NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL To Celebrate 15th Anniversary 2013 Installment Of Iconic Fest Confirmed

MassConcerts proudly presents the first details for NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL 2013, today confirming the dates and preliminary list of bands for this year’s occurrence of the long-running annual event.

For the 2013 installment, the NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL will once again overthrow the historic venue, The Palladium, in Worcester, Massachusetts, this year marking the 15th anniversary of the iconic weekend-long gathering! The festivities will commence with a pre-party on April 18th, 2013 and the three official days of the fest following on the 19th, 20th, and 21st.

Commented the festival’s founder Scott Lee of MassConcerts: “I am excited with how far we have come and am ecstatic for this to be on our 15th year! It has been a long, interesting journey. We always try to make it a memorable event and we really hope you all enjoy the festival this year.”

With more than forty acts from all realms of the extreme music world already set to storm the two stages of NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL XV -- and with many more to be announced in the coming weeks -- the confirmed headliners for the event will include Hatebreed, Opeth and Suicidal Tendencies, as well as legendary thrash titans Anthrax performing their Among The Living album in its entirety, as part of their headlining spot on the Metal Alliance Tour.


View the full list of bands set to confirm this year below. Tickets for the event will go on sale next Wednesday, January 16th.


NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL XV:

Anthrax

Hatebreed

Opeth

Suicidal Tendencies

After The Burial

Alpha & Omega

Antagonist AD

Ark Of The Covenant

Black Breath

Born Of Osiris

The Contortionist

Dead By Wednesday

Death Before Dishonor

Ensiferum

Erra

Exodus

Expire

Fit For An Autopsy

Heidevolk

Hellsot

Holy Grail

I Declare War

Incendiary

Katatonia

Legion

The Mongoloids

Mother Of Mercy

Municipal Waste

No Mercy

Power Trip

Rude Awakening

Saving Grace

Shadows Fall

Suburban Scum

Those Who Fear

Trap Them

Trollfest

Twitching Tongues

Tyr

Within The Ruins

Xibalba



Since 1999, the NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL has showcased a vast array of metal and hardcore acts across two stages, while also providing merchandising and promotional areas for record labels and other vendors, at Worcester, Massachusetts’ massive venue The Palladium.

Stay tuned for a torrent of continuous updates and coverage opportunities for the NEW ENGLAND METAL & HARDCORE FESTIVAL are made available via Earsplit PR, an official sponsor of this year’s event.

https://www.facebook.com/metalandhardcorefest

http://metalandhardcorefestival.com

https://twitter.com/moshfest

http://www.massconcerts.com

Katatonia to support Opeth on "North American Heritage Tour 2013"

 

Sweden's ultimate dark rock/metal band, Katatonia, has announced an extensive North American tour with headliner and fellow Swedish elite, Opeth. The upcoming run, "North American Heritage Tour 2013," will conquer over 30 cities this spring beginning April 18 in Buffalo, N.Y.

Commented guitarist, Anders Nyström, "Back in the U.S.A...That's right Springsteen! We're looking at round #2 as special guests to our brothers in Opeth on their last North American leg of the Heritage World Tour. This time we'll mainly cover off-territories, so regardless if you caught or missed us last time, consider this a second chance to attend the dead ends of North America with one of the best bills there'll ever be!"


The tour will make two special stops, the first in Worcester, Mass. on April 20 where the band returns to play the New England Metal & Hardcore Festival, then in Clifton Park, N.Y. on April 28 where acclaimed Porcupine Tree front-man Steven Wilson will join for the night. A full list of confirmed dates can be seen below.

Katatonia last toured North America in September 2012 as part of the co-headlining "Epic Kings & Idols Tour" with The Devin Townsend Project.

Dead End Kings, Katatonia's ninth studio album and the follow-up to 2009's critically acclaimed, Night is the New Day, hit stores on August 28, 2012 via Peaceville Records.

The record debuted at #4 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #138 on the Billboard Top 200 and #10 on Hard Rock, topping Night is the New Day first week sales in the U.S. and making it Katatonia's most successful U.S. debut in its 20-year career.

Stay tuned to the Dead End Kings mini-site: http://www.deadendkings.com for more information on Katatonia, Dead End Kings and "North American Heritage Tour 2013."


Katatonia on tour w/ Opeth...

