The Fifth Alliance – Stenahoria (Tartarus Records/Breathe Plastic/Ardua Music) [Spike]
The first hit is a cold, heavy blow to the solar plexus. When the opening movement of
Phoenix first rattles out of the speakers, the sense of total, suffocating confinement is immediate, like the grey, freezing rain of the Netherlands has suddenly found its way inside.
Hailing from the region, The Fifth Alliance have spent the last decade building a reputation for a grim, uncompromising brand of post-metal and doom. Their latest effort, Stenahoria (distress, in the Greek), is a record born from sorrow and fear, and it doesn’t offer a single melodic line without also offering a crushing weight designed to pull you straight back down into the mud.
I’ll admit that on the first pass, I struggled a bit with the architecture. There is a tendency here to push too much into a single track, pulling the listener in three directions at once, it’s doom, it’s post-metal, it’s blackened fury and in isolation, it can feel slightly disjointed.
But you can’t treat Stenahoria like a collection of singles for a playlist; you have to take the whole thing in as one massive, forty-minute monolith. When you commit to the holistic transit, the joins disappear, and you realize the band are actually forging a very distinct, uncompromising path of their own.
Natalya Thelen (ex-Yantras) is the undisputed catalyst for this new era. Her voice elegantly slides from fragile, ghostly whispers to a raw, bone-shivering wail on Benandanti, completely redefining the band’s emotional reach. She is backed by the relentless, heavy-handed precision of new drummer Peter Scheffer (Soliton), whose performance gives the crushing, progressive riffs on The Fool On The Hill a physical, bone-shaking gravity.
The production retains all the raw, icy bleakness you want from this genre, but with a massive, high-fidelity presence. You can hear every string groan on Battle Of Barnet, a track that builds a suffocating amount of pressure before eventually dropping you into the dark of the finale, Jakob. It’s a clean, professional mix that somehow manages to keep the “gristle” firmly embedded in the tracks.
It’s not an easy record, nor should it be. If you’re looking for a comfortable, predictable post-metal crawl, you’re in the wrong place. Stenahoria is a deliberate confrontation with discomfort, demanding your total commitment and rewarding you with a rare, cathartic sense of survival. I’m walking away from this one with the realization that the band has created something genuinely formidable here, a dark, suffocating monument of tone that I’ll be listening to for a very long time. 8/10
Bong Voyage – Hedonistic Hard Rock (Ripple Music) [Rich Piva]
Your summer party record is here in the form of Hedonistic Hard Rock, from the supergroup of sorts, Bong Voyage. “All we wanna do is make a living playing rock n roll!” is the quote on their Bandcamp page and one of the opening lines on their debut record, Hedonistic Hard Rock, and if it is tongue and cheek or not, it screams of all the bands on the Sunset Strip who pilgrimaged there to make it big, even if these guys are from Oslo. No matter where they are from, this is super fun and most importantly, it rocks.
I get early Van Halen, early Quiet Riot, Jetboy, and other fun and sleazy bands when I listen to Hedonistic Hard Rock. Saturday Rite Special kicks off the party, and that is exactly what it is, a party. But don’t dismiss what these guys are doing here. There are cool tempo changes and layers to these songs.
Large And In Charge may be their theme song, and it certainly kicks the door down at the party house with a keg over their shoulder and ready to take shit to the next level. UFOria has an early 80s metal feel, more Maiden than their party obsessed brethren, keeping this one heavier, but in music only, not in subject matter.
The space theme continues with another standout, Outer Space Freebase, which has a fun gallop to it and big vocals, and is probably my favourite track on the record. I dig Enabler too, which reminds me of Y&T musically, and that is a great thing. There are no stinkers on this record, you just have to be in the right mood to fully enjoy it end to end.
This one is growing on me. I bet by the end of the year Hedonistic Hard Rock is one of my more listened to records. A completely different vibe then some of the guy’s other bands, Håndgemeng (who rule), but just as much love was put into this record by Bong Voyage as anything these guys have done. Not sure if this is just a side project, but if it is, let’s hoe we see what else these guys can do with this style. Party in Olso, everyone is invited. 7/10
Blood Of Angels – Les Agnst Ov Thanatou (Self Released) [Mark Young]
Formed in 2015, with a home base in Tampa, Florida which holds a special place in the heart of all death metal fans for the sheer volume of bands that have sprung forth from there. Blood Of Angels are promising a lot here, lets see what it’s about.
Transitional Portal is their starter, the first offering in what they promise is an to redefine extreme metal. I’m all for big statements like this; the thing is having the necessary tools to back it up. As it stands, this is a largely normal/standard/dull opening instrumental which I’ve constantly moaned about elsewhere. Beating You comes in with a riff and a sound that is straight from 1989, I’m not sure if they were approaching this as a live in the studio recording because this sound very lo-fi.
Randy Reyes harsh vocals dominate and are suitably guttural which in turn provides a balance to their sound. I’m assuming that they wanted it to sound like this; primitive, served practically raw with no unnecessary fat. It’s taken me by surprise, The Last Rites coming next and it sounds different, a fuller tone now on display.
