Year in Review - the Releases of March 2013

         Intronaut - Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words with Tones)

         Genre: Progressive Metal/Sludge Metal

             Words cannot accurately portray how much I absolute love this album. This is potentially, if not absolutely, one of my favorite albums of the year. With its dreamy, absolutely delectable mix of jam-y jazz and metal pomp, Intronaut present with Habitual Levitations an absolutely stunning piece of art in the form of a progressive metal album. In a scene dominated by loud, over-the-top bands, Habitual Levitations gets attention by being profoundly quiet in comparison. It's still undeniably metal in its heaviness and feel, but the band never plays itself out too far, indeed, playing each note, lick, and groove with well-thought out intentions, to amazing results.

           This is music to get lost in, with comforting rings and nebulous, echoing vocals – soothing, yet strong. Intensity is not something you'll get from listening to a masterpiece like this, but you'll definitely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, feel yourself positively flying as the insane rhythm duo of Danny Walker (drums) and Joe Lester (bass) melodically and intricately play their way into your soul.
         But that's not to say Habitual Levitations never gets heavy – 'The Welding', the album's second piece, echoes 2010's Valley of Smoke in its jazz-exterior and hard-baked interior. But on the other hand, songs like 'Harmonomicon' or 'A Sore Sight For Eyes' are as open-ended as metal can be, pushing power on the aforementioned badassery of the band's rhythm section. Intronaut have also done away with harsh vocals, allowing the band to move as one without any jarring, sudden shifts.

              While some might call that a shame, it's actually worked well in the band's favour as they went from a purely instrumental band (Void) to including vocals sparsely on Prehistoricisms, to Valley of Smoke where the vocals were upregulated. But in any case, Sacha Dunable's gruff, mid-range uncleans were always at odds with Intronaut's flighty, tumultuous music. In Habitual Levitations, an album all about big ol' grooves and clean fun, Dunable's well-developed cleans complement this fact beautifully.

            Habitual Levitations is a modern classic, as sure to please as it is to amaze. If you haven't yet had the pleasure of enjoying this album, do yourself a favor and get on it soon. I, for one, am unduly excited to see Intronaut open for Deafheaven and Between the Buried and Me in February.

Notable Songs: 'Milk Leg', 'Eventual', 'Blood From a Stone'.

       Wardruna - Runaljod - Yggdrasil

       Genre: Ambient  

      At an Alcest show in September, I had the pleasure of meeting Canadian musician Musk Ox, and amidst asking him what it was like to open for Agalloch and meet Gaahl, the topic of the latter's new music project Wardruna came up. I'd heard mention of the bizarre 'Norse ambient' group featured in the music of a Vice documentary on Norway but neglected to check them out until the snow fell, and then it just became magical.

        Wardruna as a project are focused around traditional Norse instruments, including Jew's harps, fiddles, and big ol' drums made by crudely draping deerskin over a cylinder. Their first album, Runaljod – Gap var Ginnunga, was a meditative yet intense journey through the untamed, snow-shod forests of Scandinavia, with the band offering minimalist open spaces and conjuring up epic, yet still soundscapes. It was the perfect complement to the Vice documentary mentioned above, and when the sun is setting and you're in the middle of a forest I can only imagine how intense the music must feel.

         Runaljod – Yggdrasil (after the cosmic tree of Norse mythology) is the band's newest outing in four years, following the release of single 'Fehu' last year. As a unit, Yggdrasil is far better at transporting the listener to the middle of a fjord. 'Rotlaust Tre Fell', the album's thunderous introduction, is an invocation of the Norse gods, naming them by name and role to serve as the album's definitive start before flawlessly entering the aforementioned 'Fehu'.

         Considering how there are no synths on this album, it's stunning how the band manages to make half the sounds they do. Many ambient albums struggle with what exactly they want to do to their listener, but Wardruna are well aware of their goals and confidently make strides to take you there. Even if you don't speak Norwegian (I've dabbled a bit, but not enough for me to fully grasp what's being said), you can almost feel the pull to the middle of a ritual circle in the pine forests. 'NaudiR' begins with Gaahl's low, resolute vocals but slowly crescendos into a forceful chorus.

