Sleep & Helen Money Live at Portland's Roseland Theater
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For a band that hasn’t put out a new album this century, Sleep certainly draws a crowd. It’s no wonder, with their storied history and legendary status. The fact is, they’ve only dropped one new track in recent memory: The Clarity, via the Adult Swim singles program in 2014. They aren’t just another nostalgia act, with $50 posters and $30 t-shirts(literally). The individual members of Sleep each have well established and long running bands(High On Fire, Om, and Neurosis). Their near-constant work schedule makes them masters of their trade, but they still manage to get together as Sleep between ten and twenty times a year; and there is no shortage of devotees waiting to soak it in.
Said devotees bought out the seated upstairs of Portland’s Roseland Theater a month prior to the show on Saturday, October 22. The remaining tickets sold the week before. Helen Money was slated as the opening act. She brought a somewhat melancholy vibe to a crowd ready for heavy riffs and serious head banging. To anyone unfamiliar with the work of Alison Chesley, the artist that is Helen Money was an unusual choice for such a very specific crowd. Her creative use of the cello with some sparse accompanying percussion and piano tracks creates an intense and subdued atmosphere that is both somber and delicate, and at times visceral and severe.
After the set change, the solemnity of setting out 20 water bottles one at a time, and their traditional 15 minutes of moon landing recording, the arrival of Jason Roeder, the always shirtless Matt Pike, and Al Cisneros (all in red like a rajneesh mystic). As they lit into “Dragonaut,” the crowd commenced swaying and thrashing. This show pulled mostly from Holy Mountain with a chunk of Jerusalem/Dopesmoker at the end.
Sleep wasted little time with banter, in fact barely they communicated with each other except for occasional glances. It wasn’t business as usual, just very engaged. They appeared and sounded connected to what they were doing as if there was no time to waste on anything else. After 90 minutes elapsed all too quickly, they thanked everyone for coming and disappeared. No banter. No encore.
–Josh Nichols
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Upcoming Metal Releases: 7/19/20 — 7/25/20
Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of July 19th to July 25th, 2020. Releases reflect proposed North American scheduling, if available. Expect to see most of these albums on shelves or distros on Fridays. See something we missed or have any thoughts? Let us know in the comments. Plus, as always, feel free to post your own shopping lists. Happy digging. Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.
Surprise Releases + Things We Missed
Well of Night -- The Lower Plains of Self-Abstraction | Black Metal | United States (Ohio) Absolutely stoked to discover some new black metal from Dayton, Ohio, a place I called home for almost half a decade. Say what you want about the city -- all places come with good and bad -- but the DIY spirit is 100% alive there, something I can vouch personally. And here we are, with The Lower Plains of Self-Abstraction, which turns out to be supremely high-quality. Makes me happy for both reasons: ripping new tunes, and the sounds of a city I once knew.
-- Andrew Rothmund
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Seventh -- Vacarme | Black Metal | Canada Soaring atmo-black from Canada; you might already have the sound in mind, and you'd be close enough. Vacarme is just a step above its peers though, favoring slick songwriting and transitions that fragment the album's flow in exchange for a more concrete structure.-- Andrew Rothmund
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Aseitas -- False Peace | Translation Loss Records | Blackened Death Metal | United States (Oregon) Chaotic demon music from the necrosphere.-- Andrew Rothmund
Upcoming Releases
Defeated Sanity -- The Sanguinary Impetus | Willowtip | Technical Brutal Death Metal | Germany Death metal has always been about excess: excess in brutality, in musicianship, aggression, attitude… the list goes on. Defeated Sanity is that excess -- on all counts, even. I can't think of a more perfect post-Death example of what death metal should be: over-the-top, frightening, and incensing.
-- Jon Rosenthal
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Empress -- Premonition | Independent | Stoner Metal + Post Metal | Canada From Ted Nubel's premiere of "Hiraeth":Though each member of the band writes their own parts as they see fit, the end result feels animated and coherent: hard-nosed riffs nestle into the softer slopes of post-metal without seeming out of place. For any modern metal enthusiast who still pines for the roughshod stoner metal of the early century, "Hiraeth" may soothe your longing.
