Albums 2010–2020

Dark Tranquillity – We Are The Void

February 24, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic death metal
Label: Century Media Records
Release date: 24 February 2010

Gothenburg calling. Again. And yes, you should pick up.

Dark Tranquillity did not reinvent anything on We Are The Void, and that is fine. What they did was sharpen the knives. New bassist Daniel Antonsson is on board, Tue Madsen handled the mix, and reviewers at the time heard heavier guitars than on the previous couple of records. The growls sound like they have a grudge against the furniture. The keyboards are still there, swirling in the background, but they never take over.

“Shadow In Our Blood” opens with a punch and got the first video. “The Fatalist” and “In My Absence” are the kind of mid-tempo melodeath anthems this band can apparently write in their sleep. Not every song sticks, and a couple of tracks in the middle blur into each other. But then “Iridium” closes the album with six-plus minutes of slow-building gloom, and you forgive everything. Play it loud. Annoy the neighbours. They’ll get over it.

Best tracks:

Shadow in Our Blood
The Fatalist
In My Absence
Iridium

Author’s rating: 7.8/10

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High On Fire – Snakes For The Divine

February 23, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Sludge metal / Stoner metal
Label: E1 Music / Century Media Records
Release date: 23 February 2010

Long songs, short fuses. The title track takes its sweet time telling you what kind of afternoon you are going to have, and the answer is a loud one. Matt Pike opens Snakes For The Divine with a riff that sounds like it was forged in a volcano and then thrown at your head.

Greg Fidelman produced it at The Pass Studios in Los Angeles, and for once High On Fire sound sharp instead of buried under their own fuzz. You can hear the drums. You can hear the bass. Nobody had to sacrifice the filth to get there. “Frost Hammer” gallops like Motörhead lost in a blizzard, “Bastard Samurai” slows down and gets mean, and “Fire, Flood & Plague” is thrash with the handbrake ripped out.

“How Dark We Pray” is the long, slow grind near the end, Pike sounding like he’s arguing with the sky. Bring a neck brace for “Holy Flames of the Fire Spitter”. Is it subtle? No. Did you come here for subtle? Arik Roper painted the cover. Act accordingly.

Best tracks:

Snakes for the Divine
Frost Hammer
Bastard Samurai
Fire, Flood & Plague

Author’s rating: 8.4/10

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Eluveitie – Everything Remains (As It Never Was)

February 19, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Switzerland
Style: Folk metal / Melodic death metal
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release date: 19 February 2010

Swiss chart: No. 8. German chart: No. 19. For a band built around hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes and whistles, those numbers say plenty about how far Eluveitie had come by early 2010.

Päde Kistler plays pipes and whistles here, Kay Brem plays bass, and the album was mixed in Wales by Colin Richardson and Martyn “Ginge” Ford, which explains the heavy, polished guitar sound. The Celtic side never really gets buried under it. Hurdy-gurdy, fiddle, pipes and whistles carry most of the melodies, while the guitars do the heavy lifting underneath.

Thirteen tracks, short intro and outro pieces included, and just one of them passes the five-minute mark. “Thousandfold” was the single and the video; the title track and “Kingdom Come Undone” follow the same formula of folk melody over Gothenburg-style riffing. Verdict: tighter and catchier than before, if a little predictable in its middle stretch, where the formula starts to show.

Best tracks:

Everything Remains as It Never Was
Thousandfold
Kingdom Come Undone

Author’s rating: 7.8/10

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Rotting Christ – Aealo

February 15, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Greece
Style: Melodic black metal
Label: Season of Mist
Release date: 15 February 2010

Voices come first. Female chanting soars over the blast beats of the title track like mourners at the edge of a battlefield, and from that moment Aealo feels less like a metal album than a ritual of loss. Sakis Tolis explained the word as an ancient Greek term for thrashing, catastrophe or destruction, and the record carries that weight in every bar.

