CD REVIEW: Effloresce - Shades of Fate (2010, private release)

By this point, it should be no surprise that I enjoy the heavier end of the progressive music spectrum.  My extreme/prog metal day should have been proof positive of that for you, Constant Reader.  So it surprises me when I get messages from bands or labels telling me about their newest effort, but then saying things like ‘I don’t know if this fits for you’ or ‘this might be outside your field of interest.’  We’ve already gone over several times, I think, my premise that progressive music is “interesting music that does something different,” and I continue to stick to that.

Effloresce fits into this category.  They’re a fairly new progressive metal band out of Germany taking their musical cues, for my ears, as much from classic 80’s thrash (Metallica) as they do the Gothenburg school of melodic death metal (Opeth).  In other words, expect lots of changing riffs and tempo changes, sections slamming into each other with raw abandon, and healthy doses of keyboard over the jackhammer riffs.

Oh, and a female vocalist.

Who does death/black metal vocals.

But more about that soon.

Effloresce is a 5 piece founded less than a year ago.  Amazingly, they’ve already put out one self-released EP, the 30-minute long Shades of Fate, with a full-length in the works.  I think for most people, the vocals will be the first thing noticed.  Nicki (no last names listed in the liner notes, the band website, Facebook or Myspace) has a gorgeous high alto/low soprano voice, and when her voice is layered for harmonies, it’s even more impressive.  However, as mentioned above, Nicki tosses off a few deathy growls and screams as well throughout 2 of the album’s three tracks.  I will admit that, while I know there are some female vocalists in the extreme metal genre, it still comes as a bit of a surprise when I hear her unleash a demonic growled vocal.  Obviously because she’s female the vocals tend to run closer to a throaty black metal rasp than a deep guttural growl, but there’s a bit of force behind them.  Some people may be turned off; I find it very enjoyable.  Nicki also contributes some nice flute bits throughout, adding a bit of pastoral fantasy to the mix.

Nicki’s joined by a powerful rhythm section; Tobi (drums) and Rene (bass) really keep things pounding forward; Tobi’s got some great double kick chops, and his fills are interesting and never over-busy, while Renee really locks in tight with the drums.  I wish he was mixed higher, to be honest…I can feel him, but I wish I could hear him more.  Filling out things is Tim (guitar) and Dave (guitar, mellotron).  Both of them are enjoyable guitarists…I’m not sure how solos and rhythm sections are split up, but the heavier rhythm work is always crunchy, the acoustic bits bright and jangling, and solos tasteful and spot on.  Additionally, the mellotron (and organ) contributions help to push this material to slightly more symphonic, classic prog territory.

Things kick off on a heavy, and almost bluesy note, with ‘Birds of Prey.’  Oddly, the opening riff starts out with a slide motif that almost drags things kicking and screaming to the delta before a more pounding, traditional metal riff with tron backing that really sets things in gear.  The heavy kick drum driving the third separate riff in about 1 minute is impressive, and the rapidly shifting riffs seem so Metallica influenced that it’s hard to think otherwise.  Lest you think this is a criticism…I’m probably one of the few people out there for whom Metallica isn’t a bad word these days.  Always loved them, still do.  Throughout this release I get the impression that the guys in the band decided that …And Justice for All wasn’t just a cool album, but a great idea for how to structure songs (and I bloody love that album, so I am all for that).  Great heavy playing, wonderful vocals, some awesome shifts in tone (there’s a fantastic lighter section in here that I love, with shades of Camel really making it shine)…this is a more than impressive opening track, and one that grabbed me by the (redacted so as to not offend) and refused to let go.  My only criticism is the use of pinch harmonics at the end of some of the lead lines…it’s become such a cliché, and it’s one I really wish would go away.

‘Sear’ follows next on this EP, and at 10 minutes isn’t even the longest track there (that honour is reserved for the preceding track, clocking in at 11:17).  I adore the growling, almost demonic organ note that leads this track off, with sustained and distorted to the brink of breaking up guitar notes that finally resolve into one amazingly tight riff.  There’s some fantasticly tight rhythm playing here, bonecrushing riffs and rhythms that alternate with quieter vocal sections, each seeming so much more so as a result of the ir close proximity to each other.  This track offers us our first taste of Nicki’s death/black metal vocals, and her quick switches between the rasped, screamed vocals and her clean voice is pretty awe inspiring.  I’m used to hearing Mikael Akerfeldt do it, and Nicki’s got impressive enough vocal chops to pull it off with some authority as well.  Frankly, I think I’d like to hear more of her extreme vocals…here’s hoping for the next release!