In any respect it has probably one of the most annoying arrangements to it, a repeating passage that is similar to an alarm going off. Once it gets going, it gets better. This has a classic DM vibe to it, with the four players all on point with it. The main riff is chunky, and again the vocals underpin everything. The closing lead is just right, and there is a sense now that we have found our level.
Red River Death echoes this statement, with another step up in its tone. It’s an urgent guitar line that drops into trem picking time. They throw in some technical tapping before returning to the more brutal way of doing it. One of the things they aren’t afraid of is throwing changes in direction on a whim, especially if they feel that the song is growing stale. On the flip side is that they could have deployed the scissors on this one, but where is the fun in that?
Where it isn’t fun is on The Pain Inside. I think that it was intended for this to be the albums cornerstone, and with starting with an acoustic passage, you knew that this was going to be one of those earnest, cleanly sung and potentially overwrought songs that just kill an album dead. Luckily, they pull it back and get the distortion going.
Another change in tone, its deeper and thicker now but it will need to absolutely slay in order to get the first 3 or so minutes out of my mind. I feel like I’m being harsh here, I don’t mean to be because A – I’m not in a band B – I’ve never released any music so what gives me the right to say this? Well it’s because I’m a fan and if a band is telling me that they are doing wonderous things with the genre I love they better deliver.
There is a good song in this, cutting out the clean passages at the start and end would have made this a belter. When you look at this against those before it, there is definitely an upward trajectory in their respective builds and this is a song that would be better without the cleans. Spillage flies in like it knows it has to take care of a damaged relationship, this is such a welcome blast from them, 3 minutes of death metal that has a fiendish riff set and is furious too.
Likewise, Minds Of The Broken goes down the same route of just being heads down, brutal metal that fans of the genre can get behind. That lo-fi recording style works in their favour, as mentioned its raw and stripped back to the bone. When they do this, you can’t help but sit back and appreciate it for what they are.
And then they drop the ball with Nevermore. Its not clean singing, its that in between place that’s used before the real guttural style kicks in. It feels forced on this, bearing in mind that this clocks in at nearly 8 minutes long, the immediate energy of Spillage and Minds is now a distant memory for me.
If you look at the song itself, its got a decent descending pattern to it, nothing wrong with it all. For me, it needed to keep the rough style right through. There is a cracking set of riffs in here, massive even that totally work when the vocals are harsh. I don’t want slightly harsh vocals with my death metal, I just don’t.
Eulogy is just a spoken piece that closes out the album, and there’s not an awful lot I can say about it other than that is the end of this.
I’m not sure how to end this, because despite the ropey sound there are some good endeavours here. The two shorter songs are certainly high points of what they can do, its just that there are some severe missteps on here, which I just can’t get past. I don’t see where they are redefining metal, I also believe that they have talent to write decent death metal. Its just that they need to really look inwardly as to what they want to be. 6/10
Mirror Of My Soul – October Is Rising (Majestic Mountain Records) [Matt Bladen]
The solo project of journeyman bass player Patrik Andersson Winberg (Dun Ringill, ex-The Order of Israfel, Doomdogs), Mirror Of My Soul is a project that serves as vehicle for his storytelling, his writing, outside the constraints of a band.
Inspired by gothic rock along with classic hard and prog rock, it may not be the doom be ply’s his trade in day to day but October Is Rising is a record that has an introspection and a heaviness to it, though that’s emotional rather than in terms of volume.
It’s been a record that’s had a long gestation period. probably because there’s so many involved with it but underneath it all is the songwriting, bass, keys and more of Winberg that steer these experimentations in style, sound and feel.
Be it the Nick Cave sadness of the title track and A Good Day To Die, the flute driven progging of Mina Fotavtryck, the creeping organs of Grandpa, the songs here weren’t recorded until they were ready, regardless of genre, Winberg was committed to making sure his songs were the best expressions of his skill and passion.
Joining Winberg are drummers Pete Campbell (Axe Dragger) and Tobbe Strandvik (ex-Kamchatka), there’s guitarist Patric Grammann (Dun Ringill) and keyboardist Per Wiberg (Spiritual Beggars, ex-Opeth, Tiamat).
While there’s also a cast of singers who all bring their own personality to the characters these musical stories deal with. The vocalists are; Terry Slesser (Beckett, Backstreet Crawler, Geordie), Richard Reynolds (Lunar Tantrum), Andy Campbell (Rust Bucket), Damon Collum (ex-Don Darlings), Philip Lindgren (ex-Hypnos), and Niklas Sjöberg (Graviators).
With extra musical power from Lovisa, Songdog, Tobias Jansson (Saffire, Gathering of Kings), Niklas Börjesson (ex-Lotus), Tony Jelenchovich (Transport League, ex-M.A.N), October Is Rising is an exploration of Patrik Andersson Winberg’s creative muscle and while it is diverse and beguiling, you may be looking for something a bit louder when this ends. 6/10
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