After making a splash at Roadburn 2010 on the strength of their “Bring My Horses Home” single and after about a decade of writing material and playing shows, Sweden-based ’70S aficionados Troubled Horse have made their full-length debut in the form of Step Inside, on Rise Above/Metal Blade. The album has already met with a sizable and welcome reception, and Witchcraft comparisons have abounded for songs like “All Your Fears” and “Sleep in Your Head.”

This is probably to be expected. While fronted by Martin Heppich, whose presence is strong throughout Step Inside‘s 10 component tracks/36 minutes — even on the record, he’s very much a frontman — the rest of Troubled Horse traces a lineage directly back to the aforementioned forebears of Örebro retro rocking. Bassist Ola Henriksson is still a member and can be heard on Witchcraft‘s 2012 outing, Legend (review here), while guitarist/backing vocalist John Hoyles and drummer Jens Henriksson (Ola‘s brother) both used to be in the band, Jens having left after playing with them in their early days and producing the first two records while Hoyles stayed aboard for The Alchemist before leaving to focus on Troubled Horse and his other band, Spiders.

On Step Inside, which sounds no less inviting than its title might imply, the four-piece sound as experienced as they are, and though cuts like the aforementioned “Bring My Horses Home” and “All Your Fears” are highlights, it’s songs like the brash “Shirleen” that actually do the brunt of distinguishing Troubled Horse from either Witchcraft or anyone else in Sweden’s densely populated retro set. Heppich contributes guitar as well alongside Hoyles, and while it’s the riffs setting a course throughout, the all-Henriksson rhythm section is culls rich, classic grooves on the Blue Cheer-esque “As You Sow,” laying a strong foundation for Heppich‘s vocals, which are a standout element thanks in part to movement into and out of a Bobby Liebling-style delivery that plays up familiarity while introducing new context.

It’s also worth mentioning that while there is a current of heavy ’70s lovin’ running throughout Step Inside — in places it feels like Witchcraft decided to stop sounding like Witchcraft, so Troubled Horse stepped in (ahem) to pick up the slack — the production seems to be neither postured tape for tape’s sake nor overtly retro-minded. The post-Morricone spaghetti western guitar line in the verse of “Don’t Lie” is organic, but it’s bringing the past to meet the present rather than taking pretending the last 40 years of advances in production never happened. It’s a bigger difference than one might think, and on Step Inside, it’s the difference between Troubled Horse being a toss-off in a crowded scene and finding their individual mark in the balance they strike between clarity of ideas and fullness of sound.

Principally though, Step Inside works because of the songs; the swagger Heppich puts into his cadence on “Another Man’s Name,” and the circus atmosphere the organ brings out in closer “I’ve Been Losing,” the super-catchy chorus of which — “Yes, I’ve been losing/But the winds begin to change/And this over/I have the upper hand” — provides ample culmination for the record, wrapping up a swirl first introduced in Jens‘ steady snare on opener “Tainted Water,” shades of late-’60s psych as reinterpreted à la Baby Woodrose beginning to show themselves. If Step Inside really is the result of 10 years’ work, I wouldn’t call the time wasted.

That said, one does wonder what Troubled Horse would/will be able to do with a shorter songwriting span, as in, if it’s not another decade before they put out another record. But I suppose those are questions for another time. For now, the brash insistence of “Shirleen,” the proto-metal chug and stomp of “Tainted Water” and Heppich‘s brazen, soulful hooks are more than enough.

After a lauded 7″ and much YouTube embedding leading to retro-rock hyperbole, the Britisher-than-thou trio Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell emerge with their cheekily-titled Rise Above (Metal Blade in the States) debut full-length, Don’t Hear it… Fear it! Flourishes of blown-out analog psychedelia persist, and their vintage aesthetique runs (mop-)top to (bell-)bottom, but whether it’s the motor-groove of “Mark of the Beast” or the brash fuzz of “The Last Run,” the Hastings threesome of Louis Comfort-Wiggett (bass/backing vocals), Bill Darlington (drums; also of Gorilla) and Johnny Gorilla (guitar/vocals; also of Gorilla) show there’s more to them than charm and fancy pants.

