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Tom Valcanis
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Tom Valcanis
They Call This The Act of Dating
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The Top 10 Metal of 2011 - #2

Crawling bloodied and broken from the Inside Room, we crumple our indivisible selves on the floor of a frost-scented forest, marking time, waiting for death...

 #2
Insomnium - One For Sorrow

When Insomnium release a record, there’s a sudden rush of anticipation to get it in the mail (Yes, friends, I buy music.) the days pass achingly until you’re able to slip it into the CD tray (or vinyl platter, as I prefer.) One For Sorrow is like taking a hard look at yourself in the mirror as thunder crackles in your mind while watching your tears falling like rain. It’s like pent up rage tearing apart its fetters and bounding through your heart. With each urgent minute, there's a momentary release into freedom to remind yourself you’re trapped. Gloomy, despondent, heavy stuff from these criminally underrated Finns, outpacing and outplaying their seemingly dozing Swedish progenitors.

Though post-rock and shoegaze are the de rigeur styles of late, they lovingly furnish their palatial tracks with gilded slivers of grandeur, unwilling to sacrifice their wild streaks of old, a fierce exemplar in Every Hour Wounds. Harrowing gangs of mourners howl on Through the Shadows and the Song of the Blackbird lacerate like searing blades running thick with blood in an effort to revive a moribund elan vivre – this album has nary a skerrick of hope folded into its miasma of grey but their melodies sound defiant, graceful, and beautiful, save to mention their dark Romantic lyricism vaulting the record's raw, sorrowful element to a natural perigee on the string-filled self-titled closer. 

Workmanlike production lends tracks like Only One Who Waits imparts a calloused, bruising character, pleasing to hear amid the din of a thousand producers hollowing out the souls of their records to sound “more digital than anything else.” Though their last three albums were exquisite in their own right, the simplistic tag of “In Flames meets Children of Bodom on Opeth pills” ought to be consigned to metal history. A mature effort, it’s unashamedly and unforgettably a work of Insomnium’s stellar brand; an opus of elegant desperation.

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The Top 10 of 2011




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The Top 10 Metal of 2011 - #3

Making our way back to shore, we check into a lowly watering hole to soak ourselves in booze, washing away the pain from The Inside Room...

#3 
  
40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room

I haven’t felt this way in such a long time about a record – an unsated, mournful feeling that bubbles up from some hitherto undiscovered fissure in the depths of my heart. Probing further, one can discover the frail, weak pulse that occupies “the inside room.” Its bleak doom metal in the absolute sense of the term; there’s only melancholy and monochrome to be heard and felt on this record although it’s so heart-rending it’s almost impossible to feel moved by it. Patrick Walker’s (ex-Warning) passionate, despondent and soul-rattling voice strides effortlessly over the minimalistic yet ocean-sized riffs, each player in lock-step with one another, communicating an avalanching, existential malaise that seems to stand in solidarity with anyone who has shed a tear in anguish or has lost something so precious to them. To feel so utterly lost in and arrested by a piece of music without once suspending one’s disbelief – not even for a second - is rare; The Inside Room is one of those once in a decade records. Perhaps these inhumanly talented upstarts 40 Watt Sun are one of those once in a decade bands, too. What’s more incredible is the thought of it having been recorded over three tireless days and nights – a mere seventy two hours! Hauntingly beautiful, like a living reminder that we are somehow incomplete and for that, we must despair.

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The Top 10 of 2011




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The Top 10 Metal of 2011 - #4

The atoms from the discarded cheeseburger recombine to create a snarling metal beast rising from the waters off the cape of Jutland...

#4
Mercenary - Metamorphosis

Mercenary were every bit Danish metal royalty – every record since the groundbreaking 11 Dreams was hyped as a major event in melodic death metal and with solid reason. Since the Sandager brothers’ departure, only the two original guitarists remain. Now, with a bit more breathing room to relax and let their riffs loose from leashes gripped tightly by their former bandmates, Mercenary have stepped back from their unyielding desire to emulate the fleeting glory days of Euro progressive metal (that’s the late 90s) and fusing the heady intensity of the original Gothenburg sound (the precious little mid-90s) to thrash out a record brimming with prime lead breaks, jaw-dropping solos and carnivorous, cracking riffs. They strut with a fearless command of those big, American style arena-electrifying refrains from the very beginning, (Through the Eyes of the Devil) grind relentlessly and parenthetically pound polyrhythms with subtlety and aplomb (In A River of Madness) as honey-coated keyboard accompaniments shine through better than any of their contemporaries (ahem, Scar Symmetry).

Rene Pedersen's stepping up to the microphone to lay down toweringly clean and muscular death vocals is possibly one of the greatest personnel decisions in melodic death metal history. Impassioned throughout, he sounds none more sincere than on Memoria. Pained and ardent cries to his parents had me completely floored, easily making this vocal driven track the best on the record. In Bloodred Shades hides nothing from us; trammeling, crunching riffs dominate no sooner to halt and yield to splendorous progressive inspired passages before twisting and turning back again, keeping us on tenterhooks as we can only feel awed at what they come up with next upon each and every listen.

Songwriting that treads the line between velvety Euro cheese and angsty American teenage posturing yet succumbing to the trappings of neither culminates perfectly on Shades of Gray, cloud-like synth anchoring an “ahhhing” choir while the rhythm section thickly lay chugging riffs down would sound completely stupid if it were cut by almost anyone else, but Mercenary make it work perfectly (principally the stock 80s key change on the bridge: “oohing” in tandem with faux-poetic lyricism: “From the beauty of a single rose / To the night's clear sky / Don't let it pass you by”) eventually wiping away the “somfing wot got in my eye” in the grinder On the Edge of Sanity. Coming out swinging (of the Glenn Miller variety, natch) in the closer The Black Brigade, we must ask: is Metamorphosis metal for the 2010s, the de-spoiler of the metalcore generation? I would be inclined to say it is.

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The Top 10 of 2011





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“The universe is change, life is what our thoughts make it.”
— Marcus Aurelius