Our final track is the 8-minute long ‘Sunset in the Snowdome.’  I’ll admit that I did something I try never to do…I was so anxious waiting for this CD to arrive that I hit the band’s Facebook and played the streaming version of this track before the EP arrived.  So I was familiar with it before getting the final release.  The gorgeous flute and acoustic guitar opening, loads of stately organ, some fleetly played rhythm guitar (not ponderous and crushing…but still heavy!)…a lot of this track reminds of Damnation era Opeth, but with a much heavier touch throughout.  There’s more growled vocals here, and they add such a great touch to things. 

I should point out my aesthetic enjoyment of the package, too.  The front cover art is excellent, and in fact the entire package pulls together very nicely, with a unified design, limited use of colour and font, and an eye toward evoking a darker mood without going for cliché graphic elements.  The package looks brilliant, and the band should really be congratulated for putting effort in assembling a really professional looking, finished product that I’d put up against any major label album…and pick it over the major release.

Effloresce’s debut EP really shows a band that has a lot of promise.  There’s great playing, very good song writing, and a hell of a vocalist with some impressive chops.  I look forward to their full length album to come (even though I hear rumours the flute is going away!) and cant wait to see how additional time together has gelled this young band.


Track Listing:
Birds of Prey 11:17
Sear 9:57
Sunset in the Snowdome 8:26


Musicians:
Nicki: vocals, flute
Rene: bass
Tobi: drums
Tim: guitar
Dave: guitar, mellotron


Find out more:
http://www.effloresceonline.com/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Effloresce/338339790561?ref=ts
http://www.myspace.com/effloresceonline

CD/DVD REVIEW: Opeth - In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall (2010, Roadrunner Records)

Oh, if only this had come out last week.

I am referring, of course, to Opeth’s career-spanning monolithic boxed set that goes by the title In Live Concert At the Royal Albert Hall. Subtitled Evolution XX – An Opeth Anthology, the 3 CDs and 2 DVDs collected inside the Deep Purple-esque packaging (the entire package is a tender and loving homage to Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra) commemorate 20 years of Opeth music performed live at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London.

Now, I want you to take that image in a bit. While the RAH has been used for rock concerts in the past, imagine those hallowed halls of British music…the red velvet, the gold leaf on woodwork…and a Swedish melodic death metal band blast beating their way through a nearly 3-hour set of material, including an opening set of their epochal Blackwater Park in its entirety…5 thousand plus people sitting and standing in rapt attention as Mikael Akerfeldt and company work their way through a 16-track set list that possibly ranks among their most inclusive ever.

The DVDs are where we’ll start.

In this day and age, I know it’s easy to complain that there are no BluRay versions of this coming out. I understand the frustration…BluRay is the current state of the art. That said, the DVDs still look very good. There are occasional bits of over-saturation or darker images, but they don’t overly detract from the performance. The show is split across 2 separate DVDs, so bit rates seem reasonably high (they are dual layer DVDs as well, so the band and label are using as much space as possible). My quibble, as always, will be over the use of excessive fast intercuts. I know why this technique is used, I know it’s supposed to help build tension and excitement and the illusion of being there, but all I know is that when I go to a concert I am not flicking my focus from one thing to another every second and a half. Sometimes longer shots do just as good a job evoking tension and building suspense. There are moments where shots are allowed to develop, and they’re some of my favourite ones on this DVD.

Sound quality on the DVDs also seems very good…I’m only listening in stereo on any of my setups, but the sound is crisp and clear, with plenty of definition on both top and bottom ends, with a full midrange as well. It’s an enjoyable and easy listen…it may sound weird to describe it as relaxing, but I don’t have to work to listen to the performance, and in an era where everything is louder than everything else (there’s another Deep Purple reference for this review), it’s a refreshing thing.

On to the performance itself.

Mikael Akerfeldt is, for my money, one of the top extreme metal vocalists out there today. Hell, for my money, he is one of the most evocative and impressive vocalists in metal today, period. His clean vocals are gorgeous, smoky and fit smoothly between a high baritone and tenor range that is just breathtaking. His death growls are oddly melodic as well…not only is he clear and easy to understand, but he can actually add tone to the growls, allowing him to handle melodic lines in his guttural growl. To my ears, 20 years of doing this have done very little to weaken this voice…it may lack a touch of the strength he showed off back when Blackwater Park was new (and even there I'm not really convinced), but that was nearly 10 years ago. Show me any singer who sounds exactly like they did ten years previous…especially one doing what he does. His guitar playing is as potent as ever as well…heavy handed, crushing riffs, incisive, cutting leads, and tranquil acoustic playing abound throughout.

