Koprotopsy – Eternal Extinction (2016) / 70%

Mesopotamian brutal death made in a French bedroom? 

Koprotopsy is a one man band from France and I’m not totally sure why I like this album as much as I do. I mean, I know I shouldn’t and deep down I’m pretty sure that my inner person thinks it sucks but I managed to ignore what my brain is saying and enjoy this album. Michaël Sikli also known as Sainte Vermine, is in many projects, now something common with the development of technologies and internet but this is the first one I’ve discovered and it’s impressive in its own way.

Even if it can be seen as amateurish or even a bedroom metal band, there’s an obvious richness to this project. The combination of genres is pretty unique and it creates an avant-garde formula. You take the bass heavy dynamics of the totally insane Estonian duo Neoandertals but remove some of the crude craziness from it and you add guitars but not loud ones as you don’t want to bury the clicky bass! This is the core of their genre but it’s not over yet, Koprotopsy is adding ethnic influences to make their music completely bonkers. At times it sounds like Melechesh and Cult of Fire just discovered brutal death metal in a Russian basement full of slam wiggers. While it’s all programmed instrumentation for the estranged parts, it sounds good and it’s well done. The production for the metal elements is definitely sub-par but I didn’t really mind this. Sure, a solid production with real drums, louder guitars and real ethnic instruments would had been better but I think a large part of my enjoyment come from the fact that it’s a cheap home production.

The fourteen minutes track “Engraved Into Ashes” has pretty much everything. Piano parts intertwined with huge bass licks, dark ambient bits and toy machine gun blastbeats played underneath a symphonic doom/death moment. It’s fun, for sure. The vocals are probably way too high in the mix and the deep growls are nothing really special, it’s not what’s interesting about this album and should probably be considerably lowered on the future releases.

It’s the equivalent of cooking something that you think will turn out totally inedible because you mixed weird ingredients together but when you take a bite, you tell yourself “ehhhh not bad”. This is bad but good and it’s hard to explain why I ate the whole thing. He also released the Primitive Deathcult EP in 2016 and it’s worth checking out as well, it’s one long track showcasing the ethnic side even more.

Thanks to my buddy Caspian for the discovery.

Pay what you can download on Bandcamp

Metal Bounty Hunter: Volume Two

Khazaddum – In Dwarven Halls (2015) / 75%

By Gimli's beard!
The Wisconsin quintet plays a very cool sort of brutal death metal inspired by the likes of Nile and Suffocation but instead of writing about ancient Egypt or plain evil stuff, they decided to follow the Amon Amarth/Summoning path and accept J.R.R. Tolkien as their saviour. Their songs are slow for the style and they have the epic riffy as fuck approach of Bolt Thrower at times. The guitars are pretty legit and the soloing is quite decent, the drums are competent blastbeats as well and the production is solid as hell for a first independant release. The vocals are not your usual “breee breees”, they're more rooted in traditional death metal, deep manly growls are my favorite for this sort of metal! It would had been cool to get some Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit samples thrown in there for the sake of it though, it would add a fun cheesy side to the band that they already have anyway. Anyhow, that's a well done debut EP for these guys and I think the 15 minutes format works well for this style of primitive brutal death.

Bandcamp - Pay what you can

Pluie – d'Hochelaga (2014) / 78%

Wet dirty montreal black metal
The trio from the Hochelaga neigbourhood of Montréal plays a dirty kind of black metal inspired by their location. The production isn't that raw and it's quite richer than I thought it was at first, it's also highly interesting. It's not experimental or written to reinvent the genre but there's originality within the confines of their solid riffs and depressive vocals. The tempos are varied, ranging from aggressively fast (“La dèche des ruelles”) to mid-paced heaviness (“Sorcier des rats”). Their music is highly emotional and features vicious but still beautiful melodies played by these incisive guitar tremolos. The bass is also high in the mix for this kind of metal, it's pretty enjoyable and adds a lot to the mix. Formed by musicians coming from many different musical scenes and backgrounds (such as the awesome experimental grind of Expectorated Sequence), Pluie evolves in a different direction than most Quebecois black metal, it's not about winter or nationalism, it's about how disgusting how humanity is and that, my friends, is universal.

