Torture Squad ~ Pandemonium (album review) ... Brazilian metal at its best!

Style: black metal, thrash
Label: Voice Music
Year: 2003
Home: Sau Paolo, Brazil

Members: Vitor Rodrigues ~ vocals
Maurício Nogueira ~ guitar
Castor ~ bass, b. vocals
Amílcar Christófaro ~ drums

 

I willingly confess to having trouble with music where I can't understand what's being sung, but this band makes up for this by having engaging vocals. There's a deep throated muddy growl & a second high pitched voice to counter it. This combination might bring to mind Lacuna Coil, but Torture Squad brings their own particular personality to it. Its some of the best growling I've heard. To untrained ears a growl is a growl, but like any form of singing to do it well requires control of the voice & the ability to vary the tone, & there is indeed good & bad deep throat singing. If you want to learn how to growl properly check out Pandemonium. I'd put this up there with Arch Angel. Actually, if you want some hints on how to play thrash check out Pandemonium for that, too. No reason to focus only on the singer when this is a stellar release across the board. This is hardcore head-banging music with attractive rhythms & regular rhythmic changes to show a sense of variety within each song. Though, the songs do have a tendency to sound alike, even to the point where you can't tell where one ends & the other begins, but with the rhythmic changes within each you're not bound to get bored. Further, the drumming doesn't lean on constant double bass, which is often the most annoying thing I find with a band. That may push the music, but it doesn't add any personality. These guys let their Metallica influence breathe through their unforgettable arrangements. Speaking of unforgettable arrangements, be forewarned: there's a spooky acoustic instrumental with spooky graveyard sounds that'll come out of nowhere, but is far from a distraction. One Brazilian magazine called this the greatest Brazilian metal album. I haven't heard much Brazilian metal, but so far I'm sold.

Kard (카드) ~ Red Moon (Mini-Album/EP) ... Latin beats for a dark & sultry experience!

Style: k-pop, dance, Latin, Reggaeton, trap
Label: DSP Media
Year: 2020
Home: Korea

Members: J.Seph, BM ~ rap
Jeon So-min, Jeon Ji-woo ~ vocals

I've never reviewed dance music on this blog, as I think the electronica aspect & focus on the beats pulls it too far from rock & thus outside of the focus of this blog. Yet, I've decided there are exceptions to the rule. K-Pop group Kard are called dance music, yet there's something about their musical approach which makes their dance beats outside of the norm & a must hear. Essentially, they've got soul & emotion via a fusion of numerous music styles. Electronic drum beats are placed against a Reggaeton-esque guitar backbeat & something like a muted trumpet for the verses of opener "Go Baby", while the rapped chorus uses the same beat but with darker sounds to accompany. Its a fascinating mix of a couple styles of music that wonderfully push & pull each other. The song also features the two softer female voices for the verses, while the two males shoot out the chorus in near anger. Gender is thus used to increase the tension & release of the song. Its not just the tonal differences of the voices, which is the common approach, but the natural contrast of feminine vs masculine. It takes the song to a whole new level. Even if you don't speak Korea, which I don't, the song screams with emotion. One female has a sexy silky voice, while the other is a bit harsher, & then there's the determined almost tough male voice. The end response is almost like a call & response, or a conversation between folks spanning a wave of emotions. I wish I knew the meaning of the lyrics to verify which of these is more true, but its intensely addicting just the same & worth checking out. "Red Moon" features Spanish, English & Korean against a Latin beat that could be part of Shakira's catalog. It opens slow before diving into a huge beat. If this was Shakira you can picture her hips suddenly shaking & taking you on a sexy Latin ride at that moment. Yet, it doesn't stay on one beat, but continues to change to accentuate the different vocal styles. The song has such great & unpredictable dynamics that I can imagine a dance floor just pumping with this song. I'm not the only one who has heard this comparison. Created in 2017 by DSP Media, Kard has actually found a huge audience in South America. I love the fact that the rap here is not just like American rap, but also is heavily influenced by Reggaeton & Latin rap. "Enemy" takes a completely different approach, going with a trap dance breakdown & leaving the Latin feel behind. It plays up the darker feel that Kard has & lets the girls take the spotlight for a song. Its got some great musical moments. I'm not sure if the members of Kard compose the music or not, but whoever it is has crafted a great mix of styles & emotions. I find this album to be stellar. I found it hard to put down. I don't know much Latin music, even though I have a former girlfriend who was Mexican & we listened to a lot of Reggaeton. I just know if it makes me move or not. This album absolutely made me move. "Inferno" allows the boys a moment of their own. They go for a heavy rap moment that reminds me of some of the stuff from the Horrorcore scene. I do have to make one side comment. I've listened to a lot of J-Pop, having lived in Japan for 3 years, but one thing that always bothered me was the non-sense English that was used. Quirky lines that sounded good, but don't make sense in English & thus can't make sense in Japanese. Its nice to hear a band, & K-Pop in general, using English properly & not nonsense phrases. It makes me want to learn Korean to know what else is being said. Closer "Dumb Litty" keeps the feeling of "Inferno" but now brings together all four members. The Latin drum beat makes the song something more, fusing the Horrorcore with the Reggaeton. The synthetic beats are thick & unique with lots of layers. Latin Horrorcore trap dance? Is that a thing? I don't know, but I love the fusion found on this album. I hope they keep it up. Kard has a great thing they've stumbled upon that I recommend highly for a new Latin, rap & dance experience.

