Before The ‘Force hit the stage, however, the crowd were treated to two very different opening acts – yet both felt perfectly suited to the headliners in their own unique way. Up first were rising UK synthwave duo McRocklin & Hutch. Thomas McRocklin rose to fame in the 80’s as a child shred prodigy, having been taken under the wing of virtuoso legend Steve Vai before he even hit 10 years old. Having spent many years on the convention circuit, McRocklin recently teamed up with rising synthwave producer Hutch, and their pairing has already produced some of the coolest shredwave going. This was only the second show of the first tour McRocklin & Hutch have ever been on, though based on the slick performance by the pair, you wouldn’t know it. Dropping cuts from their recently released debut album ‘Riding Out’, the pulsing synths and ripping guitars were matched with a well-produced video backing that dripped with 80’s-inspired iconography – glowing neon suns, palm trees, sleek sports cars and Tron-esque grids, all of which created the perfect retrowave atmosphere. Though the duo put on a wonderful show, a lack of volume lessened their impact somewhat, and the crowd response was by far the most muted of the night, though still warm and appreciative. The ever rising profile of synthwave in the mainstream is encouraging, though, and McRocklin & Hutch’s appearance on this tour was another step in the right direction for this achingly cool genre getting its day in the (neon) sun.

Next up, Japanese power-metal quintet LoveBites immediately lifted the energy levels in the room with a polished and professional showcase of their particular brand of anthemic thrash. Though it feels somewhat reductive to draw too much attention to the fact that, yes, LoveBites are an all-female band, it’s impossible to comment on them fully without acknowledging the fact, and there was an expected yet still marginally disappointing shift in the atmosphere in the room when these five young women walked out on stage. It would be amazing to think we lived in a world where a band’s gender wouldn’t have any bearing on how they’re judged as musicians, but the reality is that the idea of an entirely female band playing this kind of ripping metal is still considered a novelty, and the number of wolf-whistles filling the air throughout their set only doubled-down on this feeling. Which was a shame, because the band brought a vibrant and engaging energy to their set of Avenged Sevenfold-meets-Arch Enemy-inspired riff-a-thons, and though there was a little bit of a language barrier between them and the crowd, they remained upbeat and welcoming, winning over more than a few new fans by the end of their half-hour set.

Following a gloriously cheesy intro – featuring the kind of smoke-and-laser display you’d normally expect to accompany a prog rock planetarium show – guitar heroes Dragonforce finally exploded onto the stage and the party truly began. Ripping into their set with ‘Highway To Oblivion’, the opening track and lead single from the band’s latest opus ‘Extreme Power Metal’, Dragonforce put the pedal on the floor and refused to let it up for 90 exhilarating minutes. On record, it sometimes seems that the sheer blistering speed that guitarists Sam Totman and Herman Li play at should not be physically possible in the hands of mortal human beings, so it’s always astonishing witnessing these feats of axe wizardry in person. Both men were on top form throughout, not only playing each and every song with unfathomable precision, but simultaneously with their obnoxious and hilarious stage antics in full-force – at times playing one-handed, and even playing each other’s guitars. The band’s music is pure entertainment to begin with, but the effort Dragonforce put into their performance is what truly elevates them beyond the hundreds of other power metal acts struggling to break into the mainstream.

Commanding the crowd with ease, frontman Marc Hudson carried the band through tracks both old (‘Fury Of The Storm’, ‘Black Fire’, ‘Valley Of The Damned’) and new (‘Heart Demolition’, ‘Razorblade Meltdown’), hitting every high note comfortably. Hudson stepped into Dragonforce’s vacant lead spot back in 2010, but honestly it’s impossible to believe he wasn’t always at the helm based on this performance, his charisma and skill with a microphone a natural fit for the band. Halfway through the set, Hudson even strapped on a guitar and showed himself to be just as skilled a musician as his bandmates, leading a short video game-inspired interlude with cuts from Castlevania and Final Fantasy VII given the shred treatment.

Following ‘Valley’…, the band left briefly before coming back and delivering a predictable but powerful encore. Launching into their recent (but already legendary) cover of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’, the crowd erupted for the first time that night into a furious and somewhat unruly circle pit – and though it was funny to see hundreds of metalheads going nuts to the Titanic theme song, some people got visibly hurt by thoughtless moshers, which put something of a sour taste in the mouth so close to the end of the show. Thankfully, Dragonforce still managed to finish strong with their ubiquitous anthem ‘Through The Fire And Flames’, a track that the band themselves acknowledged was “probably the only reason some people were there in the first place”.

