2013 - WeMetalheads

Fates Warning – Darkness in a Different Light

September 30, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Progressive metal
Label: InsideOut Music
Release date: 30 September 2013

Nine years after FWX, Fates Warning came back with Bobby Jarzombek on drums and an album that is heavier and more direct than its predecessor. Jim Matheos produced it, and it reached No. 41 in Germany.

“One Thousand Fires” opens with a powerful, slow-burning groove, and “Firefly” is about as catchy as this band ever gets. Ray Alder sounds excellent, more controlled than in his younger years and better for it. Jarzombek’s drumming gives the songs a physical punch.

The closing “And Yet It Moves” is the album’s big statement, a long piece in the old Fates tradition that holds together well. “Falling” is a short, gentle interlude, and “O Chloroform” brings a darker mood. A dignified, mature return.

Best tracks:

One Thousand Fires
Firefly
And Yet It Moves

Author’s rating: 8.2/10

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In Solitude – Sister

September 27, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Sweden
Style: Heavy metal / Occult rock
Label: Metal Blade Records
Release date: 27 September 2013

On their third album the Swedes stepped away from the Mercyful Fate-style heavy metal of The World. The Flesh. The Devil and made something stranger: a gothic, dreamlike record that owes as much to the Sisters of Mercy and early Fields of the Nephilim as to anything in denim.

Recorded at Studio Cobra in Stockholm in March 2013 with Martin “Konie” Ehrencrona, Sister sounds dry and close, as if the band were playing in the next room. Pelle Åhman’s voice is the centre of it all, half crooner and half preacher. “He Comes” opens with a twisting riff and a chorus that refuses to resolve, and “A Buried Sun” is seven minutes of slow, hypnotic build. The title track is the closest thing to a single, and the closer, “Inmost Nigredo”, stretches past eight minutes without wasting any of them.

It is not an easy listen, and fans who wanted another round of NWOBHM gallops were let down. But it has aged better than almost any other heavy record from that year.

Best tracks:

He Comes
A Buried Sun
Sister
Inmost Nigredo

Author’s rating: 8.8/10

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Dream Theater – Dream Theater

September 23, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Progressive metal
Label: Roadrunner Records
Release date: 23 September 2013

The band’s twelfth studio album carries their name, was produced by John Petrucci and is the first on which drummer Mike Mangini was part of the writing from the start. It entered the UK chart at No. 15.

The short songs are the strong ones. “The Enemy Inside”, which later earned a Grammy nomination, is tight and aggressive, and “The Looking Glass” is an open nod to Rush that works because it is so unpretentious. The instrumental “Enigma Machine” is fun in the way Dream Theater instrumentals usually are.

Elsewhere it is too safe. “The Bigger Picture” and “Behind the Veil” follow familiar patterns, and “Along for the Ride” is pleasant and nothing more. The closing “Illumination Theory”, more than twenty minutes long, has a lovely, quieter middle section but also plenty of padding. Solid, professional, and not much more.

Best tracks:

The Enemy Inside
The Looking Glass
Enigma Machine

Author’s rating: 7.0/10

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Ulcerate – Vermis

September 13, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: New Zealand
Style: Technical death metal / Death metal
Label: Relapse Records
Release date: 13 September 2013

The New Zealand trio’s Vermis is the darkest and most suffocating thing they had made. Recorded at MCA Studios in Auckland and mixed by drummer Jamie Saint Merat, who also did the artwork, the album sounds exactly like its cover: grey, coiled and hostile.

Saint Merat’s drumming is the engine, constantly moving and rarely settling into a simple pattern, while Michael Hoggard’s guitars create dissonant layers instead of riffs in the usual sense. After the short “Odium”, the title track, “Clutching Revulsion” and “Cessation” are the clearest examples of how well the band builds tension. Paul Kelland’s low roar sits deep in the mix, more texture than lead.

This is not easy listening, and the album asks for patience. Give it that, and few death metal records from 2013 feel this complete.

Best tracks:

Vermis
Clutching Revulsion
Cessation
Confronting Entropy

Author’s rating: 8.8/10

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Windhand – Soma

September 13, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Doom metal / Stoner metal
Label: Relapse Records
Release date: 13 September 2013

Slow, fuzzy, hypnotic doom, with Dorthia Cottrell’s voice floating somewhere above the riffs rather than fighting them. Soma is a big step forward for Windhand.

“Orchard” and “Woodbine” set out the method: huge, simple riffs repeated until they become a trance, with Cottrell’s melodies buried just deep enough in the mix to feel like a ghost in the room. “Feral Bones” has the strongest hook on the record. “Evergreen” offers a gentler breather, but the real test comes at the end.

That test is “Boleskine”, which runs for half an hour. It is not for everyone, and the album as a whole is long, but the closer earns its length through slow growth rather than empty repetition. A genuinely heavy record, and an atmospheric one.

Best tracks:

Orchard
Feral Bones
Woodbine
Boleskine

Author’s rating: 8.3/10

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Carcass – Surgical Steel

September 13, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United Kingdom
Style: Melodic death metal / Death metal
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release date: 13 September 2013

Seventeen years after Swansong, Carcass returned with an album that sounds like the natural successor to Heartwork, and that is the highest praise available.

Jeff Walker and Bill Steer, with Dan Wilding on drums, waste no time. “Thrasher’s Abattoir” is a short, vicious burst, and “Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System” locks into the melodic, twin-guitar death metal the band all but invented. Steer’s leads are the star throughout: “The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills” and “316L Grade Surgical Steel” are packed with hooks, and “Captive Bolt Pistol” is as catchy as anything they have written.

