth’s heaviest album, and deliberately so, with Damnation being released as a companion album only months after Deliverance to fully explore the “clean” side of Opeth’s music, and further cement Åkerfeldt’s relationship with Pavement maestro, Steve Wilson.  Approaching the Deliverance/Damnation project as a double album allowed Opeth the freedom to intensify and even exaggerate their characteristics on each record, and produce two distilled versions of what the band had become.  Deliverance is concentrated evil.

You can feel the intent on first track, “Wreath”, with its scarily abrasive sound and pitch-black death growl.  There is no warning here.  “Wreath” lurches out with razor sharp guitars and Lopez’s incredible drumming, precisely balancing double bass speed with restrained snare and cymbal use, and propels the listener into the black hail that is Mikael    

Åkerfeldt’s vocal: “Falling inside again / The nightmare always the same”.  The title track rides in on building waves of guitar punctuated by that solid snare, only to give way to a riff that would have long hair in metal venues worldwide spinning in unison supported by Lopez’s sustained and perfectly produced double bass pedal sound.  “Deliverance” gives the listener little glimpses of respite with a softer overall guitar sound than “Wreath”, experimental passages, gently delivered melodic vocals, and thoughtful lead guitar colour.  Coming in at over 13 minutes, alternating dark and light, Åkerfeldt’s repeated demonic delivery of the line “all over now”, the subtle use of keys, and ending on the album’s signature, and seemingly never-ending, drum beat, this song is the definition of prog death. 

The punishing tension that is built during this epic is dispersed by the softness of the album’s second act.  In “A Fair Judgement” and “For Absent Friends” we learn that even when writing a purposefully heavy album Opeth are unafraid to take their listeners on long, melodic journeys.  Åkerfeldt’s forlorn tone on the former is beautiful, enhanced by delicate rhyming couplets, and allows the lengthy traded solos to stand out fully, while in the latter Opeth simply let the gentle tones of the guitars do the talking.  It’s the last moment of objective beauty that this album will offer you. 

The opening of “Master’s Apprentice” does away with the complexity, the play of light and dark, the beauty, and opts for a giant metal riff and punishing vocals.  It’s an explosive moment on the album that will break your neck and your larynx.  Even the meandering and expressive bridge section later in the song is rudely interrupted by that unmistakable growl and provides only minor reprieve during the closing act.  In the album closer “By the Pain I See in Others” the quiet moments seem intent on simply making the heavier sounds more punishing, every moment of relaxation more and more brief, every false end to the song both difficult to endure and invigorating, like scaling gruelling, false peaks on a Scottish mountain but be provided with an ever more stunning view with each one.  Despite both songs in this final act exceeding 10 minutes, and incorporating multiple approaches to music and wide-ranging instrumentation, they comprise the most direct work Opeth had produced since “Demon of the Fall” and are a fitting finale to their heaviest album.

Opeth’s heaviness sounds natural, as if it had walked out of Scandinavian forests in to your ears, and blends seamlessly with their progressive, gothic, and folk elements.  It is important to acknowledge, however, that it is not natural, and that Åkerfeldt’s stellar songwriting, lyrical imagination, and awareness of tone make this blend work.  He is decidedly unnatural.  Other bands have tried to do what Opeth do, but none have managed to so perfectly occupy all these spaces at once without ever seeming out of place or forced.  It seems to me that Åkerfeldt’s contract with the devil worked out well.  Damnation may await his soul, but at least we’ll always have Deliverance.           