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Haken -- Virus | InsideOut Music | Progressive Metal | United Kingdom To say this is the most anticipated prog metal record of the year wouldn't do justice to it. For the past decade, Haken have been claiming the space that Dream Theater once held and Between the Buried and Me very nearly grabbed for themselves, becoming simply the preeminently prog metal band of the 21st century. Ignore what you may have heard about Virus regarding its status as a concept album; what matters here are the riffs, the songs, the hooks, the juxtaposition of neck-snapping heaviness and delightful left-brain proggy excursions, all of which it has in spades. Haken is a superlative band of the style, mandatory for anyone interested in the metallic wing of progressive music. Virus cements and underscores what was palpable even as far back as Aquarius and became pressingly obviously at the release of The Mountain: Haken is the very best prog metal band on the planet right now and not checking them out is only a disservice to yourself.-- Langdon Hickman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPziVgkIr7U...
Drops of Heart -- Stargazers | Independent | Melodic Death Metal | Russia From Ivan Belcic's premiere of "Escapist":The concept of “familiar but new” is not itself novel -- it’s a driving force in the culinary world and a significant factor behind the success of many chefs and concepts. As it turns out, it also works for melodic death metal. To embrace the comfortable, to envelop the intimate and known, and to revitalize it through fresh eyes is its own special vein of creativity, one which Drops of Heart fully embody on their second full-length Stargazers.
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Valkyrie -- Fear | Relapse Records | Heavy + Doom Metal | United States (Virginia) Valkyrie, despite coming into existence in the early 2000s, has always had the proto-metal vibe down pat, to the point where I often wonder if time travel was involved. Sometimes they riff with razor-sharp vigor, and sometimes they spiral off into expressive, lengthy leads -- either way, I find it hard to imagine listening to Fear without a goofy smile ending up on your face.-- Ted Nubel
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Buried Realm -- Embodiment of the Divine | Independent | Melodic Death Metal | United States (Colorado) From Andrew Rothmund's premiere of "Overlord":I'll be blunt: these songs go harder than most full bands can manage, and the licks are as downright compelling as some of the best tech-death bands out there. What sets Buried Realm apart, though, is the proggy infusion of both downright speed and complete instrumental dexterity all without any of the pretense that usually flows freely through these sorts of territories.
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Stonebirds -- Collapse and Fail | Ripple Music | Sludge + Post-Metal | France From Ted Nubel's fullalbum premiere earlier today:There's a powerful duality here: shaky breaths of post-metal slip between expulsions of antipathy. It's not always possible to separate the two modalities, and so you'll often find yourself in the strange position of feeling angry and sad at the same time as crushing sludge overlaps with gripping atmospherics. That's not a bad thing, though, and the interweaving of textures creates striking superpositions that make that a state worthy of returning to.Check out the album premiere here.
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Not So Grim: Three Underdog Coheed and Cambria Albums
Several days back, I resurrected the storied So Grim, So True, So Real format with Coheed and Cambria -- my absolute favorite band. In my look back through their discography, I identified their The Afterman double album as the grimmest. However, I realize that the concept of a least-amazing Coheed and Cambria record is a hotly contested area. And so I wanted to follow up by addressing three other records that other fans might instead posit as the band’s grimmest, and discussing why I don’t feel like any of them deserve that title.
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Year of the Black Rainbow (2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT_PfSa_1-Y Ardent fans who read my Coheed & Cambria edition of So Grim, So True, So Real are probably frothing at the mouth at my refusal to name Year of the Black Rainbow as the grim. It’s the canon black sheep in the group’s catalogue for three primary reasons: 1) Coheed and Cambria veered down a significantly different path in terms of their sound and songwriting style. 2) The production is markedly different from their other work, and not in a great way. 3) It’s one of two albums not to feature original (and now returned) drummer Josh Eppard (the other being Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow, with drumming written by Chris Pennie of The Dillinger Escape Plan and performed by Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins). Despite these issues, Year of the Black Rainbow hooked me immediately upon release, something I never experienced with the more well-loved No World for Tomorrow or the Afterman double album. But since the album is near-universally regarded by fans as the band’s worst, I wanted to avoid choosing it myself, both because I genuinely enjoy it and wanted to enforce a deeper dig. I’ll address the first criticism by acknowledging it and viewing it as a positive. I like the fury of this record. I like the directness with which it focuses this darker side of Coheed and Cambria’s songwriting, and I like its consistency in energy. Vocalist and guitarist Claudio Sanchez spits venom across the album, in both the downtempo surges of “The Broken,” “This Shattered Symphony,” and “Here We Are Juggernaut,” and in the stampedes of “Guns of Summer,” “World