Serpent Column - Katarsis

It seems a sad but certain fate for many bands – to start out incredibly daring, pointing a middle finger at everything but your own artistic vision…only to morph into a major-label production line of sub-par ‘accessible’ releases every 2 years (*cough - Mastodon - cough*).

So hearing a band buck this trend by pursuing more accessible directions while improving the quality of their music is truly special.

Well here we are with Serpent Column, the one-man project that just won’t quit. With 4 albums since 2019, this band has become a little more ear-friendly and - wait for it - better with each release.

It’s still a nasty mess that sits somewhere in the murkier regions of black metal. But now there’s something approach melody, rhythm and structure in a way previous releases largely eschewed in favour of (*does invisible orange hands*) pure fucking chaos.

Trhä - lhum jolhduc

What even is this? It’s lo fi. It’s weird. It’s in a BM subgenre all to itself.

I know nothing about this band, and they probably prefer it that way. Plus I think they’re one of those acts that make up their own language to write lyrics. (Don’t quote me on that. It’s been a long year.)

Anyway, the music. It sounds like a precarious dive into the strange, beautiful and obscene memories locked away in our subconsciousness. Those memories that form us into the messed-up, grown-up human beings we all become in one way or another.

It’s the dusting off of an old diary. The half legible scrawl of handwriting on decades-old paper. The forgotten words that turn to a fever dream as the past is summoned once more.

That’s what I get from it. You might just like the pretty melodies Trhä kick out occasionally.

Tribulation - Where The Gloom Becomes Sound

These guys used to be one of my favourite death metal bands. And The Formulas of Death is still one of the most exciting, interesting and important DM albums of the last decade, in my opinion.

Then they stopped doing death metal and now they’re my favourite “whatever that metal-ly goth-y thing they do is” band.

Yeah, they’re pretty big these days. And yeah, I didn’t include Carcass’s new release on this list for that exact reason. But hey, it’s my list and I’m the petty despot who says what goes.

Anyway, Tribulation rule. And they’re still making great music even after getting pretty big and softening their sound (*insert second snarky Mastodon reference here*). Listen to it.

Рожь - Вечное

If you can’t read Cyrillic that’s fine. Google tells me Рожь translates to “Rye” and the album title to “Eternal.”

Cool.

And along with Skepticism, this is the best doom-y release I’ve heard this year (I couldn’t be bothered to write an entry for Skepticism’s Companion, but it’s pretty awesome, check it out).

The music, much like the album artwork, paints the canvas black with gloomy swathes of atmosphere, as islands of colour juxtapose on the darkness and bring it to life.

The tone is sombre, awash with aural greys and browns. But the rich production, the undercurrent of melody, and the band’s propensity to switch into black metal mode keep it engaging through each of the songs’ extended runtimes.

Diskord - Degenerations

I don’t trust death metal 3-pieces. Think you’re a punk band or something, bro?

Yet here we are with a Norwegian death metal 3-piece band making my DM album of the year.

Was it the best DM album? Probably not. Carcass did release an album, after all. But this was the most distinctive, adventurous, and interesting death metal album to grace my ears in 2021.

(Note to self: insert some crap about “Voivod having a baby with Virus” here to describe the Рожь sound.)

Yes, I like my DM flowing, pummeling and groovy. Degenerations is none of this.

No, I don’t much like my DM fast or ‘skronky’. And Degenerations has plenty of this.

But it’s sheer originality and inventiveness carry me through all 41 weird minutes of it.

Eternal Sword - The Cursed Land

The third lo-fi entry on my list and maybe my favourite. The Bandcamp album page has a George RR Martin quote in place of a description, and oh does it set the tone for the music.

Clouded skies. Rain falling. Boots marching. Heavy breathing. Armour clinking. Fear brewing.

Then…orders barked. Arrows loosed. Weapons drawn. Pain-addled screams. Blood-choked last breaths.

War isn’t glorious. Even in that shitty video game you’re always playing. But hey - it inspires some great music.

This is bedroom black metal of the highest order. Epic yet grounded. Ethereal, yet almost tactile. Eternal Sword.

Boss Keloid - Family The Smiling Thrush

One of the world’s leading lights in doom-based music lightened up their sound for this very welcome addition to 2021.