Though it was disappointing the band couldn’t bring out their giant neon-lit arcade machine stage props (The Welly’s relatively small stage and low ceiling being unable to accommodate them), the stage show was otherwise excellent, each song having its own video accompaniment that synced perfectly, and despite Dragonforce not really needing any additional visual flair thanks to their own antics, it was a welcome addition to the show. All in all, Dragonforce did themselves proud and, thanks to a generally strong and positive crowd response, promised that this would not be their last trip to little old Hull. Let’s hope they make good on that promise.

JAMES LEE

Many assumed that this would likely be the last album we would ever get from the legendary band, and so it came as something of a shock when, in early 2018, the band began teasing some kind of studio activity, hinting that a new album was on the horizon. This was joyous news, as Cave In’s musical voice was always unique and highly revered among those in the know, so confirmation that the band would be putting new music out into the world was a very big deal.

Sadly, before any further information came forth regarding these mysterious recording sessions, the band – and the music scene at large – was struck the most tragic of blows. On March 28th 2018 – mere weeks after the band’s social media teasing – Caleb Scofield, Cave In’s bassist and also a prominent member of Old Man Gloom and mastermind behind Zozobra, was tragically killed in a devastating automobile accident in New Hampshire. The incident sent crashing waves of grief and sorrow through the heavy music world, Scofield having been such a beloved musician and friend to so many. It was easy to assume that, considering how inactive Cave In had been for many years, this would spell the end of the band, and understandably so.

Miraculously, however, the opposite seemed to be true. Rather than treat Caleb’s passing as a full-stop, Cave In’s spark was suddenly reignited in honour of their lost brother. It began with a moving acoustic set from Steve Brodsky and Adam McGrath at 2018’s Roadburn Festival, followed by a pair of legendary tribute concerts in Boston and Los Angeles, where the band were joined by a plethora of stunning acts (Converge, Old Man Gloom, Pelican, and even a reunited Isis, who understandably performed under a less contentious name, ‘Celestial’), to provide two nights of cathartic release for fans and themselves alike.

Before 2018 was over, a run of European dates was confirmed for spring 2019, marking the first time Cave In would play the UK in almost 13 years. As too-good-to-be-true as this seemed, the band still had another monumental trick left up their sleeve. Just a matter of days before the Euro tour, a brand new Cave In song, ‘All Illusion’, appeared online, and with it, confirmation that the band would be releasing a new album, ‘Final Transmission’, a couple of months later. The band spoke to the press in the intervening weeks, confirming that the album would feature the final recorded performances from Caleb Scofield, and that what we would be hearing was essentially demos that the band never had the chance to refine or even record in a full studio environment, but rather than them trying to ‘finish’ the songs after the fact, Cave In chose to release them as recorded with Caleb, albeit with a little polish from mixer Andrew Schneider and mastering legend James Plotkin.

The resulting album is difficult to pick apart objectively, because the knowledge of what it is and how it came to be looms large over the entire thing. Cave In as a band are well known for reshaping songs hugely from the demo stage to what appears on the final release, so it’s hard not to wonder what album we might have got had Caleb still been around. However, that’s not a guessing game we will win, so instead we must look at what we actually have. Thankfully, though a little rough around the edges at times, ‘Final Transmission’ is a totally worthy addition to Cave In’s catalogue, and offers some of the band’s most rewarding moments to date.

The opening track, ‘Final Transmission’, is literally that – a modest acoustic demo that Caleb sent to his bandmates days before his fatal accident, and was the last music he ever recorded. It’s a heart-wrenching listen, but also beautiful in its simplicity, setting the tone for the record wonderfully. Next is ‘All Illusion’, Caleb’s only lyrical contribution and the track with which the band chose to introduce the album to the world, and it’s very easy to understand why. This is Cave In at their full ‘Jupiter’-era powers, a side of the band’s sound we’ve heard very little of in quite some time – soaring, shimmering guitars soaked in their trademark space echo glide over gloriously deployed drum rolls courtesy of JR Connors, one of the rock world’s most underrated drummers. It’s all pinned together with a strong and stirring bassline that recalls some of Scofield’s finest work, with it all crashing together for a stirring and epic finale of dueling harmonies battling to reach the upper stratosphere.

‘Shake My Blood’, the second single to be released, also feels like it could have been pulled from ‘Jupiter’, its luscious riffs bearing more than a passing resemblance to ‘Innuendo And Out The Other’, though this is more than a self-referential pastiche. There’s an almost haunting quality about the track, though rather than coming across as sinister, it instead feels familiar and inviting like and old friend, particularly in its anthemic final chorus. ‘Night Crawler’ is a little more aggressive than the last two songs, though like most of the album it never hits the same level of raw fury that tracks like ‘Serpents’ or ‘Vicious Circles’ did on ‘White Silence’. Almost the entirety of ‘Final Transmission’ feels more reflective and subdued than the past couple of Cave In releases, which in retrospect gives it a poignancy that the band themselves couldn’t have predicted at the time they were writing it. Only on the final track, ‘Led To The Wolves’, do we get that abrasive storm of riffs that Caleb brought to the band, and it’s certainly the moment on the album his presence is most felt, particularly in its messy outro, which is the only hint of his thunderous roar we get on ‘Final Transmission’.