         Where Gap Var Ginnunga was atmosphere, Yggdrasil is ritual. The band played down their vocals on Gap Var Ginnunga, preferring instead to explore large soundscapes replete with even some birds, but the new record is an intensely spiritual experience, and the trance-inducing vocals on 'Solringen' or the hypnotic fiddle on 'Gibu', which feature layered vocals, one spoken, the other sung.

           Listening to Yggdrasil in fragmented stretches is a good way to utterly ruin this record. This is meant to be a spiritual, meditative exploration of the Scandinavia of yore, and in many ways it succeeds as a result of its length. There are no singularly good songs, because almost every 'song' on this record is good, but patches of particular intensity and epicness that you can't help but gape at and pray they never end. To that end, I'm not going to claim there are any noteworthy tracks. This is an experience meant to be enjoyed for its full 66-minute duration.

         Kvelertak - Meir

         Genre: "Black 'n Roll"

        “Black 'n Roll”, at least for me, is the ultimate example of people trying to pigeonhole bands into genres. It all started in 2006, when former Swedish black metal all-stars Dissection put out a bouncy, less traditional album entitled Reinkaos, which featured catchy riffs, comprehensible vocals, and a drastic scarcity of tremolos.

        Perhaps in a fit of “maintaining purity”, black metal fans began labelling Reinkaos as a new genre crossover – black metal and hard rock – and thus the designation of “black 'n roll” was born. People sometimes shove Vreid and later Satyricon in this category, and despite my misgivings about the “genre's” name, it's genuinely fun, if not serious, music.

         Enter Kvelertak – an intensely Norwegian band (seriously, their name means 'chokehold') who erupted out of nowhere in 2010 with a self-titled album and enough drunk raucousness to power a small African country. With frantic energy dripping from every guitar riff and howled lyric, Kvelertak took everyone by surprise and their newest album, simply entitled Meir ('More') was eagerly awaited the world over.

         Most people were disappointed in this record, claiming that the beer-soaked, intoxicated ranting of the self-titled stagnated in Meir as the band didn't really change or put anything new forward – and to that I say who cares! Meir takes the form of eleven relatively brief (only one song breaks six minutes) tracks, heaped with as much mass, tasty riffs, and Viking glory as you can stomach. 'Tordenbrak' features the best introduction riff out of almost anything the band has produced, and the single 'Bruane Brenn''s clean breaks are absolutely excellent.

         That Kvelertak love them some classic rock is obvious, but it's on Meir that they really get the swing of things, culminating in the Who-esque 'Evig Vandrar', which features acoustic guitars juxtaposed with an angry, shirtless Norwegian screaming his head off. If that doesn't sound awesome, get your head checked.

        Compared to their self-titled, Meir is far more riff-heavy, and even though the various riffs and ideas always seem to be just related, thanks to the skill of twin guitarists Vidar Landa and Bjarte Lund Rolland, they play off of one another continuously, harmonizing just enough to keep the music interesting – see the spectacular crescendo on the aforementioned 'Tordenbrak' for the best example. 'Trepan', on the other hand, is a far more black-metal influenced song, lacking lots of the catchy hooks and melodies Kvelertak have stuffed Meir with in lieu of getting back to the roots.

         For the most part, Meir works well at what it does – providing a listener with some fun drinking tunes infused with enough pomp to loosen you up, but ultimately the fact that this is the self-titled 2.0 does detract from it. If you go into Meir expecting to hear anything new, you'll be disappointed, but if you found yourself hungry for more after 2010, Meir supplies eleven more tracks to slake your thirst.

Notable Tracks: 'Bruane Brenn', 'Tordenbrak', 'Monelyst'.

