Gory Blister - The
Fifth Fury
23 years in and Gory Blister are only on album number 5.
These Italian Deathsters are not the most prolific band on Planet Metal.
They’re not a heavy as I expected either. With a name
like Gory Blister, I was bracing myself for a full-on assault. But instead the
Death Metal on offer is infinitely more melodic than I was expecting, mainly
down to the wonderfully tuneful lead guitars.
The intensity levels are cranked up occasionally,
especially on the technical barrage of track two, Thresholds. But even then,
there are a few melodic interludes to temper the mood.
This album falls slap bang in the middle of Technical,
Melodic and (almost) Brutal Death. The arrangements of the songs are very good,
with slower and faster passages generating plenty of atmosphere. Again, it’s
the guitars of Raff that stand out, for me.
Overall, this is a good album from band that can
obviously create well-crafted songs. From a personal point of view, I think
they need a few more hooks to make the songs more memorable, but that’s just a
minor quibble.
Al Ard
Football is often referred to as “a game of 2 halves”.
This 3 track demo, from Italian Industrial crew Al Ard, falls into a very
similar category as all 3 tracks could have been recorded by 3 different bands.
So in this case, a demo of 3 thirds.
Opening number, Pillar.Past.Present, starts off with a
keyboard sound that hints at a barrage of Industrial/EBM beats, before hurtling
headlong into glorious Black Metal. Hovering around the mid-paced and symphonic
forms of the genre, its sound is punctuated with a few Industrial beats, but it
follows a blackened path for the majority of the song.
For a Hint of Divinity starts off sounding like it could
be a Cradle Of Filth cover, before quickly introducing some bass heavy beats
and a plethora of Industrial flavours and samples. I listen to a lot of EBM, so
this isn’t a problem for me at all.
Strange Old Practice I isn’t so much a song, but a
collection of samples, spoken word passages and a groovy bit of Drum N Bass. It’s
ok, but it doesn’t really have the power of the first two numbers.
Maybe something more similar to the other numbers would
have been a better finale.
But at least Al Ard are doing something different than
the norm. As their name indicates, there is an Arabic influence that can be
heard throughout the demo. As can various influences from their Sicilian homeland.
So bags of potential, but they need to reign in the experimentation,
just a little.
And while we are on the subject of Italian bands, I have
some news from my label which fits in very nicely with todays’ update
Chiral Vs HaatE
As a big fan of Chiral's brand of Black Metal, I'm very
pleased to be finally working with the Italian maestro.
Sixsixsix Music will release a special download album
that will feature both Chiral and fellow Italian project HaatE
HaatE will provide 3 slices of Dark Ambient, whilst
Chiral will unleash a new 20 minutes epic entitled Everblack Fields of
Nightside.
The album will be available via iTunes, Amazon, Spotify
etc... in the Autumn.
More details soon
Sixsixsix Music
E-mail: steve@sixsixsixmusic.com
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