#132 Bädr Vogu - Exitium

Bädr Vogu are an interesting sonic specimen from the USA. Oakland, California, to be exact. "Exitium" is the band's first full-length album, and was released a little less than a year ago. My first impression of the band's sound was that of, and excuse the highly odd metaphor, "The kind of band that I'd see opening for someone else, and end up preferring to the headliner". Why, you may ask. Well, I'll do my best to tell you...

 Bädr Vogu play an interesting mix of just about everything, a veritable Noah's ark of stylistic medley, with bits of sludge, doom, crust punk and all sorts of things knocking around the mix. From the long, doomy intro to the opening track, to the sludgey, oddly metallic sounding riffs which come along at a higher tempo later on, and the all infiltrating bluesy twist which seems to sweeten the enhance the whole thing, everything seems to quite nicely fit into the greater picture, and the influences synergise well with one another. The use of spoken word samples here and there added a lot of "fun" to the mix, for want of a better word, and were not only well inserted but rather clever. I can't claim to know what they're from, but they certainly added to the atmosphere of the bands sound. The vocals, shrieks and deep, death-doom style growls throughout, add a bit to the extremity of the bands sound, which in other aspects is quite "meduim", aside from the occasional hail of blastbeats.

The production has a pleasing roughness, in the way that everything is there, and is audible, but it's still organic. There isn't much post production work going on here, with the drums sounding deliciously unenhanced and gritty, the way the sounded as they were being recorded, I expect. This is also true of the other instruments, and the album could quite easily have been recorded live-in-studio, pleasingly so. The production in general, and indeed the tone used creates a magnificent hazy onslaught, the kind of thing which live, would have me rocking trance-like back and forth, eyes half closed, in a good way. The depth and sludginess really gives the music a lot of punch, and makes it damn intense, absorbing and captivating, with a depth of atmosphere to match the literal depth of pitch. The riffs, especially, have an immense, crushing and fist-pumping power to them, and the guitar tone, especially on higher parts, is pleasing in a way I can't quite explain.



The album felt very complete, and was an enjoyable listen throughout. I loved the feel the album had, and although I can't quite put it into exact words, it's "essence" was very enjoyable - the essence, perhaps, of an album which you listen to again and again. I'm impressed, and I hope anyone who actually reads these bloody things is equally impressed.

I'm going to go ahead and give this 9/10.

Bädr Vogu on Bandcamp
Bädr Vogu on Myspace
Bädr Vogu on Facebook
Bädr Vogu on Metal Archives

#131 Summoning - Minas Morgul

Summoning are, for me at least, a band that took a lot of time to get into. I "re-discovered" their sound recently (although more accurately, I made myself listen to more than fifteen seconds) and discovered that I actually like the way they sound. An acquired taste, by anyone's standard, and commonly accepted to be so, but nonetheless, after a few listens, I was thoroughly enjoying it.

My main turn-off, at first, was that the synth sounded quite fundamentally artificial. I'm not sure what's changed in my mind since then, but I'm certainly embracing it now - I find myself more and more tolerant of "artificial" elements in music - as I was first getting into metal, I stigmatised keyboards in my mind, but then became open to them. Drum machines are also much more acceptable to me now, which is probably just as well, because Summoning's drumming is very much in line with there synth. Nonetheless, the somewhat synthesised aspect of roughly half of Summoning's whole sound is forgivable in light of what turns out to be one of the most epic soundscapes I've heard fresh in a long time. The overwhelming medieval sound, founded upon the synth, and to an extent, the drum sound is carried along by a humble, fairly unobtrusive guitar sound, and echoey harsh vocals. It's clear that the synth is the emphasised part of the music, and although it wouldn't be complete without the guitar, it certainly leads the charge. I've always had a soft-spot for epic music, and that's certainly present in Minas Morgul - all of the splendour of the synth is combined with the earthy guitar to create an epic but wholesome vibe not unlike (but neither quite similar to) viking-era Bathory... and you know how I feel about Bathory.

The music certainly has a vast feel, especially with the harsh vocals, which make it seem even more ethereal, and the tremolo patterns used go down epic, beautiful pathways, as opposed to the devilish ones which black-metal tends towards. The style the band play on this album seems astonishing grandiose, and in addition to the music sounding excellent, it's really tightly played, and the lengths of the songs allows them to be reasonably elaborate, albeit in the enjoyable hypnotically repetitive black-metal sense of the term. In my taste in metal, it turns out, rather pleasingly, that summoning is somewhat close to "optimum". I'm not sure what I'd have said of the band a few years, even months ago, but I certainly "get" the style they play now. While the music may initially appear flowery, and don't get me wrong, in many places it is, to an extent, beyond this initial impression actually lurks a fantastically enjoyable sound, which I missed out on for much too long.

It's was quite a trick album to take-in in one go, but ultimately, I can certainly see this, and many of Summoning's albums becoming long-term favourites of mine - It feels like the power of it will last for a long time, and well, I may have not done it justice in my inept qualification of what it sounds like and how I feel about it, but listen to it. It'll tell you what I fail to.

I'm giving this an 8/10, and I think that's before I factor in the fact that it'll probably grow on me.

Links:
Summoning Official site
Summoning on Myspace
Summoning on Facebook
Summoning on Metal Archives

#130 Tankard - The Beauty and the Beer

As a consequence of thinking of a band to review whilst simultaneously thinking of an ice-cold pint of Guinness, here we are, with Tankard. Veteran beer soaked thrash-warriors with a discography to match their appetite for the fine beverage, "The Beauty and the Beer" is a comparatively new album, dating to 2004, but after a brief time in the freezer, I'm taking it out, pouring it into an... emm... tankard, and having a taste.

 From the moment I realised that the first song was about, predictably, a bottle of beer, from the beers point of view, I knew that the band would be a fun listen. Fortunately, not every song that the band sing are about beer, and some of them take a more serious road, with the usual themes of thrash; global, political and society based songs are dispersed through the album, and what would otherwise be one of metal's longest running gimmicks is instead the occasional song or clever-pun here and there. Above and beyond the foaming pints that embellish the band's image, they do write very enjoyable thrash, and the songs are solid, especially for their relative newness, with so many ageing thrash-bands losing their touch, Tankard seem to be keeping theirs well in this album, and while their albums, as far as I can see without listening to many of them at-all, are of rather random quality, this seems to be a good 'un. Not the fastest, and maybe not taking thrash in any fascinating new directions, but nonetheless solid as a rock.

Perhaps the alcohol related humour of just about every single Tankard album threw me off for a while, but I'm glad I went past that; There's certainly more to the band than what you'd initially perceive - any band which make an album like this in the 2000's, an album which would sound at home in the 1980's, is a force to be reckoned with. Everything from the songwriting to the production is very much optimal, and I would be little-shocked if anyone were to describe this album as a modern thrash classic. The album is certainly technically sound, and very solid from a songwriting perspective. I can't find anything in particular to fault about it. There isn't any filler to speak of, and I can't fault the frequent alcohol references - I'm sure most thrash fans like a pint or twelve - after all, that's one of the cornerstones of thrash; if you're not singing about nuclear war, you're singing about booze... Or both, depending on whether or not you're in Municipal Waste.

If riffy, energetic thrash it your thing, and you haven't listened to any Tankard, I recommend that you do. I feel almost guilty for not listening to them sooner and more often, and I've certainly taken too long to get into a band who can certainly make a good album.

I think this deserves a 9/10.

Links:
Tankard Official site
Tankard on Myspace
Tankard on Facebook
Tankard on Metal Archives