The nihilistic black metal trio is back with its second full length release somewhere between black metal, crust punk and a shot of doom metal. Their sound is characterized by a bleak, cold and desperate atmosphere. 

The songs feature short and emotional vocal passages that are painfully howled by guitarist and singer Sovannak. In addition to this, the band is perfectly bilingual as five songs are performed in French and two songs sung in English which adds some diversity to the sound. Anyway, it's nearly impossible to understand the lyrics but a look at the booklet helps. The lyrical topics are sometimes socially critical and accusing but also ecological and almost sarcastic and at other times nihilistic and repugnant. These lyrics are short and simple but I think they are very meaningful and original for their genre. 

The main focus lies though on the long instrumental passages which are extremely variable. We get to hear short and hyperfast crust punk passages, slow to mid-tempo paced atmospheric black metal and slow depressive doom metal parts that almost have slight jazz inspired moments. Despite an uncompromisingly raw underground production, one can hear the talent of the involved musicians. Instead of using the usual blast beats, young drummer J. is able to play fast parts, tight and almost grooving passages but also very slow and emotionally thought-out moments. The pumping bass guitar rhythms by Vincent VDM are sometimes depressing and repetitive and at other moments angry and startling. The guitar play is at times simple and gives the other instruments enough space to shine while it comes around with slow and haunting melodies and almost garage rock influenced riffs at the right moments. The instrumental work sounds epic, intellectual and almost progressive and I mean this in a very positive way as the tracks are never overlong or pretentious. The seven tracks have a great flow and the album never gets boring. I really suggest you to listen this record as a whole as it takes you on an atmospheric yet entertaining journey to the abyss of the human soul. It doesn't make sense to point out any particular song as they are all equally inspired and complement each other.

I'm convinced that even those who are less into black metal could appreciate this band because of its diversified and original instrumental work that never fails to surprise, its gripping and haunting atmosphere and its unique lyrics that give some food for thoughts. This band is pushing the contemporary boundaries of extreme metal further than most of its peers. Old school black metal fans who are looking for fast and violent tunes might find some parts of the album too slow and tame but it's the perfect fusion of appeasing and pitiless passages that makes the listening experience even more valuable as a whole. If you are looking for intellectual and original extreme metal music that differs from the usual genre stereotypes, you should give this band a fair chance, support the guys and and spread Putamen Insula's name. This band is maybe the best band of the contemporary black metal scene in Quebec and since this scene is very rich and unique, this statement means quite a lot. Make sure to check one of Putamen Insula's extreme and intense live shows out as well.

Iron Reagan is a quintet from Richmond, Virginia, consisting of band members from groups such as Cannabis Corpse and Municipal Waste. Since its foundation three years ago, the band plays an energizing mixture of hardcore punk, thrash metal and a shot of dirty hard rock. Imagine a mixture of The Subhumans, early Anthrax and early Motörhead and you might come close to what these guys are playing. The lyrics feature a balanced mixture of absurd nonsense humour and politically or socially inspired messages. The crazy package is rounded up with a few mean cover artworks honouring Ronald Reagan situated somewhere between disrespect and sarcasm. The idea behind the band is nothing new as this kind of crossover had already animated bands such as D.R.I., Mucky Pup, Stormtroopers of Death and The Accüsed back in the wild eighties but Iron Reagan plays its music with so much authenticity, humour and rage that they should conquer anyone who likes some of the numerous aforementioned bands above by storm. Let’s add that this kind of music is meant to be played live. If you can get the chance to see this quintet in concert, your experience will be even greater than listening to one of its two regular studio albums, one EP, one demo or the split with Exhumed. Anyone who can’t enjoy the band on stage should wait for a live release which would be a conciliatory option.