Icon Of Sin ~ Icon Of Sin (aka debut) (album review) ... Bruce Dickinson, are you my daddy?

Style: heavy metal
Label: Frontiers
Year: 2021
Home: Brazil

Members: Raphael Mendes ~ vocals
Mateaus Cantaleano, Sol Perez ~ guitars
Caio Vidal ~ bass
CJ Dubiella ~ drums

When this album was passed to me by songwriter Kevin Brady, who has written for the Backhill Project which I've reviewed here, I only saw in his notes this was the debut album of a Brazilian singer who has become a youtube sensation. I'll confess being a youtuber myself that didn't mean so much, let alone I hadn't heard of him. Having listened to the album all morning & googled him, I feel so late to the game. Or, I should say, I feel like I've just discovered the Beatles & am sad to find everyone already knows them. Just the same, Mendes' group Icon Of Sin absolutely deserves a mention in this blog, even if likely everyone coming here is laughing at me being so behind the news. The guitars start right in immediately & figured I was going to be hearing a throwback to the '80's. Its great hearing a new generation make that music, but its often not so original. I had low expectations. Then Mendes started singing & the world stopped revolving. I mean that figuratively, but I actually did stop what I was doing. Fast forward hours later & come to find out Mendes has made a name for himself sounding identical to Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. He does on youtube some Maiden songs, so he might be called an imitator, yet he also does others' songs using the Dickinson voice. While this album is his own original music, so he's taken the imitation to a new level. If you haven't heard him, its uncanny just how much like Dickinson he sounds like. To make the imitation perfect Icon Of Sin creates music that feels very much like Maiden, though without some of the proggy excesses. He also has written songs with a historical bent. Its almost scary how Maiden-like this album sounds. Usually I'm a bit leery of someone who sounds so much like another singer, particularly one as distinctive as Dickinson. Yet, this is such a good imitation, & Mendes has obviously been a keen student of Maiden on all levels of their sound, that I'm enthralled by the album from start to finish. Actually, I'm not that big of a Maiden fan due to some their excesses, but this is just to my liking & had me hooked & rocking out still on the third & fourth listens. The songs are really well crafted on the whole, though became their most Maiden-like when singing about war. Also, he has the chops to pull it off as a writer & a singer. If nothing else, check out his vibrato for the held notes. Good vibrato is something not every singer has & something that can't be easily imitated. "Unholy Battleground" is a particular favorite of mine for the melody & layered vocals. "The Last Samurai", "Pandemic Euphoria" & the title track were other addictive pleasures. Actually, there wasn't any track I would say was bad, though I was disappointed by "Night Breed". Great chorus, but for some reason I always had trouble understanding what he was saying in the verses as felt like he was singing so high & so much in the same pitch the words blurred together. Its too bad as the chorus is a house shaker. I absolutely recommend this album to both Iron Maiden & non-Maiden fans alike.

Sarcofago ~ Decade Of Decay (hits comp) (album review) ... Orgy of flies!

Style: thrash, black metal, death metal
Label: Greyhaze
Year: 2012
Home: Brazil

Members: Wagner "Antichrist" Lamounier ~ vocals/guitar
Geraldo "Gerald Incubus" Minelli ~ bass/b. vocals
Zeber "Butcher", Fabio "Jhasko" ~ guitar
Juninho "Pussy Fucker" ~ bass
Eduardo "D.D. Crazy", Armando "Leprous" Sampaio, Lucio Olliver ~ drums

Additional: Manoel "Joker" ~ drums/b. vocals
Vanir Jr. ~ keyboards
Eugenio "Dead Zone" ~ drum programming/keyboards
Claudio David ~ b. vocals

