I don’t want to alarm anyone but Einar Solberg uses growls on his second solo record. Something many long time Leprous fans have been crying out for since Coal, while that band have now moved past the point of needing the harsher side of their sound. With Vox Occulta, Solberg creates much heavier, symphonically dense music.
Recorded with the much lauded Norwegian Radio Orchestra, it has a different feel to his debut solo record 16 which was a collaborative project with various musicians, involved and the synths/electronics much more prominent. Vox Occulta on the other hand is more focused in it’s direction, and more organic due to the orchestra, though there’s a lot of thematic similarities, it’s an overall darker piece, evoking the earlier work of Leprous along with Solberg’s collaborations with Ihsahn, you won’t find any rapping like on 16.
The debut dealt with the death of his father while this one is his world view writ large against a stunning musical backdrop inspired by film scores and soundtracks, the anger and frustration coming through with the very heavy crush and scream vocals as counterpoint to his more familiar soaring cleans, featured perfectly on the dreamy yet epic Setenitas.
Medulla sweeps in first with what you may expect, big choruses but that darker edge, however the title track brings orchestral Djent as the strings mirrors the palm muted riffs of guitarists, Pierre Danel, Ben Levin and John Browne, this heavy crush the first appearance of the harsh vocals. The undulating melodic swells of the orchestra and the keys are joined by with violinist Chris Baum on Liberatio, dramatic and striking, bassist Jed Lingat and drummer Keli Guðjónsson give the thick bottom end for when they break out the metal.
Trading introspection for gravitas, Einar Solberg enters his Hand Zimmer period with Vox Occulta, massive compositions with the power of an orchestra, the return of harsh vocals, but with moments that can still feel intimate. This second solo album is a much more intense and yet focussed affair than the debut, a tribute to the skill of Einar Solberg as a songwriter/composer. 9/10
VLMV – There Will Come Soft Rains (Pelagic Records) [Spike]
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your ears after a week of blackened metal and high-velocity vitriol is to let the light in. Hailing from London, VLMV have returned with There Will Come Soft Rains, and it sits at the complete opposite end of the sound spectrum from the “angry stuff” I’ve been dissecting lately. It’s a record that understands that you don’t need a wall of Marshall stacks to be heavy; sometimes, the most crushing weight comes from the quietest moments.
The experience begins with Tribal (A Heart, Self-Taught) which is a lush, cinematic landscape of shimmering synths and fragile, soaring vocals. It’s a masterclass in the “ear-cleanse”, a track that demands you slow down your heart rate and actually listen to the space between the notes. By the time you hit We Are All Explorers Now and The Pilot, it’s clear that VLMV aren’t just making “ambient” music; they are constructing intricate, emotional architectures that feel properly, painfully human.
What makes this record so compelling is the way it handles its own scale. There’s a deceptive simplicity to tracks like Bodies Grown, Pt.1 and In Absentia, but the layers of production, which are handled with a level of professional clarity that puts many “pro” labels to shame, reveal new depths with every spin. It’s a sound that reminds me of that specific, late-night melancholy I’ve always loved, when it feels like a record was recorded in the small hours when the rest of the world has finally gone quiet.
The absolute pinnacle of the record, at least for me, arrives with Bodies Grown, Pt.2. As I’ve noted before, this is the kind of songwriting that makes the “genre” tag feel irrelevant. It’s just a voice, a piano, and a swell of strings, yet the result is nothing short of EPIC. It’s a visceral, emotional gut-punch, delivered almost at a whisper, that stays with you long after the track ends, proving sometimes there isn’t a need for a single distortion pedal. It’s the record’s tectonic heart, a sprawling study in vulnerability and beauty.
The back half, featuring I Am An Officer and the haunting Somnolence In Reverse, maintains that sustained, heavy-set tension. The songwriting is knotty and unpredictable, moving through movements that feel like they’re constantly expanding until the room feels too small to hold the emotion. This is the “soft rains” of the title delivering the quiet moments of survival that define us just as much as the storms.
By the time the final notes of Somnolence In Reverse eventually dissolve into the quiet, you realize that this is exactly why we bother looking in the first place. VLMV have managed to bottle a very specific kind of modern ache, proving that the most interesting things in the underground happen when you dare to be delicate. It’s a lush, dark-edged triumph that’s going to be added to my physical collection by the time this review is published. It’s a heavy, shimmering reminder that even when the world feels too loud, there is still a massive amount of power to be found in the silence. 9/10
TONS- Stoned Villains (Heavy Psych Sounds) [Matt Bladen]
Sludge now from Turin and this is the blackest, thickest, most acrid sludge you’re probably going to get this year as Stoned Villains, invites you to light up a bowl of your dankest and get really loud.