*They still exist, it’s just they’re pretty much 70s prog now.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #39

Bloodbath – Resurrection Through Carnage

(Century Media, 2002)

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Selecting a Bloodbath album to represent the early Swedish death metal sound in this list is sort of like claiming Tarantino as my favourite director… not a bad or wrong selection necessarily, but it’s a choice that suggests I need to do a little more cultural exploration.  While Tarantino built a career taking influence or directly lifting from classic Westerns, martial arts films, and b-movies, Bloodbath formed as a side project to pay homage to their favourite death metal bands.  And like many Tarantino fans and his filmic forbears, Bloodbath, and this album in particular, were a starting point for me with proper death metal music.  They will forever have my gratitude for introducing me to Entombed, Dismember, and, less directly, Death.  But also for making a killer death metal album in its own right.  Resurrection Through Carnage brings back your favourite buzzsaw guitar sound from the 80s and early 90s and really makes it sound like they kicked in their amps before they recorded it.  Part of the enduring appeal of this album is the DIY feel it has throughout: at times the drums are like damp towels, and there are even hints that a drum machine was used in places; while the guitars sound like your mate is playing in the middle of the room with the busted old amp he bought second hand from a car boot sale.  But it never detracts from how good these songs are.  What stands out is the song-writing ability this band has, initially evidenced by their debut EP Breeding Death, and the unreal death metal growl of Opeth frontman, Mikael Åkerfeldt. 

As that guitar buzz fades in on opener “Ways To The Grave” you’d be forgiven for thinking that this album might not be up to much, but by the end of the song your eyes will be bloodshot from smashing your brains on the inside of your skull and pointlessly trying to imitate Åkerfeldt’s vocals.  They bring rookie levels of energy to every song but couple it with veteran song-writing experience and an intimate knowledge of the genre to which they’re paying homage.  “So You Die” is a blunt force trauma with an atmospheric bridge and an awesome vomit-inducing chorus riff.  It sounds like it influenced the creation of Dethklok more than any other band, and carries that same joyous love for gory and violent lyrics that those cartoon death metallers represent.  The first minute of “Mass Strangulation” sounds like one guy made it on his computer of an evening, but is undeniably catchy, and is followed by an incredible breakdown riff, and one of Åkerfeldt’s finest moments, rhyming everything he possibly could with “strangulation”.

It’s a surprisingly varied but inevitably violent three track opening that sets up the three track middle passage that really shows off what Bloodbath can do.  “Death Delirium”, the longest song on the record, and “The Soulcollector” open up more experimentation with tempo and atmosphere while building a solid base around vicious verse riffs.  In both, Anders Nyström’s lead guitar accents really push Bloodbath’s sound to the next level.  But the memory of those songs is kicked in the skull and left to die by the opening riff of “Buried by the Dead”.  This song is stacked with amazing riffs, brutal vocals, and is the insanely enjoyable centrepiece of this buzzing and horrific album. 

With more listens though, it’s the quality of the album’s final four tracks that really stands out.  These are dark and focused death metal songs that establish Bloodbath’s strong identity, independent of the influences they so clearly admire.  “Bathe In Blood” is a flurry of snare-driven riffing, galloping choruses, and double kick drum rumbling that will have the most sedate listener flailing wildly.  “Trail of Insects” means you harm.  The opening verse is cruel and dark, and you will rejoice at the catchy morbidity of the chorus:

Crucified

A trail of insects down your spine

Vermin inside you

Control you

Devour you

Funeral

My sickening mind made you dissolve

Vermin inside you

They move you

Devour you

“Like Fire” is the heaviest song on the album with a thick, chugging riff working alongside the double kick drum, and perfect death vocals.  The chorus is one of Bloodbath’s best, perfectly displaying their ability to combine theatrical horror with what feels like real malevolence:

And when they dream, that’s when my spirit arise

And when they scream, a little part of them dies

I find my way into the minds of the weak

They are led astray, it’s now my path they seek

It’s the perfect set up for the final track, “Cry My Name”, with its atmospheric opening riff that conjures equally images of The Phantom of the Opera and The Exorcist.  Bloodbath’s evil lyrics are all the more enjoyable when it’s exaggerated horror backed by almost pantomime villainy:

I steal your soul

And carve a hole

Right where your heart once used to be

I watch you die. I hear you cry

It fills my soul with such delight

“Cry My Name” leaves me feeling like the band have genuinely attempted to steal my soul when, in fact, it was the sound of early Swedish death metal they stole.  But the members of Bloodbath brought such song writing skill and innovation to the genre years after it had faded, that perceptions of their originality are of no consequence.  This is classic death metal.  Sure, if you really want that authentic sound you can pick up Left Hand Path by Entombed, but you’d be missing out on gleefully macabre, and indulgently evil death metal.  And, let’s be honest, none of us really wishes Reservoir Dogs was never made.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #43

Candlemass – Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

(Black Dragon Records, 1986)

Few album titles lay out quite so clearly what the listener should expect, fewer still can claim to have given a sub-genre its name. The dog latin's lack of subtlety here perfectly establishes what is about to happen: it's going to be epic doom metal, but it's going to take twice as long to say. 42 minutes is not a long album, but with only 6 tracks making up that time Epicus Doomicus Metallicus could be seen as the antidote to another classic metal album from the same year, Slayer's Reign In Blood, in which 10 tracks tear by in less than 29 minutes. The rabid ferocity of that thrash masterpiece finds its counterpoint in the operatic stylings of bassist and songwriter Leif Edling's most complete work. Leif deliberately seeks to slow down and simplify where other bands were speeding up and complicating, finding more influence in Black Sabbath than 1970s punk.  This is an album and a band without which I would not be listening to this kind of music. 

Stoaters

Candlemass is Leif's band, and while he and guitarist Mats Björkman remain today, this debut album was the only outing for Matz Ekström on drums and the under-rated Johan Langquist on vocals.  Leif even goes as far as dedicating opening track, “Solitude”, to himself in the album liner notes. It's not often you'll think of a bassist as a tortured artist, but in the album's first verse we find epic doom metal's leading man distilled in to these words:

I'm sitting here alone in the darkness

Waiting to be free

Lonely and forlorn I am crying

I long for my time to come

Death means just life

Please let me die in solitude

These first lyrics from Candlemass set them out from other doom metal because, while they engage with mythology and fantasy imagery, there is a personal and emotional touch akin to gothic literature and its use of pathetic fallacy. Songs like “Black Stone Wielder” and “A Sorcerer's Pledge” are bursting with portentous weather and buildings that appear to be watching and listening, while “Under The Oak” presents nature as both man's protector and a symbol of danger.

This gothic lyrical setting is perfect for the big, echoey drums, relatively clean guitar sound, and the strong baritone vocals that always stop short of becoming unrestrained or histrionic. In my favourite track, “Demon's Gate” (inspired by Lucio Fulci's strangely moving flawed masterpiece, “The Beyond”), Langquist's clean and bold vocals are the perfect expression of a man weighed heavy with fear, but determined to be strong in the face of ultimate evil. The spoken word and keyboard intro references the strangely gothic atmosphere of “The Beyond”, before slow-paced riffing carries us through the verses to an extended bridge sequence with traded guitar solos and powerful drumming. The double bass pedal throughout this song is like some inner drive pushing the listener towards the demon's gate feeling empowered but also afraid of the terror awaiting them. Conjuring a fear of the darkness with a simultaneous feeling of power derived from that same darkness, “Demon's Gate” is the epitome of epic doom metal.

“Crystal Ball” is more direct. Langquist tears in to the opening riff with the line, “Black heart, your soul is mine”, breaking the riff down in to some low end chugging. It's an immediately heavier sound: the bass punches right through to the listener accompanied by thunderous drumming; the chorus only bringing brief respite. Candlemass even go fast in this song with a double bass driven bridge section that feels like rolling thunder on an open plain, individual lightning strikes of perfectly delivered guitar solo lighting the way. “Black Stone Wielder” slows things down again with the album's best riff, most headbanging worthy moments, and pinpoint solos. A somewhat lacklustre vocal lets the song down, but it's otherwise as strong as anything on this album.

“A Sorcerer's Pledge” brings the album to a close with a three-part epic about a cursed, sunless earth and man's foolishness in believing legends or prophecies. While many believe that Messiah Marcolin is the band's iconic best vocalist, and many more will think of “Bewitched” from second album Nightfall as their most recognisable song, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus is where Candlemass created their own legend and even coined the name for their own sub-genre. While later albums like Death Magic Doom (an attempt to create another sub-genre?) are strong releases, Candlemass are yet to surpass the standards they set on this very first attempt.  If you want epic doom metal, look no further.     

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #45

Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance

(Peaceville Records, 2006)

Buy the album here

On the way to Tower Records in Shibuya in 2006 there was a small, and I assume independent, music shop. Unlike the amazingly durable Tower Records which still exists, I also assume that the shop has long since closed, but on that sunny early summer day over 10 years ago they performed their greatest moment of capitalist charity. They were selling off CDs sitting in boxes left on the pavement in front of the shop window. You would assume that these CDs were the unsellable rubbish of 2006, such as Nick Lachey's What's Left Of Me, and that may have been so, but there was at least one gem in there not even hidden from the eyes of Tokyo's shoppers. Was I the only one seeing this? Katatonia's The Great Cold Distance was in plain sight with a price so low that I still think I'm misremembering it. The exchange rate has changed a lot since then, but in 2006 ¥500 would have been equivalent to roughly £2.50, which makes this album one of the greatest value purchases of all time. It was still a very new release at that time, and I've failed in my attempts to apply logic to its pricing other than to surmise that Japan isn't hot for sorrowful, melodic, doom-inspired metal from depressed looking Swedes. Japan's loss was my gain, and Katatonia and I have been having a love affair ever since.

Some might think that it's difficult to get close to a band with the appropriately cold and distant approach to songwriting that Katatonia display here. But the almost clinical delivery, crisp production, and Jonas Renkse's restrained melodic vocals lend their sorrow a certain Brechtian distance that promotes deep contemplation rather than expressive anguish, and allow the more “metal” moments to stand out. That's not to say this record isn't sonically as well as emotionally heavy. With brutal thrashers like “The Itch” Katatonia display the ferocity that makes clear their associations with acts like Opeth, Bloodbath, and even their legendary British indie label, Peaceville. But Katatonia's music works in different ways to heavy music predicated on the notion that lighter moments, such as a groovy guitar riff in an otherwise brutal grindcore song, provide the necessary relief and respite from the intense building of tension that precedes it. On The Great Cold Distance the musically heavier moments are the listener's chance to escape the sorrowful darkness of the gentle instrumentation and introspection that are at the heart of what Katatonia do. Banging your head to the heavy parts of “Soil's Song” provides an escape from the oppressive wintery feel of the opening and bridge sections, as if releasing you from the tundra of this Swedish soil.

“My Twin” and “Consternation” encapsulate all that later Katatonia have come to represent: the former providing a forlorn ballad with a catchy and floating chorus, while the latter displays Anders Nyström's vicious guitar sound, superb songwriting, and drumming equally at home in death metal and acoustic folk. In fact, it's Katatonia's songwriting excellence and skill with their respective instruments that sets them apart from other bands that have tried such melodic dark metal. No other band can appeal equally to fans of Evanescence and Death. If you are in the position of trying to convince a friend that metal is for them then Katatonia might be the ideal gateway band to get them hooked on even harder stuff.

“In The White” is the cold, distant heart of this album, and is the perfect song with which to introduce newcomers. The poppy bass line counters lilting guitars that lead us to Renkse's opening lullaby:

Are you in or are you out

The words are stones in my mouth

Hush little baby don't you cry

Truth comes down

Strikes me in the eye

The verses float along on the bass line allowing the vocal to gently guide us through this dark loneliness before the chorus offers a solution:

To overcome this

I become one with

The quiet cold of late November

But as with all Katatonia, this respite is fleeting and we are pulled back down to the “quiet cold”. It's a song, an album, and a band that balances hope and despair, light and dark. Even though it was a warm, sunny day in Tokyo when I was a newcomer to Katatonia, I will always remember it as a sharp, cold, dark, and beautiful moment in a frozen Scandinavian landscape. Japan has had my heart since I lived there over 10 years ago, but my musical heart has been pulling towards Sweden ever since that day in 2006.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #48

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas – Mariner

(Indie Recordings, 2016)

Buy the album here

Cult of Luna have changed so many members since their self-titled debut album in 2001 that I barely took notice when Julie Christmas was announced as guest vocalist on latest album Mariner. “Just another band member,” I thought, “won't make much of a difference.” But the performance of the former Battle of Mice and Made Out Of Babies vocalist is the very thing that makes this album Cult of Luna's most memorable and atmospheric. Salvation, Somewhere Along The Highway, Eternal Kingdom, and Vertikal are all incredible albums that blend huge post metal soundscapes, gentle passages of introspection, and powerful hardcore vocals, but it wasn't until Julie Christmas that the band could boast such insidious hooks and honest passion. They had created an air of plaid shirt pretension that Christmas' vocals have cut right through. In doing so she has opened up this album to the angry intensity of earlier work like The Beyond while giving it an identity all its own.

The eerie, horror-film-child quality of her clean singing voice is reminiscent of Aimee Echo of Human Waste Project (who?), but Christmas' insane screaming range and vocal control set her apart as one of the elite vocalists in metal. In almost every song of this album Christmas infects the listener with an addictive hook or an empowering and cathartic scream that burrows in to the brain like a Ceti Eel. Her and Johannes Persson's vocals wind in and out of each other, sometimes battling for space, but more often providing the perfect contrast or complement. In the opening track “A Greater Call”, a floating opening passage gives way to the tribal drumming of Thomas Hedlund which drives the song headlong in to the brutal scream of Persson backed by Christmas' delicate melody:

We are not conquerors

We float with the tide

The combination is perfect: the anger and frustration with modern society and city living that has informed much of Cult of Luna's work is balanced by the gentle passivity of Christmas' vocal and the openness to exploration without preconceptions or judgement that the lyrics suggest. The band have stated that Mariner represents a final thematic extension of their albums from Eternal Kingdom onwards: each album exploring a different part of life on earth, before Mariner takes us in to space. “A Greater Call” feels more like a transcendence than space travel with its steady build of interplaying keys and guitar, and the repetition of the vocal lines quoted above. “Chevron”, however, has more of the energy that space exploration would require. The heavy bass line throughout the song feels like propulsion pushing this journey in to deeper territory where, halfway through the song, it explodes with a riff that carries cosmic heaviness. The intensity is pushed even further with “The Wreck of S.S. Needle” where Christmas' full range is evident, and Cult of Luna's cascading guitars are made stratospheric with samples and keys that create an almost impenetrable wall of sound. Christmas' screams in the chorus are the most engaging vocals I have heard in the last year, but it's the repeated request to “Put me down where I can see you run” that will stick in your mind for days after hearing the song.

It's an incredible song that deserves the ambient space “Approaching Transition” provides. It's the only moment of this journey in to outer space that allows for rest, and has more in common with the patient wonderings of Somewhere Along The Highway than the intensity of more recent work like Vertikal and Vertikal II. It forms the perfect respite for the album's final passage: a fifteen minute epic built around tightly circling lead guitar work, Christmas' gentle storytelling, and riffs reminiscent of both Salvation and Eternal Kingdom. While “Cygnus” doesn't have the raw aggression or passion of “The Wreck...” it is a fitting end to an album about exploration, both physical and artistic. The final six minutes of “Cygnus” are the epitome of post metal: to some unbearable repetition, to others the most inspirational, transformative, and electrifying culmination of music that asks for your patience but rewards you with journeys to places you never thought you could go. Whether or not Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas work together again, this album represents where heavy music can go, and how good it can be, when bands are willing to put songwriting and experimentation ahead of expectations.