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Overlooked Gems of 2014
Overlooked Gems of 2014
So many good albums are released every year – every week, in fact – that it’s impossible to do justice to all of them. A friend in the Netherlands who runs a magazine about hard and brutal metal told me he received requests to review no fewer than 2,700 albums during 2014. He and his team were able to review a mere 5% of that total.
There are fewer female-fronted releases in a year because there are fewer top-class female vocalists than male singers in metal. That is not a criticism of female vocalists. It is a statistical fact. Hundreds of bands play good black metal or deathcore. How many bands, though, can recruit a Simone Simons or an Angela Gossow?
At Sonic Cathedral we try to listen to as much music as possible. Hearing an album, however, is a long way from listening to it several times in detail, comparing every track on the album, and writing sensibly about it. Even so, we feel twinges of emotional discomfort when we can’t salute all the good stuff, whether that would be physically impossible or not.
I’ve pulled together six albums I would have been proud to have on my Best of 2014 list. They represent excellent music in different genres, and even in different families of music. I’m not going to pack a chapter-and-verse review of each album into this article. What I offer is a mini-review and brief information about each album.
My taste in modern music is wide-ranging. Depending on your specific taste, I’m sure you’ll also find some real gems in this selection. Metal and prog are immune to trendiness. What sounded good a year ago sounds just as good now, and it will sound as good in ten years. That’s one of the great joys of loving music that comes into existence because its creators do it for the sake of music, not to satisfy this season’s marketing campaign.
I highly recommend all of these gems, presented in alphabetical order by band name. Please note that any rating of 8 or higher denotes a darned good album.
Dark Mirror ov Tragedy – The Lunatic Chapters of Heavenly Creatures
South Korea
Symphonic Black Metal
WormHoleDeath Records
9 Tracks
English Lyrics
Material Pneuma – that’s the stage name of the vocalist – snarls and growls like a wild cat, pouring anguish and rage into the contrastingly sweet orchestral music generated by a band with six other musicians in the line-up. Her scorching, harsh voice places her in the top echelons of dark vocalists. There are other harsh elements in the music too, including the rapid-fire drumming and some searing guitar work.
What makes this album so enchanting to me is the depth and range of the instrumentation. The lush, orchestral effect results from the use of two guitars, keys and violin, further enhanced by the use of acoustic guitar and the ever-changing pace and mood in the track selection. Within the framework of symphonic black metal the band infuses flavors of melodic death and Gothic metal. Dark Mirror ov Tragedy produces a feast of delights.
I’d rank the band at the peak of the wave of good metal emanating from Asia. This outfit is from South Korea. They’ve been together since 2003 and they have two previous full-length albums in their discography.
Rating: 8.5/10
Introitus – Anima
Sweden
Neo-Progressive Rock
Progress Records
9 Tracks
English Lyrics
Sweden’s most musical family (in my opinion) have given us their best album yet. Considering the previous two albums, “Fantasy” and “Elements”, were both excellent, that should indicate just how good “Anima” is. It’s a masterwork of neo-prog, which happens to be just about my favorite of the two dozen or so genres of modern progressive rock.
Matts Bender, keyboard player for Introitus, spent three decades dreaming up a prog rock band. His dream became a reality in 2007, with his wife, Anna, doing the vocals and their children, Mattias (drums) and Johanna (back-up vocals), putting the Bender stamp on their sound. The line-up for “Anima” is completed by Pär Helje, whose soaring guitar solos are as emotionally gratifying as ever; Dennis Lindkvist, whose mostly mid-range bass adds warmth in the rhythm section; and Henrik Björlind, a flautist perfectly suited to the folk-rock and Celtic influences that slot comfortably into the Introitus style of neo-prog.
Anna has a caressing, easy voice that weaves magic vocal spells through the compositions. She can stand proud among the female vocalists of my other top female-fronted prog bands such as Touchstone, Magenta and the jointly female and male-fronted Kaipa.
Rating: 9/10
Official website
Band’s Facebook
Rearview Ghost – Revolution of an Open Mind (EP)
USA
Hard Rock
Self-Released
7 Tracks
English Lyrics
Call it an EP or call it a mini-album since it runs to just 25 minutes, but this is a perfect example of Quality beats Quantity. Rearview Ghost may be tagged as a hard rock band but they’re much more than that. They have a beautifully retro-rock sound and feel in their music. Fans of many styles of rock, from the classic rock of Janis Joplin to the most modern variants of hard rock, should get a big kick out of this gem. It certainly whetted my appetite for more.