Liken the album to Atomic Rooster‘s proto-prog, Sir Lord Baltimore‘s ballsy brew or the MC5‘s nigh-on-stunted recklessness — you won’t be wrong; there’s room for all in Don’t Hear it… Fear It!‘s 54-minute course — what I find infinitely more fascinating is that Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell aren’t merely content to pretend that the 40 years between 1972 and now didn’t happen. “Red Admiral Black Sunrise” works in a Melvins-type guitar chug along with Johnny Gorilla‘s brash, almost arrogant, lead work. You can hear a bit of it underscoring the freakout in “iDeath” as well, and even the vocals take on a snotty post-Buzzo cadence in “Scratchin’ & Sniffin’,” so even if the trio’s predominant vibe is vinyl, there’s a bit of cassette tape in there as well.

Of particular note is Comfort-Wigget‘s stellar performance on bass, which makes for an excellent response to Gorilla‘s many shredding solos and renders the Sabbath-ian war pigsery of “Devil’s Island” all the more accurate. The record builds up some considerable momentum and never really relents in terms of pace, so while “The Last Run” and “Killer Kane” don’t bring anything new, they’re shorter than the earlier songs and the performances carry them, particularly in the case of “Killer Kane,” which comes four tracks after the “Killer Kane (Reprise).” Oh, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. So unpredictable!

They round out with seven minutes of quiet that give way to the potent stomp ‘n’ groove of “Bean Stew,” a Buffalo cover that makes their roots even plainer to see. Their name may be awkward (though historically accurate) and the hype around their album may be overblown, but there’s some meat to Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell‘s Don’t Hear it… Fear it! that proves worthy of the suggestion that yeah, you should probably do the first part and actually listen to the damn thing. Whether or not you fear it afterwards depends I suppose on the natural levels of terror that classic heavy rock inspires in you.

Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell on Thee Facebooks

Rise Above Records

Metal Blade

It’s okay though, because what they lack in love, Canadian road dogs Bison B.C. more than make up for in a nine-minute song that sets Napalm Death extremity off Mastodonic riffing. At that point, to ask for love too just seems greedy. Some bands just gotta have it all, I guess.

Lovelessness, recorded with the venerable Sanford Parker, will be released on Oct. 22. Henceforth treads the PR wire:

BISON B.C. to Release New Album Lovelessness October 22nd on Metal Blade Records
Tracklisting and Album Artwork Revealed

Vancouver metallers BISON B.C. have completed work on their new album Lovelessness.  The album, which is the band’s third release on Metal Blade Records, will be available on October 22nd.   Today BISON B.C. have revealed the album artwork, tracklisting and released the first single from Lovelessness.

The band worked with acclaimed producer Sanford Parker at Soma and Electrical Audio Studios in Chicago on Lovelessness. Parker is best known for his work with bands such as Yob, Pelican, Rwake, Yakuza, Nachtmystium, Zoroaster, Unearthly Trance, and more. Needless to say, Parker is more than qualified to put-to-tape the raw, furious energy that is BISON B.C.

Lovelessness Tracklisting:
1. An Old Friend
2. Anxiety Puke / Lovelessness
3. Last and First Things
4. Blood Music
5. Clozapine Dream
6. Finally Asleep

BISON B.C. got their start in Vancouver, BC and describe themselves as “Canadian dirtbags” in addition to being veterans of Vancouver’s deep thrash and indie scenes.  Known for their aggressive and intense live shows, the band has built a strong following and has toured with bands including Baroness, Priestess and Genghis Tron to name a few. With their new effort Lovelessness, BISON B.C. will surely cement themselves as one of Canada’s finest metal exports.

