HEAVY FRIENDS: Krallice - Years Past Matter

(HEAVY FRIENDS is the segment where Robby babbles on about metal in the underground or kinda-mainstream. Basically anything heavy that's worth talking about, 'kay?)

Krallice has been one of the most celebrated bands of the recent stream of black metal groups coming out of the United States. While some criticize them and put them under the "hipster black metal" umbrella, others praise every work they put out and deem them to be among the best in modern black metal. I find myself right in the middle. I sadly have never been a Krallice fan, even though I love a lot of new American black metal bands and I love the brand of technical black metal that Krallice seems to be pulling from. There are bands like Weakling, Deathspell Omega, and yes, Liturgy that bring a ton of technicality to their black metal but make it enthralling for me. While I always admire that Krallice is composed of such accomplished musicians, the music just never translated to me; sometimes it was a bad mix, sometimes the songs just didn't grab me, I don't know. I feel like I just missed the boat on these guys.

However I was curious to listen to Years Past Matter when it was announced, because I was still holding on to some hope that the band would finally click with me and I would be in love. Well, Krallice hasn't completely won be over, but I must say this is the most I've liked a Krallice project thus far. While I still have issues with the muddy mix with little emphasis on the mids and highs, some of the band's compositions are finally starting to wow me, particularly tracks two and four; moments on those tracks are enthralling, exciting, and sometimes beautiful. The end result is an album that's more memorable to me, and doesn't just sound like a black metal band playing really fast.

While I'm still not in love with this project, I'm glad to say that Years Past Matter will not be an album that will be a chore for me to return to. That sounds like faint praise, but if the band stays on the path of writing memorable compositions and refine the way the music is mixed, we could end up with an album that puts me on the Krallice bandwagon after all.

Stream Years Past Matter courtesy of Krallice's bandcamp account below:


(Sacrifice yourself on the altar to Robby via his Twitter account @ClydeNut)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Cloudkicker - Fade

(HEAVY FRIENDS is the segment where Robby highlights the latest and greatest in the worlds of underground and sometimes/sorta mainstream worlds of heavy music.)

It's been a minute since I've done this segment, but what better way to make a comeback than with the release of a new Cloudkicker record?! If you're unfortunately not too familiar with the band, it is the musical project coming from the insanely creative mind of Columbus, Ohio's Ben Sharp, playing guitars and bass while accompanied by drummer Adam Castle. They play a style of instrumental progressive metal that never gets dull, monotonous or boring like some other acts in the technical side of metal can get. Albums like Beacons and The Discovery are consistently interesting onslaughts of progressive metal music that I just can't get enough of.

After going in a more subdued, ambient direction with last year's double release of Let Yourself Be Huge and Loop, Sharp is back at a relatively more heavy direction on his newest release, Fade. But what separates this from Cloudkicker's other heavier outings is that this is decidedly more mid-paced and introspective, not hitting you over the head with technicality from every single direction. In fact I see a much stronger influence from the worlds of post-rock and post-metal, I even heard someone describe this as a "proggy version of old Isis", and I can definitely see the comparison. If any of this peaks your interest, then stream the entire album below as well as the rest of Cloudkicker's discography via Bandcamp!



(For more metalhead fanboyisms, be sure to hit up Robby on Twitter @ClydeNut)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Between the Buried and Me - "Telos"

There are some bands that I absolute love that I can see being divisive for people. Between the Buried and Me seem to be one of them, but in all truthfulness they've made some of my favorite modern metal records. Records like Colors and The Great Misdirect are virtuous displays of progressive metal mixed with death metal mixed with metalcore mixed with just about any other influence you can think of. What I love about this band is that they don't believe in the concept of boundaries, and I wish more bands could be as daring.

Well after 2011's The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues EP we were promised a sequel of sorts to be on the horizon, and now The Parallax II: Future Sequence is coming on October 9th, and we have the first track to drop from it. "Telos" is a 10-minute epic that goes through the hills and valleys you'd expect a Between song to venture through. While this territory is not all that unfamiliar for Between, this upcoming album is said to be over 70 minutes long, so this is just one piece of the very big puzzle.