Josia (she uses only her first name) is one mighty powerful vocalist in the mold of Heart’s Ann Wilson. If I may so without intending to be sexist, her husky voice is damn sexy. It makes me tingle. She wraps that voice with ease around rock, blues, Southern rock and folk-rock. The EP features all of those styles, sometimes in the same song.
The other mainstays of the band, guitarist Craig Shadix and bassist Flip Cooper, live out the cliché – they really do fill your head with solid, blasting, extremely melodic rock. There is nothing clichéd about their performances. They switch styles as effortlessly as Josia does.
Rating: 8.5/10
Official website
Band’s Facebook
Temtris – Shallow Grave
Australia
Dark Metal
Battlegod Productions
8 Tracks
English Lyrics
Oh, goodie, another genre-bender. I love bands that show sneering contempt for tags and musical boundaries. There’s nothing wrong with sticking to a specific genre if your music is good and the fans keep on enjoying it. There’s also nothing wrong, and a whole lot right, with letting your creativity drag you onto other people’s turf.
Temtris have spread themselves laterally into an assortment of metal genres. For them, “dark” isn’t a tag, it’s the gateway to a mélange of heavy, thrash, death and doom metal. They devour all those genres with obvious relish and exceptional musicality. They use two guitars to add depth and variety to the music. Having two vocalists also adds richness. In Temtris, there’s a blasting, rawkin’ combination of dark (i.e. growly) male vocals and Genevieve Rodda’s exuberant, in-your-face clean vocals (i.e. “Man! Is she scorching, or what!”).
So they’ve conquered laterally. Going even farther than that, they’ve spread themselves vertically through time. You know what the graph looks like… time on the Y-axis, space on the X-axis, Temtris positioning themselves wherever the feel like on the grid. Black Sabbath in the ‘70s might have enjoyed covering Temtris’s doomier songs. Some of their other songs are as modern as hard metal can be. All in all, “Shallow Grave” is full of treasure.
Rating: 8.5/10
Official website
Band’s Facebook
The Sabbathian – Ritual Rites (EP)
Norway
Occult Doom Metal
Svart Records
3 Tracks English Lyrics
Prepare to put on your Evil Clothes. This is the music you want to play at your next coven.
Since I’m just your typical, everyday 64-year-old, I find doom metal deeply soothing. The grinding, repetitive, low-key riffs generate a flood of alpha waves. The somber mood of the music pulls anti-somber levers in my head and induces euphoria. When the band is not merely into doom but indulges in the occult side of metal as well, I don’t see visions of grim-faced witches plotting nasty deeds, I picture Lagertha from “Vikings” sitting with her feet on my desk while she polishes her axe and other essential accessories for a shield maiden.
Then there’s the vocal side of doom. Female voices work beautifully with atmospheric and funeral doom. Anette Uvaas Gulbrandsen – wouldn’t that be a grand name for a shield maiden as well as a doom maiden? – works just as beautifully with the more driving style of old-school doom. There is a haunted quality to her delivery. It’s quite enchanting. This EP is a little jewel.
Rating: 8.5/10
Tungsten – The Reservoir
USA
Progressive Metal
Self-Released
8 Tracks
English Lyrics
Here’s a band I would love to see in concert. If their live performances are anything like their studio work, they must be totally captivating. The only criticism I can make is that the vocalist surely could have chosen a better stage name for herself than Titi Musick.
You can play a game when you put this album on. Call it Match the Influence. “That opening, definitely Pink Floyd. Guitar riffs… Uriah Heep? Maybe Queensrÿche? Aha, that wow-wow synth… The Alan Parsons Project. The vocals, sweet and also raspy, more metal than prog. Hey, this bit’s classic heavy metal. Now a guitar solo and that drumming, then they keys, maybe Spock’s Beard, maybe Dream Theater.”
And that’s just the first song, “Water Over Stone”. Into track 2, “Contamination”: “Hmm, Jethro Tull? No, it becomes more bluesy, with Joe Satriani-type guitar. Wait, oomph! Now it’s Symphony X.”
With “The Reservoir”, Tungsten have offered up one of the most eclectically satisfying albums of the year. There are six members in the band. They sound like 26. The fullness of their sound, the superb orchestration and the tightly cohesive interplay combine in an irresistible package.
Rating: 9.5/10