After that opening, the guitars mostly march rather than race. Drums pound like war drums carried over hills, and Tolis chants more than he sings, as if he is calling the dead to stand up one more time. “Noctis Era” is pure night: cold, slow, inevitable. Primordial’s Alan Nemtheanga turns up as a guest, and his voice fits the old-world gloom perfectly.

Then the ending. Diamanda Galás lends her own voice to a cover of her “Orders from the Dead”, and the album dissolves into something close to a curse. Recorded in Katerini, this is Rotting Christ at their most folk-rooted and most haunted. Play it with the lights off.

Best tracks:

Aealo
Noctis Era
Santa Muerte

Author’s rating: 8.3/10

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Fear Factory – Mechanize

February 5, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Industrial metal
Label: AFM Records / Candlelight Records
Release date: 5 February 2010

Gene Hoglan behind the kit changes the maths of a Fear Factory record. The band’s trademark kick patterns were always a blend of human and grid, and on Mechanize the human side hits back hard. With Dino Cazares back alongside Burton C. Bell and Rhys Fulber co-producing with the band, the riffs return to the clipped, palm-muted lockstep that made the name in the first place.

The production is loud and dense. Fulber’s keyboards and samples sit behind the guitars rather than wrapping around them, which keeps the attack up front but flattens the dynamics over the full running time; by the middle third the barrage starts to blur. The title track and “Industrial Discipline” open with real bite, and “Fear Campaign”, which got its own video, has the strongest chorus Bell had written in years.

His clean hooks are still the deciding factor. When they land, as on “Powershifter”, the formula clicks. When they don’t, you are left with very well-engineered repetition. A comeback with sharp edges, and a few too many identical ones.

Best tracks:

Mechanize
Industrial Discipline
Fear Campaign
Powershifter

Author’s rating: 7.4/10

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Overkill – Ironbound

January 29, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Thrash metal
Label: Nuclear Blast / E1 Music
Release date: 29 January 2010

This far into a career, most bands are selling greatest-hits boxes. Overkill went and made one of the angriest records of their lives.

Ironbound opens with “The Green and Black”, a long, bruising thing that refuses to end politely, and the pace barely drops after that. Blitz screams like he owes somebody money. D.D. Verni’s bass rumbles under every riff like a subway train under Jersey. The title track is pure fist-in-the-air stuff, and “Bring Me the Night” got its own no-frills performance clip, shot in Brooklyn by Kevin Custer. Silhouettes, stage lights, four guys and a drum kit. Fitting. This band runs on sweat.

Peter Tägtgren handled the mix, and you can hear it: everything hits hard, nothing turns to mush. There’s a bit of groove creeping into a few songs, but don’t panic, it never gets lazy. “Killing for a Living” is the one to blast in the car when traffic gets personal.

First release on Nuclear Blast, too. Somebody at the label deserved a raise.

Best tracks:

The Green and Black
Ironbound
Bring Me the Night
Killing for a Living

Author’s rating: 8.6/10

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Orphaned Land – The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR

January 25, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Israel
Style: Progressive metal / Folk metal
Label: Century Media Records
Release date: 25 January 2010

The album opens with a voice that sounds centuries old, and in a way it is. “Sapari” sets a seventeenth-century poem by the Yemenite Jewish poet Sa’adia ben Amram, a dialogue between a man and his own soul, and Orphaned Land turn it into a strange, swaying dance. It is the right doorway into a record about searching inward.

The album plays like one long journey from darkness towards something like grace. Kobi Farhi’s voice moves between languages, Arabic among them, and between clean chant and death growl. Middle Eastern strings sit next to the distortion without anyone apologising. Steven Wilson mixed the album and added keyboards, and you can hear his patience in the long builds of “The Path” and “New Jerusalem”.

It is a lot to take in at once, and a couple of the shorter interludes feel like scaffolding. But few records from 2010 sound so lit from within.

