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Genres: Depressive Black Metal, Progressive Black Metal, Progressive Metal
Label: Hypnotic Dirge Records

Ekove Efrits presents a strange listen, one that is somewhat hard to get through without rewinding it once in awhile to catch something that caught your ear. The core is based around black metal, with a depressive lean, but it’s so progressive in ways that it’s hard to call it black metal at all in some sections.
Strings and keys play a huge part in the overall sound, with a slightly longer song structure averaging just over six minutes. Slower paces and spoken words, whispers, and immense atmosphere really help drag you into the music. I wouldn’t recommend playing this at your next party, unless you were planning a Jim Jones tribute.
Fans of Nine Inch Nails (especially The Fragile), Kraftwerk, Opeth, Morgul, and HDR’s other releases should not miss out on this one. It’s really good.
7 out of 10.

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Genre: Progressive Black Metal
Label: Southern Lord

Pushing black metal into further left field regions, while keeping it firmly rooted in it’s origins can’t be an easy feat. But Wolves in the Throne Room seem to do it just fine, perhaps even making it an easy feat after three albums and two demos before Celestial Lineage.
Musically, this album is beyond what many people would call black metal. WITTR are taking cues, it seems, from Isis (whose own Aaron Turner makes chanting appearances on “Subterranean Initiation” and “Permanent Changes in Consciousness”), Xasthur, Leviathan, and even touches of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Junius with some classic American rock leanings, as well as Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, and even Dimmu Borgir at times.

The artwork for Celestial Lineage is amazing. Photographs, presumably taken near Calliope, depict a peaceful, beautiful rural setting, with Nathan and Aaron in the distance in a falling-down forest on the back cover. The sleeves for the records are equally photographed, featuring mountains, forest, and a deforested area as well. The vinyl itself for both records is some of the blackest I’ve ever seen, the sheen on it is magical, and at 180gm the platters have a good weight.
In all, it really meshes together, the physical beauty of the records and the auditory beauty that is on the records.

“Thuja Magus Imperium” is in many ways a classy black metal song. It starts off ambient-infused and has Jessika Kenney singing wonderful vocals, then Nathan takes over with his blackened lungs and riffs. A wonderful solo happens in it, which in the notes is called the “Black Acid Solo” (a perfect name for it), and it’s performed by Milky Burgess. The main riffs are reminiscent of slower Darkthrone, with a very haunting quality to it that brings Emperor’s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk to mind.
“Permanent Changes in Consciousness” is very much an ambient track, with wind and meditative chanting being the main sounds. There is a wonderful underlayer of percussion and windchime-esque sounds. Lovely, but far too short for such a great ambient gem.
“Subterranean Initiation” starts off fast and hard, keeping the wind sounds but turning them into a gale rather than a breeze. If the more cinematic elements of modern Dimmu Borgir were performed by Celtic Frost, this song might result. Very strong riff structure that moves you along, rather than allowing you to come with it, is combined with beautiful keys. All of this gets stripped away for a short time, however, and we are left with only a bare guitar momentarily, and the song slows right down for about a minute, only to return to it’s Celtic Borgir beginnings. Faith Coloccia does additional chants on this song, with Timb Harris writing and performing the “uprooting string arrangements”.
“Rainbow Illness” is another instrumental, led primarily by keys and possible field recordings. Really good, but again, too short.
“Woodland Cathedral” seems to be the baby of Jessika Kenney, with her taking control of choral vocal performance, arrangement, lyrics, and organ. The woman is amazing, her voice strong and uplifting, while her organ work really brings you down to earth. This is almost in no way a black metal song, other than the undertones of guitar, bass, and drums, which slowly come closer to the fore, which makes it even more of a black metal song, to me. This song really reminds me of parts of the Treasure album by Cocteau Twins.
“Astral Blood” starts off as a total second wave black metal song, with riffing and drumming sounding like a drier Darkthrone, until the keys kick in at least. Then it becomes all Wolves in the Throne Room. Thick vintage tone comes from their amps, and analog synths bubble up; no longer is this dry. Wet with emotion, “Astral Blood” may well be my favorite song on the album. I love the harp/wind section by Zeynep Okyu Yilmaz at the 4ish-minute mark. It’s just so moving, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. Honestly, this whole song is like that. It definitely pulls at the heartstrings.
“Prayer of Transformation” picks up on the ending of “Astral Blood”, then morphs into it’s own lumbering beast. The entire song moves at a slow pace, bringing a doomy flavor to the occult lyrics. The synths are just brilliant, and what I think is more field recordings make quiet undercurrents throughout. There is nothing extreme about this song, except Nathan’s vocals, but the whole is extremely moving. I could sleep to this, and perhaps have the most pleasant dreams of bringing the dead back to golden life. The ending is great, with the keys and guitars coming up into a crescendo, then dropping off into ambiance for about a minute.

This is where, as the final record begins to click the fact that it is over, you turn off your record player, take off the record, put it back into its sleeve, and put the first one on the turntable again, and take the spiritual and emotional journey once, or even twice more. I could listen to this album, and only this album, for days. It is spellbinding and gorgeous. Beautiful. Perfect.
10 out of 10.

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Genre: Progressive, Psychedelic, Acid Rock
Label: Independent 

Man, having a baby really fucks up your schedule! I’ve been sitting on this review for so long, that Masonic Weird has changed their name to Martyred Whitmans since asking me to review their demo, Manic And Self Medicated! Apologies all around.