By taking their foot off the fuzz pedal and putting it on the, uh, time-signature-and-melody pedal, BK put a bigger focus on the elements that made them stand out from the crowd in the first place.

Not gonna lie, a lot of listeners will find this a turn off, and I can’t even call the band’s sound doom-adjacent anymore. But hey, I dig that they manage to sound like a cross between Mellon Collie-era Pumpkins and King Crimson without the pretentiousness of either.

For the sake of full disclosure I should probably point out these guys are friends of ours. But for the sake of your musical education you should ignore that and buy this album.

Oh and a t-shirt, too.

Atvm - Famine, Putrid and Fucking Endless

Truth bomb, this is my favourite album of the year.

Read all the other reviews if you want to hear about their blend of prog and death and tech-iness. All I’ll say is that, to my ears, this feels like the closest thing to Unquestionable Presence since…Unquestionable Presence.

It sure doesn’t sound the same. But that agility, melody, adventurousness and desire to place musicality over cheap “heaviness” is what really connects it to Atheist’s landmark album.

Probably the best album of the decade so far.

Jacob Mazlum fronts UK sludge powerhouse Kurokuma and is aa longtime contributor to Doomed & Stoned. Read more of his reviews here.

Since the new album by TRIBULATION dropped last month, I’ve quite honestly had a hard time going a single day without listening to it at least once. ‘Down Below’ (2018 - Century Media Records) is gritty, emotional, sleek, and packed with frostbitten riffs. I mean, the musicianship on this album is immense.

Tribulation has had a pretty interesting career. The Swedes emerged from a pretty thick scene of heavy metal bands, similar to bands like In Solitude or Ghost, though Tribulation began as a more barebones death metal band with elements of thrash and melody reminiscent of what you could maybe find in an Amon Amarth record or melodic death metal band from that region.

It was a cold, rainy, dank afternoon that quickly became night in Seattle in February, I had driven from Gig Harbor where I was living on a goat farm to try to find a ticket outside the venue for a sold-out Cannibal Corpse show, with Behemoth as direct support, who was touring on The Satanist LP at the time. I wanted to find a ticket so badly I must have got to the venue at three o'clock in the afternoon. Sheesh. Well, also on that tour was Aeon, who I’d seen before, and a new band I’d never heard of: Tribulation. The week leading up to this show I was probably going to miss out on, I tried to check them out. The Children of the Night had not even been released yet and I think the only song I heard before then was “Holy Libations,” which I thought was solid.

Fast forward a year-and-a-half and I am seeing Tribulation put on all-consuming performance poolside at Psycho Las Vegas 2016. Still blissfully unaware and unfamiliar with the group, I was blown away, and afterwards picked up a copy of Children of the Night and wore it out pretty good in my car.

Listening to Down Below a few songs sound very familiar and I feel like maybe one or two songs were played in Vegas. Or maybe these guys have nailed their vibe down that well. Down Below expands on the goth/prog/death metal sound tribulation set in “Children of the Night,” but maybe adds a little influence from European power metal and even John Carpenter, as far as song structure goes. Aesthetically, listening to this album feels like I’m sitting in my living room in 1800’s gentleman attire reading some Mary Shelley while wearing corpse paint and drinking a blood red wine.

Tribulation undermines the overbearing machismo in heavy metal by adding feminine elements to not only their appearance, but song writing and art direction, as well – femininity in an ethereal sense. There are many tracks from the band depicting supernaturally powerful women who are total bad-asses. Like “Lady Death,” a track in the middle of an album about what happens to people after they die, written by four men. It’s refreshing that their god of death is a woman. Other tracks from Tribulation, “Rånda” and “The Motherhood of God,” also flip the story to subvert metal’s history of sexist tropes. When women appear in Tribulation, they are the ones doing the dominating.

The nuances these Swedes have created in the corners of this hellscape will doubtless cause this record to grow on you. Through first listen, I thought it was good. Second listen, I thought it was great. And with the third listen, I was convinced I’d have a hard time finding a metal track that I like more than track two, “Nightbound.” That song rips and tears; it’s beautiful.

As I write, there are still some basic black vinyl and a few color variants available in their web shop. Fuckers on Discogs are already flipping those for more than what they cost to get directly from the band. I’m grabbing one, because I think this one will be on my Heavy Best at the end of this year.