This album has a great flow over its short running time of around thirty-two minutes and twenty-four songs plus an optional bonus track. Those who like fast hard rock should fall in love with the tight “Close to Toast” which comes around with one of the most gripping riffs on the entire album and one of the few great guitar solos. “Bill of Fights” stands most for the old school hardcore punk spirit of the band as it features fast, repetitive and simple riffs as well as a slightly more melodic and slower bridge with a pumping rhythm section and rebellious lyrics sung by a furious singer that is supported by enthusiastic gang shouts. Those who are looking for thrash metal inspired by the early eighties should enjoy the closing “Four More Years” which has the longest running time by clocking in at exactly four minutes. The melodic mid-tempo riffs are atmospheric, brutal and gripping throughout the entire track and lead to an almost epic sing-along chorus where the pissed off main vocalist is once again supported by powerful gang shouts. While the entire album is a unchained fun ride, this album closer is an instant genre classic that people should still remember in the future.

Those who are saying that this record lacks contemporary quality standards, genre diversity and uniqueness are wrong. While the production sounds mean at first sight one can perfectly hear all instruments and the dynamical sound is a perfect mixture of the spirit of the past and the elevated technical standards of the present. The band always comes around with a few surprises here and there as in the nasty punk track “Consensual Harassment” featuring sleazy female vocals performed by Luna Duran. Despite its honest old school attitude, the band forges its own identity by including several concise excerpts from political speeches or short radio play passages at the beginning of a handful of tracks that may give you some food for thoughts or simply make you laugh out loud. The band is spreading its pleasure like an enjoyable disease.

If you feel ready for a fast-paced hardcore thrash fun ride somewhere between sarcasm and social criticism for an entertaining half an hour, there is probably no better contemporary release than Iron Reagan’s second output. Don’t forget to bring something to drink, prepare enough space for a potential mosh pit, warn your neighbours if you like them, invite a couple of friends and crank up the volume to fully enjoy this record.

HammerFall’s “Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken“ is an album with many ups and downs. While the middle part includes several forgettable songs, the album also includes some of the band’s greatest efforts, a few controversial tunes and a hidden pearl.

Let’s start with the most amazing efforts. The album kicks off with “Secrets” which is maybe the best HammerFall opener ever. Right from the start, the band builds up an epic and majestic atmosphere before a ferocious up-tempo anthem kicks off with gripping guitar and keyboard melodies, a ferocious rhythm section and powerful vocals. The chorus is not only very catchy and features great melodies but is also quite meaningful. The highlight of this perfect track is the instrumental middle part featuring three extremely well executed guitar solos where Stefan Elmgren and Oscar Dronjak show off their hidden talent and prove that they can be on par with the greatest heavy metal guitarists of all times. I’m seriously asking myself why these obviously brilliant musicians seem to restrain themselves most of the times by playing rather tame, repetitive and ordinary solos in most of their songs. Now, this is an amazing way to start a record but it also sets the bar pretty high for the rest to come. The single “Blood Bound” fulfils the elevated expectations. It has no impressive solo passages but the track has other strengths. The song is to the point and doesn’t include one unnecessary second. It’s a powerful anthem with gripping vocals and harmonious guitar melodies leading to one of the strongest choruses in the band’s career which makes this track the best single the band has released in its career. This unbeatable opening duo seems to announce the band’s very best record but the following songs can’t keep the high quality and are only good average mid-tempo tracks somewhere between traditional heavy and power metal.

A promising exception may be the ballad “Never, Ever”. Some people may find the controversial track too cheesy, too soft and too weepy and when I’m listening to the strained vocals, the kitschy acoustic guitar and keyboard melodies and the melancholic guitar melodies in the chorus and bridge as well as the heavily emotionally charged vocals I can understand that point of view. On the other side, this song is truly moving me as I can somewhat relate to the lyrics about a sad end to a love relationship and I’m sure that I’m not the only one. That’s why the concept works perfectly for me and I really prefer this track over similar efforts in the past. Another controversial tracks that works at least partially for me is the album closer “Knights of the 21st Century” which clocks in at almost twelve and a half minutes as the longest HammerFall song ever. The truth is that the actual song already ends after about ten minutes and that the rest consist of two minutes of silence and a short humorous hidden part. This song combines Joacim Cans’ melodic vocals with Cronos’ guttural black metal growls of Venom fame. His exaggerated and theatrical performance sounds mildly amusing but I get the impression that this was the desired effect. Maybe the band wanted to build a diverting and slightly humorous contrast instead of truly adding an evil atmosphere to the tune. To my positive surprise, the two quite different vocalists complement each other and the entertaining vocal performances carry a track that is otherwise a little bit overlong and unspectacular from an instrumental point of view. In the end, this quite unusual song is a welcome change of style even though it’s only an average tune after all.