of Lines,” and “When Skeletons Live.” This is a cold and dark record, especially when juxtaposed with the relative lightheartedness of The Color Before the Sun and The Second Stage Turbine Blade. But it’s also the home of “Pearl of the Stars” -- one of the band’s gentlest, sweetest, and most melancholic songs across their entire career. Even in the midst of their rage, Coheed and Cambria retain the clarity of mind to find these precious moments of contemplative stillness. I can’t argue with the claim that the production on Year of the Black Rainbow is a weakness -- it’s true. The mix is blown out and crowded across the board, with overinflated low end, maxed-out drums, garbled guitar leads, and Sanchez’s overly reverb'd vocals. But production is only one facet of a record, and in light of the songwriting strengths found here, I can’t justify letting the mix alone sink the ship. Eppard’s absence is noticeable, and if you believe, as I do, that his drumming is an essential component of what makes Coheed and Cambria the band that they are, you’ll likely have some difficulty embracing this record. Chris Pennie brings his frenetic style to bear in full force, and in the record’s throes -- “Guns of Summer" and “In the Flame of Error” -- his playing is an ideal complement. At the same time, one of Eppard’s greatest strengths as a drummer is his ability to lay in a groove without overembellishing it. While Pennie is a phenomenal drummer, his performance here represents an alternate tack for the band. Eppard’s return on The Afterman is like slipping into a comfortable pair of sneakers after a day spent on your feet in rigid work boots or unforgiving dress shoes. His drumming just feels so right. Contrast this difference to that between original bassist Mic Todd, with Year of the Black Rainbow as his last record with Coheed and Cambria, and current bassist Zach Cooper, to observe how a replacement member can fit in and enhance a group’s sound without changing it outright. So why, in spite of all this, do I believe that Year of the Black Rainbow is good? Simply put, it’s packed with amazing songs, and these songs speak louder than any of the above perceived flaws....
The Color Before the Sun (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eklHJeB6mc Choosing The Color Before the Sun as the grimmest would be a lazy way out because it's the sole album that strays from the Amory Wars saga. It’d be easy to isolate that album, already an outlier, as the weakest in the band’s catalogue -- but to overlook The Color Before the Sun for its lyrical focus is to hand-wave Coheed and Cambria at their sweetest and most cleverly syrupy, as with The Afterman: Descension’s closer “2’s My Favorite 1.” From the opening choral bombast of “Island” to the cynically bubbly vitriol of “You’ve Got Spirit, Kid,” The Color Before the Sun holds some of Coheed and Cambria’s catchiest and most efficient power-pop compositions. Penultimate track “The Audience” convincingly and admirably holds its own against, though by no means exceeding, the group’s heavier work in “Welcome Home,” “No World for Tomorrow,” or “Gravity’s Union.” And with genuine odes to Sanchez’s son (“Atlas”), his wife and frequent creative partner Chondra Echert (“Here to Mars”), and even his old family home (“Young Love”), the album provides a construct-free glimpse into the artist behind the characters who occupy the rest of his creative output. The Color Before the Sun is a finely honed, deftly edited, and highly concentrated dosage of "Pop Coheed," showcasing this one side of the band as a multifaceted and complex medium unto itself. And it’s the album’s consistent quality in its compactness -- it’s arguably their tightest record overall -- that precludes it from consideration as the most grim of all the band's albums....
Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3zm1_JSPOQ As the newest album, Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures could be a tempting choice for their grimmest. It’s easy to let nostalgia for a band’s earlier work color your perception of it as you hold newer albums against a much stricter set of standards. I’d give their latest effort a bye here due to its newness alone, so as to force myself to grapple deeper with the band’s oeuvre, but Coheed and Cambria’s latest escapes nomination on its own merits. After the (fantastic) departure that was The Color Before the Sun, fans wanted nothing more than a return to the sprawling epics the band is known for with a renewed dive into their Amory Wars mythos, and with Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures, Coheed and Cambria met these demands. Album hallmark “The Dark Sentencer” is a brilliant return to form, kicking off with an energizing chant before unfolding into the heft that had begun to shape some of the band's songs beginning on their third record Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, but not quite becoming a full component of their arsenal until Year of the Black Rainbow. Meanwhile, “Toys” and “Old Flames” see Coheed and Cambria reaching to the unbridled joyousness of “Island,” pouring on a heaping serving of prog, and incorporating the sound into their ongoing lyrical narrative. “True Ugly” is a venomous rampage that erupts out of nowhere into a trademark soaring chorus, while “Love Protocol” and “The Gutter” take that latter sensibility and flesh it out into entire songs on its own. While there are a handful of valleys across the album, the ratio of greatness to dull zones is highly skewed in favor of the former, placing Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures far from consideration as a career low. Perhaps most exciting is the inclusion of the marker “Act I” in the album’s title, hinting at much more in this renewed vein to come.Support Invisible Oranges on Patreon and check out our merch.
