A new Armored Saint album is always something I look forwards to. Since I came across probably their magnum opus Symbol Of Salvation in the early 90’s they’ve always been a band that meant something to me, being my first exposure to the American branch of the Power Metal family (although in reality that’s a label that struggles to fit a band as distinctively in a sub-genre of their own as the Saint find themselves).
They never really broke big time out of the USA in their original incarnation, and ironically by the time that final album from their first run landed on my platter, they had already scattered to the winds. At their time their back catalogue on Chrysalis was a mystery here in the UK, so Salvation served as both, err a symbol, and a tombstone to an act that I was unlikely to ever see any more of with vocalist John Bush then ensconced in Anthrax, and the band seemingly gone forever, and their back catalogue with them.
Their reunion in the late 90’s passed me by as well, but when I discovered that the Salvation line-up was not only back but recording I dived back in with delight. The release that coincided with this was 2015’s Win Hands Down and suddenly ‘delight’ seemed too small a word. I’m well versed with the discography now, but for me those two aforementioned releases remain the high-water mark to beat.
Enter Emotion Factory Reset.
It takes me by surprise from the first song. Saw raw and aggressive are John Bush’s vocals on opener Close To The Bone, that I find myself wondering if there’s actually someone else behind the mike stand. The material jumps around a bit too, stylistically nodding to all eight of its studio predecessors, not least in the production values, which really do scale up and down a lot.
Their reunion in the late 90’s passed me by as well, but when I discovered that the Salvation line-up was not only back but recording I dived back in with delight. The release that coincided with this was 2015’s Win Hands Down and suddenly ‘delight’ seemed too small a word. I’m well versed with the discography now, but for me those two aforementioned releases remain the high-water mark to beat.
Enter Emotion Factory Reset.
It takes me by surprise from the first song. Saw raw and aggressive are John Bush’s vocals on opener Close To The Bone, that I find myself wondering if there’s actually someone else behind the mike stand. The material jumps around a bit too, stylistically nodding to all eight of its studio predecessors, not least in the production values, which really do scale up and down a lot.
Given the effort that went into recently revamping the 3 Chrysalis holy grail albums of my lost 20’s, it’s a surprise that such a rough and ready style has been adopted in places, but that I suspect is a consequence of the fact that the material here has been a long while coming, and was cut in five different studios.
The other gut instinct I have about is because of its fragmented production; the album suffers a little from lack of consistency. When bands usually get together they assemble a bunch of tracks as a pre-production exercise, which collates whatever’s been bubbling on the back burners and to consolidate maybe an album and a half’s worth of material which they can then hone refine and cull in the more expensive production facilities to get a thematically consistent rounded end product.
The other gut instinct I have about is because of its fragmented production; the album suffers a little from lack of consistency. When bands usually get together they assemble a bunch of tracks as a pre-production exercise, which collates whatever’s been bubbling on the back burners and to consolidate maybe an album and a half’s worth of material which they can then hone refine and cull in the more expensive production facilities to get a thematically consistent rounded end product.
Emotion Factory Reset by its very nature is a more eclectic mix stylistically, and I get the feeling that the whole point of the exercise was not to create a thematically rounded statement of intent, but to nod to the past, hint to the future and most importantly produce a bunch of songs that they simply just like. And it’s that honest intent that saves this from being a dilettanteish mess, and more like the missing Greatest Hits that I would probably have chewed my own arm off to get hold of in 1995.
By the time I’m through the first time, I’m circling back again with any sense of wariness and consistency buried by the knowledge, that this too is probably going to turn out to be yet another high-water mark, even if it does take a few spins to get deeply in. 8/10
Acid Reign – Daze Of the Week (Back On Black) [Simon Black]
Being old enough to have lived through the time of the so-called Big 4 of British Thrash, Acid Reign were an act I always had a soft spot for.
Acid Reign – Daze Of the Week (Back On Black) [Simon Black]
Being old enough to have lived through the time of the so-called Big 4 of British Thrash, Acid Reign were an act I always had a soft spot for.
