ALBUM REVIEW: Will Haven, "Muerte"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 23/03/2018

Label: Minus Head Records

 “Muerte” is a glorious affirmation of Will Haven's greatness and raises the bar for heavy music in 2018, an awesome awe inspiring achievement for a band 23 years into their existence.

“Muerte” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Hewed With the Brand
2. Winds of Change
3. Kinney
4. The Son
5. 43
6. No Escape (feat. Mike Scheidt of YOB)
7. Unit K
8. Ladwig No. 949
9. Bootstraps
10. Now in the Ashes
11. El Sol (feat. Stephen Carpenter)

The Review:

Hopes of heavy veterans returning with an album that rivals their finest early work are rarely realised. Sacramento hellraisers Will Havengave a timely reminder of their potent racket on 2011 LP “Voir Dire”. After a lengthy break the band now return with the awe-inspiring “Muerte”, a massive record that gives “Carpe Diem” a run for its money as their finest hour.

The quiet ambience of “Hewed With The Brand” is soon shattered by Grady Avenell’s glass gargling bark which heralds an earth-shaking explosion of riffage. Straight away the band lock into their trademark staccato assault, sounding bigger, heavier and uglier than ever before. The material here strikes a perfect balance between maintaining Will Haven’s crushing sonic palette while adding new layers of songwriting complexity. Will Haven have always had a penchant for hypnotic, effects-heavy interludes of calm in amongst the mayhem but now these sections have been incorporated into more challenging, dynamic compositions like “The Son” and “Now In The Ashes”. Key to this epic, immersive sound is the more prominent use of keyboards. When they were first introduced on “Voir Dire” they added a welcome subtle texture to the bands rumbling sludge. Now they have evolved into an all-encompassing wash of ethereal noise that lends these tracks a rich, unique atmosphere.  

“No Escape” provides a powerful centrepiece to the album bolstered by a stunning guest vocal performance by YOB’s Mike Scheidt. A typically brutal lumbering explodes into a slow-motion lament with Scheidt’s timeless croon really hammering home the emotion. The melancholic doom of the outro is strangely beautiful with wordless howls conveying an aching sadness.

Deftones’ Stephen Carpenter joins the fray for the massive finale of “El Sol”. This track is a perfect celebration of the friendship between these two hugely influential bands and demonstration of what both are capable of at the peak of their powers.

The possibility of Will Haven delivering one of the albums of 2018 seemed minimal at the start of the year. “Muerte” is a glorious affirmation of their greatness and raises the bar for heavy music in 2018, an awesome achievement for a band 23 years into their existence.

“Muerte”is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Yurodivy - "Aphos"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 02/02/2017

Label:Itawak Records

Strasbourg’s Yurodivy have created an intriguing debut album in the form of “Aphos”, an epic suite of furious chaotic hardcore with dark melodic undertones. Yurodivy take some familiar sounds and meld them into enthralling new forms on “Aphos”. It is a captivating debut statement brimming with potential for future releases.

“Aphos” DD//LP track listing:

A1 - Six Feet Under Water

A2 - The Way Of The Light

A3 - Ascension

A4 - 40 Days

A5 - Now You Can Feed The Monster Part I

B1 - Now You Can Feed The Monster Part II

B2 - Children Of The Sun

B3 - In The Violence Of The Ashes

B4 - War Drums

B5 - Necessary

B6 - Genesis 1.6

The Review:

Strasbourg’s Yurodivy have created an intriguing debut album in the form of “Aphos”, an epicsuite of furious chaotic hardcore with dark melodic undertones.

The opening trio of “Six Feet Under Water”, “The Way Of The Light” and “Ascension” provide an exhilarating start; schizophrenic blasts of raging punk rock, angular Botchstyle riffage and ominous spacious doom chords. The band negotiate the changes in style with fluid ease resulting in taut tracks of tension and release.

The next two tracks see an abrupt shift into tone that works to great effect. “40 Days” is an absorbing nine minute monster that moves between periods of ominous calm and clanging full-band heaviness. The vocals during the quiet sections are particularly eerie, a spooked, distant muttering riddled with desperation. A menacing piano and feedback laden drone consumes the din and casts a hypnotic spell that is soon shattered by the crushing finale.

  

“Now You Can Feed The Monster Parts 1 & 2” continues this mood, beginning with hushed picked guitars that recall the powerful screamo grandeur of City of Caterpillar. The track slowly builds in intensity and eventually gives way to a barrage of off-kilter riffage. This acts as the perfect lead-in to the face-melting triple threat of “Children Of The Sun”, “In The Violence Of The Ashes” and “War Drums”. These three short bursts see Yurodivy throw away all restraint to unleash feral doses of raging blast-beat riddled mayhem.

The final act of “Necessary” and “Genesis” find Yurodivytaking a slightly calmer approach to end the record. The former is a restrained effects-laden piece that brings the previously hinted at At The Drive-Inand Mars Volta influences to the fore, particularly on the vocal front. “Genesis” continues the work established by “Necessary” and reintroduces some of the earlier harshness to bring all of the threads of the album together in satisfactory fashion.