Stream "Telos" below, and look out for The Parallax II: Future Sequence out on October 9th on Metal Blade Records.



(Follow Robby on Twitter @ClydeNut)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

by Robby Beck

If you're not familiar with the band Gojira, they're really becoming one of the biggest metal bands to come from France. I discovered them with their 2005 album From Mars to Sirius, where the band had a unique blend of death metal, technical metal, progressive metal, and groove metal. I'm not saying Gojira are the most original and distinct band to ever exist, but at the same time they've worked out a nice sound for them that they can call their own. One of the things I loved about From Mars to Sirius was the production. High-quality production in metal is a tricky tightrope for me, especially when it comes to death metal. Nothing bugs me more than when a metal record has such clean and tidy production that it makes the band sound robotic and unnatural, like the band is hiding behind the production. That was not the case with that album in question. It had high production values, but it used it to accentuate the heaviness of the band, their impeccable guitar tone, and their melodies, which never got too clean or cheesy for me to handle. It was also a plus that the band was technical, but not flashy or "wanky".

The band's production on their 2008 follow-up The Way of All Flesh however, started to get in the way and the instruments started to sound too triggered and robotic for my taste. It wasn't a horrible record, there were definitely good qualities about it, and I had confidence that the band would come back and impress me once again.

Well, I'll say right here that the record starts out phenomenally. The opener "Explosia" has the kind of strange groove you might find in a Meshuggah track, midway through it goes into an interlude that reminds me of an interlude on some kind black metal track, and the way the track closes sounds like the death metal soundtrack to an old spaghetti western. It then moves into the title track, which is one of the biggest headbangers on here. The way that track moves is so infectious and addictive, I can't get enough of it. And "The Axe" brings a much darker, more somber approach, almost funeral-esque. It seems like a metal song you'd mourn to.

With three fantastic songs in the beginning, you might be expecting a killer album to follow, yes? Unfortunately after a great start, the album starts to go a little downhill for me, and then plateau. Not extremely far downhill, but enough that it's a significant slump in quality. The problem is too many of these tracks in the middle of the album are just so nondescript to me, where they sound like Gojira songs, but just middle of the road Gojira songs. They rarely bring anything new to the table, and when they do it's kind of embarrassing. The fourth track "Liquid Fire" has clean background vocals laden in a god awful vocal effect that I'm sure is supposed to make them sound supernatural, but just make them sound silly; "Liquid Fire" is an instrumental that goes nowhere fast; and "Planned Obsolescence" decides to end on an outro with some of the most terribly sequenced electronics I've heard in a good while. The biggest problem about these tracks in the middle of the LP is that I feel like if I were to skip them, I wouldn't be missing anything important.

The album starts to redeem itself with "The Gift of Guilt", which is one of the more melodic, but heavy, tracks on the album, and has an excellent hook. In the context of the full album, it's the first time in a good while I've felt excited or intrigued by what's going on (although the ending goes on for way too long, but whatever). "Pain is a Master" starts off with a beautifully played somber guitar passage, but then the usual Gojira heaviness just bursts in and crashes the party, and it becomes yet another nondescript track for me. The band gets back on track after that though, with "Born in Winter" being one of the most unique tracks here, despite it being ever so conveniently one of the shortest; and the closer "The Fall" is nothing short of crushing. But while these songs close out the record as well as it started out, does it really save it?

Even though I harp on the production of The Way of All Flesh and do think the sound is better here, that's not to say it doesn't sound perfect. I still find the drums to be too triggered, and it honestly makes a good deal of the chugging riffs sound tiresome after 15 seconds. And even if their previous album was overproduced, that's not to say the material on it was bad; I find it to be more ambitious than this record, I find that it attacks more angles than this record does, and I find more layers within that record. I think that finesse of the composition and the ambition just isn't on L'Enfant Sauvage, and that's because it just plays through many of the same sounds with little venturing outside of them. When the band gets melodic at many points of this album, it tends to sound the same each time, and I feel the band constantly draws out parts it doesn't need to, even on some tracks I like. Not to mention that the band's technical ability isn't quite shining through on this release, to me anyway.

