Doozr's Bi-annual Review, part 1

Yes, it's that time again. July is almost upon us, the longest day has been and gone, and it's all downhill from here. So it must be time to take stock of the first half of the year. What has taken my fancy, and what has left me flat.

It's not been particularly tricky to pick the top 10 for this, the first half of 2011. I had some hard decisions to make around about numbers 8, 9 and 10. Some stuff that I would have liked to be in there was just pipped to the post and got left in the "honourable mentions".

Top 10

Overall, it's not been a terrible year for music. Some new stuff coming out of nowhere, some long standing greats continuing to be great, but some other lacklustre performances. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my top 10 of the first half of 2011.

Sylosis - Edge of the Earth
One of the earliest albums of the year, this monstrous melodic thrash/death metal epic had me hooked immediately. It was a shoo-in for the top spot on this first top 10 of the year. Nothing has budged it yet, except maybe the atmospheric stylings of ...

Moonsorrow - Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maassa
Another epic album, and another that I would consider a perfect production. Four massive, immersive tracks of tragedy, doom and despair that carries you along whether you like it or not.

Wolverine - Communication Lost
A bit of a grower, mostly due to it being the follow up to Still, a simply magnificent record. I was both tremendously excited, and very nervous about it. Fortunately Wolverine have more than lived up to their own potential and produced this emotive, progressive masterpiece.

Chaos Divine - The Human Connection
A slow grower, this one. Took a couple of weeks to really get into the frame of mind required. In fact, I was rather disappointed with it at first. But when it clicks, it sticks. Great prog noodling complements death growls and hard metal riffs.

Amorphis - The Beginning Of Times
Described variously as "epic", "magnificent", "awe-inspiring" and "tinkly tonkly", this is a definite for my top 10 of 2011, even if it hasn't quite reached the heights attained by its predecessor, Sky Forger. I have also gone and bought a copy of the Kalevala, from which the last 4 Amorphis albums draw their inspiration. It's a very strange tale, but has inspired some great metal.

Devin Townsend Project - Ghost
Possibly the most relaxing, chilled out experience so far this year. It's taken me several goes just to listen to all of it and not fall asleep in some kind of tranced out bliss.

Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction
The soundtrack to going insane. Densely packed, massive in scope and scale, and by the time you've got to the end of this album you won't know where you are or what you're doing. You will want a cheeseburger, though.

The Decemberists - The King Is Dead
Folky Americana courtesy of the band who brought you The Hazards Of Love. Completely different in sound, and with a similar outlook to Fleet Foxes. A rather pleasing, gentle interlude to all this shouting and hard riffs in the rest of the list.

Before The Dawn - Deathstar Rising
A good but of straight up melodeath. Good riffs, good vocals, both clean and growled, and good songs that it's easy to sing along with. Apparently it hasn't gone down well with all critics, but I find it a very enjoyable record to listen to.

Ador Dorath - Adon Nin Edelith Ador Dorath
Perhaps the strangest sounding operatic death metal band on the planet. If you can understand more than 1 in every 10 words you're doing well, but even in its barely comprehensible state it's a roaring, bombastic gothic metal album with loads of good riffs and heavy, chugging beats.

Honourable Mentions

The Top 10 is quite a decent list, I think. These records have had plenty of play time over the last few months. But as I previously said, not all of the good records can be in the top 10. That would be silly, because there are more than 10 of them. Here are a few that didn't quite make the cut, but deserve a mention anyway.

Silent Stream Of Godless Elegy - Návaz
The latest album from these Czech doom/folk metallers does away with some of the doom and adds more Moravian dance. A great record, but a little disappointing to lose some of the better sounds of Relic Dances.

Sanctorum - Semper Fidelis
Sanctorum return with a third album that, while great, suffers from a couple of tracks I just couldn't get along with. Having seen some of it played live I can attest to greatness of the rest of it, though.

Anvil - Juggernaut of Justice
14 albums, 1 riff. Tried and tested, and if it works, keep on doing it. 34 years in, and still going strong. Picked this album up from the Corporation during their UK launch tour. A bit of heavy metal fun. Not too taxing, but just enough rocking.

Kabát - Banditi di Praga
Another Czech band, which makes 3 in this post. This one I actually got from a holiday to Prague, after deciding to try something that might not be available in the UK. I was not disappointed. A sometimes confusing set of songs (all in Czech, of course) but each with an infectious rhythm and great riffs.