His foil on guitar is new boy Fredrik Akesson, who replaced founder member Peter Lindgren much to the chagrin of long time fans. Akesson does a great job on both older an dnewer material, and yet I get the odd sensation as I watch him play that I’m seeing a reincarnated Rob Tyner (of MC5 fame) wailing away. No, the resemblance isn’t that strong, but it’s what struck me, and I can’t get it out of my head now. Per Wiberg handles keyboards, having joined the band officially in 2005 (though he does appear on the band’s Lamentations DVD from 2003 as well as a guest musician). His organ and tron parts add so much depth to the band’s sound, transforming them from just another prog/death band to one of the most symphonic. Bassist Martin Mendez partners with newest drummer Martin "Axe" Axenrot, creating the fluid and shifting heart that powers the band through their lengthy and complex metal compositions. Again, I know people bemoaned the loss of drummer Martin Lopez, but Axenrot has shown himself to be the powerhouse that the band needed…while Lopez is missed, Axenrot has more than adequately replaced him.

There are a plethora of highlights throughout the concert…the first DVD, which contains the entire Blackwater Park album, is almost one whole highlight reel. ‘Harvest,’ ‘The Drapery Falls,’ ‘Dirge for November,’ ‘Bleak’…every song is played with intensity and power. If you read my top 10 favourite extreme prog metal albums list last week, you saw me mention this album among my faves, and this concert’s performance only cemented that for me. And I only wish I didn’t live in a ground floor apartment with people around me, because I want to crank the volume up until my walls shake….especially at the end of the title track, where I simply cannot restrain myself enough from screaming along to the closing words. Sick liaisons raised this monumental mark indeed. And if this performance is anything to go by, it’ll be a long time before the sun sets forever over Blackwater Park.

The second disc in this set takes us through a chronological journey through the rest of the band’s CV. Starting with ‘Forest of October’ off Opeth’s Orchid release from 1995, each succeeding track advances one release…

Orchid: Forest of October
Morningrise: Advent
My Arms, Your Hearse: April Ethereal
Still Life: The Moor
Deliverance: Wreath
Damnation: Hope Leaves
Ghost Reveries: Harlequin Forest
Watershed: The Lotus Eater

Can I quibble with track choices? Of course I could. I’d have loved ‘The Night and the Silent Water’ off Morningrise. I wish there was ‘Demon of the Fall’ off My Arms, Your Hearse (and really, 'Demon of the Fall' is a concert closer). ‘The Baying of the Hounds’ might have been cool from Ghost Reveries…but they are quibbles. I cannot and will not say that I don’t like these songs, because let’s face it, I love them. There’s not a bad song in the batch…and watching Mikael Akerfeldt singing solo the opening vocal lines to ‘The Lotus Eater’ is something amazing in and of itself. Thankfully there’s also little editing done here…you get all of his between song banter, including his playful insults to his band mates, the hilarious banter back and forth between him and the audience (especially check out the Michael Jackson bit preceding ‘Wreath’!), and his increased comfort with handling the audience. Akerfeldt’s a hilarious guy, and I’d almost pay to see him just stand on stage and talk.

2 extras fill out the DVDs. On the first disc we get a 40 minute interview with the band, while DVD 2 is concluded by a 45 minute documentary of the band on tour leading up to, and including this performance at the RAH. Both are enjoyable for a viewing or so, but neither are essential. Honestly, you’re buying this for the biggest, fullest, most impressive concert Opeth has committed to DVD and CD to date, and anything will be a bit of a letdown after that.

The 3 CD audio set contains just the concert performance. Again, the first CD covers the Blackwater Park album in its entirety, while CD 2 and 3 split the remaining 8 tracks across them. Sound quality remains very good throughout…but these discs proved that I do need to replace speakers in my car, as I was hearing some crackles that seemed overly concerning until I got home and popped the discs in my CD player. I love the disc design as well…I am betting they are printed to exactly (as possible) replicate the LP labels from the old Deep Purple album Concerto for Group and Orchestra as well…maybe someone out there who has both this release and the Deep Purple album can verify this for me. Frustratingly however, the audio is only available as part of the 5 disc boxed set (very similar to how Roadrunner released Dream Theater’s Chaos in Motion DVD set…there was a special edition of 2 DVDs and 3 CDs that was likely packaged just like this)…so if you just want the music, you still have to buy the DVDs. I can see this being very frustrating, but at least the set is reasonably priced for a 5 disc boxed set, so hopefully it’s not too much of a consternation for people.

(Having said that, I’ll add that the Dream Theater special edition of Chaos in Motion…the 2 DVD, 3 CD version that is…was limited to only 5,000 copies. Thankfully, it seems the special edition for Opeth is an unlimited release, with a special vinyl/DVD set as the true limited edition)

Is this the Opeth album to buy if you’re not at all familiar with the band? I’m not sure…I think I’d lean toward the safe Damnation (which won’t at all prepare you for what the band really does) or the not as safe but pretty damned diverse Watershed (represented on In Live Concert by the magnificent ‘The Lotus Eater’). With that said…live a little. Take the risk. Free your mind, and pick up In Live Concert. I promise it won’t bite…much.



