New Music Round-Up: 20th April 2015

Leviathan - Scar Sighted

Fucking hell! Apologies for the language, but this was my genuine reaction to the first few minutes of Scar Sighted. This is a brutal Blackened Death Metal beast of an album. Of course, as you would expect from Leviathan, there is much more to this release than "just" Death Metal. The music is so densly layered as to make Tool sound like Blink 182 and later on in the album the ambient experimentation the band are known for starts to creep insidiously in. Even on the more straightforward Death Metal tracks, such as opener (not including the cliched intro) "The Smoke Of Their Torment", the mid-paced Death Metal is interwoven with some harrowing and disturbing atmospherics that will make your skin crawl and the overall tone of the album is so utterly and relentlessly bleak that it will make you feel worthless and wretched. Not for the weak of heart, but absolutely essential for fans of extreme music.

Sigh - Graveward

As usual, trying to describe Sigh is like trying to catch air with a sieve, as an amazing 26 years into their career, Sigh continue to defy simple categorisation. Of course, at their dark heart they are a Black Metal band, but very early on, Mirai's maverick Avant-Garde stylings separated the band from their contemporaries. This is probably as much due to geography as it is anything else. Much as Australia's wildlife took it's own evolutionary path, so too did Sigh. Where the majority of the bands in the Black Metal  scene of the early 90s were based in the cold, unforgiving north of Europe, Sigh developed in their own environment - the rainy isolation of Tokyo, Japan. For those who have been a little disappointed with the last couple of Sigh albums, Graveward should come as a welcome return to the greatness we all know they are capable of and for those new to the band, expect to be taken on a weird journey of musical experimentation and eccentricity - this is, after all the same band that once used experimental WWII sonic weaponry techniques on one of their albums. Yes, they weaponised their music against their own fans. make of that what you will.

Faith No More - Sol Invictus

So far 2015 had been totally dominated by bands that made their name (and in most cases released their best work) in the 90s. With mindblowingly brilliant releases from Marilyn Manson and Therapy? already rocking my world and with new albums from Coal Chamber, Pist.On and Pissing Razors (ok, strictly from the early 00s) on the horizon, the cynic in you would be forgiven for thinking that there is the distinct whiff of nostalgia in the air. While this may have an element of truth, this train of though isn't entirely accurate. The aforementioned bands have not only returned with great albums, but they have also managed to stay refreshingly relevant. Cue the returning Faith No More. After a (recorded) hiatus of 18 years and following 3 classic, faultless releases in a row, I was wary of this one. As much as I wanted this to be brilliant, I was worried that they band might play it safe and rehash what they had already done. Of course, with FNM there is always the chance that they would actually do anything but and would experiment too much and not sound like the FNM we knew and loved at all. As it happens, neither of these is the case. This is a wonderful album from a truly untouchable band. A band that just has an intangible knack for writing a great song. On Sol Invictus you will find the usual variety of songs you would expect from FNM - a band who are not only true masters of their craft, but who are also at the very top of their game. Mike Patton's voice is on a career best form and the band's musicianship is as on the money as always. Sol Invictus is everything I hoped it would be and is a more than worthy addition to the FNM back catalogue.