Local Band Review (New Hampshire): Black Norse - Real Mud Fake Blood

Black Norse - Real Mud Fake Blood

 In Need of Less Mud and More Blood

Muddy, messy, and mushy. With cover art showing peeling paint and women soiled (with what I think we may fairly assume is real mud and fake blood) a little dirt should be expected from this stoner doom band. And while I appreciate raw impassioned music as much as the next metal fan, Black Norse’s sloppiness here mucks up their music. The sound is so messy it is like the guitar player has down tuned a lot without using a heavier string gauge (this makes the strings really loose and easy to accidentally bend out of tune). A more pressing problem though is the way the songs are structured and how they come across.

Let me explain via anecdote. As I child I remember seeing a new school building that was constructed out of modular buildings. Each classroom had been constructed elsewhere as nothing more than a big rectangle with a finished interior and they were then all brought to one location and plopped down together and later deemed a school. Unfortunately, Black Norse’s approach comes off as if they have adopted the same philosophy in constructing their songs. Each riff is a suitable rectangle, not awful but nothing special, and the riffs are structured with the same mishmash between form a function. In other words the band has riffs but can not string more than three of them together to make a song. Part of this is how the riffs flow from one another, but the lack of an effective bass section is equally responsible. Bass lines connect rhythm and melody while also providing a backdrop for melodic change. To hear both problems, listen to “The Orc” from 1:30 to 2:00 - it builds up tension and the ascends to nothing and then listen to the lead riff parts where there is no backing bass melody. It ends up sounding choppy and aimless.

Black Norse still have some things going for them. The overall vibe is kind of cool even if it continually stops to move onto the next idea as if “Real Mud Fake Blood” was a jam session. The other highlight is that the vocals have a really nice timbre although the overarching composition problems are also evident in the vocal lines. The vocal style is what you would expect in stoner metal, echoey and chorus laden, and here the vocalist has a good voice for this. See for the first half of “High Elf” for example. Everything else drops away momentarily as we get to hear a few lyrics, neat.

The riffs themselves are really forgettable low chord strumming interspersed with rockingly trite guitar licks. On “Festival of Sin” you can hear that kind of Cathedral harmonizing that gives off that not-very-heavy but satisfactory stoner doom vibe. In the same song you can hear one frustratingly frequent motif, a heavy part followed by faster single 12th note triplets that the guitar player can barely manage to play (and faster than the drummer can do anything interesting with.) These sloppy triplets also happen at the end of “The Gallop” and the train wreck of the solo on “The Phoenix” which really breaks up that song’s pacing.

On a related note, other solos on the album are particularly illustrative of the band’s weaknesses. First, the guitar solo on Feast is really uninspiring, it comes way out of left field and is oddly dropped into the song. It also barely breaks through the bass in audibility because of the mixing and how the band chose not to use any particularly high notes. It comes off like the guitarist is most just meandering through a pentatonic scale and never really takes the melody anywhere. The end of “High Elf” has a similarly out of place series of solo flourishes, the last of which has a cringe worthy off note. A little feedback and the sounds of sliding and scraping can be great for creating a certain feel but Black Norse just goes too far with the sloppiness.

However, a stronger track is “Angel Women” but even there the band uses long rests to hide a jagged riff transition. Doing this breaks up the all ready short song on a 27 minute album and the band does the same thing with a rest on “High Elf” - building schools out of rectangles with riffs that do not follow one another.

Underlying these guitar riffs is drumming which is similarly boring and emasculated. I feel like the same 16th note fill is totally overused, but more problematic is how monophonic everything sounds. Bass, drum, guitar, vocals - they all fall on top of one another instead of adopting their own niches in the musical ecosystem. Examples of this happening are after the solo in “The Gallop,” how the vocals follow the guitar melody in the closing track, and how every other accented backbeat the guitar plays in the main riff on “The Phoenix” needs a snare hit. The instruments lack a distinctive identity.

“Real Mud Fake Blood” ends up sounding like a jam session. A forgettable one. My understanding is this was done by two people - if so, it may serve the band well to get new blood to help each instrument become more independent while forcing compromises to create a coherent whole for the band’s sound.

Have a listen for yourself - a digital version of this album is available for purchase and for listening at: http://blacknorse.bandcamp.com/album/real-mud-fake-blood

If you like the music, be sure to follow the band’s facebook page as they have live shows and a new album in the works: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Norse/160079360686298

Local Band Review (New Hampshire): Eerie - Amplifier theosophy

Eerie - Amplifier theosophy 

(I wrote about Eerie's live show earlier.)

In what is likely best classified as falling under the drone-laden side of doom metal, this pleasant demo is emotionally pensive with a twinge of remorse, rather than the solemn and mournful tone one might expect from music in this sub-genre. Indeed, Eerie’s “Amplifier theosophy,” while entirely without vocals, is quite a reflective piece of music. As each note rings out it makes you feel like you are at home remembering things that you wished had never happened. Although rather slow and drone influenced, it is still interesting enough to listen to in its own right because it never degrades into the realm of background noise. Also, despite having drone influences, the band wisely refrained from down-tuning guitars until they sound like churning stomachs.

“Amplifier theosophy” is a pleasant and relaxing listening experience primarily because the band conveys the negative themes discreetly - mostly through emptiness in the composition. This allows the for the intuitive composition and awesome guitar tone to shine through, take over, and sooth the listener. This guitar tone is wonderful throughout the entire demo. Rich harmonic undertones serve to heighten the relaxing feeling, and with the word “Amplifier” as part of the demo’s title such a high-quality timbre is not at all surprising. Here, chords almost glimmer, which is important because the riffs themselves are not always particularly memorable and having each moment sound so good helps make up for the fact that there melody does not develop very far. 

This is what I mean by intuitive composition, i.e. the melodies are essentially arpeggios of the underlying chords or arpeggiated chords interspersed with single note quasi-solo leads (in a slow way). Nothing on this demo is unexpected and it all sounds like it strictly sticks to a single key signature. Because of this, if the band did not do so well at creating a relaxing mood the music would end up sounding really hackneyed. Instead, the almost obvious melodies create that homey feeling without coming off as boring, but it comes close. It cuts both ways because without anything melodically jarring or abrasive you can just sit back and listen. Additionally, some riffs sound very rock influenced and the whole demo kind of melds together as one song.

The most obvious comparison I can think of is to Earth's “The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull” yet Eerie ends up sounding noticeably darker and heavier. Although musically soothing, there is a delicate sense of weakness/remorse in the music. For a exemplary example, listen to how at the start of “And Graciously...” that full enveloping sound momentarily peels away for the short part of the riff with the quick triplets. It shows the band using relatively empty sections to create a darker mood. These darker feelings are amplified by how sparse the drumming can be throughout the demo (e.g. transitions during “And Graciously...” and the first couple minutes of “Both in”). When Eerie decides not to have chords ringing out, the sparse drum work makes the music quite minimalistic. Considering that there are no vocals, it is surprising that the demo does not sound sparser but Eerie effectively uses relative emptiness as a compositional tool.

Despite the weaknesses, the demo is still good. Consistently full and engendering an enveloping feeling without having a single grating or unpleasant moment, Eerie is a band worth paying attention to.

- Eerie now has a full-length out and the band has instructed people to message them through their Facebook about it. 

- Ordering information for the demo can be found here: http://opalsoundstudio.com/about.
- You can listen to Eerie here: Eerie's Reverb Nation page.

Hellige - Demo

Hellige - Demo

Cavernous and murky, Hellige’s 2012 Demo is a fantastic march right down the line between black and doom metal, combining the best aspects of both genres. The first thing you may notice is how the deep rhythm guitar acts out the music tectonically, slowly shifting but with massive movements that parallel the bass line. This makes the core of the music incredibly heavy. On the production side, this demo is full of low end frequencies so the deeper parts come out fully and with rich timbre. All of the music’s subparts are drenched in reverb, which helps give the demo its cavernous sound. However, the key to the atmosphere is how the band melds all of the composition’s parts together.

The often slow and plodding rhythm shows a clear influence from the more radical fringes of doom. While some of the black metal influences include the usual tremolo picking, the overall lineage to that genre often comes through with crafty subtly. Tremolo picking is used either sparingly such as on “A Philosopher’s Crown” or in a way where it is not immediately obvious such as on “Obnubilum.” This lets the band put black metal’s wall of sound atmosphere to better use than most black metal bands do. Rather than an assault of repeated notes, the tremolo picking colors the overall music and is almost hidden by the reverb and massive bass end. Another subtle black metal influence on the guitars can be heard in the dark (tritone) oriented lead riffs throughout the album. As the doomier riffs march along in low notes, the odd almost dissonant black metalish melodies tactfully ring out to add more memorable character to the riffs.

All of this makes the music almost overbearing, and it can leave you fatigued. Long songs work to amplify this effect, yet the band avoids creating a repetitive atmosphere like we see all too often in both doom and DSBM. “Degraded to Mortals” is an excellent example of Hellige doing this, and the obvious interlude in the middle clearly shows how the song develops from point A to B. This great songwriting ability keeps the long songs interesting yet still entirely coherent. In fact, the demo provides several moments for the weary to rest, some of the songs include both intro and outro sections which offer momentary relief from the crushingly heavy atmosphere. However, no particular part of the album jumps out from the murky atmosphere as marvelously perfect.

 

Vocally, Hellige uses a variety of styles but the predominant ones alternate between resembling Nocturno Culto’s work on “Soulside Journey” and “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” but with deeper and doomier death metal vocals. Other vocal styles include the profoundly ominous and quiet choir-type vocals in the later part of “Obnubilum” and the howling rasps toward the end of “A Philosopher’s Crown.” Overall, the vocals serve much in the way as the lead guitar, adding color and texture to the song rather than carrying the all of the melody as is seen in other bands. What is refreshing is how restrained the band is in this respect. Hellige lets you mull over each part of the music without feeling the need to fill every last second of their songs with vocals.

Oddly enough, it is the drumming that usually forces the band’s energy forward. One can imagine what this demo would sound like with constant run of the mill blast beats or constantly slow and boring doom type drumming and either situation would be detrimental. Instead the drumming is fantastically dynamic and creative. The way that rhythm and apparent speed are connected is nothing less than artful. What makes it odd is that the drums are the best ingredient on this excellent demo because most metal is really guitar oriented. Keep in mind that the drums are not carrying dead weight but merely forcing fantastic music forward. While Hellige is far from drum music, if you listen to “The Rotten Waste” the fantastic drum work should become readily apparent, particularly at around four minutes in. Killer beats and monstrous fills.

Given that this is a demo, it may seem petty to point out minor flaws. But there is nothing major for which the band could be faulted aside from a lack of any truly awe inspiring riffs. Therefore the demo is great, but could be better. A minor reason this demo is not closer to perfection is how the tone of the bass and rhythm guitars comes off as a bit weak. While the sound is rich, it still lacks a little bit of that kind of distorted tone that makes music like this all the more overbearing and powerful. While it can be hard to strike the right balance between a cavernous reverb saturated sound and an aggressive guitar tone, Hellige only barely missed the mark. I would prefer something closer to Mournful Congregation’s distortion along with all of Hellige’s reverb. In other words, everything on the low rhythm and on the bass just comes off as slightly too soupy. Aside from that, the band might be able to get a slightly better sound with spiffier production but this demo is so good that we are really talking about marginal improvements.

The fact that the band was able to provide over forty minutes of such high quality music on this demo shows that Hellige’s excellence is not merely fleeting.  As this is their third demo in as many years that point should be clear. It stands to reason that as they keep making music that the minor imperfections will be ironed out and the band will release stuff that is damn near perfection. With Hellige, everything just works.

You can check out and download some of Hellige’s music here: http://helligearg.bandcamp.com/