Like an ancient call from deep within the foggy halls of some floating, forgotten, and fervent cosmic temple of metallurgy, the songs on Zoroaster’s third full-length, Matador, swim between sludge-drenched doom, nerve-rattling drone, and psych-metal mayhem, creating one bastard of a heavy, hypnotic ride. This isn’t just music you hear, buddy, this is music you see. It pulses and surges like a snake swallowing a beehive, it moves in nocturnal, amphibious rhythms, it explodes and flows like an active volcano. On previous efforts, Dog Magic and Voice of Saturn, Zoroaster stayed the low-end course of doom, rarely varying from the path of heaviest resistance, but Matador sees the Atlanta trio free-forming their way through meditative expanses of earth-swallowing sound and noise. Dig the title track, “D.N.R.,” “Odyssey” and “Old World” for the freakiest, Om meets Kyuss examples, while the songs “Ancient Ones,” “Trident,” and “Black Hole” spit out those classic Zoroaster riffs, which sound like High on Fire wallowing in a tub of fuzz. This is a potent, mesmerizing, and audacious heavy metal album, my friends, and tailor-made for anyone with a beard.
No disrespect to Cathedral’s recent double album, The Guessing Game, but Avantasia’s monumental box set featuring two new albums, The Wicked Symphony and Angel of Babylon, is easily the most impressive release so far this year. When I say impressive, I am of course referring to the scope and magnitude of Avantasia’s symphonic power metal, which is at once audacious, indulgent, theatrical, and fantastical. We’re usually only presented with Avantasia’s larger-than-life heavy metal fairy tales one album at a time, but Tobias Sammet must be feeling awfully courageous these days, finishing off the last two parts of The Scarecrow Saga/The Wicked Trilogy (the first part being the 2008 album, The Scarecrow) in one fell swoop. But I suppose if anyone can pull it off, it’s Sammet and his cast of usual suspects, who have gathered once again to fill their roles in this epic and evil installment of Avantasia’s latest production(s).
Zoroaster
Avantasia