Diablo Swing Orchestra - Sing-Along Songs For The Damned And Delirious

Combining extreme metal with symphonic arrangements is not exactly something new. If besides we're talking about a Nordic band the thing seems really predictable. However, this is not the case of "Sing-Along Songs For The Damned and Delirious", second album from the Swedish band Diablo Swing Orchestra who deliver 10 amazing songs in which they manage to meet all symphonic metal canons (from demonic voices to string arrangements, and from crushing riffs to the "break-a-glass" soprano voice) while at the same time they pass through swing, Balkans music and even some Latin touches. Thus, while most of their colleagues look for the operatic exquisiteness and grandiloquent classical arrangements, Diablo Swing Orchestra goes trough burlesque, theatricality and joy, with songs like the opener "A Tapdancer's Dilema", in which power chords engage to swing jazz, or "Lucy Fear The Morning Star", a song with afro-latin percussion in which we just don't know whether to make some headbanging or to shout "Azucarrrr!" while (Oh! gothic-metalhead sacrilege!) dancing deliciously. Demonstrating that there is always an exception that proves the rule, Diablo Swing Orchestra delivers a very good symphonic metal disc. Anti-solemn and exuberant. Sabor! -CORANNIEIT-

Diablo Swing Orchestra, Sing-Along Songs For The Damned And Delirious

Sensory Records, 2009

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Baroness - Blue Record

There are times we want our ears to be drilled without mercy. That's when we listen to heavy artillery from bands like Lamb Of God. But there are times when we want to hear good metal, hard and strong but without risk of permanent hearing damage. That's when a record like "Blue Record," the second album by American band Baroness, enters the picture. This quartet formed in Georgia, included, by the way, in the next Coachella Festival lineup, features 12 hymns, heavies, energetics, theatricals, with hard guitars always galloping (although not necessarily aggressive) and old school melodic solos. Heavy metal, pompous and raw at the same time, which intersects with alternative rock, doom metal and, following the path of bands like Mastodon, touches of progressive metal perhaps with not much complexity but in pieces like "A Horse Called Golgotha" or "War, Wisdom And Rhyme ", with textures, instrumental passages and rhythmic changes, is enough to give another level to their sound while songs like "Jake Leg" or "The Sweetest Curse ", rude and direct, maintains the metal rage in the album. A magnificent metal disk: epic, vital and noisy. -CORANNIEIT-

Baroness, Blue Record
Relapse Records, 2009

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Pelican - What We All Come To Need

Pelican is one of those bands that hardly make a bad record. His discography is probably one of the most consistent of the post-metal scene and "What We All Need To Come," their fourth album, is not exception. In it, these young masters of metal plays long pieces of heavy music full of chiaroscuros in which Trevor de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec guitars continue alternating distorted riffs and chords, full of power, with moments of lightness and, if we can use the term, a certain delicacy, playing an instrumental heavy metal that at times approaches to progressive rock, post-rock and stoner rock. For some tracks the band includes Greg Anderson (Sunn o)))) and Aaron Turner (Isis) in addition to Allen Epley (Shiner) vocals in "Final Breath", first non-instrumental song recorded by the quartet (although actually this does not improves the sound of the band). Perhaps slightly more relaxed (so to say) than "City Of Echoes" or "The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw", "What We All Need To Come" stay at the same level as their predecessors but specially keeps the well known Pelican´s dark power. -CORANNIEIT-

Pelican, What We All Come To Need
Southern Lord Records, 2009

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Rammstein - Liebe ist für alle da