On the whole, this album feels more cohesive than its immediate predecessor; whereas the ‘White Silence’ tracklist was easy to pick apart as being ‘Steve song’, ‘Caleb Song’, ‘Adam song’, ‘Final Transmission’ is almost entirely made up of ‘Cave In songs’. Only ‘Lunar Day’ feels like the kind of track that would usually be reserved for one of Brodsky’s solo outings, though its inclusion here still makes sense. Elsewhere, cuts like ‘Winter Window’ and ‘Lanterna’ come across as a wonderful amalgamation of the best parts of the band’s ouvre. ‘Winter Window’ in particular could easily become a fan-favourite and deserves to be a live staple should the band decide to continue to tour beyond 2019, its main riff being one of the strongest the band have ever produced.

‘Final Transmission’ is a record that many never thought would exist, and though the circumstances of its creation are tragic, the world is a better place for having these songs in it. It’s almost impossible to consider the pain that Brodsky, Connors and McGrath must have felt at every stage of putting this album together – from making the initial decision that these songs should be released at all, to the process of actually sculpting the record from rough four-track demos, all while being reminded that the bass and guitar tracks left by Caleb were his final gift to the world. They definitely were gifts though, and ‘Final Transmission’ is a thoroughly rewarding experience, sonically and emotionally. It’s as fitting an epitaph as could have been crafted to a wonderful musician and human being, and though we have to hope it isn’t Cave In’s own final transmission, if that ends up being the case it will be a fine swan song for one of the greatest rock bands of the last 20+ years. RIP Caleb.

JAMES LEE

Except Skeletonwitch themselves, who took this template and barely deviated from it over the course of their next three LPs. It’s hard to blame them, as the formula was solid and resulted in plenty of acclaim and success. Then, in 2015, the band experienced a major change when original vocalist Chance Garnette was fired for his destructive alcohol abuse, with ex-Wolvhammer front man Adam Clemans stepping into Garnette’s mighty large shoes in early 2016.

Clemans’ introduction into the act not only brought a shift in vocal stylings, but with it a palpable change in attitude. The EP the band dropped later that year, ‘The Apothic Gloom’, showed signs that some of Skeletonwitch’s more ‘theatrical’ aspects had taken a back seat, replaced with a bleaker and more legitimately angry sound. It was a statement of intent from a band who’d rested on their laurels for too long, and a promise that has been made good and then some by their new full-length, ‘Devouring Radiant Light’.

Before a note of music has escaped the speakers, it’s already clear that the band are fully rebooting from the album’s artwork. Where previous releases have been adorned with none-more-metal imagery of horned skeletons (courtesy of legendary artists like Andrei Bouzikov and Baroness’ John Dyer Baizley), ‘Devouring Radiant Light’ instead has a moodier and altogether more mysterious image of a hooded figure shrouded in smoke/clouds/waves/whatever. It’s a stark departure for the band visually, and acts as an effective signifier of their overall shift in approach.

Following a brief melancholic intro, opening track ‘Fen Of Shadows’ whirrs into life, and it’s immediately clear that this isn’t the Skeletonwitch we used to know. Like a snake shedding its skin, they have emerged from the last few tumultuous years a sleeker, deadlier animal, and where once sat wailing, Iron Maiden-esque twin leads and galloping drums, there is a swirling vortex of black metal fury. Over the course of almost 8 minutes, the band have crafted something more epic and apocalyptic than anything that’s come before, and that’s just in the opening track.

‘When Paradise Fades’ rolls back slightly and has a more familiar Skeletonwitch vibe, though it’s still cast with an icy demeanour that the band have rarely conjured before. ‘Temple Of The Sun’ continues the frosty forest-dwelling attack, piling on layers of piercing bellows as the thunderous drums blast away. The title track goes even deeper still into the black metal pantheon, introducing a melodic, almost folky sensibility that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Winterfylleth record, before launching into one of the band’s most anthemic choruses to date.

Later tracks ‘The Vault’ and ‘Carnarium Eternal’ add in Swedish death metal influences to jaw-dropping effect, the latter giving At The Gates a run for their money in terms of pulse-pounding velocity and fist-in-the-air riffing. Final track ‘Sacred Soil’ brings the whole record crashing down with a satisfyingly huge brace of bleak-yet-soaring guitars, featuring some of the finest work Nate Garnette and Scott Hedrick have ever put to tape.

