• SHORT REVIEWS • Our fifteenth edition of Short Reviews for 2024 releases finds me grabbing at as many releases from the ~first two weeks of May as I can and coming up with seven solid records. This year Short Reviews will arrive every ~1-2 weeks dependent on how many extra releases are worth talking about. // These are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself. 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. — 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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Finnish death metal quintet UNEARTHLY RITES have readied an ‘old school’ inspired sludge-heavy and kinda chaotic debut full-length album here with ‘Ecdysis‘, an album which speaks to shedding loose the strictures of past generations with new ideas. Environmentalism and anti-corporate interests make for the bulk of their themes on this album though the major draw here is the crunched out, cavernous aspect of their sound design and do-it-yourself ethic overall wherein the recording and artwork were handled by members of the band. I greatly appreciate a group of young folks being resolutely idealistic in every aspect like this, speaking more to a punk attitude than anything else as they grind and cudgel their way through these short and spongey pieces. If you are a fan of Ilsa, Stormcrow and Coffins, definitely give this record a serious go.

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MOISSON LIVIDE is a side-project from Baptise Labenne who is best known for his work in folk metal band Boisson Divine which explores the relationship of melodic black/folk metal aesthetics and the kicking rhythms, leads, and vocal harmonies of heavy/power metal on this debut full-length album. ‘Sent Empèri Gascon‘ is of course most interesting for its exuberant, tuneful style up front as its eight minute opener will quickly attest but there is some additional unique character to their work here which starts with the use of the Gascon dialect, a regional version of the Occitan dialect of French, which gives the album its own sense of place and personage. It is true hybrid release which takes inspiration from other regional groups and labelmates (such as: Véhémence, Aorlhac, etc.) for a medieval vision of blackened melodic power metal which uses folk instrumentation from the artists region to cross various auld melodies with sometimes superficial treatment of metal sub-genre fusion. There is yet a bit of a kitchen sink feeling to their sometimes rudimentary treatments of heavy/power metal movements making for a quirked, off-kilter listen which is yet easy to pick up and enjoy for its strange over the top character. The personality available to this work is its strongest suit, otherwise I’d found it a mixed bag with a few belligerent moments on the way through.

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Australian avant-garde blackened death metal legends STARGAZER have treated us to a wealth of arcane prog-death muse since reconfiguring their trio ~2019 and we can now stack on this latest ~20 minute three song mLP (or in this case, the official CD release) onto the altar. Returning to the studio two years beyond the sessions for their 2021 released fourth LP ‘Psychic Secretions‘ these songs ease on the bass lead fusion of said album slightly as they focus on thrashing-loose aggression similar to that of ‘A Merging With the Boundless‘ (2014) on these three pieces which serve their legacy well with auld touches and extra-sentient compositional features. Ornate yet menacing and masterful within their own brand of rhythmic finesse this is of course one of my all-time favorite bands who’ve been entirely consistent throughout their decades long run of quality-over-quantity discography. The vinyl and cassette versions of this EP released early last year via Nuclear War Now! Productions.

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Kyiv, Ukraine-based funeral death-doom metal solo project FRETTING OBSCURITY comes from musician Yaroslav Yako who uses dual lead guitar phrasing to create conversationally stated narrative as the backdrop for what is an exploration of existentialism that reaches about as deep as existential nihilism via the poetry of classic European authors, German philosophers, and the pre-Socratic thought that’d inspired them. ‘Das Unglückliche Bewußtsein‘ presents a classic, fairly standard form of funeral doom at the start as the opening piece here (“As in Creation Hour”) is entirely driven by its narrative lead guitar strands and how they clash but this is only one facet of the fellowes craft which soon turns to eerie, ancient death/doom metal inspired sounds on “Das Helige” where their inspiration taken from Mournful Congregation is made even more clear. This olden circa ’93-’96 feeling of funeral death/doom style presented in modest production values is one of my favorite niche sounds especially when it side-steps the gothic and dark metal of the time for the sake of stark and sparse death metal which in this case has interjections of keys and spindly clean guitar chimes adding to the dreariness of their work. Each of the four ~12 minute pieces here maintains this level of grit but also explores some post-metal inspired landscapes with similar minimalism making for a very consistent and, from my point of view, very classic treatment of funeral death/doom which rewards patience with captivating misery.

