Review: Band of Skulls - Sweet Sour

 Modern blues rock is a genuinely wonderful thing to hear. It's a style that has one a place in the hearts of many listeners of more mainstream music, while also being cool in the eyes of genuine rock fans. It's one of the few styles of music that manages to sound simultaneously fresh while revealing a classic influence as well. Anyway, in this subtle rise of celebrated blues rock acts one of the latest groups to make their mark is Southampton's Band of Skulls whose 2009 debut Baby Darling Doll Face Honey brought together the best of old-school blues rock with a chilled atmosphere of the best modern day alt rock. Anyway, this blissful array of rock is gracefully continued in 2012 as they come thundering back with their second album Sweet Sour.

 It doesn't take long for the group to reveal the full extent of this talent for bringing together the hard hitting impact of classic hard rock and the tender subtleties of indie rock and tracks like the opening title track and Wanderluster are reminiscent to the works of The White Stripes, The Black Keys and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, as rough, rustic guitar riffs from Russel Marsden and thumping drumbeats from Matt Hayward presents a joyful rock n' roll power shining through the delicate indie rock backdrop which is simply entrancing in it's ethereal serenity.

 The combination of these two elements of blues rock is wonderful enough on it's own but the moments of the album which are focused one particular element are breathtaking enough on their own. When the sole focus of the music is the hard rock element we find tracks like The Devil Takes Care of His Own and You're Not Pretty But You Got it Goin' On both having a reminiscence to Queens of the Stone Age, the latter sounding like the group in their prime, the former in their Era Vulgaris... era but both packed with adrenaline nonetheless. The lead vocals of bassist Emma Richardson and scuzzy guitar solo found on Lies also boosts the group's rock n' roll credentials. Sounding reminiscent to The Kills, Lies is pretty much successful in epitomizing "cool".

 Similarly, focusing on the more gentle moments of blues is crucial in this album as well, as tracks like Navigate and Hometowns are delivered with a simple and delicate acoustic led backdrop which listeners will lose themselves in effortlessly, plus the dual harmonies of Marsden and Richardson are both incredibly beautiful. The performance in the albums closer Close to Nowhere is also delightfully sweet, with songwriting and arrangement clearly done with an influence to The Velvet Underground's more peaceful moments.

 But, ultimately, what Sweet Sour does is continue to prove that the combination of classically influenced blues rock mixed with modern indie rock and garage rock is a style of music that can be celebrated with great ease and enjoyment. A lot of guitar work has a reminiscence to Led Zeppelin and The Who and various other classic rock masters and the stellar shimmering production and entrancing delicate vocal performances gives these songs a greater laid back atmosphere. And if swaggering rock riffs and chilled out attitudes aren't representative of the spirit of the blues staying alive in good health, I don't know what is.

 Band of Skulls' Sweet Sour is out now via Electric Blues Recordings. The band are on tour of the UK with Broken Hands.

  

Review: Hit the Lights - Invicta

When Ohio's Hit the Lights first came to prominence in 2006 following the release of their debut This Is a Stick Up... Don't Make It a Murder they were an instant hit, their single Bodybag being a delightful work of pop punk which was probably the most fun anyone has made a song about a death threat sound. Most press that followed the band was extremely positive and the general belief that emerged was that the group were likely to become one of the forerunners of the next generation of pop punk. But somehow, for the group, such a prospect wasn't appealing enough and instead for their third album Invicta the group have decided to make a collection of anthemic stadium filler rock songs. Which would work. Except none of these songs are very anthemic. And aren't likely to fill up any stadiums anytime soon.

 

 For this album, Hit the Lights have followed in the footsteps of fellow once-destined-for-pop-punk-revolutionaries Yellowcard when they released last years hugely disappointing When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes which featured a collection of generic feel-good rock anthems with little sense of soul or intimacy attached to them. I'm pretty sure the only people who were attracted by that album were easily amused pre-teens who listened to them as a mains to claim they were a fully credible listener of rock music. Maybe I think that because the Youtube videos of the songs featured backdrops with photos of islands and dolphins out at sea with lyrics appearing in shimmering pink words. It had the tackiness of such a person attached to it. Anyway, this Hit the Lights album seems to be destined to go the same direction as Yellowcard.

 There's a lot of nice pop rock playing on the album. Songs like Gravity have massive hooks in choruses and cynics to the album cannot argue it's ability to be catchy. If stadium rock can do one thing it's big choruses and the production throughout the album is pretty stellar - if the group is going to move into the big time league of pop rock groups they may as well have a grander sound.