Colin Richardson produced and Andy Sneap mixed, and the result is heavy and clear without the plastic shine of so many comeback records. Original drummer Ken Owen even turns up on backing vocals. “Mount of Execution” closes things with a slower, classic heavy metal feel, the one real surprise here.

It reached the top ten in Germany and Finland and debuted at No. 41 on the Billboard 200. Rarely has a reunion album earned its success so clearly.

Best tracks:

Captive Bolt Pistol
Thrasher’s Abattoir
316L Grade Surgical Steel
Mount of Execution

Author’s rating: 9.2/10

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Haken – The Mountain

September 2, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United Kingdom
Style: Progressive metal
Label: InsideOut Music
Release date: 2 September 2013

The Mountain is the album that moved Haken from promising to essential. Mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren, it plays like a group that has finally found its own voice.

“Atlas Stone” sets the tone: complex, warm and melodic, with Ross Jennings singing over shifting meters as if they were nothing special. Then comes “Cockroach King”, the album’s most famous track, a crazy mix of Gentle Giant-style vocal counterpoint, swing and heavy riffing that should collapse under its own cleverness and somehow stays light on its feet.

The long pieces are where the record earns its reputation. “Falling Back to Earth” builds its climax carefully, and “Pareidolia” brings Middle Eastern melodies and a fierce instrumental section. “Somebody” ends things on a quietly emotional note. Some of the shorter tracks, like “In Memoriam”, pass by without much impact, but that is a small complaint about one of the best progressive metal albums of the decade.

Best tracks:

Cockroach King
Atlas Stone
Pareidolia
Falling Back to Earth

Author’s rating: 8.9/10

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Gorguts – Colored Sands

August 30, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Canada
Style: Technical death metal / Avant-garde metal
Label: Season of Mist
Release date: 30 August 2013

Colored Sands is Gorguts’ first album since From Wisdom to Hate in 2001, a concept record about Tibet, and the best death metal album of 2013. Twelve years of silence turned out to be worth the wait.

Luc Lemay brought in Kevin Hufnagel on guitar, Colin Marston on bass and John Longstreth on drums, and the new line-up plays this music as if it had been doing so for decades. The riffs are dissonant and angular in the old Obscura tradition, but the songs are built in long, patient arcs. “Le Toit du Monde” opens with a sense of scale that never lets up, “An Ocean of Wisdom” moves from tension to something close to beauty, and the title track is the album’s emotional centre.

Then comes “The Battle of Chamdo”, a chamber piece for strings, placed right in the middle of a death metal album. It should break the flow. Instead it deepens the story, and when the band returns with “Enemies of Compassion” the guitars sound even heavier. “Forgotten Arrows” is the closest thing to a single and still unpredictable.

Difficult, demanding, and essential.

Best tracks:

Le Toit du Monde
An Ocean of Wisdom
Colored Sands
Forgotten Arrows

Author’s rating: 9.3/10

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Avenged Sevenfold – Hail to the King

August 23, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: United States
Style: Heavy metal / Hard rock
Label: Warner Records
Release date: 23 August 2013

Hail to the King went to No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and the UK albums chart, the band’s first UK chart-topper. Commercially it is the biggest moment of Avenged Sevenfold’s career. Artistically it is their most borrowed.

Produced by Mike Elizondo and the first album with drummer Arin Ilejay, the record strips the band down to slow, heavy grooves and big riffs. That approach works on “Shepherd of Fire”, which builds patiently, and on the title track, where the lead guitar lines carry the song. But “This Means War” sounds so much like Metallica’s “Sad but True” that it is hard to hear anything else, and the influences on several other tracks are just as easy to name.

“Requiem” and “Planets” at least aim for something more dramatic, and M. Shadows sounds committed throughout. Fans of the band will find plenty here. Anyone who already owns the records this album is modelled on can safely stay with those.

Best tracks:

Shepherd of Fire
Hail to the King
Planets

Author’s rating: 6.8/10

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Watain – The Wild Hunt

August 19, 2013 Published by WeMetalheads

Country: Sweden
Style: Black metal
Label: Century Media
Release date: 19 August 2013

The Wild Hunt went to No. 1 in Sweden and annoyed a fair number of black metal purists, and both facts make sense once you hear it. Mixed by Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus Studio and dressed in a painting by Zbigniew M. Bielak, it is Watain’s most varied and most melodic record.

The fast songs are still very good. “De Profundis” and “The Child Must Die” are ferocious, and “Sleepless Evil” moves with real swing.

The controversy is “They Rode On”, a near-ballad that leans toward heavy rock and could almost pass for Bathory’s Viking era played very slowly. Some hate it. It is one of the bravest things the band has done.

The album is too long, and “Outlaw” feels like a gimmick. But the title track and “Holocaust Dawn” show a band willing to stretch without losing its teeth.

Best tracks:

De Profundis
They Rode On
The Child Must Die
The Wild Hunt

Author’s rating: 8.2/10

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Tag: 2013

Fates Warning – Darkness in a Different Light

In Solitude – Sister

Dream Theater – Dream Theater

Ulcerate – Vermis

Windhand – Soma

Carcass – Surgical Steel

Haken – The Mountain

Gorguts – Colored Sands

Avenged Sevenfold – Hail to the King

Watain – The Wild Hunt

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