DVD Observation One
1. "The Leper Affinity"
2. "Bleak"
3. "Harvest"
4. "The Drapery Falls"
5. "Dirge for November"
6. "The Funeral Portrait"
7. "Patterns in the Ivy"
8. "Blackwater Park"
9. Interview

DVD Observation Two
1. "Forest of October" (Orchid)
2. "Advent" (Morningrise)
3. "April Ethereal" (My Arms, Your Hearse)
4. "The Moor" (Still Life)
5. "Wreath" (Deliverance)
6. "Hope Leaves" (Damnation)
7. "Harlequin Forest" (Ghost Reveries)
8. "The Lotus Eater" (Watershed)
9. Documentary: On Tour With Opeth


CD Tracklist Disc 1
1. "The Leper Affinity" - 10:07
2. "Bleak" - 8:53
3. "Harvest" - 6:10
4. "The Drapery Falls" - 10:07
5. "Dirge for November" - 8:28
6. "The Funeral Portrait" - 8:21
7. "Patterns in the Ivy" - 2:24
8. "Blackwater Park" - 12:32

CD Tracklist Disc 2
1. "Forest of October" - 17:12
2. "Advent" - 15:03
3. "April Ethereal" - 10:22
4. "The Moor" - 12:12

CD Tracklist Disc 3
1. "Wreath" - 12:24
2. "Hope Leaves" - 6:48
3. "Harlequin Forest" - 13:11
4. "The Lotus Eater" - 11:09


Band members
Mikael Åkerfeldt − guitar, vocals, mixing, direction
Fredrik Åkesson — guitars, backing vocals
Martín Mendez − bass guitar
Per Wiberg − keyboards, backing vocals
Martin "Axe" Axenrot – drums


Find out more:
http://opeth.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/Opeth?ref=search

CD REVIEW: Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones (2010, Prowling Death Records)

Welcome back as we conclude Extreme Prog Metal Day.

Strap yourselves in, this is going to be a brutal ride…

I have been a fan of Celtic Frost since…well, probably since the later end of the 1980’s. Considering I didn’t even really get into rock music in general till around 1984 or 1985, this isn’t that big of a shock. That said, while I’d probably heard Morbid Tales and Into the Pandemonium in my early high school days, I wasn’t quite ready for them at that time…which is odd considering that I was into bands like Slayer at that point.

In any event, I actually didn’t get into them deeply until after their first break-up. I know the very first CF album I ever bought with my own hard earned cash was Parched With Thirst Am I And Dying, which I dug extremely despite the sort of odds and sods nature of the release. I went back and bought the old albums, threw away my copy of Cold Lake, and sat there wondering where this mythical band had gone off and hidden. Like many, I was shocked to hear in 2001 that the band was reconvening to record a new album. I waited. And waited. And waited.

Did I mention I waited?

Oh, and then, I waited some more.

But 2006 brought Monotheist, and the waiting was proven worthwhile. The album was bleak. And dark. And heavy. Heavier than anything I had heard the band commit to vinyl (or bonded polycarbonite disc) before. It was slowed down, Thomas Gabriel Fischer’s voice was raspy and ancient and spoke volumes, and I was blown away. Most of all, to my ears it was progressive. Not only for the band itself, but for the genre. There were sprawling multi-part epics, multiple languages, string sections, operatic female vocals, and melodies strewn about the 70 odd minutes of bleak apocalyptic metal.

I loved it.

They toured, they argued, they broke up. Somewhere along the line Martin Eric Ain and Franco Sesa ended up with the rights to everything (we wont be getting into the story here, but parts of it can easily be found online), and TGF pulled back, surveyed the damage and the scene, and vowed to come back heavier, angrier and more boundary pushing than ever. He announced a new band, Triptykon, and we waited.

You’ll note waiting is a common thing for CF/associated fans.

A few teasers came out via Mysapce…one, a track called ‘Crucifixus,’ sounded like nothing we’d heard from TGF before. Droning, ambient…was this the new sound he was bringing to his fans? There was confusion. Heated words. And when the new album, Eparistera Daimones, was finally announced, and a few tracks began to leak out (officially or otherwise), there was a sigh of relief. It was what was promised…”a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of Monotheist,” as TGF announced it.

Eparistera Daimones is an angry album; one look at the liner notes will confirm this. TGF spends a good bit of space explaining each of the songs on this release, which aids in understanding the motivation and inspiration for the pieces within. The songs are long…2 tracks exceed 10 minutes, one is 9 and a half, and the rest mostly range between 5 and 7 minutes. There’s plenty of monolithic riffing, massive, thundering beats, and TGF’s distinctively gruff, rasping vocals. If brutality could be pressed to disc, it’s been done so with this album.

