Song review: Lamb of God - Ghost Walking

 When it comes to fully getting into music, it sometimes takes a while for me to see how things really are. And one thing that I've really come to notice over time is that there really is no such thing as all around respect for any artist of any kind. When I first got into Metallica through Master of Puppets and The Black Album my initial thoughts were that these albums were totally awesome and there was no way in hell that anyone would disagree even though both albums have something of a different sound to them. As months past, such thoughts were broken for me after realizing that The Black Album is the album that has separated most metal fans from one another more than any other album. I also realized the thousands of people out there who feel that The Black Album and all following pieces of work are some of the worst music they've ever heard. So, I lost faith in this myth of Metallica being viewed as Godly by all the metal community.
 Instead, focus on such a claim went to another band that I totally loved and really struggled to find any bad words written about, Virginia's Lamb of God. Having totally fallen in love with Sacrament and Wrath I came to the conclusion that this was finally the band that no metal fan could disregard. And then UltimateGuitar.com comment boards happened. The guys who write on these are probably the harshest people I've ever read the words of and suddenly Lamb of God were just being dismissed as a cheap Pantera rip-off. Though I've noted similarities in terms of riffing and such I'd never call them rip-offs. Lamb of God are blazing with their own sense of unique talent and intensity. This is proven effectively on their new song Ghost Walking.
 Taken from their upcoming seventh album Resolution, Ghost Walking gives a clear impression of the defining aggressive take on traditional heavy metal that LoG have become known for with a higher key that creates a sense of freshness to the song and perhaps the album as a whole. This may annoy many but the song is very much reminiscent of the group's massive single Redneck but with the rawness of Ashes of the Wake or Wrath. While Randy Blythe's vocals sound much deeper throughout the song, this really builds on the sheer brutality the band are offering plus Mark Morton has much more of a spotlight on this song with a guitar solo that is simply mind-numbing.
 So Ghost Walking proves that Lamb of God are very much their own band and shows their music isn't getting weaker in any way and is still very cool to listen to. It gets me very excited for Resolution which is being released next month. And it's also my birthday next month. So just think of how those two things could come together in some way...

 Lamb of God's Resolution will be released on 24th January via Roadrunner.

Live review: Metal Hammer Defenders of the Faith III Tour, O2 Academy, Glasgow

 Live reviews are something that aren't likely to make a regular appearance on ROARF. It's because I don't really get much of a chance to visit many big gigs because I'm just a small town boy, livin' in a lonely worl-  Let's not burst into song. Especially that song. It's a really bad song. So being from the small and sometimes lovely-sometimes depressing town of Blairgowrie, it's hard to get to any decent gigs and the idea of going to  The Gig to see some Oasis tribute band is not really my idea of a good night. However, last night was an exception. Whilst most of my fellow schoolmates were at home doing crucially important homework, or in some cases sleeping, my good friend Callum and I were at the O2 academy to witness the brutal insanity that was the Scottish leg of the Metal Hammer Defenders of the Faith III tour and the entire event was epic in every sense.
 To say this report is by any means professional is... a total lie to be honest, since arriving at just after half past six in the evening causes us to miss the opening act Insense, however I get the feeling we're not the only people to miss this.
 However, on walking into the grand and misty hall with the big open pit that is the O2 Academy, we are treated to a blistering and energetic set from metalcore stars Rise to Remain, who are still to fully convince me that they have the makings to be the future of British metal after releasing their okay-at-best debut City of Vultures. However, this is an act who clearly live to perform, as the commanding tones of Austin Dickinson are effortlessly engaging, as he has everyone jumping up and down side by side to the juddering metalcore assault of Power Through Fear and Nothing Left. As they leave the stage, we are left stunned and I view them now with a greater sense of credibility.