4/18 - Buffalo, NY @ The Town Ballroom
4/20 - Worcester, MA @ New England Metal & Hardcore Fest
4/21 - Quebec City, QC @ Capitole
4/23 - Halifax, NS @ Halifax Forum
4/24 - Moncton, NB @ Casino New Brunswick
4/26 - Guelph, ON @ Guelph Concert Theatre
4/27 - Allentown, PA @ Crocodile Rock
4/28 - Clifton Park, NY @ Upstate Concert Hall *w/ Steven Wilson
4/29 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
4/30 - Norfolk, VA @ NorVa Theatre
5/02 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room
5/03 - St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theatre                
5/04 - Athens, GA @ Georgia Theatre
5/05 - Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre
5/06 - Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
5/08 - Lexington, KY @ Buster's Billiards & Backroom
5/09 - Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue
5/10 - Flint, MI @ The Machine Shop
5/11 - Joliet, IL @ Mojoe's
5/12 - Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
5/14 - Fargo, ND @ The Venue
5/15 - Des Moines, IA @ Wooly's
5/16 - Sauget, IL @ Pop's
5/17 - Lincoln, NE @ Bourbon Theatre
5/18 - Tulsa, OK @ Cain's Ballroom
5/20 - Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre
5/21 - Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre
5/23 - Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre

5/24 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy
5/25 - Agoura Hills, CA @ The Canyon Club
5/26 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst


Katatonia is...

Jonas Renske - vocals
Anders Nyström - guitar, backing vocals
Daniel Liljekvist - drums
Per Eriksson - guitar
Niklas Sandin - bass


Katatonia online...

www.katatonia.com
www.deadendkings.com
www.facebook.com/katatonia
www.myspace.com/katatonia
www.peaceville.com
www.omerch.com     
www.northernmusic.co.uk

 

Opeth - Heritage

Polarizing. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think back on my initial spinning of the new Opeth magnus opus, Heritage. Sure, the die-hards will love it because it’s Opeth, and Mike Akerfeldt could fart and they would feel that it was as if the angels of Heaven were singing enlightenment. Those other Opeth fans who expect every album to sound like the same guttural belches from the album before will loathe the very existence of it. Of course, they also loathed everything after My Arms, Your Hearse because of the clean vocal thing that started creeping its way into the gloom, and probably jumped ship a long time ago. Anyway . . .

Being the Opeth fan, the music fan, that I am, I naturally had to bust out and pick up the deluxe collectors box set of Heritage because . . . if a band is going to put that much effort into the packaging, the least I could do is pick up a copy and bask in the physical splendor of the whole thing. Y’know, embrace the nostalgic youth within and lie back on my floor, paging through the booklet that captures the band laboring away in the studio, letting my eyes dance across the lyrics, reading the liner notes to every song, immersing myself so deep into this thing that I can practically smell the dust and must and the electric tension of the studio as if I were actually there. All the while, the music is fluttering away in the background and becoming the soundtrack for this day and many more after.

When Racer asked me about the album, my first description of it was this: A mixture of Camel and Rainbow, as if being played by Miles Davis. Heritage is a prog-nauts wet dream, and the rock aspects, though farther and fewer between than past outings, still rock harder than most. But the element that caught most by surprise was the jazzy elements of it. Full on fusion-y jazz passages weaving their way through the razor sharp rock guitars and airy progressive movements, and that’s where I’ll say that this album is brilliant. By constantly evolving the sound to something that becomes completely unexpected, Opeth make themselves relevant for today, tomorrow, and well into the future, constantly redefining themselves to satisfy their muse, not the public perception.

Normally, at this point, I would break down my favorite songs from the album, point out the highlights, explain how they moved me, etc. But, in the case of Heritage, I could do that for about five thousand words and there’s really no point. In truth, there are times when it’s flat out difficult to tell if a new song is playing if you’re not watching the LP spinning along (and even that can be difficult because of the ebb and flow of the grooves). So, know this . . . every song has rocking elements with the exception of the title track and the album closer, “Marrow of the Earth”. Both songs are beautiful instrumentals that have great neo-classical and folks elements to them.

The rest of the album is made up of eight tracks (CD and normal LP version) that never exceed nine minutes, with most hovering around the five – six minute mark. And that may be the most fascinating aspect about the songwriting on this one. Heritage is made up of shorter songs, but possibly more complex songs than Opeth’s typical ten to thirteen minute epics. The mellow portions range from the psychedelic to ambient jazz to acoustic folk, the rockin’ portions are heavy in a 70’s metal kind of way . . . distorted guitars with a lot of fuzz, not that razor sharp crunch that we’ve grown accustomed to with the band past outings. The synthesizers throughout the album add a ton of weight that may have disappeared with the lack of guitar crunch, and I mean, these things are Jon Lord heavy. At times, it’s as if Mikael Akerfeldt went to his Deep Purple and Rainbow collections and channeled some of that energy into his writing of Heritage, particularly on the song “Slither”, which was lovingly dedicated to the late, great Ronnie James Dio.