Unlike their US equivalents, longevity and global success wasn’t for most of these acts. The early 90’s wiped most of them out and whilst Onslaught and Xentrix have rebooted and recovered to an extent, Sabbat were never coming back as a recording outfit, and Acid Reign came late to the revival party. But the key word here is ‘party’, which is something that they’ve more than made up for since.
Having seen them live last year, I was blown away by how energetic and thoroughly entertaining they are live, mostly because frontman H (the only original member still standing) is like ADHD in a bottle when he gets an audience to work, which he will to within an inch of their lives.
The reality is this is only their fourth studio album across as many decades, and seven years since they last hit the studio. The line up, guitars excepted is the same that came together for the 2015 reboot, and they’ve clearly gelled in the studio as well as on the boards. Daze Of The Week wastes no time ripping holes in your eardrums, with a brutally precise, catchy and insanely energetic splatter of tracks that sounds as on the nose and in your testicles as The Fear was way back when I were a lad.
I missed out on 2019’s The Age Of Entitlement, but the key difference today is in production and song-crafting. The youthful enthusiasm of the 80’s saw them being a bit more naïve in their arrangements, but all ten of the tracks here are well crafted, with any padding well and truly sifted away. If you are going to spend a long-time gestating material between releases, it allows you to selectively hone, and clearly a lot of time has been spent crafting these beauties as precisely as possible.
Yet at the same time they achieve the magic juice of maximum scarcity, which is to make the recording sounds as crisply immediate and spontaneous as they are on stage. Loads of bands try and capture that zeitgeist, incorrectly thinking that aping old school analogue is the way to achieve it, whereas Acid Reign have clearly spent a lot of time rehearsing, pre-producing and nailing things to within a gnat’s whisker, and probably banged them out in the studio very fast.
The reality is this is only their fourth studio album across as many decades, and seven years since they last hit the studio. The line up, guitars excepted is the same that came together for the 2015 reboot, and they’ve clearly gelled in the studio as well as on the boards. Daze Of The Week wastes no time ripping holes in your eardrums, with a brutally precise, catchy and insanely energetic splatter of tracks that sounds as on the nose and in your testicles as The Fear was way back when I were a lad.
I missed out on 2019’s The Age Of Entitlement, but the key difference today is in production and song-crafting. The youthful enthusiasm of the 80’s saw them being a bit more naïve in their arrangements, but all ten of the tracks here are well crafted, with any padding well and truly sifted away. If you are going to spend a long-time gestating material between releases, it allows you to selectively hone, and clearly a lot of time has been spent crafting these beauties as precisely as possible.
Yet at the same time they achieve the magic juice of maximum scarcity, which is to make the recording sounds as crisply immediate and spontaneous as they are on stage. Loads of bands try and capture that zeitgeist, incorrectly thinking that aping old school analogue is the way to achieve it, whereas Acid Reign have clearly spent a lot of time rehearsing, pre-producing and nailing things to within a gnat’s whisker, and probably banged them out in the studio very fast.
Old school Thrash done properly is still a joy to listen to, and that, dear reader is all you can ask for. 9/10
Rival Cults – Our Gods Need Blood (Seeing Red Records) [Matt Bladen]
I’m a big fan of gothic rock, especially that post-punk style of goth that came out of the late 80’s, romantic baritone vocals, jangling guitars and songs that ooze with dark machismo and sexuality.
Bands like The Cult, The Mission, Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative are the acts that have been the blueprints. In recent years Unto Others, Creeper or anything involving Mat McNerney seem to be the bands that are bringing this style of rock back, but you can add the name of Santa Barbara band Rival Cults to that list.
Formed by guitarists Adj Tejada (rhythm), Casey Shropshire (lead) and vocalist Cole Tyler Barrington, they quickly started writing and brought in bassist Cane Fletcher and drummer Richard Rhiger and drew from dark subject matter such as alcoholism to form their style as a band.