The album as a whole sounds as spectacular as songs like these deserve, thanks again to producer extraordinaire Kurt Ballou (with whom the band previously worked on ‘Serpents Unleashed’), who recorded the band, Fredrik Nordstrom, who mixed the record, and Brad Boatright, who mastered it. Together these three men have created a crisp and clear album that never feels too clinical or produced, offering the right amount of coldness to emphasise the vibe of the material.

‘Devouring Radiant Light’ is arguably the finest work Skeletonwitch have ever produced, and feels like the start of a new chapter in their career, free from the shackles of the retro thrash scene they rose up from. Leave your preconceptions at the door, and wrap yourself in one of the finest blackened heavy metal records you will hear all year.

JAMES LEE

Then, in 2008, At The Gates finally found themselves back together for one last glorious rampage around the globe, serving as both a celebration of the band’s enduring legacy, and as the fitting send-off they’d never allowed themselves in the mid-90’s. They destroyed Wacken. They shook the USA, bringing along for the ride Municipal Waste and Darkest Hour, the latter of whom are arguably the American band who’ve most closely adhered to the ‘Slaughter…’ playbook. They made a stirring and in-depth documentary about the jaunt, dropped it out in a bumper 3xDVD set, and that was it. Done. The End. Right?

Ten years on, At The Gates have not only gone back on their initial promise that ‘The Flames Of The End’ tour would be the definitive full-stop to their career, they’ve written and released not one, but two albums, the latest of which, ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’, is released this month by Century Media. 2014’s ‘At War With Reality’ had the unenviable task of not only schooling 18 years worth of imitators and disciples, but also acting as a follow-up to one of the most iconic melodic death metal records of all time. As such, it felt at times like the band played it safe, dialling into the same mix of Slayer-esque aggression and epic riffing that ‘Slaughter…’ excelled in, without straying too far from that template. It was a good album, but couldn’t hold a candle to its elder sibling – though what could, really? ‘At War…’s most important job, however, was ushering the band back into the public eye, and with that out of the way, At The Gates have now earned the freedom to even further step out of ‘Slaughter Of The Soul’s shadow. So, have they managed it?

Following the instrumental mood setter ‘Der Widerstand’, the album begins in earnest with its title track, a straight up ripper shaped in the same mould as ‘Blinded By Fear’. It’s a strong and heavy track, but feels a little like At The Gates treading water. Second track ‘A Stare Bound In Stone’ fares better, switching pace whilst still being underpinned by a classic melodeath riff. It’s still pretty standard fare for the band, but the quality level is high enough that it doesn’t bore. It’s on ‘Palace Of Lepers’, however, where ‘To Drink…’ really starts to separate itself from the past and forge a new path. Sure, the components appear familiar on the surface, but the song’s expansive riffs are unlike anything At The Gates have done before, its latter half especially feeling fresh and epic in a way the band weren’t on ‘At War With Reality’.

From there on out, the album switches readily between more ponderous and proggy numbers (‘Daggers Of Black Haze’, ‘The Colours Of The Beast’) to some of their most furious and aggressive material to date (‘In Nameless Sleep’, ‘In Death They Shall Burn’, the absolutely savage ‘A Labyrinth Of Tombs’), whilst managing the delicate balancing act of flowing coherently as an album. Kudos must be served to the band’s new guitar player Jonas Stalhammar, who stepped in to replace departing founding member Anders Bjorler just before the band entered the studio to record the album. Though he wasn’t involved with the writing process, Stalhammar’s playing is as tight and pulverising as Bjorler’s, and not one iota of the band’s sound has suffered as a result. In fact, ‘To Drink…’ features some of the band’s strongest lead guitar playing ever, and though At The Gates never over-indulge in solos, the ones featured are tasteful and enhance their songs without taking over. The album also sounds better than its immediate predecessor, though rather than adding extra polish, it feels like producer Russ Russell has actively stripped it away, leaving a more raw and gritty feel than ‘At War…’, which definitely works in the band’s favour.

Though it’s hard to imagine At The Gates will ever write another album as impactful or well loved as ‘Slaughter Of The Soul’, it could very justifiably argued that ‘To Drink From The Night Itself’ is every bit as good as its more famous older brother. A far more varied record, it offers more light and shade than any other album in the band’s catalogue, and unlike ‘At War With Reality’, it genuinely feels like, rather than trying to recreate past glories, At The Gates are now pushing forward and reinventing their sound for the present.

JAMES LEE

Though the mixture of dreamy, ethereal shoegaze and harsh, uncompromising black metal doesn’t sound like the kind of music the mainstream rock world would ever embrace, a little band from San Francisco you might have heard of named Deafheaven released a record – again, you might have heard of it – called ‘Sunbather’, which somehow ended up being the most talked about metal release of the year.