 And that's the biggest problem of the album. When playing simple pop punk, Hit the Lights gave a very bold, simple in-your-face performance that left a lasting impression and was filled with a certain passion. With all this extra grandness comes... extra blandness. The vocal performance of Nick Thompson throughout the album is extremely generic and has little emotional properties and leaves little impact on listeners. Plus the lyrical content of the album basically means Invicta could be called Motivational Posters With Riffs! I promise you that this album does start off quite catchy amongst this blandness but as you listen further on, the blandness becomes unenjoyable and listening to each song... feels more like a task.

 So in Hit the Lights' attempt to increase the maturity of their sound, they've only resulted in creating bland rock albums that will only be appreciated by blander radio stations that don't believe in "edgy". There's nothing in the way of any soulful passion, just attempts to sound grander and more pretentious. The only positive things that can really be found in this album is there are still a decent amount of poppy hooks but when listening one of the main thoughts going through my head was "I bet these songs would sound so much better if they were to be re-worked musically and lyrically by A Day to Remember. They are truly the forerunners in modern day pop punk and even then, they've made their success through mixing it with metalcore. Invicta is another album that proves that pop rock is in a bad state right now and has no way of gaining any real respect from any genuine music enthusiasts. Seriously Hit the Lights, stay young and fresh. Keep pop punk healthy. It's in dire need.

 Hit the Lights' Invicta is out now via Razor & Tie. 

 

 

Review: Marmozets - Vexed

 The other day, my friends and I found rising punk quintet Marmozets to be one of our many targets of casual ridicule and mockery. Not even from listening to their music or anything. Just because we saw a picture of the group cheerfully posing and coming to the conclusion that the band definitely has an average age of twelve. Sometimes we do cooler things when we hang out. Anyway, this dynamic punk crew have already made a fairly big impact with the release of their debut EP Passive Aggressive to much approval and praise. Second EP Vexed sees the group continue their own take on punk. Only this time it's done with truly schizophrenic insanity.

 Essentially, Marmozets deliver an entire spectrum of punk music with great ease and opener One Man Wolfpack reveals this effortlessly mixing giant choruses with infectious hook, which reveals a talent for creating pop punk music mixed with the much more aggressive, structurally complex and unrelenting fury revealing a strong influence from some of hardcore music's most unforgiving acts such as Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan or Rolo Tomassi. Basically Marmozets have managed to create mathcore with hooks and melody which is no easy task.
 The performance across the EP is relentless as the band choose to tear their way through the seven tracks as violently as possible and crunch, growl and pummel their way through the journey. The guitar work of Jack Bottomley and Sam Macintyre reveal their ability to play with intensity and technical skill as tracks are filled with juddering structural patterns and time signature switches reveals their ability to be more rhythmically complex which, above all else in impressive for people who are at an age of starting their first year in high school.
 Also impressive is the vocal performance of frontwoman Becca Macintyre who unleashes her furious growling with immense fury and passion which is at times comparable to the leviathan growling of Rolo Tomassi's Eva Spence. Plus during the group's more melodic moments her cleaner vocals manage to be more prominent, which are actually very pretty. Well, as pretty as punk chanting can get.
 So, Marmozets seem to be getting a lot of hype and a continuously larger following as we speak and with the talent of taking complexity and melody, mixing it together and still managing to sound wilder and more over-the-top than any fellow peers makes this an understandable cause. This EP has the sound of the be-all-and-end-all to punk music. And we still have to brace ourselves for an album of insanity!

 Marmozets Vexed is out now.

Review: Goatwhore - Blood for the Master

 Ah, Goatwhore. A band with the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. From a glance one would say they've become kings in the American underground metal scene, largely because they're one of the few groups that have actually gained some mainstream success. I discovered them when their 2006 album A Haunting Curse appeared on iTunes' "Listeners Also Bought" section for Cannibal Corpse's Kill alongside Decapitated and Job for a Cowboy. If you're not big on death metal, these bands will probably all sound the same. If you're big on the genre, you'd probably look at that selection of artists and thing "Quite a diverse mix there." At first I was a little reluctant to buy their stuff because of their name. I don't think anyone would be able to look at me and suggest that I have any decent sense of sanity left if I had a band called "Goatwhore" on my iPod. Then I thought about it for a bit and my reaction was "Social consciousnesses... Hahahahaha!" and played Alchemy of the Black Cult Sun on repeat for the next week. So, I've really gotten to know their fiery, evil brand of metal that really defies all kind of genre labeling other than just saying that it's extreme. And you'll all be happy to know that that's the way they've kept it for their fifth release Blood for the Master.