Cardiacs’ Influence Discussed + Covered by Napalm Death, Porcupine Tree, Voivod
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Today came the devastating news that Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith passed away at age 59 following years battling a serious health condition that was "complex and poorly understood." Cardiacs influenced so many bands, including Faith No More, Tool, Porcupine Tree, Voivod, and Napalm Death. Napalm Death released a cover of Cardiacs' "To Go Off and Things" on a 2014 split with Melvins, and in 2018 bassist Shane Embury said, "The band Cardiacs Have been one of my favourite bands of all time and their mind bending song structures an influence I have interpreted in my own way sometimes when composing my own songs." Shane also added, "The man behind cardiacs Tim Smith is in my opinion a musical genius." Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson also covered a Cardiacs song, "Stoneage Dinoaurs," for the 2010 tribute album Leader of the Starry Skies: A Tribute to Tim Smith, Songbook 1. That same year, Steven spoke to the BBC about Cardiacs:I think anybody who likes Cardiacs, they tend to be quite evangelistic about them for obvious reasons . They're not a band you can be on the fence about. When you meet someone who likes them they do tend to be very evangelistic as I am now. I count myself as one of those people. I left school and I went to work in a computer company. I was in my late teens. I made friends with a chap who was a huge Cardiacs fan and he gave me some cassettes because that's all they had out at that time - we're talking mid to late 80s here, I'm still very young - and I grew up really loving progressive rock. I wasn't very interested in punk music or hardcore music so I was initially sceptical but I did listen to the music and I was blown away because it had all the things I liked about the music I had grown up with, you know - great musicianship, complex compositions, very literate music, kind of semi-surreal lyrics. But it had this energy that I recognised from punk and hardcore music so it kind of was kind of like a bridge for me to that kind of music for the first time. [...] I think most people tend to come up with the same kind of description and they kind of call it pop prog/punk or punk progressive. There's also a very quintessentially English quality about the music that you can almost relate back to bands like Madness, that almost Music Hall tradition and that's kind of tied up in there too. It's a very bizarre combination that I think can only have come out of England. If you had to boil it down, it's a fusion of the energy of punk music with the complexity and musical sophistication of progressive rock.On the difficult task of covering Cardiacs' music, Steven added, "I think in a way it's easy to love the music but it's much harder to imitate and I think that's why perhaps the legacy of Cardiacs isn't as strong as it otherwise might be simply because it's very, very hard to imitate music of such sophistication and complexity. It's genius." Read the rest of Steven Wilson's BBC interview here. In 2018, Voivod's Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain said to Kerrang, "I discovered Cardiacs a few years back through a friend in London. I was blown away by the uniqueness of their sound, composition and vibe. I always appreciate music that surprises me and with Cardiacs I was served with that for sure. [...] Also, Shane from Napalm Death is a big fan and friend of Tim. We talked a lot about Cardiacs when we toured together a few years back." Chewy released a guitar cover of Cardiacs' "Jibber And Twitch" earlier this year. Travis of False spoke to Echoes and Dust about Cardiacs in 2019:
was first introduced to Cardiacs through a good friend after playing together in a Devo cover band. He described them as a more musically intense Devo with more prog influence, so I had to check them out. After watching their music video for ‘R.E.S.’ (1984) and a live shed performance of ‘As Cold as Can Be in an English Sea’ (2007), I immediately realised this band was the real deal. They aren’t easy to listen to and aren’t for everybody, but once I digested more of these intensely entertaining songs on YouTube I had to dive in to their studio albums. England’s Cardiacs put out 9 studio albums, all on their own record label “Alphabet Business Concern”, and A Little Man and a House… (1988) drew me in instantly. The musicality in this album is completely over the top, weird time signature phrases played effortlessly and effectively, never sounding out of place or forced, riffs that speed up and slow down, anxious chord progressions that seem to never end (‘The Breakfast Line’ from 2:21 to the end of the track, as an example), just non-stop unbelievable musicianship and songwriting throughout. I personally have used hemiolas many times in my drum parts, something I first noticed in Cardiacs. 6 members all playing highly organised parts that through repeated listens leads you to discover things within each individual performance that you missed the first 10 times. A total Dadaist album. I could go on and on about this record, and I encourage anyone that enjoys difficult music to check out Cardiacs. Start from the beginning and take it all in. Also they were consistently critically panned by critics and hated by many, so you know they did something right.Listen to the Napalm Death, Steven Wilson, and Chewy covers below...