That’s not to say this is nothing more than plodding, lumbering metal. There are plenty of rhythmic challenges to be found within…deft changes of tempo and meter, syncopation and what may seem to some to be a surprising level of complexity in these songs. Album opener ‘Goetia’ is a harbinger of what the rest of the album holds; empty darkness, harsh vocals screaming out against hypocrisy, long musical phrases evolving slowly, inexorably from the dark, yet amazingly clear mix. It is the first sign of evolution beyond what Monotheist had to offer, heavier, more complex, more damned than ever before.

Experimentation is the dish of the day on ‘Shrine,’ a 2-minute bit of ambience that hearkens back to the lead teaser track ‘Crucifixus.’ Between those two tracks, I’d really be interested to see what Fischer could do with ambient music; he’s shown a bit of a deft hand for it. It’s not like he hasn’t played these scenes before…the earlier ‘Human’ series of songs pushed similar borders. But that was then…this is now, and with years more experience, TGF has crafted something far more disturbing. This is music for horror films, to be sure. ‘Mypoic Empire’ features some interesting vocal arrangements, with a piano and strings break in the middle adding so much tension with its sudden appearance and just as sudden disappearance. ‘A Thousand Lies’ speeds forward with syncopation between drums and vocal lines really setting things off nicely. It pulses, swelling and fading like a fibrillating heart.

Eparistera Daimones is not just about pure heaviness; I doubt Celtic Frost would have ever recorded a song like ‘My Pain,’ and it’s a damned shame, because this is one of the most beautiful things TGF has ever written. Fragile, it darkles beautifully, with layered piano lines, fuzzed bass, and beautiful female vocals counterpointed by Fischer’s own tortured lyrical lines. In college, a friend of mine and I had a list of songs we called ‘concrete median songs.’ These were the ones you never wanted to listen to when depressed and driving. ‘My Pain’ is perhaps the ultimate distillation of that classification of song…and it is frighteningly addictive.

‘The Prolonging’ closes things out. At 19:22, it is by far the longest single composition TGF has ever written (‘Triptych’ totals 21:25, but is made up of three distinct pieces, and as such I don’t count it as a single track), and between the quiet, almost unassuming opening, the jackhammer guitars, the subtly (and sometimes not subtly) shifting tempos and rhythms, it is also perhaps one of the more complex works in his entire CV. It’s not an easy listen; lyrically it’s about as heavy and hard as they come. There’s darkness here, tempered by the light that comes from overcoming that darkness, that deceit. It evokes ‘Goetia’ in many ways, and bookends the release perfectly.

Are there albums more extreme that Triptykon’s Eparistera Daimones? I’m sure there are. Are there ones more progressive? Perhaps. But I’ve yet to hear one that merges these two sides quite like this. I’ve been living with this one since March, and I still haven’t gotten my head fully around it. But it hasn’t let go of me yet, and at the end of the year, I have no doubts this one will be riding high on my 2010 Top Ten list. Listen loud and with the lights off.



1. "Goetia" Music & Epistle: Warrior 11:00
2. "Abyss Within My Soul" Music & Epistle: Warrior 9:26
3. "In Shrouds Decayed" Music: V. Santura, Epistle: Warrior 6:55
4. "Shrine" Concept: Warrior 1:43
5. "A Thousand Lies" Music & Epistle: Warrior 5:28
6. "Descendant" Music: V. Santura, Epistle: Warrior 7:41
7. "Myopic Empire" Music: Warrior/Unala/Gadient, Epistle: Warrior 5:47
8. "My Pain" Music & Epistle: Warrior 5:19
9. "The Prolonging" Music & Epistle: Warrior 19:22


Thomas Gabriel Warrior - (Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Apollyon Sun) - vocals, guitar, programming
V. Santura (Dark Fortress) - guitar, vocals
Norman Lonhard (Fear My Thoughts) - drums & percussion
Vanja Slajh - bass

CD REVIEW: Ihsahn - After (2010, Candlelight Records)

Welcome back to Extreme/Prog Metal Day, which continues with a look at Ihsahn’s newest release, After.

I think that Ihsahn isn’t all that well known outside of two circles of fans. One, obviously, is the throng of black and death metal listeners, familiar with him through his work with Emperor, one of the major bands in progressive black metal. The other would be guitarists familiar with his column for Guitar World magazine, 'Left Hand Path.' Sadly, this is but one side of what he can do.