 Certainly fans of the underground metal scene will be glad to see that Goatwhore have done nothing to altar their sound to gain more mainstream credibility. There were accusations last year of Ohio's Skeletonwitch, a band that deals with similar matters musically and lyrically having done that with their latest release Forever Abomination when they simply with a thrash-based sound, to the dismay of many worshipers of underground metal. I thought the album was brilliant myself, but you could see that a wilder more uncontrollable and evil force is required to truly ignite the Underground scene and as Blood for the Master's opener Collapse in Eternal Worth instantly hammers listeners in with it's rapid-fire thrashy riffs and the deathly growls of Louis Benjamin Falgoust II, you know the New Orleans quartet are riding hard on the trail to destruction with this album. It shows the group have no time to waste in setting listeners up for what lies ahead. There's no need for any kind of ambient sections that were occasionally present on 2009's Carving Out the Eyes of God.
 So Blood for the Master presents a very unrefined, in-your-face delivery of a eclectic range of metallic influences. Jagged thrash metal riffs are a permanent feature, Falgoust's vocals range from his monstrous death growl and his higher pitched screaming, giving him the sound of the American Dani Filth. And of course, Sammy Duet's guitar work reveals an influence from Venom effortlessly, so their black metal credentials are on a permanent high. Goatwhore are a difficult group to categorize and the best term that describes their music is "Blackened death metal". It's a term that's also been used to describe the likes of Behemoth and Annal Nathrakh but it sounds like a term that was created in a confused panic from the people at the record labels.
 This kind of thing shouldn't be worried about though, maybe we can just call it "metal" and agree that the sound of Goatwhore is definitive metal. Or not. Because it would be cool to see definitive metal being a little more dynamic than what Goatwhore have on offer. I mean, if there's any band you don't want to see completely revolutionize their sound and start acting experimental and look into the use of electronic elements and so on, it's got to be the bands that play with a traditional death metal influence (I can confidently say that I am the only person in the world that enjoyed Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus. Please don't hurt me.) but when listening to Blood of the Master, there is often a sense of predictability lurking in one's mind with each new track on offer. Parasitic Scriptures of the Sacred and Death to the Architects of Heaven are both played in a way that they could  now be described as a "Goatwhore standard" with the continuous repetition of a series thrash riff with a major structural change in the middle before returning to the riff that kicks things off. Also interesting is the fact that Beyond the Spell of Discontent has the exact same riff as Between the Immense and the Dead, the bonus track of the group's 2009 effort.
 Overall, this album serves as a mixed bag of metallic goods offering major influence from differing styles of traditional metal, but with little variation on their tracks and constant similarities, there's little to be found on this album that hasn't been present on their previous works. Still, you just know that if Goatwhore made any kind of more streamlined or experimental changes, they would definitely lose a good amount of devoted followers and their devotion and ability to give their sound a more brutal, in-your-face presentation must be praised. So for now, the New Orleans quartet can maintain their throne in the underground scene. But don't expect to move any higher any time soon.

Goatwhore's Blood for the Master is out now via Metal Blade.

Review: Romans - Cravatte Nere

 Fellow Kerrang! readers, surely you must have had your attention captured in witnessing the first photograph of Birmingham alt-rockers Romans which featured frontman Tom Sivell dressed in Roman centurion uniform and having slaughtered his fellow bandmates. He was literally a Roman. It suggested they would be a band that would play with a sense of fun, adventure and ability to play extreme. Their debut mini-album Cravatte Nere however, suggests the total opposite. It's really difficult to find anything to this collection of songs that makes this band really extreme, unique, dynamic or fun in any way.