Sepultura might be the name everyone thinks of when talking about the Brazilian thrash/death metal scene ... the two scenes overlapping there venomously with profound influence on the rest of the world ... but Sarcofago is a name not to be ignored that helped put the death into South American thrash & would even inspire the Norwegian scene. All their albums are now being reissued for the first time in North America, overseen by frontman Wagner "Antichrist" Lamounier, the original singer of Sepultura though he never recorded with them. Decade Of Decay is a good introductory album as it collects twenty highlights from all their albums (i.e. INRI, Rotting, The Laws Of Scourge, The Worst & Hate) plus songs from the demos Satanic Lust, The Black Vomit & Christ's Death, so there's something for the fan who already has all the main releases or plans to get them. One gets a solid picture of the band's musical growth over numerous line-up changes & the later controversial introduction of a drum machine, though in the casual listen it all sounds like its crawling from the same mold of Metallica riffing (for example, "The God's Faeces") with the devilish influence of Slayer, Celtic Frost & Venom. Though listening carefully one will hear in the demos how under-developed & rough the music was compared to later days. Sarcofago is heavy, slow & gloomy & Satanic in a way that really only Slayer dared to be in the thrash scene. Sensitive ears be forewarned of such ghastly black metal beasts as "Orgy Of Flies", "Christ's Death", "Satanic Lust", "Song For My Death", "Desecration Of The Virgin", "Crush, Kill, Destroy" & "Rotting". Euronymous of Mayhem was a fan & would claim Sarcofago as a major influence on the Norwegian death metal scene, while Sarcofago's early use of corpse paint would help make the trend international. If only there were more church burnings in Brazil the Brazilian scene might have as much clout as Norway. Instead the originators, including also Sadistick-Exekution in Australia, are lost to time while the imitators get the spotlight for eternity. The luck of of the draw. Much like the Hanoi Rocks story in regards to the L.A. scene or all the blues guys that were ignored while the early Rolling Stones conquered the charts doing old blues covers. If there's any weaknesses in this comp it's the growled vocals of frontman Antichrist as one can imagine him actually drooling between words. For one used to the cleaner vocals of James Hetfield or Dave Mustaine it's a bit discerning. But, I would recommend "Midnight Queen" & "Screeches From The Silence" for those fans as these tracks come from their most mainstream album The Laws Of The Scourge. There's also a few ethereal keyboard heavy horror soundscapes included (i.e. "The Anal Rape Of God", "Recrucify", "The Lost Of Innocence") which are good in showing the range of the band but one just wants to get to the music. San Francisco might have given birth to thrash but to get a real picture of the scene there's so many other countries that deserve equal attention - Germany, Australia, Brazil & even the Florida swamplands. I mean, the first black metal album is considered by many to be the debut of prog-metal Florida outfit Savatage ... who now tour playing Christian-laced Christmas songs as Trans-Siberian Orchestra. 

Virtual Jungle ~ Cycles (album review) ... Roaming through the jungle!

Style: alt rock, pop, experimental
Label: self-released
Year: 2010
Home: New York

Members: Lucio Rebello ~ all instruments

Once upon a time, growing up in the 80's, the word 'alternative' didn't mean what it does today when referring to music. Today 'alt rock' has become a particular style of youthful angsty rock that came in rebellion to the over-the-top hair metal 80's ... but once upon a time it literally meant 'alternative' in the traditional sense, as in an option outside of the norm, something different, unusual even. Cycles by VJ, the one man band of Brazilian born multi-instrumentalist Lucio Rebello, is an alternative album. It's unpredictable & offering something different, unusual even - the opposite of a majority of albums that claim the alt rock title. Over a couple songs one might go anywhere from shoegazing a la Galaxie 500 to alt pop Posies to 70's Larry Carlton jazz-rock. All of the movement hinged together with gentle singing & rolling little guitar melodies of a repetitive but hypnotic nature. Though, don't let the name of the band fool you. 'Jungle' is a deceptive term. The songs are a jungle of ideas not a jungle of sounds ... nor is the jungle in a state of chaos. If anything it's more of a calm night in the rain forest. It's a jungle of places VJ is going to take you. Or, to put it another way ... the album opens with the standout track "The Train" & Cycles is a train ride over changing landscapes. Having personally travelled on trains in Eastern Europe across countries borders I can confess to having seen in a single ride day to night & back again, unexpectant change of trains, empty chairs going to crowded halls, machine gun toting customs officers that recall too many Nazi war films, bustling cities & country sides & lost villages abandoned in time & leaving in the sun only to eventually watch snow fall out the window. I'll confess to more thoughts & experiences looking through the window on such journeys ... such cycle ... than in the trips that would ensue. Electronic drums bubble like water against layered acoustic & electric guitars to create dreamy melodic ballads that take a train ride all their own through society with VJ. All aboard.

Neon Legion ~ Empire (album review) ... Art rock moodiness!