Ihsahn is one of the closest things that extreme metal has to a renaissance man (please note I said ‘one of the closest,’ since limiting it to just him would exclude people like Thomas Gabriel Fischer, Kristoffer Rygg of Ulver, and a few others). While Ihsahn has released more than his share of influential and major black/progressive/symphonic metal albums, he’s also done work with his wife, Ihriel, in Peccatum, which covered the gamut from black metal to progressive metal, industrial to European classical music. He’s done a folk project, Hardingrock, with emphasis on the Harding fiddle. He helps run Mnemosyne Records with his wife. And sometimes he releases solo records.

After is the final installment in Ihsahn’s first trilogy of solo releases, and serves as a wrapping up point of the themes and styles he’d been visiting since departing Emperor. While previous releases were all but fully solo outings, After sees him joined by a bassist (Lars K. Norberg), a drummer (Asgeir Mickelson), and a sax player (Jørgen Munkeby).

Yes, you read that right,

Go back and look again if you need to.

Sax. On an extreme metal album.

Want to say progressive? Cos I sure can.

Jørgen Munkeby’s contributions on sax (not on every track, mind), push this album far beyond what Ihsahn had done before just from an aural standpoint. Of course, there are other changes…this is his first release playing 8-string guitar exclusively. There’s a different sound as a result, but the songs, the singing, the screaming, it’s all Ihsahn as you know him best. I think he’s one of the finest vocalists in extreme metal; his clean voice is beautiful, while his screams are blood curdling. And if you’re not at all familiar with black and death metal vocals, and think they’re all the same, here’s the difference in a nutshell: death metal vocals tend to be more guttural and deep, where black metal vocals tend toward the higher pitched, throatier, raspier scream. Lots of people can’t handle either, and while I can understand, I think it a shame because it precludes enjoying some amazing music.

Things kick off immediately with album opener ‘The Barren Lands.’ A nice balance of clean and screamed vocals, some impressive drumming, and a huge riff pin this piece together. Ihsahn rips off some very tasty solos, while Asgeir Mickelson’s drumming is fluid and powerful. Some people would say that they don’t understand why he has to scream, others will hear this song and wonder why he has to sing and doesn’t scream it all. Me, I love both…the song wouldn’t be half as powerful as it is if it just featured one side of his vocal capabilities. People who want nothing more than the screaming, harsh side of Ihsahn can wait till the next track, ‘A Grave Inversed,’ a four and a half minute burst of blast beats, jackhammer riffing, and skronking sax all over the place.

Oh yeah, the sax. We mentioned that.

Jørgen Munkeby makes his first appearance on this track, and he’s all over the place. Some of his playing feels like it’s verging on bedlam and anarchy, while other moments seem tight and pre-composed. If you’ve never imagined sax in black metal, I’d urge you to find a place to legally check this track out…it makes all the sense in the world once you hear it. Ihsahn offers up a tasty harmonised solo over a slightly slower beat, and if anything, the song feels longer and bigger than it really is. There’s a lot packed into the tight borders here.

The album’s title track follows, and it’s a gorgeous piece that actually feels to me like two songs carefully and skillfully knitted together. The opening section is a metal ballad of the best sort, slow beats, a mix of clean and fuzzed guitars, and plaintive, fragile clean vocals from Ihsahn. I love the chorus…

And this is the after
The ending of ends
This is the after
Where nothing transcends

A final iteration of this chorus leads into the heavier second half, which features the same clean guitar lines over a pounding beat. Here Ihsahn rasps and screams like his life depends on it, a preacher in a wilderness of man’s own making. It’s a brilliant balance.

‘Frozen Lakes on Mars’ feels like a European metal song as it opens, with a harmony melody over crunching, crushing chords. At times I almost get a bit of a King Diamond/Mercyful Fate feel to the opening. Again we get a nice mix of heavy and light vocals over a huge riff. Solos are faster and more furious, and while the song isn’t as blasty and brutal as ‘A Grave Inversed,’ it may actually be heavier on several counts. It’s followed by one of 2 10-minute tracks, ‘Undercurrent.’ This is Ihsahn at his more expansive, slowly developing the song in an almost organic manner. His clean playing is precise and chiming, the fretless bass playing by Lars K. Norberg really adds to the mood over the opening sections of the piece. When the song shifts into heavier territories, the contrast is night and day. I think this is a song loads fo prog fans would go seriously nuts over if they could accept the use of harsh vocals; between the shifting moods, the changes in tempo and style, and the fantastic synth and sax playing, this song has prog written all over it in big black block letters.

‘On the Shores’ is the second 10-minute piece on After, and it closes the album out. Much of this track’s opening will sound familiar, as it reprises sax themes from ‘Undercurrent.’ The two songs, from title at least, seem interconnected and related, and the musical similarities certainly add to that (if the booklet features lyrics I might even be able to determine more how much these two are inter-related). I love Munkeby’s sax playing throughout this piece, nicely wrapping around Ihsahn’s sparsely interspersed vocals. Again, given the chance, I think this is a song that would really go over a storm with prog listeners, but there seems such a fear or unwillingness to accept harsh vocals, and a great dislike of anything even verging on metal at times. Again, it’s a shame.