The good thing about being a band like Rammstein is that no one expects that each album sounds different. With a sound practically patented what we expect in every Rammstein album is furious music. Hostile music. And this is precisely what these industrial metal veterans does in "Liebe Ist Für Alle Da" their sixth studio album, which, considering what they did in very regular (not to say mediocre) "Reise, Reise "(2004) and" Rosenront "(2005), is not to be overlooked. It seems that this 4 years pause has enable these Germans to recalibrate the gears of the machinery that produced records like "Sehnsucht" or "Matter" and deliver 11 songs (15 in the special edition of the album) of aggressive and tense metal, with the guitars of Richard Kruspe and Paul Landers bringing back their impetuosity with sharp and overwhelming riffs, while Christian Lorenz left electro adornments to do arrangements a little bit more complex and symphonic that together with the always threatening and theatrical performances of Till Lindemann gives the music a slightly sinister touch. Although at times the sextet drops his guard to make themes with semi-acoustic and melodic touches as "Roter Sand", quiet and dispensable, or "Frühling in Paris", a power-ballad in which Lindemann shows that sometimes even him has a "sweet-heart" by singing "softly" (for his standard) a few lines in French, "Liebe ist für alle da" is equilibrate by pieces like "Rammlied", "Ich Tu Dir Weh" or "Wiener Blut" with the classic "Rammstein sound": hard, crushing, unsuitable for delicate ears. Not the best record from Rammstein but the more decent that the band has delivered this decade. -CORANNIEIT-

Rammstein, Liebe ist für alle da
Universal Music, 2009

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Heaven & Hell - The Devil You Know

After having met in 2006 to record 3 songs to be included in the compilation "Black Sabbath: The Dio Years", this old metal masters decided to return for their old glory and met again to record "The Devil You Know" first studio album that they sign as Heaven & Hell and with wich they break the silence that the band have mantain since 1992 when recorded "Dehumanizer" still like Black Sabbath. There is not much new that can be said about the music of these veterans: the Butler-Appice duo is the solid and strong base on which is mounted the slow, very slow and crushing guitar of Tony Iommi, the unique and original "Lord Of The Riffs, to deliver the crushing chords and nice solos that give the crude and primitive element of the music while, in the other hand, the impeccables performances of Ronnie James Dio, who in his nearly 67 years shows that still have voice for a while, give it the melodic and theatrical touch. Combining the classic Sab sound, slow and dark, of themes such as "Atom and Evil" or "Follow The Tears", with the melodic and energetic sound of songs such as "Bible Black" and "Neverwhere", this venerable quartet deliver an excellent classic metal album demonstrating that the devil knows more because he is old than because he is the devil. -CORANNIEIT-

Heaven & Hell, The Devil You Know

Rhino, 2009

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Mastodon - Crack The Skye

Masterfully combining the full power of metal with progressive rock cerebral structures, this band from Atlanta give their fourth album "Crack The Skye" which like its predecessor, the furious "Blood Mountain", is a conceptual album about a bizarre story that include Rasputin, the Tsarist Russia, astral travels, spirits and demons. Perhaps slowed and less aggressive than "Blood Mountain", but also so much darker and ambitious, "Crack The Skye" confirms that the quartet's music goes far beyond the power chords and headbanging delivering 9 songs (including instrumental versions of a couple of pieces) with an elaborated and full of nuances sound without losing its hard, heavy and often clangorous essence. Much closer to Tool than to Dream Theater, Mastodon go in prog metal using, without abuse, progressive elements (passages, structures, etc.) to achieve a more sophisticated sound while maintaining an always rude and visceral attitude. With the guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher playing wild chords but also solos that winks to David Gilmour, the album passes so overwhelming between pieces as "Quintessence," with a progressive start and final explosively heavy, "Ghost Of Karelia" , with a phantasmal riff that immediately takes us back to "Schism" from Tool, and "The Last Baron" a monumental, and perhaps the best summary of Mastodon's music, such that at the end leave us exhausted and not by their 13:00 minutes of duration, but by the intensity that reaches: after 3 minutes of simple and almost inconsequential metal "The Last Baron" takes off and starts to level up until it reach a quite progressive passage, with no signs of metal, then turn into a 100% Toolean music full of power that leads to the headbanging, finishing with another Gilmourean solo. Without rest nor truce along 50 minutes, Mastodon delivery in "Crack The Skye" elaborated and ambitious music, but above all, no-mercy intense metal. -CORANNIEIT-

Mastodon, Crack The Skye
Reprise, 2009

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