I will say this, of the ten songs on the album, “Haxprocess” and “Folklore” are my personal favorites. They are grand and epic journeys that leave me intoxicated by the instrumental phrasing and the musical flourishes. They’re complex and grandiose tracks, but there’s a more organic, more primal element to these songs (as well as the aforementioned “Slither”) than appeals to me the most. I would have to say it’s the combination of the intricate and the primal passages that make these songs the most intriguing. Epic.

Then, of course, there’s also the two unreleased tracks that came with the collector’s edition box set. “Pyre” and “Face in the Snow” are outstanding, 70’s inspired rock tracks that are much more straight forward than the rest of the material on Heritage, but too good to not be included. I like the way they included them as a part of the package, but not necessarily as part of the album. Solid stuff.

Is this my favorite Opeth album? Far from it. Is it their most ambitious album? At this point, yes. Heritage is to Opeth as Bitches Brew was to Miles Davis. Ground breaking. Avant garde. Unorthodox. Genre bending. Redefining. And like Bitches Brew, it’s damn good. Excellent. Mind bogglingly amazing. Can I listen to it at any given point in the day? Unlikely. The concentration level would be too great. The music is far too complex to simply have in the background because it would beg for attention with every measure or tempo change. And if you were to try and concentrate on it throughout the day, you’d never get anything else done. Do I love it? In short, yes. The songwriting is amazing and the performances are exotic, captivating escapades in sonic exploration.  And, most of all, I can appreciate the artistic endeavor of an album like this. Musician will love it, music connoisseurs will love it, audiophiles will love . . . death metallers and your average rock fans will not. It’s not a metal record. It’s a rock record with a heavy dose of progressive, folk, classical, and jazz elements to it. It’s a mixture of Camel and Rainbow, as if played by Miles Davis. I stand by my initial assessment.

As part of the deluxe package, there’s a DVD documentary on the making of the album. When I’m done here . . . you’ll probably be able to find me in the Ripple Theater.

--Pope

www.opeth.com 

Dornenreich – Flammentriebe

If you’re just tuning in, we have two outs, bottom of the ninth inning . . . bases are loaded and the home team is down by three runs . . . shuffling up to the plate with his head down in his typical shy fashion . . . number 666 . . . Dornenreich steps into the batter’s box for Team Prophecy Productions. I tell ya’ Racer, in all my years of watching the game, breathing in its subtle intricacies, I’ve never seen a team come through in the clutch like this Prophecy team, and we have the makings for yet another instant classic . . . a game that will live on forever in the history books of the greatest games ever played! And would you look at that!!! As if on cue, Dornenreich chases a curveball out of the strike zone . . . lined over the left fielders head . . . and all he can do is watch as the ball easily clears the outfield wall and is now a souvenir for the rabid fans who have waited a lifetime for this moment! Do you believe in miracles? I can’t believe my eyes! Racer . . . any comments? You are the color guy after all.

Sorry about that, folks . . . with spring training starting and baseball right around the corner, I couldn’t fight the urge to draw some bizarrely apt correlation between the sport and the amazing work that Prophecy Production consistently releases, and the talents of these guys from Dornenreich have displayed on their latest release entitled Flammentriebe.

Flammentriebe is black metal with an avant tinge, somewhat shoe-gazer, brutal and brackish, beautiful and morose. I first stumbled on Dornenreich on the Prophecy compilation Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings and found the track to be one of the most compelling, so once the promo for Flammentriebe made its way to me, suffice it to say that I was more than intrigued, maybe even a wee bit on the excited side. By now, you all should know that I love it when musicians push the boundaries of a musical genre, eclipsing any pre-conceived ideas as to what we all had for said genre, permanently stamping their fingerprint to a musical style for all to witness and absorb through the ages. Dornenreich take that full on aggressive black metal style of music and add fantastic elements that make my ears tickle with excitement . . . beautiful and lush acoustic guitar passages, ambient and atmospheric interludes, violins that add more than a delicate texture, acting as one of the key instruments throughout . . . and then there’s a compositional complexity that is like junk shot into my veins to ease my proggy addiction. To draw comparisons with the outside world, let’s take the ambitious musical nature of Opeth, mix it with the pure, unadulterated natural blackened death styling’s of Khold, mix that all with the show-gazing subtleties of label mates Alcest and Les Discrets, and then add a style that can only be Dornenreich’s alone, y’know . . . those intricate little sounds, moods, and tones that can’t be pinned on any other band. I absolutely love this album!

