Album Roundup

Alpthraum - Eyes of a Monument

I first heard about Alpthraum while researching epic black metal awesomeness. Which is odd, because Alpthraum is none of those things. It's a sort of symphonic, progressive, orchestral type of a thing. Like a prog metal version of Lord Of The Rings.

If you like symphonic metal and contemporary classical, this is probably right up your street. It's good, but not mindblowingly so. The orchestra is great, but it tends to leave the metal parts feeling a little flat. I tend to expect massively orchestrated music like this to be more of a wall of sound, complex and overpowering. Instead it's actually quite light and feels almost hollow in parts. Specifically, the parts when the orchestra isn't playing.

Shuffle fodder, then, but I won't throw it away completely.

http://alpthraum.bandcamp.com/


Scar Symmetry - The Unseen Empire

I picked up The Unseen Empire after listening to it on Spotify and liking the first few tracks. Seemed like a solid melodeath album, and indeed it is. The Unseen Empire takes the lyrical theme of the Illuminati, in all their world-controlling hiddenness, and wraps it up in a melodic death metal album that seems to merge quite a bit of technical death in there too.

Unfortunately, like so much melodeath these days, this album just doesn't seem to stand out. The songs are good and the riffs are catchy, but at the end it all feels a bit nothingy. I honestly can't remember a single song from it and I've listened to it numerous times. I think I might have to spend some time with the liner notes and properly listen to it to get the most out of it, but this seems counter-intuitive. Music like this should be catchy and hook you in. If I wanted to sit for an hour just to get into it, I'd listen to Moonsorrow again.

Another for the shuffle. Good, not great, but you never know, it might grow on me.

www.scarsymmetry.com


Chaos Divine - The Human Connection

The first I ever heard of Chaos Divine was their 2008 album Avalon. I was blown away by it, immediately putting on rotation for a good few weeks. So when I discovered that they had finally released their second album, The Human Connection, I couldn't wait to have a listen.

The opening track, One Door, wasn't what I was expecting at all. After the intricate noodling of Avalon, I was surprised to hear what sounded very much like Pallas-esque prog rock. Neither heavy nor particularly metallic. Clean vocals? Soft rock riffs? I wondered if I'd accidentally got hold of Hypnos69's new album by accident.

But it's not a bad thing. As much as I was surprised and a little taken aback, it's pretty darn good prog rock. And a few minutes in, I finally got what I was expecting from the off; some good solid metal riffs and growls. After being initially worried that the band had gone a bit soft after their storming debut, it turns out they were just turning it down a notch, but not forgetting what they were about.

There seems to be a lot less growl on this album, taking a back seat to more progressive vocal styles while having just enough to remain on the metal side of the prog rock/metal divide. There's just enough of each to keep up the interest, and each song deftly switches between the two to great effect. A fine album, no doubt. The only reason I've not listened to or raved about it more is that I've been in more of a "lose yourself in a swirling mass of noise" type mood of late. This might just be the album to kick me out of it.

http://www.myspace.com/chaosisdivine