 Let's take some time to reflect on bands that play in a similar ilk to Romans, because the style of music's major rise to mainstream popularity means that the Brummie quartet will be carried off in the rising as well. 2011 saw groups that take their love of indie rock and mixes it with the more melodic alternative rock bands like Thrice, Weezer and Taking Back Sunday and an influence from post-hardcore acts like At the Drive-In and Refused. Last year witnessed many bands in this manner rise to considerable sucess with the likes of Twin Atlantic, Deaf Havana and We Are the Ocean all releasign albums which gained chart success along with You Me At Six's Sinners Never Sleep which saw the group take an influence from this style rather than the pop-punk influence of old. In 2012, this style of rock is continuing to expand with Watford rockers Lower Than Atlantis signing to Island Records. Lower Than Atlantis are going to be huge this year and I want to get behind the hype. I think musically they're very good but I cannot get past the horrible vocals of frontman Mike Duce so they're on the whole unenjoyable. Anyway, this is all filler material, but it's required to make this post look bigger because frankly, the music on Cravatte Nere is so unremarkable and uneventful, they're's little to say about it.
 I mean, that's not to suggest that they're totally bland because there is a talent on this mini-album for creating strong melodies like the hooked up Something Biblical whic shows something of a frenzy being stirred as they play and the more complex rhythmic patterns found in Two and Rolling and Rome Sweet Rome showing a greater amount of thought put into the structure and flow of their songs. Plus there's a much wider range of influences and a ceartain blues inspired style of songwriting is found in melancholic ballad Barriers while the violent post-hardcore adrenaline is found most effectively in Coffee. There's even a greater influence to the more widely rcognised classic hard rock with various guitar riffs sounding reminiscent to the guitar work of Malcom Young.
 But, even with all this, Romans simply sound... lacking. Nothing more to it than that. All their songs lack that certain extra oomph that Twin Atlantic and Young Guns thrive on. But there's not a whole lot that this band does that keeps listeners genuinely gripped and excited even in their ever-chaging and surprising musical nature. It just comes with the ability to be flat out dull and unpleasant.
 So, while this mini-album reveals the initial signs of talent and potential from the Birmingham bunch, there is definitely room for improvement. What makes bands like Romans so engaging is their ability to thrill, to entice and to make listeners want to stop everything they're doing purely so thay can listen and rock out. Romans are yet to find the ability to do any of these things but perhaps with an extra dose of heaviness and distortion to their playing they can be come a group of more epic proportions. Anyway, everyone else seems to like them and they're probably going to become huge in the next few months or so and I'll look like the fool for hating them at first.

Romans' Cravetter Nere is out now.

Review: Pilgrim - Misery Wizard

 Sometimes, certain types of music have to stay in an underground dwelling. Most music that hits the mainstream with flying colours earn their place their for the snappy, hook filled and sickeningly upbeat nature. Sometimes it all gets a bit much and the best choice is to simply start digging until you find yourself completely surrounded by underground territory. And here you can find music that has the exact opposite of the general qualities regarding this mainstream sound. You will find music that is horrendously slow, requires total focus and depth when listening and is filled to the brim with absolute bleakness and despair. It's something we like to call Doom Metal and there are always fantastic acts to be found practicing the genre with more bleakness to be found with every new band. And droning their way from the gates of Hell to a rise in recognition amongst the underground in 2012 are Pilgrim, whose debut release Misery Wizard is an impressive force of unrelenting depression.

 I know nothing of this band they keep a strong sense of anonymity with stage names that aren't even worth questioning - their frontman is known only as "The Wizard", their bassist "Count Elric the Soothsayer" and drummer "Krolg Splinterfist, Slayer of Man" - and we know nothing of how they may speed their time, but I think I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest their spare time is spent with heavy drug usage and classic Black Sabbath records. There is no room for any glass-is-half-full natured ideals on this album. Tracks like Astaroth and the near-eleven-minute title track are filled with stretched out riffs that trudge along at snails-pace, which mixed with the subtly wild uncontrollable drumming of Splinterfist, which reveals a real influence from Bill Ward and the phantom-like howls of The Wizard give the songs a spacey, haunting and ultimately hopeless atmosphere that is so filled with absolute doom and despair that it gives me the impression that listening to the new Earth album is going to be an uplifting and heartwarming experience. (I'll listen to that album soon. Maybe when Spotify does what it's meant to do and... store music... when I need it.) Really though, this Sabbath influence is everywhere on this album and sometimes it can be difficult to find any kind of riff on this album that doesn't sound like the intro to War Pigs repeated for ten or so minutes.

 Sometimes the music Pilgrim makes isn't just the sprawling sound of death. Quest and Adventurer see the trio unleash the wonderful stoner groove, the kind of musical technique that never gets old or unfashionable and it makes these tracks genuinely badass as they tear their way into the depths of oblivion in a manner much more brash and extreme as The Wizard begins to add to the atmosphere, letting devilish growls take form and reveal a true metallic evil in their distorted assault.