Dornenreich hail from Austria and Flammentriebe is completely written and performed in the bands native tongue, but that shouldn’t be a turn off to anybody. The emotions transcend any language barrier, and in the case of Flammentriebe, actually makes the songs sound that much more important and immediate. The opening track, “Flammenmensch,” is a five minute gem of utter brilliance! After a tentative plucking of an acoustic guitar introduces us to the album, the electric version of the instrument creates that sonic wall that seems to permeate in the black metal world, then we get the blood curdling screams, and a little double bass drum/blastbeat  cacophony, and it’s all performed the way I love it . . . with immediacy and honesty, and to keep the wary ear entangled in the web of intrigue, Dornenreich change things up with stunning breaks that allow the song to breath and grow more ominous. Here’s where things get really interesting . . . listen closely to the double, triple, tendon-tearing pick attack of the guitars and you’ll hear the violins in tight accompaniment, adding another texture that I’ve never heard before . . . but listen closely coz’ it can get lost in the mix a bit. Totally bitchin’ effect and for me adds a completely different dimension to the music and what could be.

“Der Wunde Trieb” immediately picks up with the violins leading the way, and then stepping back to let the rest of the band beat us senseless. Then, the violins reappear, adding this great mournful and haunting effect to the blistering black metal tirades. Glorious in its darkness and oppressiveness, “Der Wunde Trieb” is epic metal filled with awesome moments of nuance, hefty technical skill, and emotional depth that will take more than a handful of listening sessions to fully comprehend. By the time you get to “Tief im Land” you should be well primed for one of the most beautifully complex and emotionally savage songs on the album. Again, opening with an acoustic guitar and suddenly bursting with electricity, this song is a full on Odyssian journey of experimentation and musical expression. To listen to the way these guys pull back one instrument to allow another to propel the song and then vice versa, it’s like watching a perfectly choreographed chorus line or, better yet, the inner working of a machine at work . . . all the pieces working together to create motion but all those piece doing their own individual job. “Tief im Land” is a clinic on composition and performance that should be taught at every musical institution. So declareth the Pope. . . so let it be done!

“Wolfpuls” and “Wandel Geschehe” follow suit with more of the aforementioned tendencies, violins working in conjunction with the bombast of the traditional black metal soundings, adding an element of class that one doesn’t find with many black metal acts. “Wolfpuls” is more of a grinding, throbbing, pulsating metallic gem while “Wandel Gerschehe” acts more as a wooden hulled ship cresting wave after roiling wave on the open seas, dipping deep into the valleys of despair, then being propelled to the peak of the wave before crashing down again. Both songs will have you lost within yourself, contemplating the greater meaning of it all and wondering why you hadn’t created such masterful work in your own life. “In Allem Weben” is another sterling example of the musical proficiency that Dornenreich seems to wield within their souls, effortlessly piecing passages together that performed by any other band may never come out sounding half this good. Seamlessly flowing from one expressive passage to another, pummeling the senses with malevolent sounds while incorporating more serene and subtle elements to keep the song from being one dimensional, these guys do a masterful job of challenging the listener, but never over-challenging them.

Flammentriebe is easily at the top of this year’s “Must Have” list. Yeah, it’s early in the year and there’s a great chance it will supplanted by another amazing album, but for the time being, I’m going to spin this gem as much as I possibly can. The layers of sound that make up this album keep me interested and help push my imagination to places I haven’t seen in a long, long time. The album rocks, yet it does so in a very intelligent manner . . . kinda’ like a premeditated murder that stumps the world’s greatest detectives. And yes, to conclude the earlier analogy of this piece, it’s a bases clearing game winning grand slam that leaves Dornenreich being carried off on the shoulders of his team mates to the cheers of thousands. Game ball should go to Prophecy for recognizing the raw talents of this band and getting them prepped for the big leagues!

