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Lizzard – Mesh Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Back when 2020 was turning the page to hopefully a better year, I caught a podcast of a little-spread act, Lizzard, and their freshly forthcoming album Eroded. They chatted with a nervous excitement about their fairly organic and elegant approach to producing a lush and layered form of prog-minded sounds influenced by memories of 90s radio rock. Memory can be fickle. I have plenty of memories of alternative radio from that time and the early 00s, most not particularly fond. If you wander through a neighborhood grocery store you can still relive these recordings, a gentle drop of an infectious yet placid Train chorus or forlorn, funky croon of Incubus or Radiohead. And though the predictable structure of this music—that is Mesh or some of its distant inspirations—may not seem readily appealing, the precise twists of tone or delicate experimentations that these aged tunes possess hold a certain charm that can often be missing in the resonance of today’s rock music scene.

That’s not to say that Lizzard shares nothing in common with the sounds of modern progressive acts. The material off prior releases 2014’s Majestic or 2018’s Shift reveal the same kind of Tool-ish syncopations and gazey, post-leaning Deftones grooves that smatter about contemporaries like Wheel or Hippotraktor. But Lizzard arrives loaded instead with warm, vibrant guitar tones; well-framed, shifting rhythms; and crushing, sing-song bass rattling that comes together against hypnotizing and emotive refrains. Despite pushing an audible gloom, guitarist and vocalist Mathieu Ricou doesn’t possess a powerhouse sadboi voice,1 falling into the Jonas Renkse (Katatonia) school of growth by iterative force, pushing the bounds of a crinkling pathos against glistening and glowing melodies (“Home Seek,” “Minim,” “The Beholder”). Mesh wears in plain sight the cracked color vocal palette of its inspirations—the fragile skip of Thom Yorke (Radiohead), the fluttering falsetto of Ian Kenny (Karnivool, Birds of Tokyo). Though, importantly, with that same lyrical atmosphere Lizzard rides the waves of their reverberating melancholy to brighter pastures with practiced aplomb (“Elevate,” “Home Seek,” “The Beholder”).

The captivating strength of Lizzard’s lead drives gives Mesh the power to hook no matter the manner of attack. Whether amp-blowing riff (“Unity”), nasally bass warble (“New Page,” “Home Seek”), or united rocking thrust (“Black Sheep”), each successive passage builds in subtle ways on the last. It’s simple—Lizzard wears the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus tried and trusted pattern well. This adherence to The Beatles method of elegant accentuations within the box of the AABA allows Ricou to step back and use looped or steady patterns to let Will Knox’s wide bass slips and slides be a voice that flitters about in near harmony to Ricou’s poetic recitals (“New Page,” “Mad Hatters”). And elsewhere, Knox and drummer Katy Elwell maintain a thundering pulse to allow Ricou’s tension-loaded scale explorations evolve into post-rock-inspired bright chord crescendos, with “The Unseen” even featuring a gaze-drenched-yet-snappy solo.

The consistency that runs through Mesh allows each song’s peaks and flairs to weave the experience into a cohesive whole. At first blush, it’s easy to parse Mesh as a collection of great songs. But in the presence of its individually structure nature, the cyclical flow of bursting intro to playful melodies to sweeping codas spills over into the atmosphere between each number. Hard-hitting, riff-loaded jams have full-brake resolutions (“Unity,” “Black Sheep,” “The Unseen”). Other songs that steer with crystalline arpeggio hooks and cymbal-splashed ceilings segue with a shimmered reverb harmonic that maintains the somber mood. And the closing trio functions as one extended thought, with “The Beholder” intentionally starting with hard-panned bass and guitar to mimic the division of it all until the first chorus unites the duo.