Some of the best moments on British trio Witchsorrow’s second album, God Curse Us, come when the band is lurking. As on the quiet stretches of “Megiddo,” the Saint Vitus-style string-benders from guitarist Nick “Necroskull” Ruskell (also vocals) have an appeal of their own, but that’s only bolstered by the creepy ambience and the prevailing cultish mood the three-piece creates on the album, which is released by Rise Above (in partnership with Metal Blade in the US). That mood could derive in part from Electric Wizard, as much doom seems to these days, but there’s an underpinning of early Cathedral-style traditionalism that makes God Curse Us (as opposed to blessing us, as we learn in the chorus of the title-track) a less stylized and more straightforward outing. That works to the advantage of the songs, since although they vary in pace enough that the nine-minute “Masters of Nothing” feels downright antithetical to the upbeat “Breaking the Lore” later in the album the mood that prevails is one of gray defeat. Together with bassist Emily Witch and David Wilbraham (who here goes by the clever “Wilbrahammer”), Ruskell crafts a doom that is obviously aware of its roots – he is a writer for Kerrang as well as guitarist/vocalist here and self-awareness goes with the territory – but nonetheless seems to be sincerely grasping to create something individual from them. For traditional doom, that’s about as much as you can ask and still hope to keep that “traditional” part intact. Still, as closer “Den of Serpents” enacts its psyche-devouring madness-swirl build to round out the album, Witchsorrow aren’t so out of league with some of what their countrymen in The Wounded Kings have been able to accomplish over the last several years, taking otherwise familiar elements and putting them to use in fascinating new ways. If not for the utter despair of the thing, you might even dare to call God Curse Us somewhat enlightened, at least in a conceptual sense.

Maybe that’s a little strong, but it’s not easy to make traditional doom sound fresh, and for the most part, Witchsorrow do that on God Curse Us, reveling in drear and overarching miseries with little to no letup sonically. Witch and Wilbraham prove immediately to be a formidable presence in the rhythm section, the crash of the latter serving as the anchor that seems to drag opener “Aurora Atra” infinitely downward. Much of God Curse Us keeps the ethic of the leadoff – lead with the riff, bury the throaty vocal, etc. – but what the 55-minute album does really well on its mostly extended tracks is create a sense of space. “God Curse Us,” which has the catchiest chorus of the seven songs, sounds fittingly like it was recorded in an open church in everything but the guitar solos, which sound punched in even if they weren’t. I guess modernity bleeds through no matter how hard you work to stop it, but Witchsorrow do pretty well in keeping a natural, grainy-horror-movie VHS vibe to the proceedings all the same, the unrelieved tension in “God Curse Us” carrying over to the even more plodding “Masters of Nothing.” Parts of “Megiddo” come close later, but “Masters of Nothing” is ultimately as slow as God Curse Us gets, and that’s plenty slow. Agonizingly slow, in fact. Ruskell has no trouble drawing out his vocals to suit the lurching riffs, as some might, and though the song picks up in its final third – Wilbraham’s crash a little low in the mix keeping time – it’s only to set up a deft return to the lumbering main riff that closes out the song, giving way to the interlude “Ab Antiquo,” on which ultra-quiet whispers accompany foreboding tom thuds and piano. It’s a quick mood piece to lead into “Megiddo,” but effective nonetheless in what it does. Like a lot of the record, it serves its purpose but isn’t really a landmark.

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Kudos to San Diego retro prog weirdos Astra for going with an orange color scheme. The Frippertastic mellotron-loving five-piece will release their new album, The Black Chord, on March 27 via Rise Above/Metal Blade, and have made available the new track “Quake Meat” for high-def YouTube streaming. Check it out, followed by a little hot PR wire lovin’:

The new track from The Black Chord, “Quake Meat,” can be heard now over at metalblade.com/astra. The Black Chord will be available in North America on March 27. Astra will be hosting an album release show in San Diego on March 16. The show will be at The Casbah with Dead Meadow, The Loons and Joy. The show will also feature visuals by Operation: Mindblown. For more info, check out astratheband.com.

At its heart, the approach of Dutch occult rockers The Devil’s Blood comes down to two words: “Hail Satan.” It’s a rallying cry of contradiction, the basis for their musical and lyrical perspective, and what lies at the very heart of their influence. In everything they do, it remains the calm center around which they swirl their storm.

Founded by guitarist/songwriter Selim Lemouchi and his sister, the powerful vocalist Farida Lemouchi, the Eindhoven-based band were subject to fervent reactions almost immediately. Following a 2007 demo and the 2008 single, The Graveyard Shuffle, their Come, Reap EP was a blatantly devilish call to arms that stood in stark musical contrast with the thematic conventions of extreme metal with which it was toying. On their first full-length, 2009’s The Time of No Time Evermore (review here), The Devil’s Blood set about offsetting classic rock with ethereal psychedelic washes, and on their latest album, The Thousandfold Epicentre (review here), they’ve mastered their form.

