Ferentes Tenebris breathe new life into dark sounds

Ferentes Tenebris have created a unusual mixture of cathartic female vocals on the one hand and rough and raw black metal elements with growling vocals on the other. 

The bandpicture is unusual like the music Ferentes Tenebris released.

Besides this contrast in vocal presentation it's also the melodies and performance of the other musicians that add something outstanding into the package that is the newest single called "Sirens of the deepest sorrow".  

It all starts openly with harmony in a opening section before the sky turns dark for the first time and heavier distortion and growling takes the stage. 

Shortly after this attack the female light returns but is once more pushed aside by the dark voices.

The instrumental section to follow set's up few dark notes in a midtempo pattern. Softer notes are to follow like in a jam session but shortly afterwards it becomes all harder once more. 

You can also listen to the single on Spotify.

I've been heavily surprised listening to this song. I would have expected it to be one of the many Black Metal releases out there but this is not what can be heard everywhere. The production has also been chosen cleverly and clearly so it adds it's share to make "Sirens of the deepest sorrow" stand out.

Let's see how the story of the band moves on. Follow them on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram so you won't miss a thing.

Album Review: Neocracy - Pure Organic (Emotional Rock, 2022)

The songs on the debut album of Neocracy speak of intensive feelings experienced in life.

The cover already says that something with feelings waits inside.

Besides the rough sound shell shines a face twisted in two parts. The female voice talks in a finetuned and fragile way about life while the growls may picture the darker depths and sides of our existence. 

The same duality can be found in the instrumental colors. There are soft guitars to be heard all put at the proper moments. But the heavyness kicks always in at moments things may get to monotone. Sometimes percussion elements like on "Shallow Hearts" bring some change. 

There are always moments when a surprise comes in. Listen to "Fate" and the clear part towards the end will surely raise your attention bar.

The guitars loop on the last moments - not to be heard that often. If you check out "Respect" closer the keyboards towards the end jumping through the music also add some extra taste to the already great meal.

My favorite is still "Sleep Awake" for it's very catchy way of building up and breaking down and the feelings shining so pure inside of the vocals. But the whole spectrum of feelings comes out throughout the duration of the album so please don't judge them for only this particular track.

The sound on the disc is very self produced. This comes with a good and a bad side. It holds the magic of the moment and prevents the rough and direct emotions from being taken away. But sometimes a bit more flat sounds would have made it a bit more comfortable to enjoy.

Anyway, it's still well worth to listen and purchase especially if you look for something going under your skin.

Contact the band on Bandcamp and Facebook if you want buy a copy of the album.

CD Review: Brutai - Born (Modern Metal/2016)

Seldomely has a band impressed me the way Brutai did with their first album. Usually the first previews of many records sound good but the finished album later on may not be as fullfilling as you hoped for.

Introduction
Happily that's not the same with "Born". Having heard the first track "Deep" I was thrilled for more to come. Seeing that the band was very busy with playing gigs wherever they had the opportunity and other stuff they had to work around like a writing blockade I thought that a EP would wait around the corner. But what we have here is a full album and that's even more impressive if you keep in mind that all of this happened in a time of under one year!

The cover of Brutai's first full length "Born", (c) by Brutai, used with kind permission

Summary
So what's inside of the package? First of all it's a modern metal record but one with a special note. While most of the songs have a rough edge to the riffs and the pushing, uncompromising rhythm it's the vocal's core that always centers the music back to some melodic and softer tonality. It's great to hear that along with some catchy melodies the record always remains one you love to listen to. Most of all the sound remains natural and intact not letting the all too modern production ruin the product in the end. You never have the impression that it's overpolished or impossible to play this but instead always can imagine that this is handcrafted music of real humans.

The first three tracks are a good intro in a row. The album slowly takes you into the world of Brutai. With every step you sink in further. While "Relapse" is a rhythm-oriented opener to the album, "Deep" adds the progressive elements just to finally push you to the riffing monster "Of Ashes".

The absolute peak of the record is reached with the songs starting with "Lucidity" up to "Dear Emily" - all the tracks grow further from one song to each other. They're all heavy and will give you a great feeling through the whole duration. I simply had to headbang to these tunes.

The middle sees us taking a breath with the modern half ballad "Valediction", some pretty complex piece of music yet is has a infectious melody spreading all along the track. Just when you thought it's over after the eight track "Over now" the band returns for two more songs.

