Monarch are an acquired taste, not unlike Khanate or Sunn O))) or Boris on Absolutego and Dronevil, which means you either drink in the French band’s bemoaning sludge drone like a finely aged Bordeaux or listening to it for more than a few minutes gives you a drastically bitter headache. Omens, their sixth release since forming in 2005, probably won’t do anything to sway the vote either, its three songs “Blood Seeress,” “Transylvanian Incantations,” and “Black Becomes the Sun” a colossal nightmare of swirling cathedral smoke, death fuzz, black savagery, and other-worldly taunts. Quite simply, Omens crawls and screams for just over thirty-five minutes straight, the cruel and sadistic work of guitarist Shiran Kaïdine (Year of No Light), bassist MicHell Bidegain, vocalist Emilie Bresson, and newest member, drummer Rob Shaffer (Dark Castle, Yob). You know, whatever you think of Monarch’s torturous methods, you can’t deny their sheer heaviness or visceral results.
Swallow the Sun Emerald Forest and The Blackbird
Spinefarm/Svart
Swallow the Sun have amassed a solid near 10-year melodic death doom résumé by wrapping an icy black cape around Opeth’s former glory, and their fifth full-length, Emerald Forest and The Blackbird, wanders the same brackish path as its predecessors. As always, crushing harmonies, classical wanderings, folksy dynamics, and progressive power collide as the Finnish band envelopes the snowy landscape around them in epic grandeur. However, Emerald Forest and The Blackbird finds Swallow the Sun dipping its tendrils into romantic waters; where the band’s slower moments were always haunting, they now tremble with cold chamber breaths, and songs like “This Cut is the Deepest,” “Cathedral Walls,” and “Hearts Wide Shut” offer the best examples of how Swallow the Sun have found inspiration from bands like Ulver and Nightwish (“Cathedral Walls” actually features Nightwish singer Anette Olzon). But Swallow the Sun haven’t completely abandoned the haunt, and use plenty of instances of black metal and spoken word to move the album’s atmospheric storytelling along. No doubt about it, Emerald Forest and The Blackbird is a bold experience and meant to be enjoyed — or tormented over — as such, like love’s death and the coming of eternal night.
Check out the video for “Cathedral Walls” from Emerald Forest and The Blackbird!
With their two previous releases, the 2009 EP Razor to Oblivion and the 2010 full-length Heavy Breathing, Seattle’s Black Breath asserted themselves, quite demonstratively, as heavy metal brutalitarians. Choose your violent adjective: crushing, demolishing, relentless. They always applied to Black Breath’s death n’ roll slaughter, and still do, but you can go ahead and put ‘em in italics now because their newest album, Sentenced to Life, is just over thirty minutes of sledgehammer emphasis. Opener “Feast of the Damned” kicks off a run of 10 songs in rotten urgency, propelled by a rush of stadium dynamics as if the whole thing were recorded in front of a swelling crowd of ten thousand undead. That overwhelming feeling persists, and as the attack that is Sentenced to Life gains momentum, the band’s speed, tone, and tempo grow ever deeper and darker, until it becomes a rich and powerful entity all its own. Black Breath even manages to toss some traditional metal flourishes and tasty solos into the mix, and the rolling thunder riffs of “Home of the Grave” and “The Flame,” and the eerie intro to “Endless Corpse,” push Sentenced to Life beyond the wall of vile thrash and into the open, blood-stained field of decrepit glory. These guys are quickly emerging as one of the best, no doubt about it.
Monarch
Swallow the Sun
Black Breath