Only 11 months after its first record that varied between emotional and nature inspired ballads, melodic and technically appealing heavy metal songs and a couple of energizing thrash metal tracks, the trio ดอนผีบิน or Donpheebin from Chiang Mai in Thailand is back with a follow-up entitled “เส้นทางสายมรณะ” or “Way of Death”. You might be surprised but there are a lot of changes between those two albums and sometimes you might even ask yourself if this is still the same band.

Gone are the down-stripped ballads and the classic heavy metal anthems with extensive guitar solos. The pitiless and dystopian opener “สุดแท้ทางเดิน” or “The True Path” is a brutal piece of speed and thrash metal with guttural vocals, high speed drumming and discordant guitar solos that take no prisoners despite a short mid-tempo breakdown in the middle of the track. This song sounds a lot like Slayer for example and already shows us what this album may sound like. The vocals are sometimes even much closer to death metal than to thrash metal.

The apocalyptic opening minutes of “สังคมบัญชา” or “Social Orders” are rather slow dystopian parts à la Voivod before the track gets a blistering twist with up tempo passages recalling early Morbid Angel for example. This sounds quite crazy and is definitely a feast for any extreme metal fan. This album is though a quite mixed bag for old and new fans. Those who liked the band’s first album might feel confused about the band’s development but those who thought that their first output was too soft might have a positive surprise with this.

You might now think that the band only put a few harder songs at the beginning of the album just like on the previous release. But the whole record turns out to fully dedicated to up tempo extreme metal. I must though admit that the first three or four songs are by far the rawest ones while the other tracks sound a little bit more like melodic thrash metal in the key of Heathen or Metallica and also include a few mid-tempo passages that may give you some time to breathe. Once you have accepted this change of style, you might realize that these twenty-five minutes are a great ride for those who appreciate the genre.

In the end, the band delivers us an American sounding, and quite entertaining, mixture of death, speed and thrash metal that should please to those who care for the early works of Death, Heathen, Metallica, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Venom or Voivod. The record is a little bit too short with only twenty-five minutes of running time. Three instrumental tracks plus another song that only includes a few words as lyrics out of eight songs are way too much even if they happen to be rather short. They are not stunning enough or technically appealing to justify their existence. That’s why this record rather feels like a somewhat rushed EP release for faithful fans than a real full length release. With a few more regular tracks instead of the instrumentals, this could have been a really great and consistent record. As it is, this album has its charm but turns out to be a lot less essential than the first record. I would only recommend this to collectors of exotic extreme metal music.

Originally written for The Metal Observer

After a balanced first album somewhere between folk rock, hard rock, heavy metal and thrash metal and a much straighter second album influenced by pitiless thrash and death metal, Thailand’s most important pioneer metal band DONPHEEBIN took a little bit from both sides and mixed them into a technically stunning extreme metal output where the beauty meets the beast.

The opener “อุบาทว์ – อุบัติ” or “Sinister – Emerge” goes back to the band’s roots. It opens with appeasing sound samples that seem to be taken from a small village close to the nature. You hear children talking and moving around but also crickets or birds and the whole thing has a very appeasing atmosphere. Melodic guitars set in and slowly develop this song into an ambitious metal song. Three minutes into the track, the riffs and the vocals shift towards a thrash metal inspired approach. A few death metal vocals can also be heard but the mixture of genres sounds much more outthought than on the previous second album. The beauty and the beast form a quite perfect couple on here and the opening song already introduces us to all that Donpheebin has been about until then. This song is also a good indicator for what this third studio output is all about.

While the harsher tracks on the second album reminded me more of Metallica, Morbid Angel and Slayer, some of the extreme metal tracks on here rather recall the unique techniques of Voivod. A pumping bass guitar, discordant dystopian guitar sounds and straight vocals that don’t care about technical skills but only about honest emotions dominate tracks such as “ดี - ใจ – หาย” or “Good – I – Lost”. In not even three minutes, this song manages to be full of instrumental details while remaining absolutely energizing. Especially the outstanding guitar work is once again mindblowing and presents us technical skills and emotions at the highest level.

The band manages to sound very diversified on this album without losing its clear guiding line and unique style. The record sounds a lot more mature than the first two outputs. “ทบทวนทาง” or “Reviewing” could also come from one of Voivod’s first three albums but has also a few classic heavy metal influences and a slightly doom metal atmosphere in the beginning. Even the rather short “สู้จนสิ้นใจ” or “Fight To Death” prepares a few surprises in form of a vivid drum solo followed by a hesitating silence at the beginning of the otherwise rather straight song.

From time to time, the band also goes back to its folk influences and psychedelic tones that are mixed with the raw thrash metal sounds. The most outstanding example along the opener is the epic album highlight “หมายกำหนดการ” or “Timetable”.