        Nails - Abandon All Life

        Genre: Hardcore/Powerviolence

         With enough hardcore rage and thrash metal insanity to shatter the eardrums of anyone unfortunate to get caught in the blast, Nails returned this year with their second auditory violation in the form of Abandon All Life – an intense, crushing 17-minute long journey through hell as Todd Yard (ex-Converge) screams unapologetically at your damned soul. Featuring a 24 second song, and only two songs over three minutes, Abandon All Life is as seizure-inducing as it is concise. The band knows exactly what they're doing, and crams it all efficiently into this mammoth album.

         But what's that? You want variety? Abandon All Life has got variety! 'Wide Open Wound' is torturously slow and sludge-y – imagine Eyehategod on meth and you might approach the song's unimaginable swath of destruction. Or perhaps the random medieval break on the title track, which is so out of place and comprises about half the song (which isn't too long, given it's a little under a minute and a half) that you can't help but do a double-take.

        Amidst the frantic D-beats, breakdowns, and incomprehensible howling, there's just enough give for you to nod along helplessly as you're roughly dragged around and curbstomped by the unfathomably heavy aforementioned 24-second 'Cry Wolf', ending with Yard barking out “something something FUCKING SHIT”.

       'Suum Critique', the closer and album's longest at a little over five minutes (I've known doom bands to have songs longer than this album), follows the same recipe as the aforementioned 'Wide Open Wound' – space things out a little bit more and fill in the space with tasty, heavy kick. Allow the listener to savour the chunky guitars as a final respite before the punishing, stupidly heavy breakdown comes in.

         Abandon All Life knows exactly what it's doing, where it's doing it, and how it's going to go about it. In a genre known for lack of direction and putting message ahead of execution, Nails have everything precisely orchestrated to deliver the maximum amount of punishment that we eagerly lap up. Nails are a band that never drag their feet, rather, they sprint howling for blood, and Abandon All Life is testament to how awesome the result is when a band doesn't feature boring interludes.

Notable Tracks: 'Cry Wolf', 'Wide Open Wound', 'God's Cold Hands'.

        And So I  Watch You From Afar - All Hail Bright Futures

        Genre: Post-Rock

       Post-rock, for all of the virtues of post-rock influenced metal I extol, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's an overpoweringly hip genre, so you're going to have a good amount of pretentious hipster bullshit - Bon Iver or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, for instance – but then you have bands like Russian Circles or Mono who, aside from actually being talented at playing their instruments, convey the same atmospheric immensity in a more traditional 'rock' way.

           Heavy Blog is Heavy described Irish outfit And So I Watch You From Afar as 'a metalhead's post-rock band', and his designation is pretty damn spot on. Since their 2009 self-titled debut, the band's put out two undisputably heavy records – 2011's Gangs, which, despite the high-pitched guitar work and sometimes snare-heavy drums, was a mighty affair with enough lightheadedness to excuse the actually quite intricate and driving instrumentals. I've had nothing bad to say about them since I stumbled upon them some time ago – 'Set Guitars to Kill' is a fantastic song – and seeing them earlier in November was well worth sitting through the castrated hipster garbage of TTNG. But I digress.

        I had high expectations, thus, for All Hail Bright Futures, which debuted this March through Sargent House, who put out some of my favorite records this year (Russian Circles, Deafheaven, and Chelsea Wolfe to name just a few), and, while I was a little let down at the start, it was undeniably a very successful, if sudden, evolution.

         If the bright, saturated covers of the album art are any indication, this is a super chipper, upbeat album, compared to Gangs' more muted monochrome, which itself was a continuation of the self-titled. All Hail Bright Futures takes equally from previous outings while spinning itself just a little bit differently than before, the most notable change coming in the form of vocals.

         Yes, it's a change that wasn't taken too well by some (my roommate got intensely disappointed), but, surprisingly enough, it's a change that works well, with the vocals never serving to disrupt the groove of the music. While it still came as a surprise initially, they're used sparingly, and ultimately help more than hinder as they take mostly the form of simple gang vocals or 'ooooohs', like on the psychedelic title track. The record also features a much more prevalent synth and an upbeat element that can't be denied, making it a departure from previous outings who were more focused on an organic sound.

