Mgla - Exercises in Futility

Finally getting around to some albums I've been hearing about but been too busy to bury myself in properly. This is the biggest - Polish depressive black metallers Mgla (how the fuck do you pronounce that btw?) getting pretty unanimous praise from across the black metal 'community', something that almost never happens. Having not heard a single bad word uttered about this album, I naturally went in with pretty high expectations, and while I wasn't disappointed, I wasn't quite as blown away as I hoped I would be.

The music is about what one would expect, fairly straightforward harsh black metal with some nice melodies. The production hits a pretty sweet spot for me; harsh and noisy without burying anything so deep that it's inaudible, with the unfortunate exception of the bass, which is nowhere to be found. There's a lot to admire in the drumming, which manages to be somewhat technical while remaining stately. Think little cymbal flourishes rather than big obnoxious tom fills. In fact, the drumming is what drives this album along to a large extent, as many of the (all untitled!) songs are built around dissonant, arpeggiated guitar chords rather than proper riffs. Normally, this could potentially be a recipe for boring, but intelligent drumming manages to propel the songs forward by alternating sparse sections with blastbeats and double bass, changing things up just enough to keep it interesting.

I don't normally care much about lyrics, but I do have to give the band kudos for writing depressive lyrics that aren't eye-roll worthy. Actually, they come out with some pretty profound shit, revolving around the interestingly specific theme of futility. Overall, I can't think of any criticisms to really make of this album, other than maybe that the songs sound a bit samey (which may just be a psychological side-effect of them not having titles!). It's just solid black metal, and I really can't praise it enough; so why am I left feeling just the tiniest bit let down? I guess it's just the natural result of getting even somewhat excited about something; I should know better, I'm still recovering from my Myrkur experience. Talk about an exercise in futility...

 The pretty unanimous praise for this album has gotten me thinking about why, and I suppose it's because it's a pretty generally likeable black metal album; it's got enough melody for the people who want that, while having enough riffage and raw production values for the trve. I guess you could even call it 'atmospheric' to a certain extent? All in all, there is plenty to like here for any type of black metal fan, and while it isn't anything groundbreaking, I would certainly highly recommend it to anyone who even says they like black metal.

4 BLESSED BE's out of 5.

Black Fast - Terms of Surrender

Now THIS is an album. St. Louis blackened thrash metallers Black Fast bring the riffs thick and heavy. And these riffs are good. Face-destroyingly, ass-rapingly good. Everything is right where it needs to be: the drums are straightforward and effective, the bass high up in the mix and following the guitars with gusto. Funnily enough, I don't think I heard a single ride cymbal played on this album? The pace is almost uniformly blistering, but it never gets boring; just when you think the band has exhausted their repertoire of riffs, they break out another one. Standouts include 'The Coming Swarm' for dialing back the pace just a bit toward the end and letting the band breathe a little, and 'Haunted Vigil' for catching me off guard by fucking with the time signature, but every single track on this album is more than solid.

This album has so much of what I love about metal music: it's satisfyingly cathartic, never boring, doesn't seem to take itself too terribly seriously, and is just good not-so-clean fun the whole way through. A definite contender for my album of the year, and I have no idea why more people are not talking about this. Seriously, if anybody is reading this, listen to this shit.

And buy it!

5 CONSUMING THEIR EYESSSSSS out of 5

The Sword - High Country

People have long accused The Sword of just ripping off Black Sabbath, and now I've heard people accusing them of ripping off Led Zeppelin with this album. I don't think either allegation is entirely fair - hearing them try to rip off Led Zeppelin would be more interesting than this. High Country is a more 'radio-friendly rock' album from The Sword, a band who I know for a fact are really nice guys, and I've always wished them well in their quest for more mainstream success. Alas, they haven't struck gold with this album.

Right away, you'll notice the gain has been dialed way back on those guitars, making the tone indeed more Jimmy Page than Tony Iommi. This is a well-produced album, certainly; everything sounds very nice. However, minus the stoner metal fuzz and more aggressive pacing of their early work, the album just feels lacking. The problem, I think, is that while the production style has changed quite a bit, the core of the music remains the same (full disclosure: I wrote 'bore' instead of 'core' the first time I wrote that sentence, so we know what we're dealing with here.) The band is still playing the same pentatonic riffs they've been playing since their first album, but on their fifth effort, they just feel a bit... tired. Regrettably, the band veers in to some synth-driven territory on this album, with the main offender, 'Seriously Mysterious', being just cringeworthy, from that title on down to the inappropriate use of drum samples (which also plagues a couple other tracks).

Vocals have never been The Sword's strong suit, and main man JD Cronise delivers the same bored Ozzy impression he has for five albums now. That's fine if you're doing stoner metal, but in the absence of anything more musically interesting (or at least in-your-face), one might expect him to step up his game a little. In fact, the most enjoyable tracks on this album happen to be the instrumentals: 'Unicorn Farm' and 'Suffer No Fools' are both rockin' little tunes that end way too quickly. Fortunately considering the album's 15-track length, all of the songs are mercifully short, with quite a few not even cracking three minutes. Kudos to a couple of tracks towards the end ('Ghost Eye' and 'Turned to Dust') for shaking things up melodically a little bit, steering things away from the pentatonic tedium. 'Turned to Dust' in particular feels like the intro to a much longer (and better) song, but it's marred by more unfortunate drum samples and ends before it really gets started.

This album feels like some good but undeveloped ideas mixed in with some standard Sword tunes, albeit modified to try and accommodate wusses who can't deal with a little (ok, a lot of) guitar distortion. The short length of all the tracks is particularly jarring, since the band has written some lengthy, multi-part songs in the past. Perhaps what the band is lacking is a bit more ambition; they seem to want to move in a different direction, but are afraid (or maybe don't know how) to write songs that aren't melodically similar to what they've done before. While to comparison to Zep is undeserved, maybe they should embrace it; the blues-rock moments that shine through at the very beginning and very end of the album did manage to grab my attention. I don't know what the deal is though, these are just my thoughts. I like this band, but I can't give this album a good score.

2 Unicorn farms out of 5