Tag Archives: North Carolina

ALBUM REVIEW: Temptation’s Wings – Marauders of the Killing Moon

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If Black Label Society was influenced by Classic Metal and Doom instead of Southern Rock, they would probably sound a lot like Temptation’s Wings. The Asheville, North Carolina-based group features delightfully Ozzy-esque vocals with extra Zakk Wylde gruffness, guitars rooted in beefy bottom-heavy tones with playing that consists of steady gallops and melodic leads, and rhythms with a certain Southern Metal swing. All presented with a barbarian attitude that lends itself well to tales of drinking and mythological conquest.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Crystal Spiders – Molt

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Having been acquainted with vocalist Brenna Leath through her work with Lightning Born, her new project Crystal Spiders has a comparable grittier approach to Stoner Doom. Their first album, Molt (Ripple Music), is primarily driven by bass-heavy fuzz with songs that range from Psychedelic excursions to borderline Punk numbers. The style is most comparable to Year Of The Cobra, especially with the bass-drum duo setup, but the darker aspects also trigger associations with Windhand and Ruby The Hatchet.Continue reading →


Verse Vica – Endeavor

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album-cover

By now there is an over saturation of progressive/tech metal bands on the market. With a rich diversity of bands under the banner with a wide range of sounds and styles, it is definitely a genre in rude health, thus as a result there is seemingly a conveyor belt presenting more and more by the minute. Asheville, North Carolina’s Verse Vica are one of the latest crop of acts who have to stand out from the herd. Luckily there is evidence of something special about them.

Although debut album Endeavor (Independent) doesn’t show innovation in leaps and bounds, it does show a band with a youthful and energetic outlook yet with heads wiser than their years. Album opener ‘Airyth’ has a luscious, mellow tone which gradually builds with a little more power before ‘Cities 1: Cerulean’ kicks straight away with ferocity. Throughout this marries huge melodies with splatters of guttural growls and dynamic shifts in pace.

There is a sign of weakness here and the vocals of Spencer Brunkhorst are bit of a dampener, proving one dimensional during the growled passages and a little lacklustre at times in the singing when it should prove more commanding.

Tech metal is never going to be a sub genre which will never be considered cool, and Pokemon references (Cerulean and Saffron) are hardly going to help Verse Vica shake the geeky tag. But in a sub genre which is all about technique, these newbies have it in abundance.

Besides who doesn’t love Pokemon anyway?

 

8.0/10

Versa Vica on Facebook

CHRIS TIPPELL

 


Wretched – Cannibal

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Wretched

 

Confession time. I missed Wretched’s latest release, the charmingly entitled Cannibal (Victory) when it came out back in the summer. I’m not entirely sure how that happened but I should probably put it down to carelessness or middle aged lack of attention to detail on my part. Anyway, I have now rectified this and can report that all is well in the technical death metal world of Wretched. Very well indeed.

Cannibal is the fourth album from the North Carolina outfit and it is as breathless and brutal as you hope. In fact, it might just be the best album to date from a band that don’t seem to have gotten the credit that they are surely due.

Attempting to explain Wretched to the uninitiated isn’t the easiest of tasks. Sure, they cover the technical end of the death metal sub-genre with consummate ease but additionally they have always seemed to be eager to include additional ideas, tones and influences within their extreme musical language. On Cannibal, you can also hear plenty of metalcore, a soupcon of Behemoth and a bucketload of satanic sounding bile and venom. All well and good, then.

At one level, listening through a poor MP3 and terrible laptop speakers can, if you are not a convert to this sort of thing, sound like kicking a bag of kittens down a long, steep metal staircase (not that I have any experience of this but hopefully you can conjure the imagery.) You’d be wrong though.

For all its pulverizing bluster and pile-driving enthusiasm, Cannibal is not as frenzied or out of control as my description might suggest. There is self-evidently a remorselessness in what they do but you do get a sense that the band understand that allowing themselves to take a breath from time to time doesn’t detract from the intensity of the listening experience; more, there is a better sense of controlled aggression that is a sign of a band progressing and advancing their craft.

Given the sonic intensity of the whole record, picking out highlights seems somewhat pointless as it’s all pretty solid stuff from start to finish but in the interests of music journalism, there’s plenty of meat on ‘Cranial Infestation’ and there is nothing like any sort of let up in the power of the thrash inspired collective mugging of ‘Morsel’ but seriously, if you like this sort of thing, you’re going to really like this sort of thing. Wretched are tearing everyone a new one, as you’re supposed to say at this point.

 

7.0/10

Wretched on Facebook

MAT DAVIES