SHORT REVIEWS Our thirty-fifth (35th) edition of Short Reviews for 2023 finds me grabbing at six notable releases from the start of the month of October plus one leftover from September I didn’t get around to in time to make the cut for last month. I’ve done my best to showcase the most interesting works that I come across while still presenting some decent variety here but choices boil down to what sticks, what inspires or what is worth writing about. These are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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Though you will find very light shades of Emperor, Old Man’s Child and even Cor Scorpii in the more symphonic black metal steeped portions of this debut full-length from Tampere, Finland-borne trio Moonlight Sorcery we’ve other places to root around for reference now that they reveal their first evolutionary peak a couple of years beyond their first mLP. ‘Nightwind: The Conqueror from the Stars‘ had already hinted at this last year but ‘Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle‘ confirms that the sound of this band has much, much more to do with the traditions of Finnish metal around twenty years ago as the innovations of both Moonsorrow and Kalmah opened the doors for many others. Of course we could debate the feeling of this album having a shade of Norther and Wintersun per its clear video game and power metal inspired wailing neoclassical-sparked lead guitar touches but, sure, we are all dorking out in the same backyard full of snow, eh?

The exuberance available to this music is infectious and naturally inspiring and of course they’ve done their best to pack every minute with enough flash-and-bang to keep that momentum going for a full ~45 minutes. This means tons and tons of shred, wailing guitar leads which bear a reasonably effective melodic thread which reads as lyrical beyond most any of the vocal cadence (sparingly) utilized. As we hit songs like “The Moonlit Dance of the Twisted Jester’s Blood-soaked Rituals” yes, this is basically the band daring kids to cover their shred in videos as most of the guitar work here is both memorable and gymnastic in its fretboard woven wiles. My only criticism which keeps the score the same as the last few releases is that they haven’t necessarily found an personalized atmosphere to give this wild electrical energy a home, though the productions values are much improved.

Since I’d mostly be repeating what I’d said about their last mLP here I suppose I will reiterate that Moonlight Sorcery have focused where the energy, the action and the excitement is and I am glad to see this largely dead form of Finnish melodic metal given back to extreme metal ears and further refined with melodic black metal in mind. The actual LP has some really nice metallic embossing, the gatefold has tons of photos in its booklet, seems like they were able to go all-out with this one if you’re hot for vinyl.

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Oslo, Norway-based atmospheric sludge/post-doom metal group Dwaal return for a second full-length of dreaming-low diversions and some heavier hitting, miserable sludge pieces. While I appreciate some of the post-rock influenced steps outside of thier skin the best parts of this album have a strange funereal feeling to them, specifically “Repentance of a Bastard” which almost hits like a Skepticism piece at times. The harder edged side of their work is bluntly driven by grooves and barked out to be sure, a flat and raw aspect of sludge that avoids melody, but this is almost always more engaging than their dazed and drifting side which shows up less often than on their debut ‘Gospel of the Vile‘ (2020). ‘Never Enough‘ ends up leaving me on the fence, on one hand Dwaal have clearly improved the dynamic of their sound and returned with an effectively transfixing atmospheric gloom experience yet they’ve done less to make said experience stand out, and I suppose bigger personification is all that is really missing here for my taste. “Pseudanthium Aionios” comes close with its chanted title, recalling the chunk and budge umbrage of Heavydeath, but overall I’d wanted more reasons to return to their realm.

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‘Dead Obelisk‘ comes from Bellingham, Washington-based duo F. Funds (ex-Black Breath) and vocalist N.T. McAdams who I’m sure folks will recall from Black Breath, though it has been a while. At least a few people likely remember how I’d spent most of 2015 touting ‘Slaves Beyond Death‘ as one of the most exciting records in the first half of the decade. If not, you’ll recall their admixture of Swedish death metal, crossover thrash and crust punk was one of the bigger successes to come from a Godcity/Audiosiege render and a high point for their time. Come Horrid Sigil doesn’t replicate the hi-fi sound of that band, the guitar parts sound like they’re partly performed in GuitarPro or a similar program, but their style seems like it has some evolution of “Swedish melodic death metal” mashed with the moshable crossover/thrash metal in mind on this first EP. If we can consider this a demo for more practical recordings I couldn’t be more excited for the potential of this project, the first couple tracks have some serious ‘Slaughter of the Soul‘ grooves but the EP in general smacks of an artist who keeps one foot in a mid 90’s-era melodic black/death portal and another in the Power Trip-adjacent world of heavier nowadays crossover.

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Linus Klausenitzer is a well-renowned musician in the progressive metal space perhaps best known for his fretless bass guitar work for prog/tech-death groups Obscura and Alkaloid, prog-power band Eternity’s End, as well as session work for associated musicians Hannes Grossmann, Christian Muenzner among other projects. With some existing admiration for his work I was interested to hear that this was first more of a progressive death metal album in general but also featured various guest musicians with a theme described as “a musical odyssey through time, exploring the story of an Austrian lord’s attempt to create artificial humans through the ancient art of alchemy” with all of the songwriting coming from Klausenitzer. Of course we all know that virtuoso albums tend to be mostly tech demos meant to showcase dedication to the instruments they are endorsed by for workshops etc. but I think if you are already a fan of his associated bands, especially Obsidious, many aspects of this record such as the vocalist will feel familiar. All of the guitars are performed by Ian Waye (Soreption), drums from Grossmann, and there are guest spots form Phil Tougas, Roland Grapow among others featured all of which adds up to precise and whimsical prog-death action.