 Following a spell of standing around and chattering, we are treated to a completely different beast. As the stage darkens and ominous chanting begins to rise we are treated to a set from upcoming satanists Ghost. This is our first time listening to this band after simply managing to look at and be confused by pictures of the group. However, the spectacle of four unknown hooded figures appearing onstage and picking up guitars is an impressive and downright awesome spectacle. As the group's master Papa Emeritus takes to the stage donning satanic cardinal attire, we are treated surprisingly to a blissful and genuinely awesome array of relentless doom metal, free of screaming and opportunity to mosh. Still, the highly theatrical and dramatic charm of the set really proves Ghost to be more than a band that just makes me say "What the hell?" whenever I see their picture.

 Afterwards as Gothenburg's finest In Flames take to the stage, the real mosh pit sessions begin. There is a demand with a group as widely respected and highly influential as In Flames to lose your head to their outstanding melodic death metal run-through and frontman Anders Fridén isn't best pleased from the lack of movement from the people higher up in the stands telling them "You know we got paramedics back here right? Because you guys must obviously be dying or something." It's fair enough, the group are just wanting from the crowd the same energy that they put into their performance. Having released their brilliant Sounds of a Playground Fading in May the group play with a full-on pummeling, which attracts everyone in the pit, as they begin smashing into each other and mass crowd-surfing ensues. The insanity of this goes to the extent to which me and Callum are separated during closer Take This Life, not to see each other until the set is long over.

 However, as great as these bands are they're not the real reason why we have come tonight. And tonight's headliners are none other than Floridian metalcore masters Trivium. The band that was one of the first to really get me into metal, the first band this blog covered and now, the headliners of my first metal gig. And as Capsizing the Sea begins playing from speakers surrounding the stage and the band get into place, the sense of anticipation surrounding the Academy is overwhelming. It is when Matt Heafy, accompanied by a crowd of amazed metal fans scream out "IN WAAAAAAAAAVES" together, the moment is so alive in it's extreme intensity and sense of togetherness, that the moment is simply phenomanal. Throughout the set we are treated largely to a selection of songs from Ascendancy and August's fantastic In Waves as well as a selection of tracks from 2008's Shogun. As the crowd continue their shout-alongs as Heafy requests us to join in with every "DUSK DISMANTLED" from the track of the same. Meanwhile, Callum and I decide to take sterile and violent dashes through the circle pits that arise during Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr and Kiruste Gomen. As the close their set with a massive performance of the hectic Throes of Perdition, it's pretty clear that Trivium have managed to capture the hearts and keep intact the love that everyone screaming their name at the end has for them.

 So, that was the Defenders of the Faith III Tour Glasgow leg. As someone who listens to a lot of music but basically never gets to see live music, getting to go was an amazing experience that I'll never forget. And being part of a mosh-pit is something I can totally get behind and would totally recommend to all reading. Seriously, if you go down in one of those things, you will have ten people around you all helping you up. Just don't do what I did and pull someone up so hard that you then cause them to fall the other way... Oops.
 It might be a while before you see me write another live review, but I promise you now, that this will not be the last. My New Year's Resolution for 2012 is going to be... to go to more gigs. Sorted.

 Thanks to Callum Strachan for the awesome photography.

Review: Black Spiders - Volume

 This year, my four favourite British newcomer rock acts would have to be Black Spiders, Arcane Root, The James Cleaver Quintet and Turbowolf. For this review it would be very convenient for me to call Doncaster's Sons of the North my favourite of the four, but that would be lying. They came a close third after Turbowolf and the JCQ. However, that's no kind of underestimation to how good the band are at all. Their February debut was a mind-blowing hard hitting collection of traditional heavy metal with some stoner rock elements thrown in for good measure. And now, so popular is the demand for the band to make their earlier material more available across the globe, that the material from their debut EPs and single for St. Peter have been collected together on Volume.

 Volume is my first chance to listen to these earlier recordings from the band and the opener being the single version of the album track St. Peter is a perfect example of the band when they let the stoner roots take flight. It's sinister, the riffs are dwindling and overwhelmingly powerful and the solo sees more extreme action kicking into place. Yeah it's all epic.