Best tracks:

Sapari
From Broken Vessels
Disciples of the Sacred Oath II
New Jerusalem

Author’s rating: 8.7/10

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Ihsahn – After

January 25, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Norway
Style: Progressive metal / Post-black metal
Label: Mnemosyne Productions / Candlelight Records
Release date: 25 January 2010

Picture a shoreline nobody has walked for a thousand years. Grey water, a low sky, a wind that carries no voices. That is roughly where After lives, and it is a long way from the fire of Ihsahn’s Emperor years.

He has described the album as the last part of a trilogy begun with The Adversary and angL, and where those records ran on anger and confrontation, this one looks outward and inward at the same time. The lyrics drift through empty landscapes: the sea, frozen lakes, the surface of Mars. This time the guest voice has no words: Jørgen Munkeby of Shining plays saxophone, and it never arrives as a novelty. It wanders through “Undercurrent” and “On the Shores” like a lone figure on the horizon, sometimes mournful, sometimes close to a scream.

The music underneath is heavier than the mood suggests. Writing on eight-string guitars for the first time, Ihsahn found lower, darker registers, and Asgeir Mickelson and Lars K. Norberg of Spiral Architect give the rhythms an elastic, almost jazz-like flex. “The Barren Lands” and “A Grave Inversed” open the album with the harshest material, a reminder of where this man came from, before the record slowly lets the tide take over.

Jens Bogren mixed it, and the sound is spacious without being polished to death. The two longest pieces are the heart of the album, slow tides rather than songs. “Frozen Lakes on Mars” may be the closest Ihsahn has come to something you could hum, a melody hanging in thin, cold air.

This is not an album for a quick listen between other things, and it was never meant to be one. It asks for headphones, a dark room and some patience. Give it those and the landscape slowly fills in, one grey shape at a time.

Best tracks:

The Barren Lands
Frozen Lakes on Mars
Undercurrent
On the Shores

Author’s rating: 8.7/10

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Sigh – Scenes From Hell

January 19, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Japan
Style: Avant-garde metal / Black metal
Label: The End Records
Release date: 19 January 2010

Imagine a horror film scored by a brass band that has lost its mind. Trumpets, tubas, oboes and strings crowd into raw black metal riffs, and the orchestra does not sit politely in the background: it leads, shrieks, stumbles into the abyss. “L’art de Mourir” sounds like a funeral march gone feral, while “The Summer Funeral” drags itself along in heat haze and dread.

Current 93’s David Tibet adds a spoken voice like a priest who has stopped believing. The raw, claustrophobic production will bother some. Others will hear smoke rising from it.

Best tracks:

L’art de Mourir
The Summer Funeral
Musica in Tempora Belli

Author’s rating: 7.7/10

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Shining – Blackjazz

January 18, 2010 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Norway
Style: Avant-garde metal / Industrial metal
Label: Indie Recordings / The End Records
Release date: 18 January 2010

Saxophone, played through a grinder. That is roughly where Blackjazz starts, and the Norwegians never really let go of the idea. Jørgen Munkeby’s horn screams over machine-tight drumming and synths that buzz like faulty wiring, and the guitars lock into odd-metre riffs that feel programmed even when they are not. The jazz is in the harmony and the nerve, not in any swing.

Sean Beavan mixed it, and the industrial background shows. Everything is compressed into one dense, glowing block, which suits the battering “Fisheye” but flattens some of the longer pieces. “Blackjazz Deathtrance” runs past ten minutes and earns most of them; the two split-up track pairs feel more like sketches than songs. Guest vocalist Grutle Kjellson barks on “Omen” and on a closing cover of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”, which turns the prog classic into something far nastier.

Too loud by half, and a little too pleased with itself in places. Still, nothing else sounded like this in 2010.

Best tracks:

Fisheye
Blackjazz Deathtrance
Omen

Author’s rating: 8.0/10

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Dark Tranquillity – We Are The Void

High On Fire – Snakes For The Divine

Eluveitie – Everything Remains (As It Never Was)

Rotting Christ – Aealo

Fear Factory – Mechanize

Overkill – Ironbound

Orphaned Land – The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR

Ihsahn – After

Sigh – Scenes From Hell

Shining – Blackjazz

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