For a progressive metal double LP focused on a fantastical alchemical theme the album art for ‘Tulpa‘ gives a somewhat uninspired first impression, looking a bit mid 90’s alt-metal in presentation. The album itself is of course anything but the sort as the artist marries his love for melodic metal and the violent burst-action of prog-death opener “King of Hearts” is a big like if Quo Vadis (Canada) had a bit of power metal in mind along with prog-melodic death, not exactly as shred happy as First Fragment but connecting worlds in a similar way. I don’t find the way the vocals are layered effective in conveying a melody but the guitars do most of the work anyhow. The bigger point to make is that we’ve got very catchy and impressive work serving the song here rather than the cluster of egos one could imagine. In fact this album gets downright memorable in its broader strokes, such as the floaty shred-rock hook that opens “Our Soul Sets Sail” or the lush jammed flow of “Sister in Black”, and to the point that it seems Klausenitzer‘s work aims for accessible modern prog-metal more than he does a pure showcase for the bass guitar often taking an extended backseat for entire pieces. Sure, it isn’t really my thing per the groove/melodic metal side of things being a bit aimless and without any real emotional core but I think it would be fair to say that his is not just another solo album, rather a solid attempt to merge all of the worlds the artist inhabits into one pot.

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Following up the OST for Priest Simulator video game avant-black metalpunk terrorists Gruzja are back with the kind album that might encourage you to learn Polish so you can tell when you’re being insulted by… the album you’ve just bought. I think it is safe to say they’ve spat upon the majority of we enfeebled masses throughout ‘Koniec Wakacji‘ but they are most often picking on the smartphone simps, the panicked beasts seeking approval in a fake world. But sure, this album is about a lot more than that, it is a big-groovin’ metalpunk enhanced deal which wastes no time getting weird, whipping through one-off whims and strange follies, plenty of sex-groaning wartime guff, and some electro-pumped gumption. If you are already a fan of Truchło Strzygi and enjoy the wackier side of Gabestok you will find this world they’ve created louder, more colorful and centered around dizzyingly frequent shifts between a gamut of non-specific style. If you felt like their debut was somewhat straight forward in terms of black metalpunk check back in with the band because they are creating far outside of the borders of metal and rock in general here, for better or worse.

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Southern Swedish thrash metal band Eradikated have been at it since 2014 having released one album as The Generations Army back in 2017 before changing their name and rebranding to become stage and media read with this more mature but still pretty straight-forward style of thrash. Consider their sound still heavily rooted in the peak of late 80’s Bay Area/Los Angeles thrash metal theatrics, big booming scooped-ass guitars and a socking beat which has the belligerence of Sodom at its core, especially if we introduce chunkier shotgunned triplet-shot riffs to the polka beaten sound of the ‘Code Red‘-era of that band. Their merger of U.S. and German thrash cadence is well met but there isn’t much flexibility in their sound beyond big and loud chunking riff slammers beyond the odd gang shouted chorus or shredding lead. I’m all for a young group of folks writing Slayer-assed songs (“Dead Heaven”) and I could see why their sound would hit a festival hard but there isn’t much here that’ll be too exciting for the thrash fandom who’ve heard it all. Plenty of speed, heavy sound, odd snare hit lends some color to the experience, some good anthemic ideas, but I’d like to see them get to a level where their songwriting was more experiential and not just one globe-kicker after another.

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London, England-based atmospheric doom/post-metal band Morag Tong appear to have mastered the art of saying the quiet part loudest as we step into their latest mLP emerging from a sleepy post-music induced place and rousing up to a mountain of a riff in a matter of minutes. The sheer dramatism of ‘Grieve‘ should be enough to yank in any curious ear per the gravity of its opener before the rasped, more kinetic sludge metallic side of the band (“Passages”) steers things in a less interesting place. None of this quite lines up with the expected style of psychedelic rock and sludge/doom metal fused sound of their debut LP ‘Last Knell of Om‘ back in 2018 where the performances and the intent of each song are now decidedly precise and clear. I’d enjoyed the style of that record quite a bit for its freed movement but the high-dramatic gloom of this ~42 minute record is engaging in an entirely different way. The longest pieces here only seem to get better the more involved they become with “A Sten’s Embrace” warming like an older Pallbearer piece. I’m less enthused by the ~21 minute “No Sun, No Moon” and its more typical rise-and-fall between heavier parts and its drift in and out of consciousness but overall I’d enjoyed this very different take from the band. I’m not sure why they dropped the unique, organic feeling of their LP for this kinda status quo post-metal style but it wasn’t half bad.

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