 A lot of tracks on this album keep the characteristics of stoner rock in place but add a greater sense of adrenaline and pace to a lot of their songs. If we look at it in terms of what I recently decided to be my favourite album Kyuss' Blues For the Red Sun basically most of Black Spiders' songs are more like Green Machine in their style rather than... Thong Song. I hope that meant something to anyone reading this. I don't think I've ever met anyone who hasn't looked confused and blank whenever I've mentioned the almighty Kyuss.

Anyway, Cold Dead Hands is a good example of this paced up stoner rock.

 It's not just that though. There's a influence to various classic rock acts, with D & B sounding like The Rolling Stones playing heavy metal and Jitterbug and I'll Be the Judge playing with the hard rock fury of The Wildhearts and of course there's Kicked In the Teeth which is Led Zeppelin's Black Dog, only evil. Of course ll whilst containing the spirit of classic heavy metal spirit of Black Sabbath and AC/DC.

 The group also carries an incredible sens of slickness about them which lakes them even cooler. It's best demonstrated in Just Like a Woman and their cover of Motörhead's No Class which isn't quite as good as the original but hey, they make it their own.

 Essentially, Volume is a perfect display of what makes Black Spiders so great as a band and proves that this band haven't had a single low moment in their career which has just blown up this year. I'd strongly recommend this along with Sons of the North and find yourself immersed in a band who are likely to become future legends of hard rock.

Review: Korn - The Path of Totality

 Back in June, when I started off this humble little blog, I wasn't really sure of what to do with it, properly and rather than doing music reviews, there was really just pointless... rambling about music. Actually there'll be a bunch of people around who still think that's what it is today. But in one of my earlier posts I discussed my love of nu metal and how I thought it was still relevant and defied the common criticisms of the genre. Anyway, without any forward knowledge of the kind of events that would unfold over the next few months, I concluded the post by writing:
"The genre is still very much alive today,due to many bands who originally brought the genre to the masses in the late 90's and early 00's such as Korn and Disturbed, and may it continue to reign for many years to come."
 And then Disturbed went on hiatus. And Korn?... Korn did this.

Korn decided that they wanted to challenge themselves and their fans and try something all new and experimental. Being fully grown men and having released themselves of all the anger and suffering that fueled their early releases, the group were looking for a new style they could use to adapt and update nu metal for the 2010s generation of new music styles. And it's pretty obvious that the main music style that everyone grew an interest in this year is the dark and heavy electronic sound that is dubstep. So, teaming up with a group of dubstep musicians such as Kill the Noise, Noisia and currently the most recognizable face of the genre Skrillex, Korn have made a huge gamble on their tenth album The Path of Totality. Is it a success? Sort of.
 Following last year's stale sounding Korn III: Remember Who You Are this album makes it immediately delightful to hear the Bakersfield quartet sounding fresh. There's a real atmosphere of pureness and ultimate freshness in the electronic beats that Skrillex operates in opener Chaos Lives in Everything. It proves dubstep to be the craziest and most dynamic of all electronic genres and the nasally vocals of Jonathan Davis actually fits in very well with this backdrop, elevating the atmosphere of darkness and insanity provided. Actually, this electronic backdrop manages to characterize a lot of the themes and emotions the song want to build up. The genuine electronic brutality that Downlink provides in Sanctuary puts a greater emphasis on the levels of evil the songs is wishing to emphasize while the frantic electronic beats and breakdowns that Skrillex and Kill the Noise provide on Narcissistic Cannibal highlight the sadness and anger Davis wishes to draw on. These musicians often manage to just make an interesting and dramatic musical backdrop a lot of the time. The electronic effects provided by Downlink and Excision on Illuminati sound like a more energetic version of a backdrop from Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile. The dubstep effects are genuinely interesting and having a type of dance music that one can actually headbang to is pretty awe-inspiring.
 Call me a fuddy-duddy rock fan if you will, but if I have any problem with this album, it is that it should be a proper fusion of dubstep and metal and there are a lot of moments where that doesn't happen. The dubstep effects are heavy enough, but many of us will have been hoping to hear an equal emphasis on electronics and riffs and there are too many moments where that's just not happening and the album could just be called Jonathan Davis and Dub Friends! Some of the best tracks are the likes of Get Up!, Way Too Far, and the sinister Bleeding Out, where the power chord smashing from Munky and bass slapping of Fieldy are mixed well with the wobble bass effects from Skrillex, 12th Planet and Feed Me. These are the kinds of songs I was expecting from the album.
 So as you'd expect, The Path of Totality is Korn as you've never heard them before and the dubstep effects mixed with Korn's bleak heavy metal style is a combination that works well. However many may be disappointed to find a greater emphasis on the dubstep as opposed to the metal itself. But for it's sense of dynamism,creativity and thinking outside the box that the music provides, this album is pretty triumphant in achieving Korn's goals of following a new venture and redefining themselves musically.