Not only did it make tidal waves in the underground scene, but also wound up being celebrated across mainstream media, its iconic baby-pink artwork even being used in a worldwide iPhone ad campaign. Though not necessarily the first band to embrace this particular sonic fusion *cough* Alcest *cough*, Deafheaven pulled it kicking and screaming out of the shadows. And fairly quickly a whole slew of bands emerged with them, that at least loosely followed the same aesthetic, from Ghost Bath to So Hideous. Even established acts like Oathbreaker pushed their sound away from their hardcore roots into a more expansive, blackened realm.

Despite this sudden burst of popularity, however, it felt like just as soon as blackgaze had ‘arrived’, other sub-genres eclipsed it in the public eye, and the media moved on. Rather than kill the burgeoning scene, though, this allowed bands to flourish away from the prying eyes and elevated pressure that comes with that level of exposure, free from accusations of bandwagon-jumping.

So is the case with Møl, a quintet from Denmark who, since 2014, have quietly been piecing together a discography of gorgeous, heart-stopping music with the help of the UK’s finest purveyors of underground metal, Holy Roar.

Their first two EPs, ‘Møl’ and ‘II’, are stunning works in their own right, but it is the band’s debut album ‘Jord’ that will surely send them into the upper stratosphere, and once more shine a blinding light on their entire sub-genre.

Opening with delicate brace of delayed guitars, first song ‘Storm’ explodes into, well, a storm of skyscraping riffs and drums, immediately setting the bar excruciatingly high for what’s in store for the next 40 or so minutes. Vocalist Kim Song’s shrill howls create a devastating and fitting counterpoint to the lush orchestration concocted by the rest of the band, fusing into a cascade of beauty and horror that both pulls at the heart strings and threatens to snap them at any moment.

‘Penumbra’ throws blast beats into the mix for the first (but certainly not last) time on the album to exhilarating effect, before slowing to a crawl in its midsection, the rampaging attack replaced with a swooning post-rock vibe that’s reminiscent more of Texan heroes Explosions In The Sky than any metal band you could care to mention. Lead single ‘Bruma’ opens again with a delicate and melancholic passage that wrong-foots the listener just enough that when the barrage of heaviness hits proper, it’s impossible not to be bowled over.

Møl’s use of dynamics is faultless throughout ‘Jord’, their innate sense of when a lightness of touch needs to give way to pure power and fury almost unmatched in their genre. They also manage to avoid sticking to a single, easy template – ‘Vakuum’, for example, launches straight into one of the biggest and most anthemic walls of riffing on the record, eschewing the need to build up before going full-tilt.

‘Lambda’ follows by offering a completely instrumental and entirely melodic track, showing the band are more than capable of fully embracing the ‘gaze’ aspect of their sound. Then ‘Ligament’ pulls another handbrake turn, opening with one of the most outright brutal assaults found anywhere on ‘Jord’, before switching gears itself and offering up a shimmering and glorious middle section, introducing for the first time melodic vocals that are as haunting and beautiful as anything Alcest ever committed to tape.

One of the ways ‘Jord’ separates itself from many of its peers is that the songs are on the whole much shorter and more concisely constructed. Where Deafheaven seem unable (or unwilling) to write a song under 8 or 9 minutes in length, Møl are not only able but actively thrive in crafting pieces that have just as effective an ebb and flow in half that time. Though the length of tracks shouldn’t necessarily equate to quality, it is absolutely to Møl’s advantage that they’re able to have just as visceral an impact without taking forever doing so.

It means ‘Jord’ never has even a moment to drag or become boring. From the first breathless seconds to the last, it’s a vital and engaging experience. Once again, Holy Roar have delved into the far reaches of the heavy music community and come up with absolute gold. ‘Jord’ is a tirelessly sumptuous album, evoking and perhaps exceeding the label’s strongest works – not only in Møl’s loose sub-genre – but in the constituent wider genres from which only the finest components have been cherry picked.

JAMES LEE

Though many were ecstatic to see the band return, their hiatus hardly seemed worth all of the fuss that they’d kicked up in the first place; plenty of bands have periods of relative inactivity longer than Underoath without the increasingly meaningless rigmarole of breaking up. What wasn’t clear initially though was if this was a full-scale reunion, or simply a limited engagement to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band’s landmark ‘Define The Great Line’ record, which formed the centrepiece of the live tour that followed their initial batch of reunion shows, alongside a full-album performance of their breakthrough, ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’.