 So, it's six tracks long but that's more than enough album space for Pilgrim to unleash the monolithic beasts within them delivering an ultimate spaced out sense of doom and spellbinding bleakness to all those needing their optimism to receive a severe beatdown. It's classically recorded, contains the musical sound of getting dragged into the pits of fire and brimstone and is rooted in complete doom. This album is the sound of the end of everything.

 Pilgrim's Misery Wizard is out now via Metal Blade.

Review: Orange Goblin - A Eulogy For the Damned

 It's been a while since we last heard from one of the UK's most reliable sources for stoner rock, Orange Goblin, with their last album Healing Through Fire was released in 2007 and saw the band taking some time away from music to find some better paid jobs to help support families, something of a tragic sign regarding the music industry's harsh effect on underground rock bands that are that bit more deserving. Their departure was to the dismay of many stoner rock fans (I love the way I try to present myself as someone who knew about them in 2007. Let's not kid ourselves; my music taste in 2007 was godawful.) And since then, as I've followed the path of stoner rock in my constantly-growing love for the genre, I came across some of their stuff with great delight. So to a see a glorious return in the form of their seventh album, A Eulogy For the Damned is a joyful thing for myself along with all my fellow stoners.

 Perhaps the time away has been a positive experience for the group, we'll never know that, but what that has done is given the group five years to think of a new album and they actually seem to have used that time well, which has been seen as a rarity in some groups. A Eulogy For the Damned is essentially an album with ten tracks, each track containing what would be viewed as many people as rock and roll and heavy metal perfection as opener Red Tide Rising kicks off proceedings with driving stoner grooves played with immense passion and rapid fury from guitarist Joe Hoare and frontman Ben Ward. It reveals the group playing with a greater strength than ever before, with the boozy, trippy atmospheres kept totally intact.
 It's the deadly stoner groove that is unleashed with unrelenting power whenever possible that makes this album so overwhelming in it's quest for pounding listeners into oblivion. Whether it's in tracks like Stand for Something, the mellower Save Me From Myself, or the actually danceable Return to Mars, (which at times has a more hook based and catchy rhythms suggesting a Van Halen or Faith No More influence was put into this album) which use the groove in a more uplifting style, using it to present a heavy blast of colour and positivity or in the darker tracks such as The Fog and Death of Aquarius in which the dramatic and sudden increase in rapidity of the groove in the former and the transition to an eerie single riff accompanied by eerier whispered chanting in the latter give the album very prime moments of... pure evil. Pure awesome unrefined evil.
 More importantly, this album is filled with some wonderful rock n' roll swagger. The muscular riffs with a progressive sense of thunder found on Acid Trial, the crunching, adrenaline packed rhythm of The Filthy and the Few, and the awe-inspiring, soulful solos accompanied by equally soulful backing harmonies heard at the end of the album's closing title-track are all excellent examples of the best moments where you can literally hear the heart of rock n' roll beating intensely to the levels of it having some kind of major cardiac arrest. In a good way. And no Orange Goblin album would be complete without a clear influence from Motörhead, pretty much the kings of rock n' roll swagger being identified in most areas of the album. It's most identifiable in Bishop's Wolf in the rapid fire riffs fired out into a filthy atmosphere of grit and drunken aggression. Somewhere, Lemmy downs a tumbler of Jack Daniels with pride knowing his influence is being truly fulfilled by another British band as awesome as his own.
 So, if you're feeling your music is in need of a little more awesomeness and truly awe-inspiring psychedelic wonder, A Eulogy For the Damned is the perfect place to look. It sees Orange Goblin playing extreme rock and roll and heavy metal sounding as close to perfect as this music has ever been heard. The stoner grooves are central in this role of achieving ultimate extremities and power and it's even done with a lot of heart and soul put behind it. It shows rock and metal at it's most real and honest with results that cover an entire emotional spectrum with ease and perfection and a delight for all enthusiasts of rock and metal music. Orange Goblin could just represent the unrelenting, determined spirit of rock n' roll's quest to fight on in the face of impossibility. And they do it in the best way possible. This is quite possibly music at it's most real.


 Orange Goblin's A Eulogy For the Damned is out now via Candlelight Records. The band will tour the UK in April with Grifter, Dopefight, Church of Misery and Slabdragger.