Released on 4/20 (obviously) Stoned Villains is the fourth album from these weed smoking hardcore dudes who traded speed and aggression for building levelling heaviness and buckets of fuzz, however they don’t fully slow down as Rollercoaster Dier Bombo blasts and there’s some bluesy grooves on Lost In Plantation. Vocally there’s still anguished shouts from the hardcore scene but the instrumentals are headache inducing, hypnotic grooves, thick like tar as they bleed through your speakers like the ooze in Ghostbusters II, turning everything it touches into desolation.
Like many bands in the doom/sludge scene, TONS like to play with synths and samples both used as an accompaniment and counterpoint to the fat fuzzing riffage and tonal distortion of the guitars and bass. You can play spot the sample here if your brain works that way, I got Robert Underdunk “Bob” Terwilliger doing his acceptance speech laugh from The Simpsons episode Sideshow Bob Roberts, Peter Finch’s Oscar winning role as Howard Beale in The Network (probably the most sampled speech ever?) and also Zucker comedy Top Secret but some of the others I had a bit of difficulty.
These samples are there to add to the hallucinatory nature of this record, with Duncan McCrapper (named for his father perhaps?) the sample master and lead guitarist who carves leads and solos through the mire of fuzzy heaviness. Stoned Villains features new drummer Oreste Pennarelli, who brings a renewed force to the bottom end, locked into the crushing grooves with Stewart J Tanuki on rhythm guitar and Gingerzilla who is bassist, synthist and screecher.
Combined together this foursome create filthy sludge noises that will rattle your skull. 7/10
The Medea Project – Akkadian Artefacts (BDB Studios) [Spike]
Handing your songs over to a remixer is often less of a collaboration and more of an exorcism. You’re essentially inviting a stranger to strip the flesh off your work and see if the skeleton can still stand on its own. For The Medea Project, that stranger is Lucifer X, and the result is Akkadian Artefacts, a five-track document that trades the raw, untrammelled majesty of their live presence for a lightless, electronic mausoleum. It’s an ambitious, atmospheric shadow world, but it’s one where the various components seem to be in a constant, uneasy tug-of-war for the listener’s attention.
The EP opens with Babylon (The Fall Of Akkadia), and the shift from their previous work is jarring. Gone is the immediate “shove” of the rhythm section, replaced by a dense, industrial fog that feels like walking through scarred ruins at sunset. Brett Minnie’s vocals are pushed into a new kind of isolation here, and while the lyrics gain a certain fragmented power, the musical backdrop occasionally feels like it’s trying to be too many things at once. It’s a sophisticated bit of dark ambient, but the transition into the hard electronics of Cave Dweller highlights the record’s primary friction: it’s a sound that is technically spellbinding but emotionally elusive.
What’s clear throughout the record, particularly on Ghosts In The Shell is the sheer level of talent involved. Pauline Silver’s percussion and Minnie’s guitars are reconfigured into these haunted, melancholic dream states that demand a high level of concentration. However, I find myself feeling that the record is “out of focus.” By the time we hit The Drone Song (Desertion), the genre-blending between doom and electronica feels like it’s pulling in opposite directions. It creates a flickering light in the void, but it lacks the cohesive emotional “gut-punch” that anchored their Live At Dingwalls release.
The finale, Redacted, is perhaps the most successful moment of the experiment. It’s a quiet, atmospheric fading of the light that refuses to offer a tidy resolution. It’s here that the “quiet world ending” aesthetic truly takes hold, avoiding the clutter of the earlier tracks in favour of a still magic that actually allows the listener to breathe.
Ultimately, Akkadian Artefacts feels like a record for the scholars rather than the seekers. It’s an honest, unvarnished look at what happens when you deconstruct a band’s DNA and reassemble it in the dark. While the talent on display is undeniable, the experience remains a series of entrancing strangers rather than a unified voice. It’s a challenging, occasionally brilliant bit of survivalism that proves The Medea Project are fearless in their exploration, even if this particular mirror doesn’t always show a clear reflection. 7/10