Yurodivy take some familiar sounds and meld them into enthralling new forms on “Aphos”. It is a captivating debut statement brimming with potential for future releases.

“Aphos”is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Ohhms - "The Fool"

By: Stephen Murray

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 31/03/2017

Label: Holy Roar Records

“The Fool” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Shuffle, Cut and Reveal

2). The Magician

3). The Hanged Man

4). The World

5). The Lovers

6). The Hierophant

The Review:

This is not doom. Even less is it sludge. The influence of those genres can be felt, but to understand Ohhms under those terms is misleading.

Three years on since Ohhms' first appearance outside the rehearsal room, it is still unclear who first applied these labels to the band, though there's no doubt that these are labels the group have done nothing to eschew. Speaking outside Camden's Black Heart in 2014 before their second ever gig, the deal with Holy Roarnot yet in the bag, vocalist Paul had admitted as much. "To be quite honest I would be happy to be lumped in with the doom thing just because it's different and there [are] elements of doom in [our music]," he had said. And yet, out of the then 30 minute set they had, only eight minutes were described by Paul as doom. He'd timed it. So what are they? "Classic rock, if anything," he'd said then.

'The Fool' is the band's third release and the first that they consider to be a full-length, and the description 'classic rock' still sounds fairer than what is more usually thrown at them. There are definite hints of Pink Floyd’smore reflective moments, along with some guitar work that would not upset the 80s hard rock applecart. Though there is more going on here, and not just Dan working his way through his extensive pedal board of boutique guitar effects, or indeed anything particularly progladytic. Where Ohhms skirt the sludgey-doomy influence, it is filtered through post-something-or-other and is akin to grunge.

There they are in good company; though rather different, Germany’s Aleph Null also came in on a stoner tip but sound like the debt is actually made out in the name of grunge and psych rock, and that is no bad thing. To anyone who has been following Ohhmsthese last few years, this record will feel a very natural and subtle mutation. Paul still has his self-professed “singy and shouty, never screamy”vocals pushed through echo. Not psych rock meltiness, but a big room-feel. Chainy’s restless and nomadic bass still wanders widely in search of home. Max still offers a lyrical range of punctuation and backbone, though has stepped it up on the faster moments in “The Fool”. But despite the ready familiarity of the sound, the word that fell from my lips as the first listen came to a close was “surprising.”

One of the most striking things about this album is not the penultimate track, 'The Lovers,' (which, on first hearing, you would be forgiven for thinking a song penned by Phil Collins for a Disney soundtrack had somehow snuck its way in -- that may read as though it is intended to be a slur. It isn't.) Rather, it is most striking for its echoes of the band four fifths of Ohhms emerged from: The Babies Three.

Before taking on this review I had decided not to wake the dead; to allow Ohhmsto be judged independently of that past. But not only do some of the guitar lines seem to recall that heritage, but the lyrics to the album’s closer, ‘The Hierophant,’ are lifted wholesale from File UnderRetaliation’s ‘Rotten Apples’. As the lyric says: “Recurring themes throughout my life.”

The original mission statement may have been Swans circa “1984”, but it was never quite to be. Instead there’s something more organic. Ohhmsshoot new blooms from deep roots, laying out their generational history as they evolve as musicians.

“The Fool” is available here

 Band info: bandcamp|| facebook

REVIEW: Oak - “Your Mess As Much As Mine” (EP)

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 28/01/2017

Label: Truthseeker Music

The band deliver a breathless mix of Converge at their most knotty, mixed with a distinctly European brand of screamo/chaotic hardcore that hits hard. These tracks are really brought to life by some frantic, complex drum work that channels the spirit of Ben Koller.  “Your Mess As Much As Mine” is a brief but brilliant release from Oak that shows the band are more than capable of holding their own against the heavyweights of the genre.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine” DD//LP track listing:

1). Broken Bodied

2). Garden

3). For Better or Worse

4). Elsewhere

5). Family and Friends

The Review:

Oak’s new EP “Your Mess As Much As Mine” may only be seventeen minutes long but it makes a strong impact over its short duration.

The Gothenburg trio come out of traps hard with the fierce opening trio of “Broken Bodied”, “Garden” and “For Better or Worse”. The band deliver a breathless mix of Converge at their most knotty, mixed with a distinctly European brand of screamo/chaotic hardcore that hits hard. These tracks are really brought to life by some frantic, complex drum work that channels the spirit of Ben Koller.

“Elsewhere” sees the band ease up on the gas while maintaining high levels of spite. It’s a slower track that sees Oakintroduce elements of noise rock and culminates in a crushing doom riff that is eventually overpowered by a rising tide of raw noise. “Family and Friends”provides a fitting end to the EP, five minutes of intensity that brings together the different elements explored over the previous tracks for a raucous finale.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine”is a brief but brilliant release from Oak that shows the band are more than capable of holding their own against the heavyweights of the genre.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine” is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook