Voivod - Phobos

I’ve never really been into Voivod. I even tried to witness the band play all of Dimension Hatross at Roadburn Festival 2012, which is hosted in Tilburg’s 013, a venue with arguably the best sound in the world, and I still couldn’t get into it. I just don’t get it – is it thrash? Is it prog wankery? Is it a tired display of both? Phobos though, blew my fucking head off. It works better as background music (I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but most metal just goes in one ear and out the other these days, unless I’m high or something) but it’s a chunky, hard-hitting, more-metal-than-metal journey. Everything I thought Voivod wasn’t.

Typically it turns out that this album is from an “iffy” mid-period in Voivod’s history that most fans avoid like the plague. All the power to them, I say – you keep enjoying those dodgy stoner rock records they did with Jason Newstead and I’ll keep blasting this epic sci fi record. The reason this album sounds so different from normal Voivod is that theoretically only half the band performed on it. The usual bassist and vocalist were replaced for a time by Eric Forrest, who took over both duties. His harder vocal delivery really makes this (and the Negatron album) stand out in the extensive Voivod back catalogue.

Some REAL sci-thrash, motherfuckers!!!

The Mars Volta - Deloused In The Comatorium

Welcome to another post about another album that I have put off buying for nearly a decade. You can thank the wondrous Amazon marketplace for these posts that should have rightly been made a long time ago; their CD prices are sometimes so goddamn obscene that I cannot resist buying a whole bunch of new CDs every week. This one cost me a little more than the usual 1p, but it was still a criminal sum for a brand spanking new CD. I’ve received some sorry looking CDs through the Amazon marketplace (particularly from Zoverstocks) but this one is pristine in every single way. Anyway, onto the recording itself!

Deloused In The Comatorium is an extremely ambitious debut from a band that includes those two chaps from At The Drive In and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on bass, and a bunch of other guys that I’ve not heard of before. I don’t really know that much about RHCP or of ATDI for that matter, but considering the type of stuff that both those acts produce, you’d never in a million years expect something as mind-bogglingly experimental as this. To sum up quickly; Deloused… is a concept album based on the experiences of a dude called Cerpin Taxt, who journeys through a week-long coma induced by consuming a concoction of morphine and rat poison. Yeah.

Before I start going into particular tracks, I would just like to say that the instrumentation here is absolutely flawless; the guitar work is enough to fuck with any 6-stringed student’s head, whilst retaining that dirty, distorted “indie” sound in the loud parts, keeping everything nice and digestible. The bass, by the ever-amazing Flea, whilst playing perfectly, is kinda kept in the background for the entire album. You can hear him clearly, but the bass is the backbone here, which isn’t what you’d expect from something that seems to be so hay-wire with it’s other comprising elements. I can’t tell if there are electronics going on here or if they are just severely mangled guitar sounds. Either way, they add a whole new depth to most of the tracks. Finally, the drumming is precise, fill-happy and extremely busy (and often very Latin-sounding).

I think you’re either gonna love or hate the voice of Cedric Bixler; his high-pitched wails, whines and nasally highs are enough to get up the backs of more gruff rock’n’roll listeners, but whilst I am not particularly a massive fan of this style of vocal performance, I think that it works perfectly with the music. The first proper track “Inertiatic ESP” has an enormous chorus, and Cedric's vocals work so perfectly on the chorus.

I could go into every song here but they are so varied that this blog post will end up lasting a million years, which I do try to avoid. Whilst I do like writing in depth about records, it is time consuming on both myself and the reader; and I don’t want things to get too boring! Anyways, thanks to the copyright-defying users of Youtube.com I can let the fantastic tunes of The Mars Volta do the rest of the talking. If you’ve got an hour spare (and an open mind) I would definitely recommend giving Deloused In The Comatorium a listen through. This catch-up purchase of a band that I liked once upon a time has initiated a whole new love for me; it’s time for me to go out and discover the rest of the material that The Mars Volta has to offer. Cheerio!

Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken...Deeds That Go Undone

Akercocke’s fourth album was by far their most experimental. Following up the absolutely monstrous and enormous epic that was Leviathan could have been no easy task for these distinguished English gentlemen. In my opinion, Words that go unspoken… is nowhere near as brutal as the exquisite aural punishment of Leviathan, but the band definitely followed through by evolving in incredible leaps into something far more sprawling, technical and genre-bending. Where Leviathan had that the “oomph” factor that is missing from most death metal recordings, Words that go unspoken has a daring sense of adventure and experimentation; it is the sound of a band flexing it’s creative muscles, to be poetic about it.

Things kick off fairly simply; “Verdelet” is Akercocke through and through, with a thrashy pace and double bass, which eventually gives way to clean vocals and excellently composed semi-acoustic guitar sounds. Despite the softer elements, the drums never give out for the duration; David Gray is an animal on the kit. “Seduced” has classic death metal written all over it, and also has one of my favourite Akercocke guitar solos (which is actually one of the simpler and more understated ones the band has ever used). The real fun begins however with track 3, “Shelter from the Sand”. This snarling death metal beast slowly evolves into something altogether more Opeth-y (minus the untold amounts of boredom). I can’t really describe it, but there is a whole world of prog-rock influence here, maybe not so much on the psychedelic side (imagine that? Haha satanic pysch-metal) but definitely on the progressive, “things unfolding at a gradual pace” side of things. I think it was Jason Mendonca himself who once likened the sound on this album to “Morbid Angel and Rush having a fight in a lift”. 

From here on out, things are much tamer than they have been on any previous Akercocke record. Sure, the staple sounds of the band are all here but they are utilised in much more subtle and experimental ways. The title track, and it’s sequel “Intractable”, are two fantastic pieces of musical art that you would never expect from blasphemous, sex-charged death metal swine such as Akercocke. I think this is what I was trying to convey in my opening paragraph; whilst Words….doesn’t necessarily blast your fucking head off, it showcases a maturity in so many ways, that would continue to unfold on the band’s next record (although in not so overtly experimental tones).

All in all this is a fantastic metal record, and I guess if you’re looking for an in-road into Akercocke I would say that this – whilst ironically being their most experimental – is by far their most easily accessible material (I think you wrote this for the Antichrist review too, ya feckin' eejit - Ed, 2019). Antichrist that followed had a much more direct death metal approach, but the genre scope of Words… more than allows a much wider chance for appreciation from fans of other genres. Like most of their records, this was released on Earache Records, and unfortunately only on CD format. I would absolutely love the Akercocke records to be pressed onto vinyl, but I think that sadly there isn’t ever going to be enough demand out there for somebody to take the risk and get the ball rolling (I know Earache certainly won’t, check out this blog post by Dig). Give the entire disc a spin in the link below!

Zonderhoof - Hakken!

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself of the growing pool of talent in my local area. Zonderhoof were another local band that I’d somehow spent my entire life avoiding; that was until Terrorizer magazine gave their album away for free with an issue of their magazine, and at their stall in Damnation Festival 2011 (which is where I kindly received my copy). Even then, I only gave it a quick listen, and I wasn’t turned on to the band again until they supported Conan in a Cardiff show last year.

My first - and somewhat harsh - thought about this album is that Zonderhoof sound like a poor man’s Bongripper. Y’know one of those silly half-opinions you form after listening to something for the first time, like no matter how much you convince yourself otherwise, you really still haven’t got your head around it? Well, it was one of those. See, that’s why I can never understand “professional” reviews where a writer is given an album to write about*; I’ve found that you always need to let a record unfold for you over time. First impressions are just that; first impressions.

And with time I have come to appreciate Zonderhoof as an instrumental wonder of the metal world, playing a nice, almost progressive brand of lyric-free metal goodness. This CD is a long ‘un, which is really great considering it was given away for free (just think of the recording and production costs; sheesh!). My favourite tracks are probably opener “Smoking Ears Screaming Teeth” and the groovy “Hogslayer”, although the last couple of tracks are awesome as well. Well worth a listen, in my somewhat skewed opinion.

*a brilliant, recurring example of this is the writers that Kerrang! employ(ed). When a big band dropped a new album they’d always give it either an arse-kissing five Ks or a controversial licking, and within months go back on their own fucking word almost every single time, like clockwork. Mind you, Kerrang! is a heap of shit and probably a bad example, but there you go.