        That's not to say that All Hail Bright Futures came out of nowhere – there's still plenty of fun, sparkling riffs scattered throughout the album, but this is the first record the band has really thrown their weight around and established what they can or can't do, and it's more on the former with this record. Psychedelics and synths aside, the monumental seven-minute 'Brave Minds' is a sprawling, atmospheric epic with a hint of horns lurking in the back as the instrumentals form layers on layers, and it's totally entrancing. Opening pair 'Eunoia' and 'Big Things Do Remarkable', on the other hand, are dainty and fast, featuring the chanted line “the sun is in our eyes”.

         All in all All Hail Bright Futures is, as has been the case with ASIWYA since their inception, a complete success. Fans of the band will find themselves a little taken aback, but in the grand scheme of things everything the band set out to do with this record goes beyond success and enters brilliance. If this is any indication of what the band have in store for us it's exciting indeed.

Notable Tracks: 'Big Things Do Remarkable', 'Brave Minds', 'Mend and Make Safe'.

         Vanna - The Few and the Far Between

         Genre: Metalcore

        As the dust clears from the minimalist title track, which is replete with slowly mounting intensity and some piss-angry spoken word, Vanna return to the fray with their most effective and winning formula yet. The turbulent Boston hardcore act has featured a radically different lineup each release, but 2013's The Few and the Far Between shows promise.

         By trimming the fat and dumb metalcore accoutrements that made their beginning work so boring, 2011's And They Came Bearing Bones was an interesting, if predictable hardcore record. I've had mixed feelings to this band for quite a while, but a combination of following their release of The Few and the Far Between and seeing them open for Every Time I Die (who have held my heart securely for quite some time now) fixed them in my mind as a band that definitely gets the hang of this whole metalcore thing.

     That Vanna are in a difficult genre to make music in is no secret – with labels like Rise and Victory cranking out cookie-cutter, breakdown-festooned love ballads, “true” metalcore bands, that is, a cross between hardcore punk and thrash metal, are becoming a rarity. Fortunately, as is the case on 'Year of the Rat', Vanna know how to equally juxtapose the catchy hooks and clean breaks of the former with the filthy, chunky downcast texture of the other. 'I Said I'm Fine', the track that directly follows, wears its Black Flag influence like a badge of honor, eventually giving way to a vacuous clean break.

 The Few and the Far Between is the logical continuation of And They Came Bearing Bones, and fortunately has left the snorefest of A New Hope and the disorganized screamo worship of Curses deep in the dust. It's still quite obviously a metalcore record, but the band knows how to exploit the sweet spot between dumb and Hatebreed-style dumb and plays it up for all it's worth. There's even a spoken word-style song, which features little drums and melodic guitar ('Please Stay'), and is such an utter departure from the style of the album that I was immediately sucked in on first listen.

      It's difficult to tell if a hardcore band has progressed so much as 'has become interesting to listen to', and Vanna may simply have evolved into the latter category.

          Yet, while it is a step up and easily one of the band's best, The Few and the Far Between lacks staying power – most of the songs leave little to no impression, and the album is over fairly quickly given the longest song is a little over three minutes long. The second half of the record is, for lack of a better word, forgettable in that song structures start to blend together – intro, verse, verse, clean, ringing verse, breakdown, and close.

         Vanna are at their best when they're playing classic hardcore, not trying to spastically inject melody and clean vocals in a shot at accessibility. Commendably, the band has moved quite quickly, and their past two records are testament that they have the ability, if not the will (or label's permission) to make interesting hardcore and transcend the jaws of mainstream metalcore. The Few and the Far Between is Vanna's best record, and is worth checking out if you're a fan of their work.

Notable Tracks: 'Year of the Rat', 'Casket Rhythm', 'The Dreamer/The Thief/The Relic'.