aborted — Blog - Crushtor.net

In the Winter months, it can get really dirty and ugly - especially when there’s days you just don’t wanna get up and everybody sucks. To coin a phrase. It’s Winter and there’s not much fun to be had, especially when you’re stone motherless broke (I am right now, that could change in minute…) Here are some traxx I’ve been spinning:

The Last of Lucy - Godform

Weird name for a weird band. If they weren’t playing fret-melting tech death, what would they be playing? Twee indie rock? Something like that. What strikes me looking at the runtime of this disc is how short it is (a bit over 32 minutes) despite how many ideas one hears throughout. Empyreal Banisher clocks us over the head with lightspeed doublekick and riffs to match, lead breaks lifting off before crashing down, spiders emerging from the wreckage threatening to devour us limb from limb. This all happens within a taught three minutes seven seconds. Twin Flame is aptly titled as they chew off our ears and salve them with gentle clarinet solos (two of them!). Old school arsekicking (Sentinel Codex, Angelic Gateway) sits alongside new school dissonant, technical asskicking (Darkest Night of the Soul). Both work in brutal harmony by never belabouring the point. So much to love here.

Ollie Wride - The Pressure Point

The voice and face of the New Retro Wave is BACK! Ollie’s last record Thanks in Advance had a sexy, confident edge to it; The Pressure Point by contrast is lovelorn and weary. A Matter of Time is a bright, dare I say jaunty track that could’ve cut straight out of Buckaroo Banzai or a similar thoroughly entertaining, OTT, yet completely bonkers film. He struts through syncopated, Calypso-tinged (think Billy Ocean) contemporary (for the time) adult pop (a sax drenched The Way I See It), U2-style arena-filling homages to Radio Ga Ga, at least where that shuddering beat is concerned (Radio feat. The American English), and post-disco shuffle melding with New Jack Groove in electric dreams (Holy Drug).

Though all of the cuts are stellar thanks to meticulous production and knockout vocal performances, centrepiece Victoria is the business. It arrives on a wow and flutter of synth, Ollie’s breathy tones building tension as brisk bluesy licks accompany him, leading to an incredible release: an explosive chorus carried on the backs of a thousand pained voices: “First you tell me to go / then you tell me to stay / Your eyes are fixed on me / but you’re a million miles away” - simply irresistable. Like I’ve said so many times before, in the reniassance of 80s synthwave, Ollie Wride is IT!

Unto Others - Never, Neverland

From my Best of 2024 review:

From the hard yet jangly chords of opener Butterfly, Gabe Franco’s baritone croon, rich with metaphor comparing a difficult lover to a butterfly (I could win your heart with a melody / I could comfort you with a sweet serenade (I made) / Or I could lash my tongue in a criticism, yeah / Or put you down and pray for the tears in your eyes / I want you to die) you can just feel that this is album is dark magic pressed into thin perspex. It shifts from goth to crossover Suicidal Tendencies thrash (Momma Likes the Door Closed) to ironic post-punk meets Steinman pop (Angel of the Night) with such self-assuredness it’s almost criminal. This all occurs over three consecutive tracks, by the way. What’s even more incredible is that some of these mouthwatering cuts clock in at 7” 45 lengths: a punchy Fame, a punky Flatline, or a satisfying morsel of Blue Oyster Cult worship Hoops. It all feels like Lt. Tuck Pendleton’s bittersweet lament in Innerspace: “When things are at their darkest pal, it’s a brave man who can kick back and party.” So Unto Others did. And we reaped the benefits.

Aborted - Vault of Horrors

The Vault of Horrors is as close to a compliation or mixtape style album we’ll ever get in death metal. Each track features a who’s who in the gurgle-throatripper zoo and these Belgian goreanauts mould their necksnapping riffery to match. Archspire’s Oliver Rae Aleron joins on The Shape of Hate and it’s shotgun blasts of vocals and drums for four minutes straight. The one minute forty four fleshripper Insect Politics could slot in at a hardcore show, thanks to Jason Evans (ex-Ingested) throat stripper delivery plus semi-demi-breakdown in the dying seconds of the last act. Aborted is fun death metal. Put it on and mosh in your seat. Boom.

Opeth - The Last Will and Testament

Opeth IS BACK! Well, as far as their metallic roots are concerned. One minute twenty into §1 (yeah, I know) as their syncopated riffs crunch along, Mikael Akerfeldt growls for the first time in what feels ike 20 years (Was it 20 years? When did Watershed come out? 2008? Oh fuck) Of course, it’s metal with all the weird paisley and patchouli 70s prog weaved in; dizzy Camel-isms, Jethro Tull cribbed flute parts (§4), Emerson, Lake, and Palmer riff salad surgery, and a ton of other weird stuff only your hippie uncle has ever heard of. We’re never getting another My Arms, Your Hearse, but hey, they can (and have done) much more blander fare.

Sworn - A Journey Told Through Fire

Norway’s Sworn has its feet in two worlds: one planted in dark and mystic black metal imperium of Hel Vete yore; the other in the post-Enslaved, post-Ihsahn reimagining of black metal. How? Ohhh, Dan Swanö (ex-Edge of Sanity, Nightingale, Witherscape) produced this. Now it makes sense. Their blast-beaten Scandi-shred chops are uimpeachable, as is their Finnish sadboi tendency, an Insomnium-eqsue snowdrift acoustic break in Grand Eclipse sealing a frostbitten Northernmost deal. It’s melodic black metal through and through, though you’d be forgiven if half of Dissection and half of Omnium Gatherum showed up to the studio (under Swanö’s guidance), sprinkling in a little Emperor or Old Man’s Child for good measure. There are few - if any - pitch perfect hybrids of latter-day melodic death metal AND melodic black metal out there. It may have taken fifteen years of gruesome gestation, but the journey told through riff and lick (and fire) is well worth it.