After all, Donpheebin manages to balance its two quite different sides in form of the more experimental folk, progressive and psychedelic rock influences on one side and the energizing thrash and death metal passages on the other side on a very high level. The album has a clear guiding line, a very good flow and just the perfect length around forty-five minutes. Not every song is a killer but the band sounds more mature than ever. Even though I clearly preferred the first record thanks to its more prominent emotional guitar solos, this third record defines the band a lot better than the other two and is a convincing return to form after the monotonous second album.

Originally written for The Metal Observer

Dear readers of my blog,

How should a radical politician who is often called a dictator react when journalists criticize him for the lack of freedom of speech in his country? Erdogan reacted with radical comments, forced a meeting with the German ambassador and wanted to oblige him to ban this satirical clip and expected the journalists to apologize. By doing so, he simply proved that everything mentioned in the video is actually sad but true and received more negative attention from the international press. I think it's worth sharing this video clip with you.

''The 5th Wave'' is one of the worst in a series of dystopian coming-of-age dramas with female lead actresses where quantity beats quality. This movie stands out negatively because of a plot that lacks depth and explanations. There is an increasing number of scenes towards the end of the film that are so unrealistic that they feel like a misguided genre parody. An overall extremely exchangeable acting performance makes things even worse. The movie lacks tension and has noticeable lengths. It tries to be atmospheric at times but overall lacks consistent intensity as some parts of the film are dominated by vapid side plots focusing on generic dialogues. The visual special effects are also surprisingly unspectacular for such an ambitious production. Since this movie has another ridiculous open ending, I would urge you not to watch this film because you might feel obliged to watch future sequels that might be even worse.

Despite all its flaws, this movie has a few positive elements to be fair. First of all, Chloë Grace Moretz is one of the more talented teenage actresses of this generation and she is the only reason why one should even consider watching this film. Her acting performance finds the right mixture between emotionality and maturity to convince related to the story and her age. Even the usual predictable love story between the two lead characters was more credible than I had expected. Another positive element are two twists in the last third of the story which were rather predictable for me but which might take younger audiences by surprise. The few atmospheric scenes that take place in the camp and in the forest were shot efficiently. The middle part of the movie was overall stronger than the lacklustre and overlong introduction and the laughable coda with its disappointing open ending. The middle section is also where the best fighting scenes and special effects take place that accelerate this surprisingly slow-paced movie a little bit. 

Still, this movie has more negative than positive elements and is obviously weaker than he comparable ''The Hunger Games'', the ''Divergent'' and ''The Maze Runner'' series. Only faithful fans of Chloë Grace Moretz should give this a try. This movie might be of a good average quality for teenagers who like the genre but is unappropriated for younger audiences and simply boring for older audiences. 

Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Assassin" is a very introspective, metaphorical and philosophical wuxia movie that requests a lot of patience from its audience. It's more like a slow-paced historical drama than anything else. It's comparable to Wong Kar-wai's episodic, mysterious and sophisticated "Ashes of Time". Both movies received critical acclaim by intellectual movie critics but were mostly despised by regular audiences. Since the trailers aren't very helpful, potential viewers should read a handful of critics and make themselves familiar with other works of these particular directors in cases like "Ashes of Time" and "The Assassin" before watching such a film.

There are less than a handful of fighting scenes and only a few secondary murder scenes in the movie despite its title and those scenes are not necessarily spectacularly executed.

The movie doesn't have a lot of continuous dialogues but the few words that are spoken are meaningful and help the audience to understand the twisted story that unfolds slowly but surely. A lot of things are explained through facial expressions, still lives and symbols of nature which aren't always obvious to understand. The movie is so slow yet precise that it requests a lot of attention and maybe even multiple viewing to fully grasp its content. 

The acting performances seem restricted and wooden at first sight but turn out being extremely precise and talented since the characters are all very emotional behind a veil of traditional discipline. 

The challenging acting performances, the calm camera work, the colourful costumes, the accurate dialogues, the diversified landscapes and the atmospheric soundtrack all add to the guiding line of this unusual film which deals with characters who are restricted in their traditional laws, rules and values but who are longing for emotions, freedom and individual fulfilment. From this point of view, the movie is more than a simple period drama and has a modern message that suggests that individual liberty is a greater good than governmental conventions. It might not come as a surprise to you that this seemingly traditional movie was made by a director who has rather identified himself with Taiwanese culture, history and values. This film seems to offer much more than meets the eye. 

If you are willing to look beyond the slow mood in beautiful pictures, you will discover an inspired and profound movie which offers a lot of food for thought. If you are looking for memorable entertainment, you will definitely not like this movie. I admit that this film is hard to digest and I couldn't watch this kind of cinematic art on a regular base but I appreciated the movie's hidden messages or at least my own interpretation of the ambiguous content and its coherent yet unique style. It was the director's goal to make its audience think on its own and while two of my friends who watched this movie found it dull, pointless and pretentious, I accepted, elaborated on and ultimately enjoyed its challenges.