Korn's The Path of Totality is out now via Roadrunner.

R.I.P Nu Metal

1994-2011

You should check out: Amongst Carrion

 I was recently introduced to Welsh up-and-coming metallers Amongst Carrion by my friend John on Google+ and was pretty impressed by what they had to offer. Their bold sound made it clear that metalcore is still a living breathing creature with a lot of anger to release, which left me entranced and asking for more.

 A lot of rising metalcore acts today are easy targets for criticism, choosing to adopt a sense of party-boy antics and happy-go-lucky positivity to a genre that theoretically shouldn't belong in a genre that was built on metallic blood, sweat and tears. I won't complain. I've been into a lot of bands with this description but I can understand that many could view this as problematic. However, Amongst Carrion shun any kind of tomfoolery away. Their debut EP We That Should Not Be is packed to the brim with dramatic, spiteful and fairly doomy metalcore. Think As I Lay Dying with a greater influence from death metal and deathcore acts and you get a pretty basic picture of the band. As guitarist James Hampson creates a selection of brutal juddering riffs across Snowblind and We That Should Not Be you can identify a sense of anger at the world around them has been put into the music, particularly  in the latter track in which the acts of mankind are pretty much slammed to the ground and frontman Josh Lewis or... AJ, as he likes to be called growls about the beauty of mother nature.
 Speaking of which, the metalcore sound must be praised for it's absolute pureness and earthly roots, which gives the music a much richer texture, especially in comparison to some of the rising metalcore acts who have been making constant use of synthesizers, which sometimes works, sometimes really cheapens their sound, especially when they try to make themselves totally unique by mixing metalcore with what sounds like B-horror movie soundtracks. (Yeah, I've not been getting into likely-to-be-next-year's-Kerrang!-cover-stars Motionless In White)
 So, taking to the sort-of-underground world of youthful metalcore acts packing energy and brutality to their music rather that party-boy-quirks Amongst Carrion are taking all their listeners by storm.

Review: Steak Number Eight - All is Chaos

 Belgian sludge-makers Steak Number Eight have been gathering up a lot of interest and noise as of late. This is due largely to the quirky yet doom-ridden yet captivating sludge metal that is found on their second release All Is Chaos, and fair enough really. If you like your stuff heavy and if you like your stuff trippy which makes you feel like your chilling out in the dark armchair of hell waiting for the world to end, then this is pretty much the best new place to look.