Pope

http://dornenreich.com/

http://www.prophecyproductions.de/front_content.php?idcat=258&idart=397&releaseid=204

Opeth - In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall

No matter how hard I try, how many fancy words I string together, to try and describe Opeth’s In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, I fear I simply won’t do this package it’s due justice. To aptly describe this majestic release, I would have to channel the essence of James Michener, who’s thousand page epics have a tendency to sprawl across hundreds, nay . . . thousands of years of a subjects existence, depicting the great land movements, the tectonic shifts and violent volcanic episodes that formed the environment that the subject may call home. I would then have to detail out every last bit of emotion and nuance from the main character(s), so rich in detail that you would feel that you’ve just spent the last century walking in their shoes. Then, I’d weave such an intricate tapestry of words that you would swear that you could taste the dust of a country road on your tongue, feel the bitter cold of a Chesapeake winter, or smell the floral scents of perfume on a maidens breast . . . or, in the case of Opeth, the stinging taste of battery acid on your tongue, the sweltering heat of an enclosed venue, or the ripening smell of the bodies struggling within said venue.

I can use all of those nifty adjectives that we writers like to use so much. Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing. Yeah, they all work because they do express some amount of excitement about that which they are describing. But in the case of In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, they’re simply not adequate enough descriptors. A four disc vinyl set with two DVD’s will never adequately be described by one word, especially a set as painstakingly detailed as this particular issue. This set deserves . . . no, requires a tome of words to form a shadow of what is actually going on. The set will require another volume to add color.

For Opeth’s twentieth anniversary, Mikael Akerfeldt and company decided to do a short tour, hitting a few venues that harbor an image of class and respect, and then release the subsequent recordings in a package that would be represent the band and cater to the record collecting masses (of those of us who are still out here.) The two album set is all recorded live and spans the full career of Opeth, paying homage to many of the members of the band who have since moved on, and spotlighting with special attention their breakout album, Blackwater Park, by performing it in its entirety. The packaging on this set draws me back to those glorious days of the 1970’s, an era when rock n’ roll, progressive music, whatever, paid close attention to the visual marketing of the album art, the imagery, the overall sensation of buying a record and vegging for hours with the music as the soundtrack to the visual stimuli that the artist had created . . . a phenomenon that was inhibited by the CD revolution and completely lost in the digital age. This particular box set includes a concert poster and a twenty page book with “Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing” photos from the concert at The Royal Albert Hall . . . all serious eye candy to lose oneself while the vinyl does its glorious dance on the turntable.

However, the imagery really means nothing if the musical quality isn’t there. Let’s face it. We all have those great pieces of vinyl where the album art is infinitely superior than the musical quality . . . Meatloaf, I’m looking at you. In the case of In Live Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, the musical quality is sharp, loud, and clearer than just about any live recording I’ve heard, and the performances are a testament to the physical and mental abilities of these five musicians. I’ve said it before, with the advent of Pro Tools and all of the various technical studio tricks, recording ten minute epics that shift moods, musical styles, tempos, and time signatures is cool, but it’s almost too easy. Maybe I’ve become jaded. But to pull off that feat live, without a net, as they say . . . that, my friends, is what being a musician is all about! To put this latest live adventure into perspective, imagine that Opeth is playing all of Blackwater Park, which they do, without fucking up the parts and transitions (coz’ you should know that there are plenty of those lying around) and then follow it up with an additional eight songs that touch on every variation of the bands creativity, every stylistic change, every musical nuance from the last twenty years. Breath taking.

I could go through every song and wax poetic about their deeper meaning to my every heartbeat, but that got old the second I thought about it. Instead, you really need to listen for yourselves. In particular, “Bleak,” “Blackwater Park,” “Advent,” “The Moor,” “Harlequin Forest,” and set closer “The Lotus Eater” jump to mind as the moments that I felt the greatest shiver of someone walking on my grave, of staring into the mesmerizing gaze of a thousand succubi, or breathing in the noxious and intoxicating fumes of Hades. I can’t help but marvel at the performances of these musicians, the rich textures that they apply with their respective instruments, and the overall exhilarating physical sensation that I get when I hear the sounds and tones spew from my speakers and bathe me in their brilliance.