Predicting that which will deeply resonate within our listening hearts stands as an effort futile, misguided by the things we want rather than need. I never could have predicted that 2021 would deliver me Lizzard’s Eroded, a modern classic in my head canon. And though Lizzard’s back catalog remains loaded with smart tune after smart tune, Mesh still had no guarantee of landing as a success. Mesh is not the definitive and downcast cry that drilled Eroded deep into my listening heart. But it is steady, lush, and hopeful. Mesh is not an album that revels in virtuosic spectacle or deeply layered narrative. But it is so finely woven in execution—exacting and exuberant—that Mesh too has embedded itself as necessary progressive listening.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 72 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Pelagic Records | Bandcamp
Websites: lizzardband.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/lizzardmusic
Releases Worldwide: September 27th, 2024

Dawn Treader – Bloom & Decay Review

By Itchymenace

I love black metal—especially when it’s drenched in an atmosphere that soars between heroic highs and guttural lows. But, finding quality records with dynamic songs that resonate with me on an emotional level can be harder than finding a needle in a Norwegian blizzard. Jorn knows I’ve dipped my scabbed hands into the sump numerous times only to pull out some third or fourth-generation Emperor copy put together by a couple of kids who are in 300 other bands that I’ve also never heard of. Patiently, I’ve waited for a band that has the hood-covered chops to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the great atmo-black bands I adore like Agalloch, Alcest, Panopticon and, dare I say, Deafheaven.1 So, it was as if Odin himself answered my prayers when Dawn Treader steered its mighty Saxon hull into my harbor with an album that’s as fierce, beautiful, stirring, and memorable as anything I’ve heard in the past several years. What makes this album such a gem? Direct your black gaze forward.

Dawn Treader is a “solo, anti-fascist black metal project” from London native, Ross Connell. Bloom & Decay is the project’s second release and the first to include vocals from Mr. Connell, who proves himself a formidable and impassioned vocalist. He balances urgency and angst with an emotional nuance that elevates the songs above most of his contemporaries. His opening shriek on “Idolator” is blood-curdling in the best sense, but he channels that rage into the verse with a near-melodic delivery that will put your heart in your throat. On his previous release, 2021’s The Burial of the Dead, any vocalizations came in the form of soundbites from poems, namely T.S. Elliot’s “Wasteland.” Bloom & Decay still benefits from plenty of carefully curated samples, but the vocals add a much-welcome dimension to the landscape.

The majority of Bloom & Decay is instrumental, but you hardly notice because the music has such a storytelling quality to it. To paraphrase the release notes, it takes you through the “cycles of life and death, grief and glory, hope and melancholy.” And while most black metal bands promise some form of this, Dawn Treader delivers in spades. The opening minutes of “Sunchaser” offer a prelude of everything to come with delicate melodies that intensify into heroic tremolos that feel victorious one moment and mournful the next. The track segues perfectly into “Idolator,” which somehow combines compelling black metal riffs with a crushing, metalcore-style breakdown and a finger-tapping guitar solo. It works, check it out! Listening to Bloom & Decay, you can’t help but feel that it is building up to something. That something is the title track and one of the most uplifting and inspiring songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a monster album closer that soars through some of the best, most melodic blackened guitar work you’ll hear. But, the coup de grace is the masterfully placed sample of Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart” as read by Tom Waits. The poem, which emphasizes how life’s soul-crushing lows can be offset by glimmering moments of light, perfectly delivers an emotional climax that makes you want to wipe your brow, catch your breath, flip the record and start over.

A big part of me wanted to give this record a 5.0 but the objective voice inside my head (and the thought of Steel’s boot on my neck) persuaded me to step back and reconsider. As good as the good stuff is, some areas could be trimmed. Curiously, the first single “Sky Burial,” resonates with me the least. “Iron Price,” with its heavily political and meandering “fuck you” speech may turn off some listeners, but the ferocity of the second half delivers serious chills reminiscent of Panopticon. While I love “The Oxbow Incident,” the Henry Fonda speech included before the final track delays rather than builds my excitement. Still, at 53 minutes, Bloom & Decay is right in the pocket for this sort of epic black metal.