 As opener Dickhead throws readers into a a dwindling stoner rock influenced riff opening, you realize that these rowdy teenagers know a thing or two about making rock and roll with a rougher more distorted edge that carries a "don't-give-a-fuck" atmosphere about it as well as maintaining an atmosphere of doom. This idea of doom is further emphasized in Pyromaniac where things really slow down and provide a more melancholic atmosphere. This effectively makes Steak Number Eight sound the missing link between Mastodon and Isis making effective use of the types of rhythmic complexity and bleak imagery that these bands have thrived on throughout their career, as well as allowing for more moments of mellowness and ambiance and moments where such concepts are dropped in favour of pure rock and roll.
 However everything musically manages to add up to make this atmosphere of bleakness come into full shape. Be it in the sludgy riffs from Cis Deman on Black Fall, or the bass slapping on Stargazing from Jesse Surmont, these elements in their heaviness and down-tuning give the music the atmosphere of doom and terror the artist were clearly looking for.
 There are moments when this is not the case. The more straightforward The Calling has the qualities of Queens of the Stone Age meeting Crime in Stereo and just rocking out without any care of anyone else around them whilst Track Into the Sky takes things down a more uplifting path with it's heavy dream pop effect with an extra shoegaze influence which actually remains fairly mellow but grows heavier in a very subtle manner.
 Lyrically, there is an issue that many critics are picking up on regarding the lyrics to Dickhead which are as graceful and subtle as the title itself. ("But now you can suck my fucking cock/ you dickless motherfucker/ You can suck my dick if you don't like my shit.") It's hard to tell what the group were thinking there because the rest of the lyrics actually reveal a sense of vulnerability and extra bleakness within the group such as "Talking inside my head/ Tonight marry my death/ Vultures swarming within my mind/ Losing time." and "Sometimes I have to escape from it all/ And I know there's only one way and it's through you/ I would have followed you/ But I still walk in your tracks in the sky."
 The overall impression of this album is that despite the average age of Steak Number Eight being eighteen, the group sound a lot more mature than any other rising acts at the moment. They have a pure devotion to their music and the creating metal with a more artistic and gripping-you-by-the-throat quality about it and they're a bind who pretty much revel in doom and bleakness. So, if you're looking for an album filled with hatred, a state of emotional instability and impending doom with a more youthful and energetic edge, this is the album I would recommend. The music on this album is music that has been all the way to the depths of oblivion and back. All the music is... chaos.

 Steak Number Eight's All is Chaos is out now via PIAS.

Review: Living With Lions - Holy Shit

 There's a decent amount of buzz being spread about possibly at this very moment about up-and-coming Canadian quintet Living With Lions, whose second album Holy Shit is being perceived as something that is going to blow the world over with it's hard hitting ability to spread a sense of cheer to all who listen. Kerrang! has already described the album as the "soundtrack to your best day ever". Upon hearing the album, it's clear that this buzz may be onto something.

Displaying a range of energetic pop punk with a rougher hardcore edge, Living With Lions deliver an array of uplifting, anthemic and angst-fueled rock songs with great ease, with such emotions being delivered in a spectacular array of varying techniques, such as In Your Light's crushing breakdowns which present an identifiable atmosphere of fury or the rapid fire bittersweetness that emerges through the punk assault of Honesty, Honestly, all of course done with a selection of massive hooks.
 With their pop punk stylings which manage to take things on a harder and more metallic edge Living With Lions share a lot in common with the stylings of A Day to Remember and The Wonder Years but balanced out with the more blues influenced punk stylings of The Gaslight Anthem or Against Me! tied together by the rough guitar work from Chase Brenneman and Landon Matz and the aggressive melodic vocals of Stuart Ross.
 Though there are themes of angst, frustration and sadness within the album, this musical work with a pounding rhythm section that makes the music sound ultimately powered by pure ecstasy and hysterical excitement and joy. Wither this is what the effect the group desired is a different issue, but if they did it's been a fair success because musically, Holy Shit is exhilarating throughout.
 So, an issue that has been taking place throughout 2011 is the question regarding the state of pop-punk. Claims are being made that the genre is not dead, but with acts like Four Year Strong and You Me At Six changing their styles to a more streamlined rock act and sounding better as a result compared to the likes of All Time Low and New Found Glory sticking to the genre and sounding stale as a consequence, some questioning really needs to be put into how healthy the genre really is. However if more band s like Living With Lions manage to rise up and make it big, then there's a good chance that pop-punk could make a strong revival.

Living With Lions' Holy Shit is out now via Black Box.