Leading to their debut full length in 2023 which cemented their gothic rock identity and penchant for personal lyricism as it was inspired by Barrington’s path out of addiction but doing so they wanted to put “more rock in our goth” by dialling up the volume with bigger and badder, riffs and solos to move towards a more grandiose musical offering.
The lyrics have evolved from personal rebirth into songs about “love, faith, desire, and mortality” these more hedonistic ideals fitting their dirtier and heavier rock n roll. Rival Cults are not a band who live in the past, this is gorgeous goth rock for the 21st Century, worshipping those statuesque gods of old but a bringing their own vampiric swagger and maudlin mystery to the genre.
Come quickly as Our Gods Need Blood and it has to be yours! 8/10
Opensight – The Outfit (Inertial Music) [Matt Bladen]
There probably aren’t too many rock/metal albums that start off with the Morricone-esque trumpets you’d find in a Spaghetti Western, but then Opensight are not your typical rock/metal band.
I’m a big fan of gothic rock, especially that post-punk style of goth that came out of the late 80’s, romantic baritone vocals, jangling guitars and songs that ooze with dark machismo and sexuality.
Bands like The Cult, The Mission, Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative are the acts that have been the blueprints. In recent years Unto Others, Creeper or anything involving Mat McNerney seem to be the bands that are bringing this style of rock back, but you can add the name of Santa Barbara band Rival Cults to that list.
Formed by guitarists Adj Tejada (rhythm), Casey Shropshire (lead) and vocalist Cole Tyler Barrington, they quickly started writing and brought in bassist Cane Fletcher and drummer Richard Rhiger and drew from dark subject matter such as alcoholism to form their style as a band.
Leading to their debut full length in 2023 which cemented their gothic rock identity and penchant for personal lyricism as it was inspired by Barrington’s path out of addiction but doing so they wanted to put “more rock in our goth” by dialling up the volume with bigger and badder, riffs and solos to move towards a more grandiose musical offering.
The lyrics have evolved from personal rebirth into songs about “love, faith, desire, and mortality” these more hedonistic ideals fitting their dirtier and heavier rock n roll. Rival Cults are not a band who live in the past, this is gorgeous goth rock for the 21st Century, worshipping those statuesque gods of old but a bringing their own vampiric swagger and maudlin mystery to the genre.
Come quickly as Our Gods Need Blood and it has to be yours! 8/10
Opensight – The Outfit (Inertial Music) [Matt Bladen]
There probably aren’t too many rock/metal albums that start off with the Morricone-esque trumpets you’d find in a Spaghetti Western, but then Opensight are not your typical rock/metal band.
They’re one the UK’s biggest purveyors of ‘cinematic rock’ all their albums build around a storyline, like a movie, telling a story from beginning to end through evolving musical dynamics but always staying within the soundscapes of film genres rather than musical ones, the funkadelic riff on Final Cut for instance. With The Outfit they throwback to the glory days of 70’s grindhouse, where gritty crime capers, westerns, bloody horrors we all there to grab your imagination and offer cheap thrills and spills.
There’s nothing cheap about Opensight though, they’re a talented crop of musicians who probably just as much musical education as they do media. After the Procesión De La Muerte’s brass subsides it’s straight into Killer Outfit where the bad guys in the black hats ride into town, segueing into the spooky and surreal world of In Plain Sight which has that customary Theremin used in all horror/sci fi movies.
What I do find about Opensight is that they don’t let the conceptual stuff get in the way of the songwriting, everything on the record is quite immediate and pulls you in quickly, there aren’t too many instances where the style is more important than the substance.
In regards to the substance, Opensight hook their sound to classic heavy rock and metal from the same period of their movie period though with a few modern touches with Muse and Faith No More being two due to the Western themeing and experimental style, while there’s also some Jeff Wayne influences of course. The Outfit reasserts that’s Opensight’s cinematic rock style is here to stay, another story driven record from this innovative act. 7/10