After basking in the sonic splendor of the aforementioned four discs, I made my way to the Ripple Theater and dropped in the DVD’s. “Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Astonishing.” I honestly don’t think I breathed for something like four hours. Mouth agape, I stared . . . completely transfixed on the visual performance of this concert. The band must have used something like 3,000 cameras (a slight exaggeration) for this production. We had the standard center stage angle, left stage angle, right stage angle . . . got a little creative with the behind the band, over-the-shoulder angle, some nice crowd angles and then a few nice shots of the drummers foot (always a fan of the drummers foot work) . . . and then there were the camera angles where I swear I could count the musicians’ nose hair. The visuals were cool, nothing interstellar like a band mascot running out on stage and catching fire (as cool as that always is), just clean and concise images that help separate Opeth from any other band on the face of the planet. I found the stage presence of the various band members intriguing. Martin Mendez with his hair whipping from side to side, Fredrik Akesson dropping into the classic metal headbanging pose, the relaxed, almost bored look of drummer Martin Axenrot, and maniacal glare and eccentric demeanor of keyboardist Per Wiberg . . . and, of course, the stalwart center figure of Mikael Akerfeldt . . . they all just had that look!  

When watching this, note the guitar issues that the band has during particular songs. With a simple wave of his hand, Mikael Akerfeldt signaled to his guitar tech, and without panic, without stepping away from the mic, continues belting out his trademark death growl with the same sincerity as we’ve grown to become accustomed . . . guitar tech switches out guitars in mid vocal line and BAM! He disappears and the show goes on. I give a nod of respect to the professionalism that Akerfeldt shows here because I’ve seen the opposite from bands in the past, people become flustered, they freeze or start throwing tantrums, ultimately making the show suffer. Not here, not with Opeth. The best part though is in the second set closer, “The Lotus Eater,” as guitarist Fredrik Akesson has his own set of technical issues with his gear. In listening to the LP version, it simply sounds like the band has an extended quiet passage going on in the song, kind of like they’re playing with the crowd a bit . . . as if this was a planned break. Seeing what actually happened fills in the gaps from the pure audio portion, but I think it’s interesting how the mind goes places based on the information it’s given.

Yeah, I spent more money than I could really afford on this production, but food is overrated anyway. Hey! It’s not like anyone’s ever really starved to death, right? In truth, based on how much I want to listen to this album, and spend four-plus hours glued to my television watching this performance, how excited I get when I start talking about this album to people, how many words I just wrote as tribute on this release, hell . . . I’d spend the money all over again. If you’re an Opeth fan and you’re on the fence about this album for any reason, then I would hope that these words have acted a gentle nudge to knock you off the fence. If you’re new to Opeth and are looking for a jumping off point to get into this band, this is the place to do it. You get Blackwater Park in its entirety and select choices from every album before and since, with performances that capture the band at the height of its creative brilliance. If you don’t like Opeth and have no interest in the band whatsoever, I thank you for reading this far though I’m confused why you would have spent your time doing so.  -  Pope    

FYI – this release does come in numerous formats, so don’t feel that because I wrote about the vinyl edition that you have no other choices. Rock on! 

--Pope

buy here: Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2DVD/3CD)
buy here: DVD Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2DVD)
buy here: mp3: In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall

www.opeth.com

Katatonia - Night is the New Day

With the clouds hanging low in the sky and rain in the air, I sit in my candle lit office; needle of my beloved turntable poised in anticipation over the spinning vinyl platter of Katatonia’s latest release, Night is the New Day. I pause for a brief moment to reflect on the bleak weather and the perfect backdrop for the music that will soon fill the air with its brooding and ominous weight. Can you believe my luck? Gloomy and miserable weather to go hand in hand with the new album from one of metaldoms darkest and most moodily complex units! The Metal Gods are surely looking down on me in favor!

Admittedly, I’m a rather new fan of Katatonia, having only discovered them on the Viva Emptiness album. But, in so many ways, I feel like I’ve been following this band, and they’ve been a massive part of my life for decades. Maybe I simply relate to the heartache, the mental torment, the pain that they’ve espoused over their past releases. Maybe a part of me really likes lurking around in the gloom of my candle lit office. Or, maybe, just maybe, I like being depressed. I don’t know all of the reasons, and nor do I claim to want to. What I do know is that Katatonia has released a demon of an album that propels the listener into a primal state of self deprecation at the same time that it’s sending that same listener to a place where the soft light of hope softly burns. Even while I sit in near darkness and let the detuned chords wash over me, bathing me in sheer moments of melancholy, I marvel at the complexity of the musicianship and song composition.