Disappointments

While it's been a good year so far, it's not all coming up roses. There have been a few disappointments on the way. These are albums that, for one reason or another, I expected to be much better than they actually turned out to be.

Arch Enemy - Khaos Legions
With a massive publicity campaign, this was supposed to be a magnificent album. It's actually just an Arch Enemy album. And I already have some of those. They even nicked a riff from Nightwish in the process, which I found bizarre.

Scar Symmetry - Unseen Empire
I heard this album before I bought it. On first listen, it sounded pretty good. On each subsequent listen, it got more and more boring, and I cared less and less about hearing it again. I've listened to it 3 times, then gave up. Dull.

Within Temptation - The Unforgiving
A comic book, videos, a massive concept album with a coherent story arc and loads of accompanying extras. It should have been every metal geek's idea of perfection. It actually turned out to be a confusing mass of boring pop-metal and euro-dance. As I said once before; About as metal as plaid, and makes as much sense as fish trousers.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
I so wanted to love this album. After discovering Fleet Foxes, the debut, I wanted that experience again. All the reviews said it was like rediscovering the band. I wanted it. And, well, it's ok I guess. I just don't get the horrendous cacophony of instruments being tortured to death about half way through. People often say it of metal, and I'm saying it of this; it's just noise!

In the scheme of things, a few disappointments are inevitable. For the most part, I've very much enjoyed this year's voyage of discovery. I've got some great new music and, thanks to an increased list of reading material in my RSS reader and a new subscription to Terrorizer, I'm finding more stuff I actually like and less stuff that annoys or bores me. This is all good.

Ador Dorath 3 Album Megareview

A couple of weeks ago I waxed lyrical about Ador Dorath; a new (to me) Czech metal band I had found via the magic of last.fm. After ordering their entire back catalogue and spending a week blasting my ears off I figured I'd best write the megareview I promised.

 Adon Nin Edeleth Ador Dorath
The "gothic" album

First up, the band's 2002 debut album. The sound is immediately reminiscent of other gothic symphonic bands like Nemesea and Nightwish, but with a healthy dose of blackened death metal male vocals smashed into it. It's much faster and thrashier than similar bands, too, which makes Ador Dorath more a death/black metal band that happen to have operatic female vocals than a symphonic rock/metal band.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the sound is a full on assault on the senses. This is proven from the very first noise that comes out of the speakers upon pressing play.

Aaaah! What!? It trips you up. It catches you unawares and makes you double take. It obliterates any expectations. As such, it's a pretty damn good opener.

As far as themes go, the album is very grim. Less introspective and more morose and despairing. Lots of mildly disturbing imagery, tolling bells, werewolves and other gothic elements. Many of the songs reflect on pagan imagery, humanity's place in the world, but more often just on symbolic and poetic musings on the nature of the world.

Of course, normally one would glean this information from the lyrics. Unfortunately I can barely make out a word of it. Maybe 5 lines out of the entire album. And that's with the lyrics booklet open in front of me! I'm pretty sure the band wrote a bunch of lyrics, stuck them in a book, then sang something completely different on the album.

The album art is pretty cool, with lots of pen-and-ink drawings in a vaguely mediæval style. The front cover is an x-ray of ouroborous, the serpent eating its own tail, and throughout the booklet other mythology is referenced.

There are a few standout tracks. Ubique Daemon I've already mentioned as the album opener. Arcana Lunis is instrumental and includes much gothic imagery. Circle and Rule Of Nyx are just catchy metal tunes that I like to sing along to, even though I have no idea what the lyrics are.

The title track, Adon Nin Edeleth Ador Dorath, I thought was sung in Czech, but Google Translate can't figure it out. It's a great track, though, playing the two vocalists off each other with an almost folky backing melody interspersed with operatic chants.

The bonus track will make your brain hurt.

Symbols
The "experimental" album

Next up is Symbols; Ador Dorath's second^* album from 2005. In many ways a world apart from Adon Nin Edeleth, and yet somehow very similar.

This album encompasses many different sounds. Every song seems to be unique not just through the melody and lyrics, but style. From black to death to electronic to symphonic to melodic, the sub-genres encompassed and woven into the sounds varies wildly from track to track, and yet always sounds coherent.