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After their self-titled EP launched their ship back in 2021 I wasn’t sure if London, England-based ‘old school’ death metal inspired quartet VATICINAL RITES had enough time to fully figure out who they were heading into the production of a full-length album just yet. Their initial work was unfocused, torn between worlds and as they stated it today parsing headspace between classic USDM and the broader European expansion of it in the early 90’s as elements of death-thrash and heavy metal helped build their case. ‘Cascading Memories of Immortality‘ successfully conquers the puzzle of forms presented by their EP. The way they’ve sorted it comes by way of roughly ~3-4 minute thrashing death metal songs which are braced by strong lead guitar framing a la early Brutality, Monstrosity, and some groovier edges which we’ll find on standout pieces like “Bowels of Gargantua”. Much of the vision for this debut seems to come from the mind of lead guitarist (and I believe main songwriter) Andreas Yiasoumi who gives himself plenty of room to shred and wail in a dive-bombing 80’s-into-90’s way while also bringing in some nowadays techniques. The marriage of the slightly technical guitar work, the grotesque and horrified atmosphere of it all, and some pretty rad vocals from Marcus Broome all feed into a record which feels great to step into from the first listen and does well to keep it morbid, violent, and creeped as possible within these mostly mid-paced songs. Fantastic production values, rad album art, and the right overall ‘old school’ inspired semblance make this a totally respectable and entertaining debut LP.

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Best known for playing death metal covers of hard rock/heavy metal songs on their ‘Graveyard Classics‘ series SIX FEET UNDER made an impression upon me back int he day as a more easygoing, stoner-assed death metal side project from members of Cannibal Corpse and Obituary back in the late 90’s when stuff like I dunno, friggin’ peak Rob Zombie was on the horizon. Their style changed at a whim over the course of the next couple of decades but generally emphasized groove metal, a sound which’d held their (mostly) original line-up through thickest-and-thinning times from about 1993 ’til 2011 when it seems they’d exhausted the gig and guitarist Steve Swanson eventually moved on. Vocalist Chris Barnes has more or less been curating the band from that point by way of collaborations with eh… YouTube influencers, Chimaira members, and session musicians since handing over the reigns for some decent stuff (‘Undead‘, 2012) but mostly albums that suffer from this nowadays common method of hiring a ghost-writer who produces a fairly cheap imitation of their classic sound (see: Massacre, Deicide, etc.) and of course I mean no direct offense. After Jack Owen left Cannibal Corpse and had a decade plus stint in Deicide he’d been hired on for this group around 2017 and this is their second album to feature him in the main songwriting role. So, of course the fellow is up to the task but it is crucial that the audience recognizes the assignment here, which is clearly to take it back to the swinging stoney grooves of their earlier death n’ roll sound while giving up some simpler thrashing chunks along the way.

There are way too many songs here as we reach for 13 total pieces in ~47 minutes. By the time we hit “Judgement Day” on the running order we’ve gotten the point and experienced the full range of the album well enough. In fact the stoney grooves of “Neanderthal” paired with “Judgment Day” give the peak ideal expressed here in terms of where Owen‘s classic thrashing sensibilities hit a blip of Slayer riffed abandon as well as the easy-riding side of the band. If you’re like me and started out with ‘Haunted‘ (but paid more attention to ‘Warpath‘) and appreciated what was different about it at the time, this’ll hit with at least some nostalgia. Anyhow, the point to make is that this record sounds like Six Feet Under at their most sensical point of definition rather than just another unrelated, generic death metal album to stack up in their discography. If they’d cut the runtime back about ten minutes and lost some of the more “plain” pieces sans any serious cadence this’d probably have been one of their better releases to date. The Nazareth cover is of course just terrible but I’m glad they’re still having fun with it in this way.

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Italian heavy/power metal act FLAMEKEEPER is the vision and spiritual directive of musician and engineer Marco Vermiglio who is best known for his work in black/death terrorizers Demonomancy but chose a different path after relocating to Stockholm, Sweden. The main directive behind this band is inspiration, using classic heavy metal sounds and melodies to convey a message of the human spirit as potentially unbreakable will, a message rooted in personal faith. It took a few years but he’s managed a formative EP in ‘We Who Light the Fire‘ (2019) and this brilliantly succinct, impactful debut self-titled full-length album which strips back some of the Quorthonian indulgences of his presentation while still hitting each of these ~3.5 minute striding heavy metal pieces with variously immediate and ‘epic’ distance. While their sound is righteous enough to fit well within the bounds of the “keep it true” crowd I’m not sure this release is all about finding a point of belonging so much as striving to empower the self, that said if you are a fan of early 80’s hall stomping heavy metal, epic heavy metal in general but appreciate a concise and impactful 80’s German speed/power metal moment there’ll be a lot to love here in this easily grasped ~31 minute record. I could see this approach to tunefulness going as big Rhapsody or as theatrical as old Queensryche but either way I think I’d left the experience wanting a bit more of a power/speed metal rush somewhere in there to break up the anthemic trod of it all. The most obvious hooks and standout moments for my own taste were: The outright catchy inspire of “The Golden Spark”, the march of “Use and Them (The Song of the Voiceless)” and the exuberant rush of opener “New Wild World”.

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