Night is the New Day opens with the majestic “Forsaker.” The song is balanced artfully between beautiful and brutal, namely by the guitar work of Anders Nystrom and Fredrik Norrman. While one guitar is shimmering elegant clean toned passages through the left speaker, the other is bombarding us with wave after wave of detuned distortion. The contrast of the two moods created by these uber-talented guitarists is the yin and yang of Katatonia, but it’s the tormented performances of vocalist Jonas Renkse that defines the band’s sound, at least of recent years. The rhythm section of bassist Mattias Norrman and drummer Daniel Liljekvist may have the toughest job of all. These two have to keep the groove throughout the countless mood swings and abrupt time changes . . . and they do a masterful job at that. “Forsaker” is the epitome of the Katatonia composition. Huge musical movements countered by subtle instrumental textures, all powered to the touch the soul by soaring, though tortured vocals.

The sprawling epic-ness of the Katatonia sound is carried on through “Onward Into Battle,” dark and filled with melancholy. There are no wasted notes as the band seemingly adds a piece of their individual beings into the performances. With every verse, you’re gripping onto every word in hopes that with the combined strength of every listener that everything will work out for the better. The instrumental break near the midpoint of the track is filled with so much drama . . . the band very easily could have inserted a simple start/stop break, but instead, they chose to add huge chords of synthesizers to accompany the guitars, creating a short but utterly fantastic movement in the music. It almost has a progressive vibe while rooted in classical composition, while still retaining a full on gritty metal approach. It’s truly an amazing break! Listen to the wide array of effects that the guitar duo uses throughout this track and become amazed at the virtuosity that they employ in their craft.

“Liberation” and “The Promise of Deceit” are the two tracks that see my return the most frequently during this initial auditory exploration because of the superior musicianship and the bands ability to plant seeds of fantasy in my mind. In particular, the chorus vocal melodies in “Liberation” send chills across all of my emotions. Filled with equal parts sorrow and hope, Renkse’s voice should be a national treasure of the great country of Sweden. Note the guitar work on these two tracks, as well. Both songs are filled with great ambient moments from one guitarist, beautifully textured approaches of clean tones, and then shift into monstrous distorted tones that are mixed with a great technique of palm muted attacks and wide open sustained chords. The combination makes for an intriguing listen. “The Promise of Deceit” is oppressively heavy and ultimately creepy, awash in darkened tones, it’s the kind of song that would be playing in your head as you wander dazed through an empty old house, seeing aged pictures of people that you think you recognize as those you once loved. Man . . . the imagery that these guys convey through their music is always a welcome treat!

“Ashen,” despite being one of the heavier songs on the album, has a ton of accessibility due to the bands great use of melody. Now, I’m not talking the sickly sweet type melodies that make us retch while listening to pop radio. I’m talking haunting melodies that grip you in a real way. Melodies that actually feel like a weight has been placed on your chest and that you want to cry because these same melodies bring back a million memories that are filled with pain. Melodies that actually mean something. Dancing between the rich melodic works, the guitars pummel away with tastefully palm muted and somewhat aggressive passages. The off time drum patterns are a nice touch! You never know exactly where Liljekvist is going, but it’s always someplace of greater interest than most. Note the soft pitter-patter of what sound like fingers rapping across a desk in the early moments of the track. Again, nice touch of texture that may not necessarily move the song along, but it becomes a place of interest.

I hate to say that Katatonia can do no wrong, but everything that I’ve heard since Viva Emptiness has been nothing but pleasure to my ears. When Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt said something along the lines that Night is the New Day is the best heavy album that he’s heard in the last ten years, I certainly paid attention. Is it the best heavy album that I’ve heard in the past ten years? No. It is most certainly one of the best albums that I’ve heard in the past year and will undoubtedly make my year end Top 10 List because Night is the New Day is absolutely amazing. The musical moments contained within the grooves of this album are mighty and definitely deserve the recognition of the masses. The darkened tones of the albums material are real. If the subject matter isn’t real, then Jonas Renkse is one hell of an actor, because he conveys the torture and pain of his emotions like we were witnessing it happen first hand. And what I’ve found possibly the most interesting aspect of this album, and those before it, is that even though the subject matter and the musical tones are dark and brooding, the music isn’t depressing. Though it works well to be played in a darkened room merely lit by candles, I never feel the need to look for a loaded gun or a bottle full of pills. These are songs of inner strength and a firsthand description of one man’s ability to handle said struggles. Night is the New Day is simply a captivating listen and will require more than one listen to grasp the full weight.