The sound throughout the album is far less gothic than Adon Nin Edeleth, and the balance of male to female vocals has shifted slightly in the male vocalist's favour. A bonus is that, for this release, the lyrics are actually decipherable. Many of them, certainly for Rosa, the album opener, are lyricised versions of famous (or not so famous) quotations about the nature of the world. The themes are very similar, although not nearly as dark and depressing as Adon Nin Edeleth. I particularly liked this little gem:

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco

While the tracks contain a bit of everything they still flow well from one to the next. There are no jarring segues here. From the chugging death metal of River to the insane operatic electronica of Mountain, with a soprano ballad in the form of Desert between them, the listener is dragged on a journey through the album by one catchy hook after the next. This all culminates in Nin.E (presumably named for Adon Nin Edeleth) which includes the most off-the-wall church organ metal riff I've ever had the pleasure to have blasted into my head.

Continuing a theme for the album art, there is a lot of pen-and-ink stuff in Symbol's liner notes and cover art. Various different glyphs are used to represent various figures to stylise the lettering. The paper is a strange sort, somehow old fashioned and brittle to touch.

The bonus track will make you fall into a deep, happy sleep.

Bestiari
The "black" album.

Last, but by no means least, is the 2008 album Bestiari. With a new female singer and a completely new style (again). The whole album takes on a far more death/black metal feel with the female vocal parts used sparingly. And yet, while there are less of them, they are used well enough that they fit well and add to the whole.

Bestiari is not as varied as Symbols, but benefits from the consistency. The style from track to track does not change drastically, but each song is distinct in melody, riffs and hooks. The blackened death vocal is clearer still than Symbols so singing along, or just understanding the lyrics, is no problem. It reminds me quite a bit of Martriden's latest concept album, Encounter The Monolith. Except for the soprano singing in the chorus, of course.

There are some definite folk elements still there, especially in Only The Man Has The World/And Is Inside The World, along with the same basic thematic elements. Space gets a look in this time, too, with the anthropomorphisation of the entire cosmos into female form in the aptly named Space Odyssey. Attitude Gyroscope continues this theme and brings some of the crazy keyboard riffs from the earlier albums into play.

As the album progresses, it starts to slowly become less like Martriden and more like a black metal version of Nightwish. Race For Life and Words are very much like Oceanborn era Nightwish, but with Ador Dorath's own manic electronic riffs and harsher vocals layered into the guitar and drum tracks. Dead On Arrival (Nice And Easy) brings some great melodic death riffs and really showcases not only the vocal talents of the two singers, but also their chemistry.

The album art for this one hurts my head. The digipak shows the artist and album title in braille. Inside, there is no book. Instead, there is a square double sided poster. One side of the poster shows the band reflected in a pond. The logo is upside down. The other side is shiny metallic cellophane. Half the elements of the shiny side are upside down, and the band name is jumbled up all over the place. At least the individual tracks' lyrics are coherent.

The bonus track will make you think you're in an 80's sci-fi movie. In the desert.

Phew

There you go; three for the price of one. And I for one think it was worth it. For me, Ador Dorath provide the ideal compromise between heavy, growl-laden death or black metal and lighter, female fronted symphonic metal. They should be a guiding light to all the female fronted bands currently losing their way with commercial pop sounds, concept albums, tie-in movies, comic book gimmicks and a distinct lack of heavy, metal music.

* aside: does anyone else detest the word "sophomore"?

Ador Dorath - Not your usual operatic metal

I've noticed lately that a lot of the female fronted symphonic metal bands I have liked in the past are caught up in the same trend. Strip out the male vocal, get rid of the growls, add a catchy chorus and far too many pop sensibilities. It's not a good trend.

Fortunately I have found something to fill this niche that seems to be opening up in the market. Ador Dorath are a Czech black metal band who use operatic female vocal alongside the male grunts, growls and general grizzliness. It's an assault on the ears, with the various layers mixing, splitting and competing for dominance. It's a formidable musical bombardment.

It's hard to find their albums for sale anywhere near the UK, and the band's label, Shindy, provided little information on how to get international shipping. They do allow cash on collection, though, which is interesting. I finally found obscene.cz, a Czech record store with no online shipping calculation. I've placed an order and now I'm waiting for them to tell me how to pay!

Coincidentally the band are touring with Silent Stream Of Godless Elegy in the Czech republic while we're over there on holiday. Unfortunately the venue is some 360km away from our hotel so we're unlikely to get to it. We'll have to plan our next Czech city break around the local gig guides.

I've ordered all three of Ador Dorath's albums, so I'll do some sort of massive review later on. In the meantime, here's the video for V.I.T.R.I.O.L. from Symbols, released in 2005.

You can hear more tracks from all the albums on the band's MySpace page.