"Visitors" has some great keyboard melody going through the whole track - it touches you and has been circulating in my mind for a long time. "The Border" is the heaviest track and a full surprise to the package. It's a long pushing heavy crusher that never seems to end but it gives you this special feeling to it that the band has put out something great with the debut "Born" and that you definitely need to see them live.

Purchase Link
Make sure to pick your copy early. All CD and T-shirt bundles are £20 for a limited time only... Prices will increase after 'Born' is released on November 25th. You can place your pre-order here.

Album stream
I've picked the track "Of Ashes" as a quick check- in song for you. Besides the great music it comes with a nice animated album cover. If you'd like to listen to the full album, just check out the Facebook page for the Heavy Metal Underdogs Blog - at this direct link you can hear the whole album that the band has uploaded to YouTube.


Contact data
Make sure to keep a eye on the band through Facebook and mark your calenders when the band hit's the road in January 2017 with The Devil You Know in the UK. For detailed tourdates check my post.

Album preview: Vortex - The Asylum

Ok, let's sneak a bit into a upcoming record. We haven't done this in a whle here on the blog but this new album trailer of the canadian metal band Vortex somehow got me.

The band Vortex, (c) by Vortex, used with kind permission

Besides the growls there's something in the compact and pure sounding recordings that found my attention.

I think it's the coolness of how the band performs the different song segments. It's also the many changes in the song structures that made me like them. It doesn't get montone so quickly and most of all with the lighter overall feeling the sound remains enjoyable while still staying in a heavy tonality.


The brand new record "The Asylum" will be shipped out on Friday the 13 via their label PRC music. You can pre-order the silver disc on the website of the label. So it looks as if that day will hopefully not be a black friday. :-)

Check out Vortex's Facebook page to see a video for a first full song of the album.

CD Review: Charm Designer - Everlasting

A dark and mysterious Gothic / Doom record. Besides the typical growling vocals it features a lot of groove, melody and a lot of blistering, haunting atmosphere. If you like a mixture of these ingridents you shouldn't hesitate and take a close look at "Everlasting".

Short Introduction

Charm Designer is a Gothic / Doom metal band located in Columbia. It was the first time for me that I had the chance to listen to a band from that country so I was extremly excited how they would attempt writing songs. Plus I didn't listen to a album of that genre for some time so I felt it would be a good idea to check it out.

My attention was raised even more as I got to know that the follow-up to 2008's “Blood Sounds” was recorded with legendary producer Waldemar Sorychta, known for his work with Samael, Tiamat, Lacuna Coil, Sentenced and Moonspell among others, being the first time for him to produce a Latin American band. The artwork was designed by Romanian artist Costin Chioreanu (At The Gates, Arcturus, Vulture Industries, Primordial, Arch Enemy, etc.).

The cover of Everlasting, (c) by Charm Designer, used with kind permission

Summary

Charm Designer did a outstanding job on this one. The album contains eight brand new tracks that will take you on a wild ride through your inner feelings and emotions. It's filled with all that makes us humans and it goes to all the extremes we all endure and are pushed through every day. It sounds extreme and will give you pain at some points but after all the harsh parts and heavyness there's always release and silkness coming back in giving you freezing chills and giving you the breath back. In the end it will strenghten you for all that still is yet to come.

The album lives of it's contrast of dark, brutal vocals and the much lighter contra female voice parts. The same goes for the music. Sure there's darkness and heavyness all around but it never presses you down. It still pushes on forward through the groove and there's always some melody shining through. Black clouds and silver linings. The best way to quickly check out if the record is for you is to see the lyric video of the title track which you can find at the Player and Purchase Link section further down in this review. If you feel like it touches you the you should give the full album a listen, because there's a lot more yet to come so prepare yourselves for the ride...

Album Overview

The album is well balanced but there are some tracks I'd like to point out. Besides the title track my personal favorites are Never After and most of all Inertial Dream for their very heavy attitude and remembering me of old classic Gothic metal times.

Disruption is one of the most flexible cuts of the full length bringing together a good mixture of oldschool and slightly modern elements. But all the modern stuff is kept in a discret way. They are never overused and only taken if they add to the mood so it sounds authentic. Some tracks have a length of nearly seven minutes but never sound lengthy. If you prefer the shorter one's make sure to listen to Mentors, it goes out as a very straight number.