Is After an easy listen? Maybe not. But I think it’s a brilliant album, truly progressive in so many ways...and while the album's opening lyrics may state 'These are barren lands,' the music is anything but! Open your ears to something new and different from the usual…this is one of the places truly progressive music is being made.


Track Listing
1. "The Barren Lands" – 5:12
2. "A Grave Inversed" – 4:25
3. "After" – 4:47
4. "Frozen Lakes on Mars" – 5:54
5. "Undercurrent" – 10:00
6. "Austere" – 6:16
7. "Heaven's Black Sea" – 6:15
8. "On the Shores" – 10:12

Band Members:
Ihsahn – vocals, guitar, keyboard, piano
Lars K. Norberg – fretless bass
Jørgen Munkeby – saxophone
Asgeir Mickelson – drums

Bill's favourite extreme progressive metal albums

I thought it might be interesting to offer up a small list of my favourite extreme/progressive metal albums.

Please note that just because something’s a favourite, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a band’s best album, or even indicative of what the band does as a general rule. These are just albums that have connected with me on some level a bit more deeply than superficially, and that I find myself returning to time and time again. There’s even a good chance that some of these don’t necessarily qualify as extreme metal to some people (and in one case, there’s a very good chance people would argue that the album isn’t even metal…at least, not all of it). But this is my blog, and on my blog my rules basically, you know, rule.

There are in no particular order.

I’ll have a little write up on each as well so you’ll get to know my thoughts a bit.

Here we go.



Moonsorrow – Viides Luku – Hävitetty. 56 minutes. 2 songs. Sounds like a Yes album, doesn’t it? Only Yes never featured blast beats, tremelo picking, and harsh vocals in Suomi/Finnish dealing with elements of traditional mythology and legend (maybe we just need to give them time, hmm?). A little lighter on the folk elements that typified their earlier albums, this is still an amazingly dense, complex, and progressive slab of metal that should impress even the most jaded of prog listeners. Usually when I play Viides Luku – Hävitetty, it’s in a playlist that either immediately precedes or follows another album I’ll be including on this list. In fact, maybe this is a good time to echo my playlist choices and tell you about…



Green Carnation – Light of Day, Day of Darkness. One, single, 60 minute song. Light of Day, Day of Darkness is one of the crowning moments in metal music as a whole, and the band never did anything like this again. There’s a little bit of everything here, from ambient sections, pastoral, ballad like movements, and full on metal riffing. Choral vocals, clean vocals, spoken word, a bit of death metal growl, there are very few albums that have offered the diversity of sound and mood that this one did. Sadly, it’s out of print. This means that if you find a copy, it’ll either be used or more expensive than perhaps is warranted (I’m looking at Amazon and there’s 3 new copies for sale, with 2 of them priced over $60.00 US). It is worth seeking out, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of metal, because there’s way too much good stuff on here to simply ignore. Not only a favourite, I think it truly is one of the hallmarks of progressive metal.



Emperor – Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. Yes, Emperor would release more progressive albums. Future releases would be far more symphonic, far more grandiose. And those albums would in many ways be more like Ihsahn solo releases than Emperor albums (not that any of that is a bad thing, of course). But for me, this is where it all begins for them. With expansive tracks like the 8-minute ‘With Strength I Burn’ next to massively heavy tracks like ‘The Loss and Curse of Reverence,’ this album was proof positive that black metal had every right to stand shoulder to shoulder with any other style of metal…that it wasn’t just about the stuff that got publicised in newspapers. This was intelligent metal that never lost sight of the purpose of the best metal…to rock the **** out as hard as possible.



Agalloch – Ashes Against the Grain. Sadly, you’ll see very few American bands in this list. I don’t know why it seems to me that American metal bands with a prog leaning seem to look toward Dream Theater for stylistic influence and so many European bands look to the more extreme side of things. Obviously this isn’t always the case, but it rings true more often than not from my experience. Agalloch hails from Washington state, and theirs is a pretty interesting sound. Equal parts pastoral and brutal, both musically and vocally, there’s times I see them as the metal equivalent of a post-rock band. It’s hard, again, to pick a single album from them, but I think I’ve listened to this one more than any other Agalloch release save for The Mantle (and maybe The White EP, but that’s another story). I discovered this band via Youtube, and their video for the song ‘Not Unlike the Waves.’ Check that song out…it may not be 100% typical of them, but it gives you a good taste of what the band has to offer. I love the 3-part, 19-minute epic that closes out the album too (and there’s another 19 minute epic on the limit edition version of the release). Like the Green Carnation album above, this one’s on The End Records, but still in print.



Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Of Natural History. Here’s another band on The End Records. It may be a theme. This album was not released by that label, however, so I feel less odd listing it. This was the California band’s second full length studio album, and it did an amazing job of distilling their sound, crafting an album with diversity in sounds and tightly written songs. It’s hard to pick favourite tracks from this one…‘A Hymn to the Morning Star’ and ‘The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion’ are key for me because they were the first two SGM songs I ever heard at their concert at NEARfest in 2003. Nils Frykdahl’s voice ranges from the sublimely operatic baritone to wails and screams that seem impossible to have come from the same throat. Violinist and vocalist Carla Kihlstedt shines on ‘Gunday’s Child.’ ‘Babydoctor’ is 14 minutes of extremely disturbing music. Every sing brings something different to the table. I think it’s currently their finest moment.



Therion – Vovin. By this point Therion had well and totally left their death metal roots behind. I had a hard time picking one of their releases to add here, but in the end, I stuck with my favourite. Other Therion albums may have been a bit more ‘progressive’ or genre-bending (I’m thinking of Theli or Lepaca Kliffoth), but Vovin is where everything came together for the first time. Hugely symphonic, with amazing vocals, memorable songs, and hooks big enough to catch a whale, this album is a perfect slab of metal. ‘Draconian Trilogy’ (Vovin means Dragon in Enochian), ‘Clavicula Nox,’ ‘Raven of Dispersion,’ ‘Birth of Venus Illegitima’ (which was the subject of a great performance video), there are so many highlights on this release that I wonder if the band felt that they could never live up to it…



Opeth – Blackwater Park. Picking an Opeth album is hard, because there’s so many great ones. It’d be easy to pick something like Watershed, which is perhaps their most diverse single album. And while Damnation was my gateway album for the more extreme side of metal (and let’s face it, there’s very little extreme about Damnation!), when all is said and done I’ve listened to Blackwater Park more than any other Opeth album. The beginning of their collaborations with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, it really was their coming of age release. Amazing songs on here, amazing moods throughout. Mikael Akerfeldt shows breadth and range with his singing…I think he’s one of the most impressive vocalists out there today no matter what genre. His clean singing is smoky and gorgeous, his growls menacing and above all clear and easy to understand. The album’s title track is one of the great prog epics ever with no questions. I dare you not to want to scream along to the ending lines after you’ve heard it. There’s not a down moment on this album, and it really paved the way for the releases to follow.



Enslaved – Eld. What Opeth is to death metal, perhaps Enslaved is to black metal? There are times I think this, and the fact that the two bands toured together recently doesn’t exactly dissuade me of this notion. There is a difference between death and black metal (and it’s not something I’ll go into here and now), but even at the beginning Enslaved wasn’t exactly a typical black metal band. Some of that has to do with the fact that the two main members of the group (Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson) have a deep and abiding love of bands like Rush and Genesis. While later albums developed their progressive metal side much more, it began here, with 1997’s Eld. While the production values are somewhat typical black metal (i.e., not necessarily that great), the songs are pretty expansive, with the 16-minute ‘793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne)’ as the keystone.



Primordial – To The Nameless Dead. Here’s one where we’re blurring the lines somewhat, but the songs are so damned good, and the singer so amazing, that I had to add it on. Primordial is from Ireland, and is one of the biggest names in Celtic/Pagan metal. Much like Therion above, I had a hard time picking a single album, but this, their most recent studio effort, really distills everything the band is capable of. The songs are tight, powerful, very heavy yet played with a light touch…there’s some turn on a dime changes that really impress. And as much as I rave (and rightly so) over the vocal capabilities of Mikael Akerfeldt, Ihsahn, and Thomas Gabriel Fischer, Nemtheanga (Alan Averill) may well be my favourite extreme metal vocalist of all time. Key songs include the brilliant opener ‘Empire Falls,’ ‘Gallows Hymn,’ ‘Heathen Tribes,’ ‘No Nation on This Earth.’



Ulver – Themes From William Blake’s The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell. Here’s the one I think people will argue even being metal. And I really can’t complain too much…by this point Ulver had pretty much left behind their black metal roots and crafted a 2-CD set of genre bending, style defying music. One could guess based on the title that the album was inspired by William Blake’s illuminated opus The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell, but few could guess the amazing breadth of the music held within. Drum and bass, prog rock, industrial, black metal…every track was something different. Every song or spoken word piece took the band and album in a different direction, and if the description makes things seem nebulous and not well connected, well…you really have to hear it to understand it. Oh, and the CD booklet contains reproductions of Blake’s plates as well…it’s a gorgeous looking release, as well as one of the most progressive things I have ever heard.