Metal Things I Found On YouTube This Week
What? You actually paid for Deezer? Hahahahahaahahahahahahaahah
Once again into the depths of what YouTube decided to shove on my suggested list this week. It’s like it knows me….
Osiah – Temporal Punishment (Official Music Video)
Well let’s start as this track does – straight in with the brutality and the double kicks. Fuck yeah. Many ‘0’s! Many technical riffs! 3:55 of Osiah ripping us an aural new one. Ah, man… This is like all the metal we need right now… Just relentless and slamming Deathcore and a singer who seems to be very angry about something. Maybe it’s that this track doesn’t last long enough. [8/10]
For fans of : All the -core’s
Gojira – Into The Storm [LYRIC VIDEO]
Look I’m gonna be honest – I’m not Gojira’s biggest fan. He comes over here, knocking down our cities and breathing that fire shit all over the place. Scaly wanker fucktard. Who does he think he is? And people go mental about it. “Ooh! Ooh! Fight Kong next!” Yeah mate, whatever. It’s just a fat CGI lizard. Or worse, a small Japanese man in a latex suit. Calm the fuck down.
Oh, you mean the band! Yeah, it’s OK. Nothing new. It’s no flying whales that’s for sure. [6/10]
For fans of : Gojira. They’re gonna lap it up anyway, even it it is mediocre. Which it is. Sorry.
Drown This City – New Burn Order [Official Music Video]
Now this is better. Something a little chunkier and I don’t mean what we’ve all become since lockdown. Alex Reade knocks out some great cleans, the video looks gorgeous and the mix is suitably atmospheric before it gets heavy as balls. But at 1:48 it seems to have a stroke and goes all nu-deathcore breakdown. I’m in. Even if the bass-player does look uncomfortably weird with that mullet. Are mullets back? Well Drown This City are Aussies so I guess that’s basically a Bogan Helmet. [7/10]
For fans of : Having a smoko between every breakdown china.
HUMAN HELL – AMALANTRAH [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]
Hold up…. What? Is this a Slam Worldwide release I actually like!? You know what… It might just be. The mix is a bit iffy but you can still hear all those great drum grooves, time modulations and the sick chord choices. And I LOVE THE GUITAR TONE! Yes, that needed all caps. SW have labelled this as Deathcore but it sounds more like brutal Death Metal to me. Either way it’s epic. Good signing, SW. Well done. [8/10]
For fans of : Oh no… I’ve been making Slam Worldwide jokes for so long now I don’t know what to say when I actually really like something… er…. Just pretend I said something funny and move on.
MISTER MISERY – Mister Hyde (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)
Great piano intro! Some lovely chord choices in there – a major when you expect a minor makes my trouser department go all warm and fuzzy. And it keeps getting better : The video is as dramatic as the music, the tension builds and we launch into the first vocals which I am happy to say are not the ‘testicle-stuck-in-the-zipper’ I was expecting but nice and nasty with a proper melody. These Swedish boys are onto something with this : It’s horror-metal done perfectly! And that chorus comes in with a mix that’s top shelf scream-along. Fuck yeah! You can “do the devil’s work” on my playlist, [9/10]
For fans of : People who like to gothic cosplay at 6 and slam the pit at 7
OUR HOLLOW, OUR HOME – Seven Years
OHOH‘s last track was as disappointing as ordering underwear from wish.com, but I thought I’d give them another chance. And glad I am that I did! Those dirty vocals are as great as last time, but used properly here. The riff is bouncy and catchy without being derivative and the chorus sits properly within the structure this time. And it’s even got a “Whoah-Oh” bit. They’re always welcome. They must have been listening because the great riff at 1:25 gets repeated rather than just doing it once. Nice. And the clean singer does the chilled section. Correct. Good work boys. Mix still needs some work but this track will shred at a festival gig. Redeemed. I knew you could do it 🙂 [7/10]
For fans of : Not knowing which one of the band is the better vocalist
HIDEOUS DIVINITY – Chestburst (VISUALIZER VIDEO)
With a name like “Chestburst” this better slam harder than a door onto someone’s unsuspecting fingers. And it does. The Old-school Death Metal mix works really well here : There’s a fuzziness to the black-metal guitar tone that just tops up the evil with some satanic frosting and a cherry of grizzled soloing. While not a modern sounding track it properly evokes the gloomy horror. [8/10]
For fans of : Proper old-school blackened death metal
DEFOCUS – Thought of a Vision (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
We’re being spoilt this week with br00tal choons. And Defocus deliver the goods with the sort of cyber-metal that you wish had been on Fear Factory’s later efforts. I love those high-bend riffs and the pounding does not relent. The vocalists has definite Cory vibes to his delivery and the atmospherics bed him down onto a drop-tuned slab of groove-filled riffs. Yeah I’ll be checking back on you boys again. [8/10]
For fans of : When the Germans make great 21st Century metal
DIAMANTE – Ghost Myself (Official Video)
Look, I see blue hair, I click. And while this isn’t as heavy as I would have liked, Diamante Azzura Bovelli has dropped something cool here. It’s no Against The Current (Which YouTube played immediately after this track. It really does know me!), but it’s got a guitar-driven stomp that’s infectious. This will sound best doing 20% over the speed limit on an open road. And to be honest by the third chorus I was singing along. So that’s going on the playlist. Fuck it. [7/10]
For fans of : Sing-along modern Hard Rock when you can’t take any more 270BPM double kicks.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM – Burn The Sky (2021)
What – THE Flotsam and Jetsam? Ah cool. And yes this is EXACTLY what you expect it to be. And that’s exactly what it should be. Erik sounds amazing, the drums have pace, the riffs sound better than anything Metallica have shat out in recent years. And of course the solos are epic and made of many notes. 35 years of experience right there on this track. When older bands keep making the same music it can be all the cringe, but like Overkill, this proves you CAN do what you used to 35 years ago and it still sounds fresh. [9/10]
For fans of : What ’80’s Thrash would have sounded like with better production and years of experience behind it.