The hidden pearl of this album which includes a few too many fillers is “The Templar Flame”, a short yet epic heavy metal anthem almost on par with “Blood Bound”. The song is a little bit slower and the chorus is a little bit less euphoric which might be the reasons why this track is often overlooked. Still, the guitar melodies and vocals remind me of a mixture of HammerFall’s later single “Any Means Necessary” and Mike Oldfield’s “Moonlight Shadows” with a healthy dose of heavy metal of the eighties in the key of Iron Maiden with a fun sing-along part in the middle section. I really hope this song is on the set list when I’m going to see HammerFall live because this kind of tune is meant to be played in concert. I can only warmly recommend to rediscover this hidden gem again as it’s one of HammerFall’s catchiest and most entertaining tracks on here.

As you can see, this record is somehow a double-edged sword. It includes two undeniable band classics with the ferocious opener “Secrets” and the catchy single “Blood Bound”, an amazing heavy metal song meant to be played live with “The Templar Flame” as well as one of the band’s very best ballads with “Never, Ever” and one of their most experimental tracks with the unstable epic “Knights of the 21st Century”. These five tunes would have made an excellent EP. Sadly, the rest of this full length release is really unspectacular and sounds like random background music that can be skipped without any regrets. If a company ever decided to choose some metal tunes as elevator music, then they could find five candidates right here. My final verdict is that faithful fans of the band should purchase this release while occasional listeners may find the very best songs on here on the “Steel Meets Steel – Ten Years of Glory” compilation or the live outputs “Rebels with a Cause – Unruly, Unrestrained, Uninhibited” and “Gates of Dalhalla”.

No, this release isn't as innovative as many experts and fans claim. The stupidly entitled "Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die! Death Metal Symphony in Deep C" with an abysmal cover that makes Iron Maiden's Ed Hunter artwork look like a brilliant piece of art is a mediocre collection of opposing genres squeezed into one single record. The different genres are rarely fusioned and mostly stand apart. When they get mixed once in a while, they rarely harmonize. Waltari didn't really try out anything completely new either as bands such as Phlebotomized and Therion were also already mixing classical music and extreme metal elements back in the days in a much better way.

The overlong opener "Misty Dreariness" doesn't feature any rock or metal elements and is basically an elegiac piece of classical music plodding on for almost eight abominable minutes. As if that wasn't enough, the middle part of this album features a slow paced classical music instrumental entitled "Completely Alone" that even breaks the twelve minute mark. It's not because a track is long that it means it's experimental, intellectual or progressive. Now, don't get me wrong, I admire classical music and listen to everything from Bach and Beethoven over Wagner and Tchaikovsky to Orff and Varèse. There is great and inspired classical music and there is pseudo-intellectually plodding classical music. This here is definitely the second category. It gets much worse though as "Move" is a horrible mixture of female operatic vocals and male rap passages while the instruments play a really odd mixture of highly repetitive classical music with some scratching. A wannabe Montserrat Caballé meets a wannabe Chuck D in a nu metal prototype that makes even the worst Limp Bizkit song sound clever. The suffering doesn't end here for the listeners as the band closes the regular version of this release with "The Top". That is rather the bottom of this record. We get to hear uninspired classical music featuring technoid elements that actually sound like a mixture of cringeworthy Eurodance elements and dumb Darkwave sounds somewhere between DJ Bobo and Das Ich. Those who are complaining about Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus should actually listen to this track and will realize that the experimental fusion of metal and Darkwave can sound much worse than they might have thought before.

