It’s 2011 and we have While Heaven Wept from the United States of America with a new album, already one of the best of this year, from Nuclear Blast and with an additional member, Jason Lingle (Keyboards, Vocals) added to the existing lineup, Tom Phillips (Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals) Jim Hunter (Bass, Vocals) Rain Irving (Lead Vocals) Trevor Schrotz(Drums) Scott Loose (Guitar) Michelle Schrotz (Keyboards, Vocals) playing Doom / Progressive / Symphonic / Epic Metal, holding worthily the crown of the epic-doom throne! Seven great sad journeys to a music galaxy full of grief! “Fear Of Infinity” will become the passage to the final destination of the decision, the end, letting pain, grief and mourning be the cost. In this album you await for the unexpected, that which came to complete the constant search that existed in V.O.L. For me it is the sequel and the solution, the atonement that comes to redeem. The solution which you already know and await, which will guide you blindly to the fears of infinity. The hour of payback will come, “Hour Of Reprisal” purely dynamic, epic, it will grab you right away with great musical beauty. “Destroyer Of Solace”, realizing the trap and how lost you can  be in an illusion, anger will take over, dynamic, aggressive and nicely colored by the voice of Irving, as with the tribute to Bathory times. The obsessions are closing in on you and the modern doom sounds of “Obsessions Now Effigies” make you see the treason. Musical superiority and skill without exaggerations. Irving’s voice is probably at its best phase. Sorrow and desertion will dominate you with “Unplenidude”, where the tempo drops and the well-known sentimentalism of W.H.W. touches you once more. These are the parts that you like to feel your eyes getting wet, because everyone has a reason. ” Grieve Forever” is a pure doom song, melodic, without having a way to describe the unique feel that Tom Phillips has with his guitar. Amazing intro till 01.20’, with Rain taking up the vocals somewhere in 02.25’; voices and notes destroy you! “Saturn And Sacrifice” what can I say? It’s the signature of W.H.W. with doom-epic seal. It’s the best it can get! Heavy slow guitars that go up, the crystal clear, natural, expressing voice of Irving, the massacre from 02.30’ to 03.30’, the speed, the power, will make it the hymn of “Fear of Infinity”. Tom Phillips had mentioned to me at the past that the music he writes will always come from his heart. This unofficial promise he gave me was kept vividly in the last song of the album. Finality is truly an eleven-minute musical trip to infinity. It gives you the ticket to a massive galaxy of mentality without return. After all this truly internal absurdity, comes the time of hard acceptance. The despair becomes notes, and if “Vessel” (V.O.L.) moved you, with “Finality” the thing that you maybe be afraid of but in fact you expected will happen to you, you will break..!

Tom and his party have found the code that makes you want to take a deep breath and say: “At last! This IS an album!”. An album that is already at the top, with the sweet melancholy that drives you to unbelievable emotions. Amazing bonding between the members of the band, truly beautiful artwork from Estelle Motsiou from Greece.  Twenty-one years have passed, and While Heaven Wept, at the peak of their creativity, can make you take final decisions.“Fear Of Infinity” passes from the shock – disloyalty – denial. It will make you fight with anger – despair – acceptance. Who doesn’t want to reach the ending?… FINALITY ???

“May you find peace and happiness into the light transcend
  I’ll spend my last days in sorrow alone until the end”
Written by Helen Liverakou

Home Nucleonics is no more. I’ve decided to relocate all my activities to Alternative Matter (http://alternativematter.net/). Thank you for visiting HN and I hope to see you all at Alternative Matter.

Cheers,

Raymond Westland/Home Nucleonics

It’s fitting that the band should come to this album throwing down gauntlets and blaring horns in challenge. Project Hate have gone through significant upheaval, in the form of line-up changes between this and the last album (The Lustrate Process), replacing their female vocalist, bassist and drummer. They’ve met these challenges and are coming forward with fists raised, determined to prove they haven’t lost any of their fight.

And they have chosen their weapons carefully. One of the best things about this album is new female vocalist Ruby Roque (Witchbreed). Her voice doesn’t have the shattered, operatic, soprano quality that taints so much symphonic metal; it is strong, solid, lithe and elegant. Her voice is actually more enjoyable than the music she’s singing over, at times, as one of the problems with album is the way the melodies tend to wander and fragment. Her muscular voice is complemented beautifully by Jörgen Sandström’s harsh vocals. The pair of singers behave like sparring partners, treating their voices like fists.

The sound on the album is solidly enjoyable — this is death metal that tries to be listenable, in the way a good workout can be fun even when it’s brutally hard. There are gothic, industrial and groovy notes flavouring the music; I like the way these other genres tint the sound, but prefer the tracks that focus on a clearer death metal atheistic, like They Shall All Be Witnesses. When Project Hate stick to death metal, the pedigree of the musicians comes to the forefront; the riffs have a great throatiness to them, like the roar of a chainsaw — part moan, part merciless machine.