Two years on from that initial resurgence, confirmation came that this would indeed be a total rebirth of the band, with the announcement of a new studio album, ‘Erase Me’, released through the band’s new label, Fearless Records. As with any band releasing a new record after a long period of time (though the band’s ‘last’ show was in January 2013, they’d not released any new music since 2010’s ‘Ø (Disambiguation)’), there was a great deal of anticipation to see what direction the reborn Underoath would take, particularly considering how much the band’s sound had evolved over the main bulk of their career.

‘Erase Me’ whirrs into life with ‘It Has To Start Somewhere’, and all initial signs are good. After having toured the world playing the album in full, it appears that the more melodic sound of ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’ has rubbed off on the band once more, the song resembling a microcosmic collision of that record’s dynamics, angular and punchy one moment and fists-in-the-air anthemic the next. The song is also notable for some unflinchingly nail-on-the-head lyrics that quite clearly see the famously Christian band change their collective Facebook status from ‘In A Relationship with Jesus’ to ‘It’s Complicated’.

It takes until track two, ‘Rapture’, to hear the band branch into new musical territory, though sadly it’s a territory the band should probably have stayed clear of. Choosing to eschew the often chaotic and quite brutal sounds of their last few records, there’s a B-list nu-metal vibe to this song that’s hard to ignore, coming across like something Trapt or Spineshank might write today. ‘On My Teeth’, the first single from the album, offers a slight improvement, though it’s hard to ignore how much like Bring Me The Horizon’s latter day Linkin Park flirtations this sounds, particularly in the processed and flat guitar tones. ‘Wake Me’ continues down the same avenue, the plodding verses led by a plinking piano that sounds ripped straight out of a Twenty One Pilots song, only to lead into a similarly flat and monotone chorus.

‘Bloodlust’ fares better, opening with a ‘Kid A’-era Radiohead vibe that explodes into the first really exciting chorus on the album, the song feeling like it could’ve been lifted from Thrice’s expansive and experimental ‘The Alchemy Index’. ‘Sink Into You’ shifts between nimble electronica-led verses and walls of ferocious guitar noise, and contains some of the only truly heavy passages on the entirety of ‘Erase Me’, the ending particularly echoing the rawness of the band’s most underrated album, ‘Lost In The Sound Of Separation’. ‘Ihateit’ then stumbles backwards into the same troubles that plagued the first few tracks on the record, namely a sub-30 Seconds To Mars mainstream rock vibe that the band don’t wear nearly as well as they think they do. ‘Hold Your Breath’, on the other hand, showcases all of the ways Underoath are capable of utilising melody well, and houses the best and most anthemic chorus on the record (and maybe the best in their discography since ‘Reinventing Your Exit’).

‘Erase Me’ is a frustrating record in many respects. There are some wonderful ideas scattered throughout it, and some of the band’s experimentation does pay off in interesting ways, like on the vocoder-heavy industrial stomp of ‘No Frame’. However, for every moment that rings true and genuinely excites, there are twice as many that seem misguided and just don’t feel like the Underoath. Obviously bands (and people) change and evolve over time, and Underoath as a band have always reshaped their sound periodically, but there’s nothing on this album that feels like it’s pushing the band forward in any meaningful way. The heavy parts aren’t as heavy as they’ve been in the past, the more chorus-led songs aren’t as interesting or catchy as the biggest ‘hits’ from the band’s history.

Underoath were always an exciting proposition because they were able to pull together a number of disparate sounds – coarse, angular metalcore, pulsing synths and electronic programming, both angelic melodic vocals and ungodly screaming – and shape them into something truly unique and entirely theirs. For the majority of ‘Erase Me’, there’s nothing that sounds like it couldn’t have come from any number of modern rock bands, and that’s probably the biggest gut punch of all. Give it a try, and maybe you’ll find something there to love. More likely though, you’ll be following the album title’s advice.

JAMES LEE

‘Witness’ is our first taste of new album ‘Only Love’, due out in Europe via Throatruiner in April, and it’s business as usual for The Armed; every possible detail is in a state of extreme flux. For starters, their drum stool is now occupied by Ben Koller, percussionist extraordinaire of Converge/Mutoid Man/All Pigs Must Die fame, The Armed clearly throwing the dude a bone after the quiet year he’s just had… His wild abandon adds another layer of manic ferocity to the band’s already volatile sound, while the heavy use of synth and electronica pushes them closer to filling the void left by Genghis Tron. It’s a visceral, brain-rattling barrage, equal parts brainy and psychotically off-the-rails, and it’s as exciting as hardcore music gets in 2018. Say hello to your new favourite band. For realsies this time.