Where is the metal music in here? About one third or a little bit less of this release is actually death metal music. It sounds like a badly recorded mixture of early Atrocity and early Therion. Most of these parts are just brutal and fast but there are also a few slower and almost doom metal inspired parts. The latter parts sometimes harmonize with the classical music while the faster passages contrast this kind of music. Contrasting elements can work well if they are employed in a clever manner but Waltari keeps repeating the same song writing ideas all the time and after one or two initial surprises, the clash of genres just sounds odd and predictable. 

Now, why doesn't that release get an ever lower rating? A few songs actually manage to mix death metal elements and classical music in an interesting way like the well elaborated "A Sign", the chaotically experimental yet strangely coherent and fascinating "Deeper Into the Mud" and the mostly pitiless and fast paced short neck-breaker "The Struggle for Life and Death of Knowledge". These three songs stand out among the five abysmal potpourris and the pointless hidden bonus track. I must also admit that I'm impressed that Waltari and their partners in crime really had the courage to release this oddball of an album to the masses. 

In the end, this release is only interesting for those who are looking for an unusual listening experience that is experimental at all costs. If you actually want to listen to an elegant, energizing and progressive fusion of classical music and metal music, you should obviously choose Therion's records over this oddity.

Whoracle is probably In Flames' weakest studio release. It doesn't have the bleak atmosphere of the first releases, fails to come around with the catchy melodies and vocal lines of the transitory middle years and doesn't feature the more experimental alternative rock touch of the contemporary releases. This album feels like a rehash of the previous output The Jester Race which had a couple of decent tunes but wasn't the band's greatest hour either. A look at the track list already reveals the lack of inspiration on this album. The record is only forty-two minutes short and includes two fluffy and inoffensive filler instrumentals plus a cover track by Depeche Mode which means that there are only thirty-three minutes of own music with vocals left. It's funny enough that "Everything Counts" is one of the more energizing and catchier tunes and a rather interesting choice for a cover song. I have always appreciated In Flames' cover tracks and this is no exception. The experimental yet inoffensive original doesn't impress me much but this version is catchy, heavy and melodic at the same time. From the band's own material, only "Episode 666" reaches the same level of addictive energy and would have been an obvious single choice for such a band.

The only other standout songs are the more experimental efforts. "Jester Script Transfigured" is sometimes missing a clear guiding line but includes a couple of promising song writing ideas in a running time of almost six minutes. The acoustic guitar parts are moving and the distorted violon sounds add an elegant, elegiac and melancholic touch to a track that never falls off the edge. "Worlds Within the Margin" also breaks the five minute mark and is one of the darkest and harshest tracks on the record. It features a fine touch of symphonic elements which is rather unusual for the band. The symphonic extreme metal experiment sounds very promising though and it's sad that the band didn't push this combination of genres any further until today.

The other songs are generic melodic death metal. These tracks are short and to the point, feature a couple of harsh riffs and focus more on the vocals than before. The problem is that the vocals aren't very variable on here. The lyrics are also rather unimpressive. The riffs start to get repetitive after a while and the album doesn't include many heartbreaking melodic guitar solos. The rhythm section with bass guitar and drums is unimpressive. In Flames has never been a band centered on the rhythm instruments but this element has never been as inoffensive and unimportant as on this output. A more dynamical production would have helped to solve this problem.

In the end, Whoracle is not an abominable output but it is mostly boring, repetitive and uninspired. It's the most forgettable studio effort by a band that constantly tried out new things. It feels like an unmotivated rehash of The Jester Race where the band was just lazy and wanted to fool around a little bit. I can only recommend this release to faithful collectors and die-hard fans. It would have been a better choice to release this record as a short and entertaining EP featuring only the best tracks "Jotun", "Jester Script Transfigured", "Worlds Within the Margin", "Episode 666" and maybe the cover of "Everything Counts".