Pluie on Bandcamp

Angel Sword – Rebels Beyond the Pale (2016) / 84%

Enter the Court of Chaos

Finland is easily becoming one of my favorite niches for trad metal, their scene oozes badassery and pure 80s fashion flair. Alongside bands like Legionnaire or Lord Fist, Angel Sword really found their sound in old compilations full of German and American bands and they're freaking awesome. Many will argue that the vocals of this band are mediocre but I really love this sort of amateurish, bad good style of delivery, he really fits the heavy metal sound found here. Like most Finnish metal, there's a certain peculiarity even if it's without a doubt traditional metal with the vintage themes.

The songs are all pretty short, super melodic affairs with juicy riffs and the choruses are awesome and well written, they remind me of Accept or Running Wild (minus the pirate element) with they variety and appeal of Slough Feg (the last track “Witches Never Die” reminded me of the San Francisco band). It's efficient, meta metal of the highest quality with madman vocals. Highly recommended for true fans of true metal. Despite their name, they're far from generic.

Angel Sword on Bandcamp

Yetzer Hara – Demo 2014 / 76%

Dark obscured doom

This young Swedish mysterious unisex duo plays a vibrant form of doom/stoner while keeping only the necessary elements of the genre. Huge ass heavy guitars played by a small lady and loud slow drums played by her manly viking acolyte. The four instrumental songs are slow, thunderous dirges with a self assumed improvisational identity. It feels like they're in a dark smokey room and they're recording themselves play for half an hour before going out in the snowy climate of Norrköping. The theme of the band and their music is mostly related to Judaism but unlike fellow Swedes Meshuggah, they're subtle, introspective and smooth.
While I think some vocals could had been cool (think of High Priest of Saturn), the compositions are well thought out, repetitive but not overly so and the guitar tone is super good for such a recording. The inclusion of a short sample in “Ha” was thoughtful as well. I really like the ending of the demo, there's some sort of little bells resonating in the background and it's special. I'd really like to hear a full length from these guys, they're a bit elusive and slow to release stuff though but I'll be there waiting in the shadows!

Bandcamp - Pay what you can

Mulletcorpse - Disinfect (2012) / 15%

It's only 25 minutes... It's only 25 minutes...

That's the thing I constantly told myself when I was listening to these guys, god it's a style I never learned to liked. What style is it, precisely though? Well, hard to truly say since they probably don't know what they're doing and which direction to take themselves. They label their music as “death/grind” possibly because they fear the dreaded “deathcore” tag but that's what they are with a mix of other genres they don't really know how to integrate. 

The whole thing has obvious brutal death metal influences but it's not as sick or deranged enough to truly be something enjoyable. It's basically a mix of that with pseudo grind written by some dudes who think Dying Fetus is the epitome of the genre and think that Napalm Death aren't heavy enough and some modern djent tripe influences that are as disposable as the little poop bags I used when I walk my dog.

 The vocals are decent, more in line with actual death metal than grind or brutal death and they're possibly the only thing I actually liked on Disinfect except the integration of metalcoreish shouting such as in the closer “Posercrusher” (dudes, pretty sure you'd have to crush yourselves). The lyrics are uninteresting rambling about death but not gory, nasty or smart enough to be compelling for the genre(s) they play. 

“Congratulations, you've just been nominated the world's biggest wannabe”

Well, ok!

The band began to annoy me immensely me when the guitarists decided to stop playing riffs and branch out into djent/modern “metal” territories with these noodly and totally obnoxious riffs composed for a generation who grew up listening to all the wrong things. The songs are all around three minutes and they're constant attacks of badly written breakdowns and generic blastbeats and combined to the dual vocals, it's just unbearable. The musicians aren't the problem here since they're not bad, the songwriting and the melting pot of genres are what ruined this first full length

I'd rather listen to Periphery since at least they have a cohesive vision of their craft, Mulletcorpse are all over the place and can't seem to find a way to actively combine their wide of uninteresting musical genres.

Like mullets, the music of these Ontarians is ugly and for people with poor taste.

Bandcamp