Like I said, I feel like at way too many points, Gojira is just playing it safe on this release. A good handful of these tracks can be fun, introspective, hell maybe even inspiring, like Gojira's work used to be; the rest of the album, however, is just forgettable to me.

score: light 6

FAV TRACKS: Explosia, L'Enfant Sauvage, The Axe, Born in Winter
LEAST FAV TRACK: The Wild Healer

(If you're a Gojira fan and you liked this album more than Robby did, hit him up on twitter @ClydeNut to discuss it further)

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TRACK: Baroness - "March to the Sea"

Baroness has dropped yet another fantastic track from their upcoming double album Yellow & Green. Like "Take My Bones Away", this new song "March to the Sea" was also played live for me when I saw the band in support for Meshuggah; but John Baizley's inaudible guitar pretty much meant I couldn't hear half the song. But thankfully we have a studio version to relish in.

The guitar melody in the beginning of the track starts it off on a pretty sunny note, which fits the uplifting, positive atmosphere surrounding this one. This is as sunny as the sunniest tracks off the new Torche album Harmonicraft. But don't think this band has sacrificed songsmanship, because the riffs and guitar leads are just as righteous as Baroness has ever sounded. Is the track as "heavy" as Baroness has ever been? No. Does it matter? No.

Check out this track via Pitchfork, and look out for Yellow & Green on July 17th on Relapse Records.

(If you want to hear Robby talk about more righteous music, check out his YouTube page.)

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HEAVY FRIENDS: Miroist - The Pledge

As much of a metal fan as I am, I have a good deal of reservations when it comes to instrumental metal, especially when it comes of the progressive variety. To me way too much of it just comes off as an exercise of technique and skill rather than true craft; really what I like to call "wankery". I much prefer bands like Russian Circles, who aren't "progressive" in that they aren't flashy about technicality, but the way they create vast soundscapes and a gargantuan sound while relying on dynamics more than technicality brings out a force that's far more emotional, to me, than a lot of bands that choose to be "progressive".

But it's not like you can't be technical and emotional and dynamic. One of my absolute favorite instrumental metal projects is Cloudkicker, which is a one-man DIY project out of Columbus, Ohio. Recently on his tumblr he plugged an instrumental progressive metal project called Miroist, who as recently as last month released their debut EP entitled The Pledge.

Like Ben Sharp (the mastermind behind Cloudkicker) said in his post, the EP reminds me of his project's output around 2008, but even more heavy and "chaotic" than that, to use his words. While I wouldn't call it chaotic music, as what's going on here seems pretty damn tight, I will say that I like what I'm hearing. I was initially turned off by the opening riff on the opening track "i ; Non decipies me, fortuna" because it reminded me of the recent wave of "djent" bands that some consider to be a big movement, but I consider it to be nothing more than mindless Meshuggah worship. But it doesn't take long for the track to start going through some hills and valleys. This band even lists post-rock as an influence, which definitely contributes to the dynamics of these songs. I feel like if a band hits on the same riff endlessly with no variation (like all too many of these Meshuggah-copycat bands love to do) the music grows stale and quickly. Not so with this music.


The first track is nice, but the EP really gets going with the remaining two tracks, which are longer, and to me produce an "epic" vibe that not many EPs achieve. For a project that's just starting out, I see bright things in the future for these guys if they continue down this road of being more ambitious than the average band of their style. Stream the EP below via their Bandcamp page.



(It feels like Robby's the metal contributor for YPOIW. Well, if you're interested in the genre, be sure to visit his YouTube page for some metal-related reviews)

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