Füneral Rain Press Cörps

Genre: Black/Folk Metal

Label: Bindrune Recordings

Falls of Rauros are a black/folk metal band from Maine, who I had never heard before. Some quick research revealed that the band members adhere to the neopagan beliefs that nature is to be respected and that the world would be better off without Christianity. From a lesser band, such declarations would seem generic and trite, but as I also discovered, Falls of Rauros have a musical prowess that commands respect.

Almost immediately after I began listening to their latest album, “The Light That Dwells In Rotten Wood”, the music trickling out of my speakers made me think of Agalloch. I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. This is fantastic black/folk that has it all; hypnotic black metal riffs, butter smooth guitar solos, acoustic sections aplenty, and deliciously autumnal melodies. It oozes frigid pagan atmosphere that conjures images of snow capped mountains and silent wintery forests

Two things set Fall of Rauros apart from their more well known contemporaries in Agalloch. First, Fall of Rauros employ no clean vocals (unless you count a brief whispering section in “Awaiting the Fire or Flood That Awakens It”). Secondly, their music is even more atmosphere-centric than that of Agalloch, rarely letting solos, bridge sections, or even vocals disturb the introspectiveness at work. What’s left is a semi-ambient contemplative journey through a winter wonderland.

If you like folk/black, black metal, or even neofolk and post-rock, do yourself a favor and get this. Meanwhile, I’ll be exploring the rest of this band’s discography. 8/10.

Genre: Death Metal, Grind

Label: Comatose Music

Modus Delicti started up after the band Nobody broke up in 2005. In 2006, they broke up again and reformed within the same year… yeah. After hearing that, I wasn’t expecting a whole hell of a lot from this band either. But the test of their mantel is in their metal, not in their tumultuous history. After giving Nobody a spin, I have this to say:

If you like spastic grind in the vein of Kill The Client and more groove heavy death metal by way of Skinless, then this six year veteran of the Italian metal circuit and their first full length album are right up your awesome choice of alley!

I don’t really need to say a whole lot more than that for this review. Modus Delicti plays some fairly technical, yet eerily relaxed grindcore that’s akin to countrymen Tsubo’s style. The guitar buzzes through riff after bloody violent riff and even slows down for a little melodic break in Beyond The Mask. Claude De Rosa, Modus Delicti’s drummer, is a killer. Plain and simple. ADHD pummeling and controlled, technical blasts move this band out of the shadows of mediocre grind and into “keep your eyes and these guys” territory.

The vocals aren’t terrible most of the time.  But every once in a while, there’s that irritating Cookie Monster growl that pops up and ruins the flow of an already brutal song. And as for flow breakage, at the end of The Teeth Collector, there’s about thirty seconds of silence that just annoys this piss out of me. Why the hell is that even there?

Overall: Modus Delicti’s debut album, Nobody is about twenty four minutes of a brutal groove ‘n’ grind fest!

8/10

Modus Delicti On Facebook

Modus Delicti On MySpace

Genres: Doom, Melodic Death Metal
Label: The End Records

Chicago’s masters of gloom return once again with eight tracks of dark, death-tinged metal that I just can’t stop listening to.
Head crushing heaviness meets heart wrenching emotion. Cathartic and depressing at the same time, Aphotic was obviously written in the very Temple of the Riff itself. Or perhaps the Novembers Doom rehearsal area. Whichever.
Some of the songs were actually written with more input from the new bassist Mike Feldman, which gives the bass a very different room to breathe in for this album, and with Paul’s voice seeming to be at it’s strongest ever, Novembers Doom look ready to finally take the throne that they deserve.
My favorite tracks are “Buried”, “Six Sides”, “Harvest Scythe”, and the female vocal filled, almost gothic acoustic track “What Could Have Been”.
9 out of 10.

Novembers Doom on Facebook.

Genre: Black Metal

Label: Forever Plagued Records

Looks like I’m in luck! Darkest Grove is a one man black metal project that hails from Pennsylvania and if history has taught us anything, it’s that New England produces some of the best American black metal out there. And if the cover is any indication (which it most certainly is), we’re in for some Mesopotamian themes and grim wickedness in Pain And Suffering Shall Be Known. This is gonna be sweet!

Pain And Suffering Shall Be Know starts off an instrumental title track that is, in all honestly, fairly boring. Slow, repetitive organ keys played for three and a half minutes that don’t seem to lead anywhere are not the most exciting way to build up to the action. Hopefully, this is merely a fluke. I’d hate to think that my excitement was premature…

Ok, here we go! The second track, (Within My) Drunemeton, starts off an overwhelming liking to Primordial’s Imrama era. This pleases me.

Moving into the third track (and beyond) Pain And Suffering Shall Be Known just ends up becoming a simultaneously boring and completely unfocused mess of an album. In some tracks, I believe that sole member, Devoid Being, is aiming for a more atmospheric approach. He succeeds if only for half of a song before switching (or possibly some other reason) to a “depressive” or “suicidal” mode. The two might mix well if the artist holds his attention on them well enough, but in Devoid Being’s case, not so much.

And then you come upon Repudiated Ideology, Of Lies And Deceit which starts off with a melodramatic soundbite from a movie that I can’t put my finger on, rips into some mid-paced black ‘n’ roll and then slows back to a crawl with that depressive stuff again! Good lord, man! Ritalin!

Overall: Simultaneously boring and unfocused. That’s this albums faults in a nutshell. But underneath that,  there are elements of a decent album. If you REALLY enjoy Primordial or the likes of Aanal Beehemoth, then there are minutes of this album that you’ll enjoy.

5/10

Darkest Grove On MySpace

I’d like to introduce this edition of Conjuration of the Sepulchral by apologizing to the many avid readers who I’m sure have been left crushed and without direction by this column’s absence. Real life has been getting in the way of my illustrious career as a metal sage, but I’ve thought long and hard about my priorities and realized that shit’s overrated. Now back to the death metal.

This week we will be sampling a fine Swedish vintage with a very un-Swedish flavor. Gorement from Nyköping, Sweden. I have never seen them discussed in any magazine like Terrorizer, Zero Tolerance, or Metal Maniacs, or any larger metal site like blabbermouth or metal-rules.net, but they maintain a dedicated cult following among die-hard old school death metal fans. And for good reason; their only album, the magnum opus “The Ending Quest”, is a masterpiece of atypical melanchoic death metal.

Their style is hard to describe; Swedeath cliches are eschewed. No HM-2 pedal Left Hand Path Guitar tone, no d-beat drumming. A very strong sense of melody is present, but so are monolithic grooving death riffs. Hyperblasting madness flows seamlessly into gossamer melodies that evoke soltitude inspire contemplation. To me, the entire approach of Gorement conveys an ancient, inhuman sense of esoteric knowing and despair. It could perhaps be described as the reminiscing of an ancient entity that has seen the rise and fall of  countless gods and nations, and knows that all things good things come to an end. Check it out here, and buy Gorement’s “Darkness of the Dead” compilation or the vinyl re-issue of “The Ending Quest” from Necroharmonic Records.