Sure, there have been British metal bands in the last few years to have made waves artistically and critically (SikTh, Bossk, Rolo Tomassi), and others who have achieved stunning mainstream success (Bullet For My Valentine, Bring Me The Horizon), but it’s been many a decade since a British metal act has been able to marry legitimate success with genuine critical acclaim from anything other than lowest-common-denominator ‘heavy’ music press. Well, ladies and gentlemen, allow us to present to you Conjurer, and their frankly jaw-dropping debut full-length album, ‘Mire’, because this could (and should) be the album that finally gives our tiny little island a new band who are able to operate on the same artistic and commercial level as any Mastodons or Gojiras you care to throw their way.

‘Mire’ is such a densely and richly packed smorgasbord of everything that is exciting and invigorating about modern heavy music that it’s difficult to know where to begin. So, logically, the album’s opener ‘Choke’ is probably smart. Beginning with a jarringly major-chord-heavy gambit, anyone who’d hungrily devoured the band’s 2016 debut EP ‘I’ could have been forgiven for thinking they’d accidentally put a Torche record on. It takes very little time for the other (concrete) shoe to drop though, a tidal wave of soul-cracking guitars and drums crashing from the speakers as co-shredders/vocalists Dan Nightingale and Brady Deeprose exorcise every demon within a 60 mile radius with their harrowing bellows. Blast beats and full-rage thrash-outs interweave seamlessly with walls of monolithic riffing and bottomed-out sludge, and this is only the first song.

‘Hollow’ eases off of the accelerator just a touch, allowing the band some breathing room as they interject a deft touch of melody into their sound, and it sits as naturally within their wheelhouse as the full-tilt black metal assault that opens ‘Thankless’. ‘Retch’ bounces from borderline tech-death one second into rampaging hardcore the next, before again slamming on the breaks and lurching into a gut-churning sludge riff that would rattle even Primitive Man’s windows. Lead single and quasi-title-track ‘The Mire’ stands as the album’s towering centrepiece, epic and devastating in equal measure thanks to some finely-pitched screams and a wash of blackened atmosphere. ‘Of Flesh Weaker Than Ash’ slow-burns with the kind of low-end groove that most djent bands would sell their 9-string guitars to be able to write, and album closer ‘Hadal’ feels like a long, agonising descent into Hell. In that good, heavy metal way.

Hard to pin down with a single easy descriptor, Conjurer’s apocalyptic vision of heavy music pulls from almost every corner of the extreme universe, yet such care and thought is poured into every second that it never feels messy or haphazard. Their closest possible comparison point would be the trans-European collective The Ocean, though even then it took that ever-evolving group of musicians the best part of a decade and dozens of member-changes before they achieved the first fully realised version of their sound on 2007’s ‘Precambrian’. Conjurer have managed to concoct this very-reasonably comparable piece of progressive art on just their second release as a band, after only a few short years together, and with all of its members still wallowing in the shallow end of their 20’s. ‘Mire’ could only be the beginning of a very long and illustrious career for these four lads from Rugby, and the very notion that things could get better from here is simultaneously laughable and terribly exciting. Conjurer are the band our country has needed for a very long time, and long may they reign over us.

JAMES LEE

As soon as ‘Della Mancanza’ bolts out of the gate it’s clear that something has shifted in Calligram’s master plan in the last year. Though the song jolts into life with a raging crust-punk riff, it very quickly takes the left hand path into straight-up, honest-to-Satan Black Metal, and never really comes back. Though the band made their name on the hardcore circuit and managed to mix the two genres with plenty of dexterity on their EP, the interim has clearly seen them grow in confidence to be able to shed their more punk leanings and fully embrace the darkness. As such, this is a far more intimidating and claustrophobic listen than ‘Demimonde’, which given the context, is absolutely a good thing.

That first song evolves through multiple stages, each more terrifying than the last, until it hits a passage of murky dread towards the end, unsettling the listener just enough for them to be caught completely off-guard as the frenzied wall of blasts and riffs that open ‘Sinking Into Existence’ blow through like a gale force snow storm. Though there’s nothing even remotely ‘shoegaze’ about Calligram, there’s definitely a Deafheaven vibe as this song drops into half-time, the razor-tipped riffs giving way to haunting arpeggios and tremolo picking. It’s a rollercoaster of a track, that veers wildly from an almost Swedish Death Metal passage into an ending that brings to mind Behemoth at their most majestic.

Lead single ‘Scourge’ rips the speakers to shreds with its relentless drumming and vicious guitars, alternating between searing minor chords and malevolent chugs. The song’s back-half is a masterclass in creeping intensity, proving that everyone doesn’t need to be playing at light speed to be throttlingly heavy. The brittle interlude ‘Murderess’ calms the boiling blood, just in time for the thrilling penultimate cut ‘Entwined’ to send it bubbling over again. It’s an invigorating exercise in blackened extremity, and is by far the fastest song on the album, which works well to create some jarring juxtaposition, as it segues pretty seamlessly into the grand finale, ‘Lament’. Incorporating more of a doom and drone vibe in parts, the track is a brooding monolith compared to the direct assault found elsewhere on the album, however the dark atmosphere that clings to it feels perfectly in-line with everything that came before. It’s one hell of a send-off for a brief but bone-rattling album.