It should be mentioned that the band did a cool cover version of Depeche Mode's "Policy of truth". The song remains intact in it's structure through the cover conversion, but you can heavily hear that Charm Designer put their signature of Doom 'n' Gothic brutality on it. It's a good cover I can see this going down quite well in Gothic or Metal clubs on a saturday night with many people handbanging along to it.

Player and Purchase-Link

The album is available through the store of the band's record company Inverse Records as a physical CD.
There also the chance to buy a mp3 version of the record from Amazon. 

Update 2016/02/20: You can also place your order via the band's Facebook account. Read this info sheet they released for detailed info. They also have some nice goodie packs available with T-Shirts plus CD and you can also ask for other combinations. Just send them a message and they'll put together a nice package for you.

As far as I've seen there's no album stream available so I've added the official lyric video of "Everlasting" here to give you a quick idea of the band's sound and style.

Update 2016/02/22: The album has been uploaded to streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer. I've added the Deezer widget under the YouTube lyric video of the title track. Also if you're not registered to the service you can at least listen to some 30 second clips of the album.


Links

www.facebook.com/charmdesigner
www.twitter.com/Charm_Designer
www.reverbnation.com/charmdesigner
www.soundcloud.com/charmdesigner
www.youtube.com/charmdesignervid   

Brutai show how different songwriting these days is

Today's upcoming bands have a lot more complexity and variation in their sound. Sometimes it's not easy at all to sort out the elements that come along when you start listening to their music.

I mean their are sometimes these straight songs that come with a clear structure. A straight riff, the fitting rhtyhm to it and some vocals with the typical song structure marking the way through the song.

As of today it takes various times to get through all of the stuff because some of them are so complex and diverse you wonder how it's all coming together. A good example for that is the London-based modern Metal band Brutai who have just released a new single with accompanying music video for their track 'Deep', taken from their forthcoming album which is due for a summer release.

While the beginning goes in straight with some vocals and a good amount of riff hacking kicks into the song it's quickly getting diverse when the vocals change for the first time from the clear style over to the harsh and deep tonality. This is where the song starts to grow in my ears in some sort of monster style, much heavier and harder.

It's followed up by a pumping and pushing part which leads back to the first formula. After the next break of deep vocals their's another ride taking the track to a rougher edge. Finally the end part is quite different from what can be heard of other bands - what a different yet cool way to end a song and letting it fade out with some soft keyboards...

Felix Lawrie (Frontman, Guitarist) says about the track:
"Lyrically, Deep is about a time when we were struggling as a band during the writing process of the album. It talks about challenges we faced when overcoming adversities such as writers block and other struggles in our personal lives. We needed to come back and finish what we started. This song is a reminder to never give up."

Photo credit: http://www.willirelandphotography.co.uk/
(Left to right-  Mathieu Bauer- Drums, Alex Lorimer- Backing Vox and keys, Felix Lawrie- Frontman/Guitarist, Henry Ryan- Guitars, Christian Sturgess- Bass)

The band has some live dates coming up so don't miss them out if you're around:

25th February- The Underworld Camden (supporting Textures)
10th March- Hammerfest (Wales)

If you'd like to have a copy of the song check out Bandcamp or itunes to purchase it.

Also make sure to mark their social accounts with a like or follow so you won't miss out on the further developments via Facebook or Twitter.

Album preview: Van Halst shows diversity of female voice

After a longer period you can find more bands out there that are centered around a female voice these days. While I like these bands a lot I missed one little element: the use of the whole spectrum that women are able to sing. Edmonton based Goth Rock Metallers Van Halst seem to be of a similar opinion.

It's cool to hear that Kami Van Halst dominates as the vocalist performing both growls and soaring vocals in their sound. It's also great to hear that the music shows a bit more of ups and downs which makes listening to their music much more exciting. The first single of the upcoming album "Save Me" is a good way to start discovering this great band.

The second single "World Of Make Believe" continues where "Save me" left off and gives even more room for the voice and puts the musical elements in bit a softer spotlight so the voice can breathe through clearer.

I'm looking forward to this release which will see the light of day on March 4th. The album can be pre-ordered via Van Halst's Bandcamp page.The album cover looks already promising. Who know's what lies beyond the portal the person is about to enter? Well, I think we'll find out on another day...

(c) Van Halst, used with kind permission

If you want to follow the band on the journey to the album release don't hesitate to check in at their social plattforms such as Facebook or Twitter.