VENUES – Shifting Colors (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
More Germans. More metal. And the first verse does not set you up for the chorus at all. Dude’s getting all his important inner bits seen to and then Boom clean vocal chorus from the black and white dreads. And a proper hard rock solo followed by a breakdown. Plus being strangled by someone else’s innards is pretty metal… They know how to keep it visually and musically interesting. And I am interested. [9/10]
For fans of : Not being bored while you’re singing along.
LIGHT THE TORCH – Wilting In The Light
Oh, Howard… Class. He brings the usual depth and style to anything he sings on (Although even he couldn’t save Sion) and supergroup Light The Torch sound better to me than Killswitch ever did. There’s passion and grit in this. And some money behind the mix it seems. Those octave-d melodies and filtered guitars sound just great no matter how loud you turn them up. And turn them up I did. So should you. This is their third album and it’s just getting better. [8/10]
For fans of : Well crafted metal. And Howard. Not the Duck. The other one. Howard Jones. No, not that “What is love?” one. The other one.
BLACK VEIL BRIDES – Fields Of Bone
You couldn’t move for “In The End” a few years ago. With good reason. 140 million views on YT is not to be sniffed at. 9 years later here we are again and it’s just as I remembered it. Some dicks-out-for-Harambe rock metal with everything BVB were great at – simple riffs, great structure and a kick-ass chorus that’s only a swimsuit model on an expensive car away form a Motley Crue song. Oh and fuck me it’s got a gang-vocal mid-8 too before the 80’s-shreddy solo. Just because you’ve got a little electronica in there still doesn’t make it modern, it makes it BVB. Which is what we want. [8/10]
For fans of : Never getting older. If we can help it.
Mental Cruelty – A Hill To Die Upon (Official Video)
Put some Blackened Deathcore up where it’s uncomfortable and embrace the breeeeeeeeeeee. This punches you in the gut and doesn’t stop until it comes out the other side. That breakdown drops harder than trousres at a prostate exam with just the correct amount of “bleagh” to go with it. I like the track but this is YouTube and we have to address the elephant in the room. The video sucks. Well, that’s unfair. But the poor CGI on “tiny guitarist supposed to be on a mountain” is not how it should be done. And give the singer a mic for fuck’s sake – he doesn’t know what to do with his arms and it’s distracting. But I’ll forgive the sickening video for the putrid brutality of the music. And for once in this genre the lyrics are pretty good. [7/10]
For fans of : Puppies and Kittens and that Instagram filter that makes you puke rainbows
DUST IN MIND – Lost Control (Official Video)
Ok three things. 1) There wasn’t any prog on my playlist this week, but I did save the best ’til last for ya. 2) I talked smack about the Italians making shit dramatic opera-styled videos an article or two ago and YouTube went “hold on, let me fix that for you with some Frenchies” and 3) Well….
It’s bad form to speak about gender when referring to a singer. The fact that they are male or female should make no difference. That’s just perpetuating a stereotype or a misogyny metal and metal journalism can do without. Sure, it’s fine to say “Hey, she/he is hot, fucking hell!” there’s no shame in that (I choose my thumbnails for MTIFOYTW with click-bait in mind), as long as it doesn’t deride the art or demean the person. But I am going to mention gender here. But not for the reason most people do.
The fact is that within this fucking epic operatic metal song the two timbres of Jennifer Gervais and Damian Dausch sound perfect together. That whole “woman does the cleans, guy does all the growls” thing always seems to fall short (That’s why Courtney LaPlante is all of the everything) but here they are matched complimentary rather than disassociated. This is how it should be done. Sharing harmonies and backing each other up to drive the track along.
And what a fucking track! It’s part power-pop, part industrial, part progressive and basically everything I like to put in me. The video looks gorgeous, the colours are graded to perfection and the visuals don’t distract from the music. If I had one gripe it’s that percussive slam that happens on bars 1 and 3 of every chorus. But I listened to their other stuff and they seem to do it all the time. Ah, that doesn’t matter.
Check out their last offering, “Break” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vWOT02sPEc. It’s equally as good. Have I just found my new favourite 2021 band? I just might have! [10/10]
For fans of : Everything epicus dialed up to maximus but with attention to the delicacy of the minimus.
And now it’s time for the round everyone has been waiting for! Yes, it’s time for the “Synth-wave, Spiritbox-ish, theyallstarttosoundthesameafterawhile, bonus, quick-fire, roundup, get-through-them-quick-please-god section thing round bit” Just like your mother always promised you but never delivered. I do. I’m better than her.
Holding Absence – nomoreroses
Not bad. Not great. Sung well. Great tones. Just doesn’t do anything in the pantaloons for me. [5/10]
I The Fire – Save Me
God that mix sucks. Pretty good synthy-Metal-core otherwise. Doesn’t dj0nt as much as it drifts along. And there really should be a comma in “I, The Fire“. Two-finger clap for this one. [5/10]
Nova – Alone (Official Lyric Video)
This started off on the main list then… well… It didn’t do anything. Yeah, those guitars sound great and the synths are just up my street. But… there’s just not a lot here, like a Pet Store on Christmas Eve. [4/10]
And that’s it for this week. Just one 10/10 but it was worth it just for that. Thanks YouTube. I owe you a beer.
Speak soon
Si
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