Now signed to UK heavyweights Basick Records, and with production by Lewis Johns (Svalbard, Rolo Tomassi, Employed To Serve), Calligram are likely to be even more visible than ever before in the heavy music world. Thankfully, with ‘Askesis’ they’ve created a statement of intent that is more than worthy of the extra attention that is about to be heaped upon their collective shoulders. It’s a brutal and emotionally draining experience, and it’s up there with the year’s best black metal releases. Jump on Calligram’s bandwagon now, because it’s about to get awfully full very soon.

JAMES LEE

All Pigs Must Die No are exception to this rule. Not only are they one of the most terrifyingly powerful hardcore bands to have appeared in the last decade, but they are also a collective of gentlemen whose previous/current ‘other’ bands cast incredibly long shadows over the world of heavy music. Formed at the end of the last decade, APMD’s roster reads like some kind of all-star hardcore dream team – Kevin Baker of the sadly defunct Boston heavyweights The Hope Conspiracy, Adam Wentworth and Matt Woods of Bloodhorse, fresh recruit Brian Izzi of Trap Them, and rounding things out, the inhuman drum savant Ben Koller. ‘Hostage Animal’. APMD’s latest and third full-length album is the second of THREE albums that Koller has played on this year (Mutoid Man’s ‘War Moans’ and the impending ‘The Dusk In Us’ from Converge finishing up the trifecta), not to mention his touring with each of those three bands and never once losing that maniacal Ozzy-like grin whilst doing so.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Koller might be spreading himself too thin and that his individual performances could suffer as a result; yet mere microseconds into the album’s opening title track it’s obvious that nothing could be further from the truth, his frenzied blast beats kicking your proverbial doors in with the power of a runaway panzer tank. The song is an assault on all senses, Wentworth and Izzi’s buzzsaw riffs peel layers of epidermis away while Kevin Baker’s eye-bulging screams rip through you like a gale-force storm. ‘A Caustic Vision’ stomps and slams with venomous intent, before the grind of ‘Meditation Of Violence’ flays any flesh still left clinging to your already battered bones, and we’re still only three songs into the album.

‘Slave Morality’ brings the tempo down significantly, opening with one of the album’s doomiest passages.  Awash with bleak atmosphere, it seeds a deep feeling of dread before the band kicks into a higher gear once more and brings the song home with a crushing weightiness. ‘End Without End’ continues the mid-tempo attack, Koller’s abuse of the double-kick matched by Izzi’s serpentine riffing to further nauseate as well as terrify. The addition of Brian Izzi to the band’s line-up was an inspired choice – his work in Trap Them has always shone, his ability to mix up crusty hardcore with an old-school Swedish Death Metal vibe putting him among the most influential players in the scene today. With Trap Them now sailing off into the sunset, his jumping aboard the good ship APMD makes total sense, and the results on ‘Hostage Animal’ speak for themselves.

‘Blood Wet Teeth’ and ‘Moral Purge’ pummel and destroy with vicious intent, the latter managing to reference both the HM-2 grind of Rotten Sound and the menace of Slayer in a little over 90 seconds. ‘Cruelty Incarnate’ begins with a creepy, horror-infused guitar that wrong-foots the listener enough that it completely knocks you to the floor when the speed ratchets up into the album’s most black metal-inspired moments. ‘The Whip’ sounds like classic Entombed pumped full of amphetamines and chained to the front of a speeding car which suddenly screeches to a halt for the album’s grand finale, ‘Heathen Reign’, an epic anthem filled to the brim with planet-crumbling riffs and anguished roars.

‘Hostage Animal’ doesn’t hugely deviate from the template All Pigs Must Die set for themselves on ‘God Is War’ and ‘Nothing Violates This Nature’, however it does massively refine every aspect of their work, and is by far the most potent and dynamic version of the band’s sound to date. The album’s recording was handled by (of course) Converge’s Kurt Ballou, and as such sounds spectacular – raw and muscular whilst never losing definition or clarity. Having worked with this band (and all of its members individually) so many times, Ballou has innately been able to bring out the best in them, dialling in those chainsaw guitar tones perfectly so as to cause the maximum amount of carnage. The final result is an album that devastates in all possible ways, whether blasting at full tilt or creeping in the shadows. This is an animal that deserves to be let loose on everyone’s 2017 Best Of list.

JAMES LEE