2 posts tagged “album reviews”
Death in June has never been any stranger to (mostly unfounded) controversy. Starting life as a post-punk band after Douglas Pearce left the leftist punk group, Crisis, everything about them has fallen under constant scrutiny. Over the years, their aesthetic obsession with Nazi symbolism as well as Third Position philosophy and neopaganism, has led to everything from show cancellations to full-on protests to this album actually being prohibited for sale to minors in Germany. And their actual music has taken them all over the world (including Israel). Rose Clouds of Holocaust is probably their most popular album and a good representation of Death in June's neofolk sound.
The intro, "Lord Winter" features spoken vocals (the lyrics to the track, "Luther's Army") read by Max Wearing, over an almost industrial lead-in to the first real song, "God's Golden Sperm," which, like most of the album, exercises a jarring vocal restraint with a sort of upbeat but dreamlike musical approach. Keyboard and melodic percussion underscore a low-mixed acoustic guitar. "Omen-Filled Season" follows a similar musical path, with the keyboards providing a certain breeziness to the sound. Douglas Pearce's spoken/sung vocals work well within their limitations. The album as a whole shows an almost hallucinatory lyrical style, as evidenced by "Jerusalem the Black" ("Babylon awake and laughing/Jerusalem asleep and smiling/Someone I know, he holds a gun/And shoots with his heart in Jesus"). "Luther's Army" is more of a traditional post-punk styled thing, vocally. More attention is paid to rhythm and in the right hands I could see it remixed into an awesome industrial dance track. In Douglas Pearce's hands, however, it's much more interesting, with horns and keyboards providing ominous drones below the acoustic guitar. "13 Years of Carrion" features more prominent horns, providing their own melodies rather than just droning. "The Accidental Protégé" features some of the most beautiful lyrics on the album ("I thought I found paradise/But, paradise came and wept/Like the wind through the winter's woods/It cowed and took a breath"). The vocal delivery and instrumentation on this song is nearly perfect, with sad, understated vocals and the horns replaced by what sounds like a melodica. Some of the guitar on this song reminds me of (and may well have been performed by) David Tibet's playing. The title track, "Rose Clouds of Holocaust," is probably the second biggest departure here. It's probably the fastest song on the album with the most pronounced and - dare I say? - catchy vocal melodies. The biggest departure, however, is the last track, "Lifebooks." With tremolo-warped chords and muted spoken vocals, it seems to serve as more of an outro than anything. I think I hear David Tibet in there providing a vocal counterpoint to Douglas Pearce's sort of subdued vocal style with his own oddly enthusiastic delivery. The most legible audible words are a repeated hissing assurance that "it's a dream" followed by a demand to "wake up." That's Death in June in a nutshell.
Anyway, this is an incredible album that I would highly recommend.
Drudkh made the news recently signing to French metal label, Season of Mist. However, this is a band that's been around since 2003 and has quickly risen to the top of the legendary Ukrainian black metal scene (home of such hordes as Hate Forest and Nokturnal Mortum). Today, I'm talking about my favorite of their albums, Кров у Наших Криницях (translated into English as Blood in Our Wells - translations will just be in brackets as they're listed on Wikipedia from here on out).
Drudkh have always been a sort of unusual band, mixing atmospheric black metal with more traditional elements of metal, like harsh, almost proto-death metal style vocals, guitar solos and occasionally riffs more reminiscent of Bathory than of Burzum. The lack of constant blastbeats is also refreshing. The result is at once heavy, cinematic, and utterly mesmerizing.
The first “real” song, “Борозни Богів [Furrows of the Gods]” goes more places in its 8 minutes than some black metal bands go over the course of an album. “Коли Пломінь Перетворюється на Попіл [When the Flame Turns to Ashes]” starts with a folky intro and then suddenly your face is being melted off by an awesome guitar solo. From there, it's the blackest of the black atmospheric exploration with the occasional ray of hope shining through. “Самітність [Solitude]” starts off sounding more like the soundtrack to an epic battle before entering more depressive territory, with Roman's vocals tearing angrily through. “Вічність [Eternity]” is a faster song. The opening riff and guitar solo kill, and then the vocals come in. This one has a really strange melody to it for black metal. Almost upbeat, but not quite. The last track, “Українська Повстанська Армія (Ukrainian Insurgent Army)” is a slower, but shorter song, clocking in at just over 5 minutes. It's really not the most interesting track on the album, but it's a fitting closer.
This comes as a highly recommended black metal classic. Check it out.
