The Six Stacker - Bleak House

I live in Melbourne. Many Melburnians have lived here almost all their lives. None of us are used to the weather. Poking your head outside to bask in a sunny morning full of promise and dreams will be quickly dashed as you jump back inside. Grey clouds gather in an instant and you’ll be soaked in misery before you can even make the two or three steps to your car. A “Melburnian weather contingency starter pack” contains an overcoat, umbrella, sunscreen, and a Twitter account (to bitch about the unpredictability of the weather, which we all knew was a thing.) Fuck me, it’s spring already. I just saw Cattle Decapitation and the venue stunk of smug veganism and flop sweat. Cos it was sold out and humid at the Croxton. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been listening to:

Sacred Outcry - Towers of Gold

A GREEK power metal band? Surely not. Sacred Outcry formed in 1998 and in true Greeka no orris boss fashion, took 22 years to release their first record Damned for All Time. A swift two years later we have their follow-up Towers of Gold. This is a BIG DEAL in power metal since it’s their first with ex-Lost Horizon and ex-Crystal Eyes vocalist Daniel Heiman, which is a very good nutcrunchy thing. When their press packet gushes about a “meeting of golden age of the 90s and 00s power metal with the 80s American scene” they mean Rhapsody or Hammerfall mixed with, well, I’m not entirely sure. First (proper) track is all stallion gallop Hammerfall, every twelfth bar worth of vocals punctuated with an off-the-chart high note. Next track The Voyage does feel more American, thrashier in parts owing much to Jag Panzer and those huge gang choruses.

When I had this blaring through my car, I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Listening back, the neo-classical mist and cape fantasy Symphony of the Night (no Belmonts were harmed in the making) caught my ear more often than not. Semi-demi trilogy The Sweet Wine of Betrayal, The City of Stone and 15-minute guitar heroes’ journey Towers of Gold are the real meat of the album. Riding like the wind then kneeling in supplication as piano gently caresses Heiman’s face like the lace-gloved hand of a lost lover (or some shit) Towers of Gold comes damn close to matching the epic-ness of Helloween, Heiman doing his best approximation of Michael Kiske (who else) and just about pulling it off. It doesn’t make the previous 40 or so minutes dead weight, but the quality in the finale show tears strips of what came before. Worth the price of admission? I don’t know, do I fire up a CD for one song?

Faceless Burial - Speciation

Spending $15 on what could have been rent or food after their set at Exhumed a couple of months ago I consider the risk of homelessness or starvation worth it. When fellow Hysteria traveller Tom MF Hersey wondered (out loud) why “Facey B isn’t as big as Parkway” I too pondered this, also. Opener Worship is everything good about technical death metal - not too showy and just the right amount of sugary guitar-lead goodness, fizzing our brains with excitement.

It’s total Chuck Schuldiner worship, though they haven’t cribbed his entire Sound of Perseverance (that was a pun), just the spirit of it. Overall, it has that ripper taste of late 90s “what if we did this”-ness to it. The same questions Atheist, Gorguts or Necrophagist would ask. Riff after riff they throw out like ninja stars, always spiking smack dab in the middle of someone’s eye, gushing fountains of blood and guts and piss and shit everywhere (all good things.) Barely 40 minutes long, it’s perfect as is. Every time you spin it, you discover something you missed the last time around.

My Dying Bride - The Light at the End of The World

After a near-disastrous flirtation with sounds ranging from blissed out Stone Roses and electronics ala Depeche Mode (though it didn’t hurt Paradise Lost any) on their previous album, the emperors of gloom roar back to re-conquer the lost territory of death-doom. Not that anyone was really posing a challenge. Not PL, not even Anathema at this point. Even so, using the Deep Space Nine font instead of chunky serifs seemed to upset a whole lot of people.

When the band chugs towards a wall of sorrowful violin and stops for Aaron Stainthorpe’s plaintive lamentations, you know shit is back and back in a big way. The Light at the End of the World hears the band crush up withered Nick Caves and Tom Waitses and snort them wholesale. She Is The Dark moves at lightning speed compared to most of their fare, and Stainthorpe’s bloodthirsty snarl rams home the anger that belies depression and grief. High drama and romanticism ensues in The Night He Died, sort of like Type O Negative dressed in blood-stained Edwardian garb; fan favourite The Fever Sea capturing a furious ocean that threatens to turn even the most steel-hearted of men insane. They do squarely focus in on death-doom’s primeval metallic nature, especially in hard-edged rocker (by their standards) Into the Lake of Ghosts, which they would expand on in later releases (especially on A Line of Deathless Kings and the albums after.) Their talent lies in creating a faultless, multifaceted funereal sound that retains classic metal elements: soaring leads and headbang-worthy passages. Like my old friend Jan used to say (often to bands, as they were playing) “the riffs are good.” Enough said.

Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

At Cattle Decap’s show with Fallujah (The Croxton, 17 September), our Malthusian panic merchants played mostly cuts from this and previous belter Death Atlas and everyone was pretty happy about it. That said, Terrasite is brimming with everything that makes death metal so attractive to us depraved weirdos in the first place: rib-crushing sub-bass, machine-gun double-kicks, riffs coming down like mechanised cavalry, and mastery of the brain-melter leadbreak. That otherworldly Fear Factory style robo-vox Travis Ryan does is also a big plus. It’s odd to place “songwriting” and “death metal” in the same sentence, since DA RIFF is the most important element of any extreme metal combo worth their (ethically sourced) salt. Scourge of the Offspring is chained to a circular arse-kicking machine, landing blows at such frenetic speed it might make Archspire pause to catch their breath. Cattle Decap are mighty talented practitioners of the arcane death metal art. To follow up a genre classic with something so close it can smell its decaying innards is nothing short of phenomenal. Recommended.

Unto Others - Mana

Sometimes bands emerge with one core purpose: to be as kickass as possible and not give a fuck what anyone thinks. Unto Others (originally Idle Hands) is one such band. Yeah, we like Iron Maiden, yeah we like Sisters of Mercy, what are you going to do about it? Well, rock the fuck out to it, because it’s fucking awesome. You wanna Goth dance like its the 80s, go for your fucking life on industrial banger Nightfall, punctuated by slacker harmonies and lead breaks brighter than disco ball reflections off tuning pegs. If these guys released Jackie during the Cure’s heyday, they would have been on double-bills with them within a month of release. Gabriel Franco’s devil may care baritone works well whether it’s about hitting the open road (Cosmic Overdrive) or blurring himself into drug-fucked Accept-style oblivion (Give Me To The Night) or just kinda taking the Jim Steinman piss because it’s awesome (Dragon, Why Do You Cry?) A Single Solemn Rose is their ultimate fuck you to glam rock, Franco letting his voice soar above plaintive arpeggiated guitar. You know what anguish really feels like, Jon? Nikki? Axl? Fuck off.

Their Type O Negative meets Judas Priest schtick defies expectations every time you spin this one up - it exists almost despite itself and in saying that, it makes the entire disc nigh on perfect.

I forgot the sixth record. I may not have had one. Opps!