-- Pope JTE

Buy here: Night Is the New Day

Buy here: Night Is the New Day (Ltd)


www.myspace.com/katatonia

www.katatonia.com

Forest Stream – The Crown of Winter

Way back in nineteen eighty whatever, most U.S. adolescents pretty much thought that Russia was just this big land mass somewhere to the east, er . . . west, uh . . . east and west of us, that practiced a pretty piss poor civil rights policy. I know I didn’t know squat about the country other than they had a lot of nuclear warheads aimed at me (I lived in a military town, so it stands to reason that I would have been one the first recipients of said warhead.) It wasn’t until we had all that hoopla of Glasnost and the Wall coming down that I started to recognize the rich culture that Russia had tucked away in its frozen nether regions. No longer was I ashamed of my Russian heritage, and now, I embrace it with a weird sense of pride. So, how thrilled was I when I received the second full length release from Forest Stream through some contacts with Candlelight Records? About as thrilled as when Alex Ovechkin scores a goal!

For years, I’ve watched the Scandinavian countries produce one epic metal band after another. I’ve seen Greece produce more than its fair share of stunning power and doom metal. Recently, France has blown up with its low end fueled experimental sounds. Is it time for another wall to come crumbling down? Will Russia be the next great land of heavy metal expression? Man . . . wouldn’t that be something!

The Crown of Winter is deathly metallic and ethereally ambient at the same time. Forest Stream work in great musicianship to their complex and highly emotive compositions. In a lot of ways, this album can be thought of as a thinking man’s record, because there is so much going on in the way of shifting textures and haunting moods. There are massive time changes, odd time signatures, and heady themes that make this disc quite comfortable nestling up next to your favorite prog-metal albums. Is it totally fresh and original? Sadly, no. But the music is performed at such a high level that the Opethian melodies and Akerfeldt-like vocal barks don’t bother me as much as they would if performed by a less than able unit. Yes, there are Opeth similarities to the sounds, and by no means does Forest Stream come across like a cheap knock off of the Swedish metal masters. There’s something else a bit less tangible mixed into the music that gives these guys their own individuality, a strange new voice in way of modern metal.

After a beautifully emotional ambient build up as an introduction, Forest Stream launch into the eleven and a half minute title track of the album. Huge waves of distortion crash down upon the delicate plinking of the piano keys, cannon fire drums punch holes through said wave of guitars, and then the instruments swim like a playful school of fish, darting around one another in a roaring sea of sound. The vocals join the dance with a strange sense of sadness, suddenly making everything seem so desolate and hollow. Then, in classic death metal fashion, the vocals shift to that of a perturbed and unfed bear fresh from its winter hibernation. What a great dynamic shift! Amidst the flurries of metallic notes soaring through the soundscape, various melodies weave in and out of the chaos, sending this song to some higher plain. Then, it all goes away. The storm vanishes and leaves us hearing a gorgeous clean tones guitar plaintively strumming chords over a huge synthesizer passage. Absolutely beautiful work in how the band wrapped all of these sounds and themes around each other to create such an epic song! For all intents and purposes, this has to be categorized in with prog-metal, and some of the finest that I’ve heard.

Following the album opener, “Mired” bursts from the speakers with double bass drums afire and a triumphant melody line to lend an interesting contrast to the barrage of death riffagry, and then . . . whoa. Forest Stream lay down a mind blowing goth-y sort of soft passage filled that has shades of Katatonia mixed in the emotion. It’s dark and eerie, bordering on creepy. The kind of music that might work well in digging a grave to bury one’s lost beloved. Though this moment is short lived, the oncoming death metal pummeling is a perfect fit and moves the song along nicely. The vocals and melodies on this track remind me of Opeth, blackened in a fiery pit of hate and individual torture. The clean toned guitars towards the middle of the song fooled me for a brief minute into thinking I was hearing a piano adding further texture. Awesome! Way to keep me guessing! I absolutely love it when a band challenges me with the use of sounds and odd time arrangements. Nothing sucks more than predictable music. Well, other than utterly terrible music.

It’s basically like this, folks. The Crown of Winter is progressive death metal. That’s about as simple as I can put it. Ultimately, this album is an example of excellent execution in composition, musical arrangement, and instrumentation, all of which make up for the music’s somewhat lack of originality. Also, the conveyance of emotion is superb. While listening to this album, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the bleakness, the solitude, the despair. I can feel the tortured souls on this recording and I like it! It makes me want to pack up all of my earthly belongings and set sail on an old Norse ship, or to live out of a vibrantly colored wagon in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. And, maybe more importantly, Forest Stream make me want to visit Russia and explore even further the musical treasures that are hidden from the masses of America. If you need me, I’ll be surfing the net . . . Googling Russian metal bands and seeing what comes up next. - Pope JTE

www.myspace.com/foreststreamband