Füneral Rain Press Cörps

Genres: Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal
Label: Candlelight Records

Opening with rain, and a pretty piano, then ripping your head off with some intense death metal, My Arms, Your Hearse is a wonderful album, full of Opeth’s trademark touches.
Death metal exterior with a slightly proggy center, My Arms… is an angrier sounding album, compared to Morningrise and Orchid, with more presence in the drum kicks and a little more distortion in the bass and guitars.
And like its predecessor, there are parts of it that state blatantly what Opeth would become in less than ten years.
Metalgasmic clean vocals at 6:39 in “When”, showing that Mikael is not only a great singer, but that he’s getting better with every record.
This re-release includes a pair of bonus tracks, the only two covers that Opeth ever recorded (until the Ghost Reveries album), “Circle of the Tyrant” (Celtic Frost) and “Remember Tomorrow” (Iron Maiden). Naturally, both are awesome.
After everything is said and done, My Arms, Your Hearse is not only one of my favorites from Opeth, but it’s in my Top 20 of all time.
8.5 out of 10.

Genres: Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal
Label: Candlelight Records

Much less black metal influences are obvious on Opeth’s second album. It’s pretty much pure melodic death, continuing with the cleanly overdriven sound that Opeth have created.
Mikael sings more, and the guitars are even more pretty, especially in what was originally the album’s closer “To Bid You Farewell”. I think this album is really showing what Opeth would become in only a couple years after this was released.
Standout tracks for me include the amazing epic “Black Rose Immortal”, which is over 20 minutes long, “To Bid You Farewell”, and the re-release bonus track “Eternal Soul Torture”, which is another 1992 rehearsal tape song that was cannibalized to help create “Advent”, this album’s opener.
Morningrise, for me, is right up there in the metal pantheon’s top great albums. 8 out of 10.

Genre: Blackened Death Metal
Label: Candlelight Records

Opeth’s first album, originally released in 1994, is a monumental recording.
Technically, Opeth are concidered death or melodic death, but this album has so many sections of music and so many lyrics that are so black metal, that I call it a blackened death album. Even vocally, Mikael’s performances are pretty blackened.
Instrumentally, it’s death metal riffing, but without tons of distortion. An almost clean, overdriven sound with awesome bass tone and drums. It’s a sound that I’ve never heard another band successfully duplicate. It’s a sound that defines a genre, and that genre is Opeth.
This re-release also includes a bonus track, the rehearsal tape song “Into the Frost of Winter”, which had parts from it cannibalized for the song “Advent”, the opener of the second album. It’s an amazing look into the Opeth that existed in 1992.
Overall, Orchid nets itself an 8 out of 10. It’s a bloody brilliant chunk of metal that to this day can stand next to tons of other records and still shine brightly.

Chrome Leaf Records are firing up some disturbing new releases for 2010. The first to be released is the foul and utterly terrifying split LP between Australian noise terrorists NEKRASOV and  ADERLATING. This LP release will be limited to 300 copies only, on translucent dark green with silver splatter wax.

As one might expect from such a union, this split LP shall surely be one of the most frightening releases of 2010, punishing the listener with each act’s depraved experimentation within black metal, dark noise and ambient sub-musical territories. Australian one-man unit NEKRASOV embraces Nothing as a state and rejects Nothing as a value. NEKRASOV was initiated in 1997 to direct those to the black pain at the body’s core. The hell unleashed by the unit here is severely haunting; their lone track clocking in at a mammoth 24:42 in length… And that’s all before you even get to the wretched B-side of the split. From within the same dimly-lit hate cellar and born of the same dismal mind as Gnaw Their Tongues, the cavernous suffocation delivered by ADERLATING bursts forth with low frequency horror, nausea-inducing 20khz drones, fistfucking distorted tape-hiss and raped soundscapes, while the lowest and vilest of demons provide a diabolical orchestration. This is purely demented, scathing, metallic bliss.

The ADERLATING/NEKRASOV split LP release date is February 9. Here is the tracklisting for the split:

1. Nekrasov “Qualities of being Futile and Valueless” [24:42]
2. Aderlating “Chalice of Abalam” [10:15]
3. Aderlating “Ritus Orgia Sanqin” [6:24]
4. Aderlating “Dog Semen” [6:23]

Other upcoming releases from the Chrome Leaf banner this year include a 7″ picture disc of PORTAL’s Lurker At The Threshold EP on May 4th, and a one-sided mLP repress of PROSANCTUS INFERI’s Desecration In Excelsis [release date TBA]. Also in the works is the anticipated new DEADSEA epic two-song full-length, with a final album title, album info and release date to be announced shortly. In the meantime, DEADSEA will be appearing at the free Scion Rock Fest in the band’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio this March, alongside heavyweights Shrinebuilder, Pelican, D.R.I., Cannibal Corpse, Saviours, Brutal Truth and more (http://www.scion.com/rock/).

Genre: Death Metal
Label: Nuclear Blast Records

Before this album, I’ve only heard a couple songs from Nile, and what I heard I liked. So when I saw the new disc at HMV, I grabbed it.
And am I glad I did. Super heavy and twice as hard music with some of the most brutal death metal vocals I’ve ever heard, all with the basic backdrop of ancient Egypt.
It’s another of those albums that makes my job really easy. Nile, FTW.
9 out of 10.