This is not a perfect album — the primary issue is length. The shortest song clocks in at nearly nine minutes, with four of the six tracks well over the ten-minute mark. For a record that wanders melodically and revels in its complexity, there is simply too much to fully digest. This more-is-more approach also affects the quality of the music.

There are some novels that would have benefited immensely from a heavy-bladed editor. Likewise, this album would have been better had someone not just delicately trimmed the edges, but hacked off whole supernumerary limbs. But if you can control your doses, there is pleasure to be had in this apocalypse.

Written by Natalie Zina Walschots

Earth

The music on Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Lights I is mostly instrumental. It’s slow, minimalistic and incredibly brooding and the massive presence of cellos and assorted strings give the album a hauntingly melancholic undertone. Compositions like Old Black, Father Midnight, Descent Winter and the title track are soundscapes, somewhat similar to what Bruce Lamont has done with Bloodiest and his own solo album.

This album has a more structured approach and melody is another key factor. This makes Angel Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I relatively accessible, but it’s still by no means easy listening music. The warm and vintage sound enhances the melancholy of this album.

Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light takes you on a journey through musical soundscapes of hope and sorrow. Mere words aren’t enough to captivate the brilliance of this album. It’s simply breathtakingly beautiful.

Written by Raymond Westland

1.800.Vindication was Illdisposed’s first album for Roadrunner Records and this may explain why the album sounds so fresh and inspired. Bo Summers and Co are on fire on songs like I Believe In Me, Dark, Jeff and Still Sane. The song material is diverse, refined and compact and the addition of well placed keyboard parts and electronic effects takes 1.800.Vindication to the next level. The clean vocals provided by producer Ziggy are a nice bonus.

Despite the addition of keyboard layers and clean vocals, Illdisposed is still first and foremost a death metal band. The heavy guitar parts, deadly grooves and Bo Summer’s impressive arsenal of growls and screams make sure of that. Now We’re History, In Search Of Souls and You Against The World are still as heavy and formidable as they come.

The heavy and modern production stresses the relevance and urgency of 1.800.Vindication. Producer Ziggo and Tue Madsen were responsible for the production magic of this album.

1.800.Vindication is a relatively accessible record, but it’s the overall strong and convincing song material that makes it a true winner. Certainly one of Illdisposed’s finest hours.

Written by Raymond Westland

There Is Light (But It’s Not For Me) starts in familiar Illdisposed fashion with Your Own Best Companion. It’s a heavy groove-laden song with some faster parts and massive grunts by Bo “Subwoover” Summer. This is just the way I like my Illdisposed. The good news is that the rest of the material is just as strong as the opening track. Heaven Forbid, Our Words Betrayed, As The Day Rottens and Step Into My Winter are just as formidable.

Another key factor is the increased presence of subtle keyboard layers and electronic effects. It kind of remind me of 1-800-Vindication and Burn My Wicked, some of the best albums by these Danes. The brutal and grooving edge of There Is Light (But It’s Not For Me) isn’t compromised in any way. They merely serve as an additional ingredient to spice things up a bit. Reality To Fall and Rape are great examples of this.

The heavy and dense production enforces the brutal punch of this record. Illdisposed’s own Jacob Batten and producer Tue Madsen are responsible for that.

Illdisposed’s new record sounds a lot a more inspired than The Prestige and To Those Who Walk Behind Us. The song material is more diverse and of better quality. In short, There Is Light (But It’s Not For Me) is a convincing return to form for Bo Summers and Co

Written by Raymond Westland

At some point, someone needs to do the same for heavy metal: as much as I love this genre, it is rapidly becoming filled with piles and piles of deriviative, tuneless and pointless records that are not worthy of your precious time and effort. Scrap Metal anyone?

Consider the debut album from French metal outfit Ommatidia. Their new record, In This Life, or the Next is a great case in point. It’s all fairly listenable but all very forgettable at the same time. There are lots of ideas here but none of them really work and there’s a level of trying everything in the hope that some stuff will stick and resonate. There are some things that do but not enough to sustain or inspire. You know when you’ve eaten a huge Chinese meal but feel incredibly hungry very soon afterwards? That’s exactly what I felt after listening to this.

The perfunctory, “atmospheric” opening track Only Found By Those Who Seek is treads a fine line between inspiration and parody. Starspeed is much better, reminiscent of early Pearl Jam (no bad thing) with a decent riff and dynamic that promises a decent amount.