As soon as this demo started up, I was reminded of a band that I review waaaaaay back with E-Metal Reviews called To The Bones. I went a little overboard with praise on that review since it was my first real experience with the progressive/psychedelic sub-genres and to this day, it still creates a massive erection in my trousers whenever I’m allowed to review anything from said genres. And now that you can’t unknow that, I’m please to say that Masonic Weird’s demo is a “boner”-fied piece of doom-y progression! If you’re not familiar with To The Bones, then maybe the comparison of The Sword (sans the poser tag) meets Earth might raise an eyebrow or two (I know it did for me as I wrote that).

Now, I’ve read some reviews about this band in the past that didn’t paint them in the best of lights, so I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t really looking forward to it… how quickly we remember not to believe everything we hear/read/see on T.V.! Seriously, I’d like to know who those guys were listening to when they wrote those reviews? Because I’m positive that it wasn’t Masonic Weird! There’s nothing “hipster” about this music! Sure, pot helps… it helps with EVERYTHING! And who the fuck isn’t gonna toke up when they’re listening to doom or prog?!

Braking down the instrumentation, the riffing is exceptional! You’re not really sure where you’re going to be lead next, but that don’t matter since it’s constantly exciting more than what you were expecting. The bass in Manic And Self Medicated is perfect. Perfect. The mixture or doom and progressive styles pretty much just left the bass roam free. The freest I’ve ever heard a bass be, in fact. In my opinion, this is some of the best use of bass I’ve ever heard! (Kudos to Yehuda McKay) Drums? Yeah, they’re there and awesome. But, prog drums are always awesome, so I’m glad to see that the trend continues here. The only other thing that feels standard are the vocals. They aren’t anything ground breaking, but I wasn’t looking for groundbreaking so it all works out fine there.

There’s not much to say about this demo that I haven’t already touched on or that you couldn’t already gather. It came completely out of left field and rocked my socks off. But if you really want me to gripe about something, I’ll give you this: I was expecting something a bit more “weird”. But that’s not an official gripe.

Overall: Every riff is a combination of thick and catchy. Every lyric is dripping with THC and acid. Every bash of the brass is one that will stay with you after the demo stops playing.   Everything about this offering is genius! Plain and simple. If you like bands that stick to their guns and play shit that isn’t exactly what people think that it should be, then Masonic Weird/Martyred Whitmans is just for you!

10/10

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Martyred Whitmans On Facebook 

Genres: Death Metal, Progressive Grindcore
Label: Relapse Records

FTF have been a favorite of mine for a long time, as readers of this site may well know. When I was given the opportunity to download and review the new album from the PR company, I was stoked. So yeah, I downloaded the promo, listened to it a couple times, and loved it. But never had the actual time to get my thoughts on it down. Then last night I was in HMV and ended up grabbing a copy of the album. So now that I have the physical version I’m making the time to review it properly.

This is definitely one of the strangest FTF albums so far. It has the grinding of previous albums Stigmata High Five and Disgorge Mexico, but it blends in more of the death metal influence that was very obvious on the Unnamed 7″. Absent are the slower, pretty parts that hearken back to 80′s thrash (especially Metallica) that were featured on Disgorge Mexico. The songs seem longer too, and in continuing with FTF traditions, there is a long song that is almost seven-and-a-half minutes long (“Census Blank”). This song also has a guy doing vocals on it, but due to the awesome amounts of liner notes for the album I have no idea who is doing them. Probably one of the guys in the band.

The second-longest song brings in another FTF tradition, a song in French! “95″ is the tune, and it’s a really fast, angry sounding track that makes me want to mosh like crazy, especially during the guitar solo. This one is a good example of the strangeness of the album too: it’s got a slower riff that really strikes me as a Black Sabbath worship riff. Totally doomy with a touch of psychrock going on.

These little sections are peppered all over the album, riffs that just are not typical grindcore or death metal, but bringing in other genres that influence the men and lady of FTF. And the way that they work with the more typical Fuck the Facts sound is amazing!

In the end, Die Miserable is a sweet album, and definitely should be looked at for those that are into Pig Destroyer, Buried Inside, Gigan, Napalm Death, and Nasum.

8.5 out of 10.

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Genre: Depressive Black Metal, Progressive Black Metal, Symphonic Black Metal
Label: Hypnotic Dirge Records

It’s quite unreal the amount of quality work that is coming from Hypnotic Dirge as a record label. Skog has been signing such great bands that really are different from the standards in depressive black metal (which is HDR’s primary bread and butter along with more ambient sounds), and Funeral Fornication is not a change of his general attitude.

FF’s newest album, Pandemic Trangression, is at it’s core depressive black metal but it has so many facets to it that it almost immediately steps out from the shadow of generic one man closet DSBM. Clean guitars and pianos, true singing, and symphonics that would make Dimmu Borgir proud are brought together with a real rawness that you could only get from the mountains of British Columbia.

This is Canadian black metal like no other, and I definitely recommend it for fans of the aforementioned Dimmu Borgir, old Cradle of Filth, Spectre, and the shoegazing black metal that is seeming to be taking over the world (Alcest, An Autumn for Crippled Children, etc…).

8 out of 10.

Funeral Fornication on MySpace.