With a massive, 74-minute sprawl, The Thousandfold Epicentre makes no attempt to hide its grandiosity or self-indulgence, instead celebrating its blatant atmospherics while also maintaining a strong core of songcraft that can be heard on the flagrant hooks in “Die the Death” or the centerpiece “She.” Through it all, Farida keeps supreme hold of her charisma, and Selim‘s instrumental melodicism behind her makes for one of the underground’s most intriguing pairings. The Devil’s Blood owe more to Coven‘s “Black Sabbath” than Black Sabbath‘s “Black Sabbath,” but as Selim hints in the interview that follows, the band revels in doing what’s unexpected.

And since in order to hold onto an element of Satanic mysticism one must be vague in discussing processes, the word “hints” is all the more appropriate. Nonetheless, Selim, who often goes by the initials SL, was open in acknowledging his band’s theatricality and his own classic pop and heavy rock influences, from The Beatles and Thin Lizzy to Roky Erickson and Black Widow. If you make it that far, a particularly fascinating moment came near the end, in talking about touring and playing high-profile festivals (The Devil’s Blood will be on the Decibel magazine North American tour with Watain, In Solitude and Behemoth this spring; dates included below) as opposed to club shows. Just something to watch out for, if you’re interested.

Please find the enclosed Q&A with Selim Lemouchi after the jump, and enjoy.

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Issued in 2011 in Europe via German imprint Ván Records, mysterious Dutch outfit The Devil’s Blood release their second full-length, The Thousandfold Epicentre, via Metal Blade in North America. Their 2010 debut, The Time of No Time Evermore (review here), was put out by Profound Lore, and if anything, the amount of people who’ve gotten behind The Devil’s Blood shows the kind of dedication their cult rock inspires. With a penchant traditional witchy melody – bands like Coven and Black Widow are appropriate points of reference – taken to the Satanic extremes of European black metal (the band has close ties with Swedish outfit Watain, among others), the core brother/sister duo behind The Devil’s Blood, guitarist/songwriter Selim and vocalist Farida Lemouchi, have been able to hammer out a sound that is at once foreboding and unashamedly accessible. In light of the aforementioned early ‘70s cult folkies, this isn’t such a contrast, but given the avenues of heaviness and extremity in which such themes are more prevalent today, The Devil’s Blood stands out. At the same time, they belong to a growing league of bands – Ghost, Sabbath Assembly and even, to a more distinctly doomed extent, the latest incarnation of The Wounded Kings – who’ve been able to successfully blend that school of classic melodic thought with modern Satanic or occult ritualizing. Farida’s vocals, however, along with Selim’s apparently growing fascination with darkened psychedelia, give The Thousandfold Epicentre a strong individual feel even within this burgeoning context. It is a powerful and creative work.

It’s also really, really long. At 74-plus minutes, The Thousandfold Epicentre is beyond what might usually qualify as expansive, but the atmosphere of ritual it creates – one can almost smell the dry-ice fog coming through the speakers – more than accounts for and justifies that expanse. Where The Time of No Time Evermore took the (in hindsight) formative elements of 2008’s Come, Reap EP in a more traditionally metal direction, The Thousandfold Epicentre seems bent in highlighting melodic grandeur. Following the intro “Unending Singularity” that builds to it, “On the Wings of Gloria” is resplendent. Farida’s vocals echo above a rocking riff from Selim and thudding drums. Among the varied approaches The Devil’s Blood take on the album’s 11 tracks, “On the Wings of Gloria” stands among the most effective combinations of the elements that make their sound their own, breaking after a ripping guitar solo into a vocal-led ritualistic invocation that in turn gives way to a wash of chanting and psychedelic noise, all anchored and given structure by drums and an overall forward movement. The duo of cuts that follows, “Die the Death” and “Within the Charnel House of Love,” are shorter and more geared toward highlighting Farida’s prowess as a frontwoman, while “Cruel Lover” takes rhythmic cues from ‘80s metal (as did a decent portion of the last record) and is less pop-based. Talk of possession and “tongues of fire” allures and adds sexualized danger without feeling outwardly exploitative, and the music behind chugs with a clear sense of structure without being as predictable as either “Die the Death” or “Within the Charnel House of Love.” Nonetheless, indulgence prevails.

