Last updated on 10 July 2020
Howdy Fans and Friends!
It is (already) time again for an update on what has been cooking at RockmusicRaider since Tome III. And there has been a lot of action, I can tell ya.Â
It looks like Tome IV shows less influence of Black Metal and everything blackened. Even if this particular genre has whelped a few very good specimens worth mentioning. And I expect this to continue for the remainder of the year. But enough of this and let’s get down to what we got.
But first we take to the sea. The wild, cold sea. Rain drenched shores, ready to be invaded. Proud dragon-headed longships crawling with crazed, screaming
Then we moved and actually stayed in Italy for a while. Fleshgod Apocalypse gave their corpse-like and – for sure – Machiavellian appearance for our pleasure with King. I almost heard Lucrezia traipsing around in the background, when listening to their tune. And it is a mighty cauldron of stuff being thrown at us. So much so, that it almost veers off into the unmanageable. But they just about strung this together, managing to get a very complex, but also very decent record out to the fan crowd. The album is pretty hefty fare and you will need some time to get used to it. But – hey – this is really good stuff. You should try it one day.
Moving East towards Slovenia and still in Italy, the surprise of the year happened
Finally the much awaited new record Nemesea advertised for quite a while reached our shores. But did Uprise really deliver what the name promised? Well not quite. If you look for a revolution, you ain’t gonna get it. If anything, they display a more mature style in the way the tracks are delivered and a lot of the credit for that goes to Manda Ophuis. The album is perhaps a tad over-commercialized and pointed towards the mean mainstream, using bite-size lengths for their tracks. But by and large, their delivery is more pensive with much more substance. And it seems that their path to fame is not rooted in metal. I guess it never was neither, if I am to judge by the about-face they did between Mana and In Control. The record is nevertheless a fascinating piece of music, and a band to be watched.
The fairy land caught up with me, when meeting Antyra and their record
Lacuna Coil is back too. With their new record Delirium. And it is deliriously refreshing to see them work on their oomph some and deliver something much
Black nights haunt Tome IV starting with a bunch of youngsters from the States.
Back to the dark side of Italy. Dark side? One would not think so, but there are demons dwelling there. Darkend just issued a disturbing piece of Black Metal to us. The Canticle of Shadows gets us this Congressus Cum Daemone that one would expect from such a Black Metal outfit. The record has this tendency to get your adrenaline level up a few points. You can just sail along on their meaty riffs, hooks and shreds letting you be taken down to Hel to meet your very own daemon. And these are very powerful black waves you will be surfing on. If only they would not have hit this wall of bricks too much. The rating would have been so much better. Nevertheless, a 7/10 is still laudable.
The next album is haunted by geographical confusion. More Atmospheric Black
Beer, we want beer!! No, this is not Alestorm. Panychida hit us with this stellar Pagan Metal opus called Haereticalia – The Night Battles. The band hails from the Czech Republic, and this heavenly brew can be found there. But in truth it is not beer that we crave on this one, but metal. And a blackened brand of Pagan Metal it is that this band is delivering with a vengeance. Together with a rock solid theme album that really stands out. Good story telling and crunchy metal tunes that work well. With a beer in the evening watching the green valleys and mountains in front of you. Crookedly stellar. Good stuff.
And this gets us to the end of Tome IV. More to come later in the year. Stay tuned. Â