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https://youtu.be/jNwC9FP2sEg https://youtu.be/6ORaJVXDop8Support Invisible Oranges on Patreon and check out our merch.
Haken’s Prog Metal “Virus” Usurps Your Mind (Album Review)
The year 2020 has been a gluttony of riches for prog metal fans. When I say prog metal, I don't mean the ever-burgeoning worlds in each subgenre of metal that have been more and more openly embracing prog rock and experimentalism over the past 15 years or so; instead, I mean prog metal: Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Queensryche, Pain of Salvation, the real shit. And last year was in no shortage of heavy hitters: from reigning legends Opeth, Devin Townsend, and the aforementioned Dream Theater to returning greats like Arch/Matheos to contemporaries Leprous, Wilderun, and Cult of Luna. But 2020's game has been strong so far. Caligula's Horse have produced their strongest record yet, as have the returning Green Carnation which was an incredibly pleasant surprise. Ihsahn is about to drop his second EP of the year, this one explicitly tilted toward prog compared to Telemark's implicit prog. Katatonia reconfigured what once was going to be a Jonas Renske solo album into yet another strong offering in their unimpeachable run as a more straight forward prog rock/metal act. Protest the Hero, Hällas, and Thought Factory have each produced impeccable showings of the genre, and The Ocean have a new one on the way. Haken is easily the most exciting of all of these offerings, though, and the reason is simple and superlative: for the past decade, Haken has been the best prog metal band on the planet.
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https://youtu.be/4EmbYo65Pbs...
Haken has been a widely acclaimed band in the genre since their debut Aquarius was released in 2010. That was a momentous year for prog metal: Dream Theater, the absolute and undisputed titans of the genre, had just lost founding member Mike Portnoy as drummer and would begin the long, slow process of rediscovery that seemed to only fully erupt with their most recent studio record. Devin Townsend was finishing up his Devin Townsend Project four-album cycle and was indicating at the time that he intended, albeit only briefly, to step away after. Between the Buried and Me, a band which to many was the heir apparent to Dream Theater, had just released The Great Misdirect, an album that would both be the platform for the future of the band as much as it initially confounded some who wished that the trajectory of their career would remain unaltered. And seemingly out of the blue arose a British band fusing elements of Opeth's moody and death metal-graced approach to prog with similar young upstarts Periphery's post-Meshuggah take on the genre, all alloyed against a deliberate base built from the type of prog metal Dream Theater had developed into a veritable genre field. Over the next decade, Haken would release five studio albums and a 40-minute EP consisting of rearranged and re-recorded songs from that first self-released demo album. Each record was met with rapturous response from the prog metal world, and for good reason: finally, a band had arrived that was delivering both the kind and quality of progressive metal Dream Theater was dishing out with ease in the late 1990s and early 2000s, updated with all the modern tricks and play styles that had been developed since (but without sacrificing that core aesthetic). Mike Portnoy must have noticed their exceptional quality as well, because when he finally set out to tour a setlist comprised of the finished 60-minute epic suite based on the 12 steps, it was Haken that he called upon. To say their sixth album Virus, releasing Friday, has a lot to live up to would be a drastic understatement. Like Dream Theater before them, they run the risk of having built an esteem too great to ever possibly live up to....
https://youtu.be/2Rkx6b5vFdQ...