Style: electronica, experimental
Label: self-released
Year: 2011
Home: Germany/America/Canada/Argentina

Members: Philip Kurt Kressin ~ vocals/keyboards
Brett Caswell, Afie Jurvanen, Javier Bustos ~ guitar
Chris Lesso, Brad Kilpatrick, Kieran Adams, Alejandro Lopez ~ drums
Lincoln Hamlyn, Jon Hynes, Jeremy Little, Juan Huici ~ bass
Nicolas Ospina ~ keyboards
Daniel Bensi ~ cello/piano
Adam Crystal ~ violin/keyboards

NL is the rock ensemble encircling German composer/multi-instrumentalist Philip Kurt Kressin. NL is also more than a band but a cry for chivalrous moral living, painting this shout with rock, classical themes & electronica for their debut release Empire. Kressin comes from an electronica background with a reinvention of his music after a foray into classical music for a film soundtrack. With a partially deaf director Kressin was forced to add sub-bass frequencies so the deaf could feel the music, thus organically discovering new musical directions. A two year stay in Argentina added more musical dimensions leading to the first incarnation of NL. Kressin's project would eventually include both American & Canadian musicians transforming NL from just a band into an organically changing international ensemble. Recalling the art rock of the Flaming Lips, a little early Depeche Mode & other such avant-garde bands Kressin sings in a light almost tongue-in-cheek & slightly synthesized tenor over a background of generally soft electronica & beats that will recall for many fans the ballads of Erasure or other synth-pop bands of the past. But, what is absent is the heavy looping quality that dominates so much of electronica making the result more machine than human. For Kressin electronic loops are just one instrument among many & not the dominate sound as songs move from primarily electronic to live instruments including distorted guitars. Though some of NL would be welcomed on the dancefloor this is not dance music, though it might be welcomed in trance circles for its creative ethereal keyboards that reappear here & there between the guitars & beats. Empire is mostly an upbeat collection of three minute songs of hypnotic quality, never getting too maudlin or extremely moody though moments are there with the album getting darker as it progresses ... though the darker moments are, intentional or not, the definite highlights. But, everything takes a dive down with the seven minute coda-like concluding track "La Revolucion" that brings out all the moodiness that came before with its nearly instrumental mix of guitars/keyboards. It sounds like lonely soldiers going off to war. It doesn't attack but creeps while it opens up a whole new world just as the it lets the listener move on.

Argenraza ~ Primera Conquista Total Del Hemisferio Sur (EP) (album review) ... My ears are bleeding!

Style: death metal, black metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2004
Home: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Members: R. Raza ~ guitar
Eviigne ~ drums
N. ~ vocals 

 

 

 
I've made an unwritten rule for these reviews that I won't review an album that was horrible ... & yes such albums do exist ... or I find totally bland, unlistenable & unoriginal. Some albums I review might have glaring weak parts, but the positives should tilt the balance. I won't promise to give every band a glowing review but I try to be fair in my criticisms. So far, I've heard no complaints. The only albums I'll give a completely bad review to would be those bands, preferably untouchable famous bands, that have an obvious skeleton in the closet not reflective of their greater career, such as The Joe Perry Project's first album which I don't like & neither do fans generally but obviously can't be considered representative of Perry's output. Further, if a band inspires me to write something than an album can't be all bad. & inspire is the key. I don't attempt to pick apart every bar of music or instrument - this I have been criticized unjustly for - but to just let the thoughts flow. If I'm inspired to write, & I tend to not write when uninspired, then some musical magic is happening. It's more complimentary, I believe, to allow the magic then to dissect the songs. But, going against everything I've just set forth - this debut by death metal outfit Argenraza is probably the worst album I've ever heard in my life (which now counts 32 years if you want to know), including living in 4 countries & visiting a dozen more where I always checked out the local songsmiths. Even the horrendous bootleg live jams by the Velvet Underground with potentially out of tune guitars have more dynamics than this near imitation of white noise. Add to this noise top of lungs screaming, three chord riffing out of the Stooges, no solos & monotonous one pattern drumming. & all this is lost under poor production that sounds as if the band recorded in a poorly set-up studio. The first time I heard this album my ears kept hearing it after it ended or maybe they kept bleeding. An aural assault? Beyond that! So, why give it a review if even my review is making it sound better than it is? Because it's so bad, so atrociously bad, that I can't help but take notice, so they're obviously doing something musically right ...?! I'm also reminded of all those senior citizens who say rock'n'roll is just screeching. This is obviously the band they've been listening to. Now I understand everything! Avoid this at all costs ... or give to your girlfriend if you can't figure out how to dump her. I just don't want anyone to say I'm not listening to metal from around the world & not giving non-English speakers a chance, albeit I can't tell if he's screaming in English or not...