As well it should for a band like The Devil’s Blood. They move from a long bridge back to the verse in “Cruel Lover” and end with the central riff, moving briskly onto centerpiece “She,” an immediate highlight. Layers of Farida’s vocals weave between each other to make The Thousandfold Epicentre’s most memorable chorus, while the verse singing has more clarity and make use of her range, which has impressed since the band’s beginnings. Sandwiched between “Cruel Lover” and the title-track, “She” is both a worthy single and a deep cut, adding to the atmosphere of the record without sacrificing the quality of songwriting or structural crispness. A final chorus stomps its way into the cerebral cortex and the song gives way to mellotron and keys that set the stage for “The Thousandfold Epicentre,” which tops nine minutes and is the longest song apart from 15-minute closer “Feverdance.” Like the album itself, the title-track does well with the time it’s so purposefully taking. Gone is the immediacy of hook that drove “She,” but instead, The Devil’s Blood begin to immerse the listener in the ambience that will typify the album’s back end and still have room for catchy delivery of the chorus line, “I call your name/Devil of a thousand faces,” though it doesn’t arrive until more than three minutes in. Like the opener and like the closer still to come, though, the build is what makes it work. Selim skillfully incorporates acoustics and gives a fullness to do more than just complement his sister’s vocals, and breaks into one of The Thousandfold Epicentre’s most impressive guitar solos just after 6:30. They named the album after the right song – pretty much every accomplishment of the whole is summed up in some way on the title-track.

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Two full decades of doing anything is impressive, and what separates British doom mainstays Cathedral’s 20-year tenure from that of many others is that they never really stopped. Until now. The 2CD live album Anniversary – their first live record in all that time, released through frontman Lee Dorian’s own Rise Above Records (Metal Blade in North America) – captures a special show they did to mark 20 years on Dec. 3, 2010, at the 02 Academy Islington in London, and it’s part of the band tying up the loose ends of their existence, which they reportedly plan to end in 2012 with a final studio offering to be called The Last Spire and another London show Dec. 3, 2011. The Last Spire will be Cathedral’s 10th full-length, and though their catalog has had its ups and downs as far as fan reception, their stamp on the genre of doom is cast if only in the fact that when they started out, there was hardly a genre to speak of. As time passed and their catalog grew, landmark releases like 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror and 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre helped not only grow the band’s legacy, but that of doom at large, and through his work with Rise Above, Dorian in particular has been placed at the fore of tastemakers when it comes to what the term “doom” means and can be expanded to incorporate. That has little to do with the sound of Anniversary, but is relevant for context if nothing else.

The Anniversary show itself saw Cathedral basically play two concerts. The first, captured on the first disc here, brought back the original two-guitar lineup for a full front-to-back performance of their 1991 classic, Forest of Equilibrium. The second was Cathedral’s current incarnation – Dorian and guitarist Garry “Gaz” Jennings being the remaining founding members – doing a selection from the rest of the band’s discography. Disc one is an hour and disc two is just under 80 minutes, so the sheer amount of material on Anniversary is staggering, and for someone unfamiliar with the band, probably too intimidating to take on completely blind – but one doesn’t release something like Anniversary for the casual fan. Anniversary is for those who’ve stuck with the band through the highs and lows, or for the late comers whose appreciation for Cathedral is seen in the band’s influence on doom both British and worldwide. And as much as they’ve come to personify the band over the years, to hear Dorian and Jennings joined by guitarist Adam Lehan, bassist Mark Griffiths and drummer Mike Smail for a full run-through of Forest of Equilibrium is a fitting way to celebrate Cathedral’s time together, though the sound between the studio versions and their late-2010 live interpretations is more than a little different. Dorian’s vocals – though he’s obviously performed much of this material all along – have developed considerably since 1991, and though he’s always been more of a frontman than a technically-minded singer, his range and use of cleaner vocals can easily be heard progressing from album to album. Forest of Equilibrium was never going to be what it is on the record itself, but whether it’s “Commiserating the Celebration (of Life)” or the show highlights “Serpent Eve” and “Equilibrium,” Cathedral as They Were do the album justice and leave a high mark for Cathedral as They Are to live up to.

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