But, thankfully, mercifully, Virus is not the record where Haken cracks. Instead, it follows the arc that Haken has been traveling since The Mountain, stripping their admittedly only ever brief usage of harsh vocals to further foreground their world-class vocalist while simultaneously making the music consistently heavier and more metallic. The album opens with the punishing prog metal tune "Prosthetic" -- the main riff pummels with a tight syncopated chug that feels head-spinning without sacrificing a direct and potent 4/4 groove. And even when the song decides to start throwing odd time signatures your way, Haken maintains a sheer percussive force that emphasizes groove over trying to impress you with tricky time changes. It is not a sign of unoriginality that I get whiffs of the proggier post-metal of Cult of Luna, especially their material from Vertikal onward, or of the post-djent doom metal of Obscure Sphinx. Instead, the fact that they are able to fit those textures and aesthetic approaches within the broader framework of prog metal feels a fulfillment of one of the most enticing elements of the genre as an enterprise. In fact, it is precisely because these elements seem at times like deliberate nods but are so impeccably deployed that makes Haken as a band so wonderful -- and also why so many superlatives are often thrown their way. We've all heard even acclaimed prog metal bands occasionally fall flat on their face when their ambitions and interests exceed either their songwriting acumen or their patience in making sure those ideas really work well together. This is never the case with Haken; it consistently feels refreshing and exciting when they wink and nod at other groups, be they heavy metal, prog, or electronica flourishes. So when "Carousel" flits between anthemic alt-rock, passages that are reminiscent of "Home" by Dream Theater, burbling electronic breaks and Tool riffs, it comes across less like a band that doesn't know who they are and more like a band that is endlessly capable of synthesizing anything and everything under the sun into what they do. The entire two-disc concept functions as a large-scale nod to their own work, a double-disc concept arc built off of a single song from a previous record. For Haken, that expansion is of "Cockroach King," the magnum opus track from 2013's The Mountain and what might be the best prog metal track of the 2010s -- producing material that feels like a satisfactory expansion of ideas inside of it can come at a fine compromise to any listener. The focus on Virus isn't on blowing your hair all the way back with brief and mind-boggling passages anyway. Haken have matured not just as songwriters but as composers of album-length spans of music, retaining a much keener sense of pacing and the emotional and mental taxation long spans of difficult music can produce. It helps as well that their execution of hooks both melodic and rhythmic is simply stronger now, able to consistently grab a hold of you even as they maneuver through dizzying stretches. Like all great concept albums, Virus is less concerned with the specific story than it is using that story as both a skeleton to structure the pacing and arrangements of the tracks within it. Like most prog metal concept records, it may be hard to follow the precise story without liner notes and reference materials in hand, something the genre is sometimes criticized for. But it's important to remember that this is less the intention of the record than to be sonically catching, to get stuck in your head, to compel you to press play on it like a rabid animal the second the rush has faded following the close of the final track. On that mark, Virus is a tremendous success. It is now the sixth release in a row from Haken that lives easily among their most esteemed peers. It is impossible to imagine a fan of progressive metal not loving this album; further, it is impossible not to recommend any fan of heavy metal music to give Virus (and, more broadly, Haken) their time, even if they find it maybe isn't ultimately to taste. That's because Haken has simply become one of those bands, one that you need to know and be familiar, a fact this album underlines....
Virus releases Friday, July 24th via Inside Out Music. https://youtu.be/KJQy1Waj_cYIngested + Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein Team Up on “Another Breath” (Listen)
UK death metallers Ingested are releasing their new album Where Only Gods May Tread on August 14th via Unique Leader Records, and new single "Another Breath" features sludge metal legend Kirk Windstein (of Crowbar and Down, and a solo artist), and Kirk adds a gravelly melodic side to Ingested's otherwise totally brutal sound. The song comes with a 1990s-inspired claymation video made by Shayne Minott. "The director for this video was Shayne Minott at Budget Blood Productions. Seeing his style the idea was to do this all out 1990s throwback, dark claymation video. Just like the ones that used to play on music TV when we were teenagers," guitarist Sam Yates said. And as for how the collab with Kirk came about...
In 2018 we opened a fantastic tour in the UK with Crowbar and they were all such down to earth great dudes. Super tight, crazy heavy and had the best stories! Kirk and his wife Robin were so genuine and cool and all of Crowbar would hang with us and shoot the shit most nights. I was on public transport in the piss down rain writing lyrics for Where Only Gods May Tread and I wanted the opening of what became ‘Another Breath’ to be this epic, heavy, sad song by someone who could actually sing. My first instinct, my first choice for this song was Kirk. It was that “I wonder if…” moment. [Crowbar bassist] Shane [Wesley] took time out of recording with Crowbar to engineer the guest spot himself, and Kirk brought the all-time goods. It was exactly what I had in my mind and he smashed it in record time like an absolute professional. It’s my favourite song from the record; Kirk is truly one of the most slept on metal greats and he was and always will be “The Man”.Watch/listen:
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https://youtu.be/AfjIgxgwC8cSupport Invisible Oranges on Patreon and check out our merch.
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