Some Commotion has a nu-metal feel about it but it’s not the high energy, grab-you-by-the-throat stuff you’re hoping for. No, it’s the ponderous ever-so-slightly self-important dirgey stuff that no one really liked the first time round; they aren’t going to like it now, either. Leaning on Complete Affinity wants to be the album’s epic track but it’s far too clunky and hamfisted to be anything other than a “yes, I can see the joins actually” metal by numbers effort.

Unaffected by Loss tries to ingratiate itself and has one or two decent ideas but not enough to hold your attention sufficiently long enough for you to want to revisit this record time and again- which is surely the whole point of this enterprise called making music, isn’t it?

Naked Truth has some charm and some genuinely effective atmospherics but it all comes a little too late in the day. It’s as if the band have taken 40 mins or so to discover that what they really want to sound like isn’t actually anything like the previous eight songs you’ve just sat through. It’s all a little weird, to be honest.

I would sincerely love to hate, loathe and despise this record- if I did, I could write a steaming pile of vitriol that probably would be reasonably amusing to read but wouldn’t get us anywhere. As it is, I don’t hate this record- there’s not a lot to hate. However, there’s not a lot to like either.

Written by Mat Davies

Clocking in respectably at just under an hour in length, the album certainly does live up to its hype. Abasi and his extraordinary prowess on the 8-string guitar truly shine here, but the album does a great job of balancing tracks heavy with technical exhibition such as CAFO against more melodic, jazzier ones like Modern Meat. Interestingly, many of the tracks even feature risky, nigh-electronic beats like Tempting Time.

The times this album truly shines are when the two sides of the coin that is Animals as Leaders come together in a perfect and intense union, such as The Price of Everything and The Value of Nothing or On Impulse. In these cases the band masterfully crafts a base of a catchy jazz beat over which to pour an impressive flow of their technical prowess. The result is, overall, an effect that is at once both cerebral and contemplative as well as visceral and moving.

Production-wise the album is top-notch as well, and every note comes through crisp and clean where appropriate, and distortion rings true as well. This only adds to the aforementioned effects that make the listener feel as if they’re in another world.

In closing, Animals as Leaders is an album that isn’t afraid to take risks and show off a bit, and definitely profits from this. The album makes for an absolutely incredible experience that can be listened to over and over again, and I would highly recommend it.

Written by Tony Burgio

It seems like the band has cut the proverbial fat out of their music. The band is true to their virtuoso selves on the album, but it seems they stripped Specular Reflection, Augment Of Rebirth and Lunar Wilderness to their bare essence. The focus is firmly on technical death/metalcore, but the progressive undercurrent is still fiercely present. The long forays into jazz, blues and other genres are greatly shortened, but the parts that are there create quite a compelling effect.

Of course I miss the extended progressive musical adventures, but realistically speaking how long can you duplicate the same idea before it becomes stale? It’s to their credit the band dares to move and try new things. Moreover, the song material on The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues still contains at least six albums worth of ideas for more conventional bands. No love lost there.

Production wise The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues has a more “metal” sound, which enhances the aggressive edge of the song material.

This album shows a more focused and refined side of Between The Buried And Me. All the familiar elements are still there, but used in a more subtle way. The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues is the first installment of a new series of albums, so I’m anxious what Tommy Rogers and Co have in store for us. Until that time this EP should keep me off the streets…

Written by Raymond Westland

Just like the prior release, The Great Misdirect is a massive musical adventure through progressive twists and turns, jazzy interludes, surf music, chaotic death/metalcore styled bursts and other trademark Between The Buried And Me madness. However, the main difference with Colors is that The Great Misdirect feels like a cohesive unit, while its predecessor was all over the place, musically speaking. Both records follow the same blueprint, but The Great Misdirect is the more civilised, mature and refined of the two.

The material on this album is as diverse as it comes. Disease, Injury, Madness starts as a raging river full of technical death metal but along the way it mellows down to a heavily seventies prog-inspired track with vintage keyboards. It’s combination like this why I love this band so much. Obfuscation is one of the harshest tracks on the album, but some parts sounds remarkably like Dream Theater’s New Millenium. A western styled swing piano piece forms the basis of Fossil Genera – A Feed From Cloud Mountain. It’s probably the creepiest song on The Great Misdirect, but one of the finest.

The bluesy acoustic guitar composition in the form of Desert Of Song is a welcome relief after the madness of the first four songs. It’s sort of an intro to Swim To The Moon, the longest track on this album. It’s basically a summary of the different influences you’ll hear on The Great Misdirect. Quite impressed, I must admit.

The Great Misdirect is the logical evolution of the course set on Colors. It feels more cohesive and balanced than the previous album, but it still contains all the technical and progressive frolics Between The Buried And Me is known for. Another classic album from the BTBAM guys!

Written by Raymond Westland