Bloom & Decay not only contains amazing songs that celebrate the highs and lows of the human experience, but it also sounds great. It has a bright and punchy production that submerges you just beneath every cascading note and crashing tidal wave blast. For fans of black metal and certainly post-black metal, black gaze and atmo black (and whatever other hip genre you want to add) Dawn Treader has released a must-have record. Prepare to set sail for greatness!

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: Lossless (PCM)
Label: liminaldreadproductions.com
Website: dawntreaderuk.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024

Jarhead Fertilizer – Carceral Warfare Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

There’s disgusting death metal, there’s brutal death metal, then there’s death metal that walks into a room and makes you wonder if anyone else in that room has a restraining order against it. Autopsy may have pioneered this brand of whiplash, burner phone grooves against parole-violating subject matter, but Jarhead Fertilizer—featuring mostly current or former members of grinders Full of Hell—has taken the campy idea of that putrid stance and added to it a real-world violence. What do you expect when their namesake (and logo style) comes from Dystopia and the track “Jarhead Fertilizer,” a crusty anthem that holds a decidedly anti-military stance. Jarhead’s weapons are different though, imbuing their partner act’s trudging and noisy powerviolence tendencies with heavier-weight, death-addled grooves that set the stage not for cartoon skeletons or zombies but for a rusty-edged ambush in a skeezy back alley. A circle pit would be too comfortable.

Performance is the heart of heavy metal, and death metal is no different. But sometimes that hard-to-grasp heft that defines the brutality of extreme escapades can take a moment to latch. That level of base aggression and simple appearance blew a little by me the first couple times I heard 2021’s Product of My Environment. But over time, hooked by morbid curiosity to its intensity, the incendiary sample choices,1 feverish dips into stone-fisted breakdowns, and reckless drum expression that thunders as both murderous skanks and reluctantly controlled freeform fills, Jarhead won my heart over. Or, rather, they ripped it out, threw it down, and stomped it until it got the message. Acts in similar hardcore/slam space like Snuffed on Sight or Bodybox possess this same skill of maneuvering through remedial rhythms with an elevated stumble, but Jarhead wears it with a harrowing death-aligned roar.

The hammering yet natural flow throughout Carceral Warfare owes its shiv-like precision to smartly timed bursts of heaving death metal. Deep and vibrating animalistic snarls tee-up riffs the way you might hear in a prime Autopsy cut but with a different kind of mania—the voices of beings who grew up in the world that an act like that spat at (“Cell Warrior,” “Mark of the Beast,” “Hysteria”). Despite the viciousness and anger that a straining throat can manifest, Jarhead allows their mangled manifests to run through flush filters and other hazy modulations to denounce the humanity that the world around them tries to present (“Blood of the Lamb,” “Parasitic Pathology”). The landscape built by these primal chugs and carnal hisses oppresses.

A diverse array of media references and sound inclusions offer a unique atmosphere with layers of enjoyment. Opening Carceral Warfare with beats fit for an El-P rager and recalling that grimy, urban malaise in “Torture Cage” infuse an industrial hip-hop edge that’s as threatening as it is unconventional. Continuing to capture the tension of a downcast life, Jarhead pulls samples that highlight the inhumanity of war (“Wrath of Judas”) and call out the many vices (“Carceral Warfare”) of human behavior, even calling upon a tripped-out reading of Revelation 14:9-11 (“Parasitic Pathology”). None of these clips read straight, though, each receiving pitch-shifting, wonky panning, fizzled fades—anything to help these snippets devolve into the grumbling bass and jagged low-end runs that await them.

No matter how far away Carceral Warfare steps away from the traditional oompa bounce and piercing, feral leads of deathgrind, a thuggish tremolo and riff lurk in the shadows. And no matter how far into a societally disgusted message that Jarhead Fertilizer steps, a catastrophic tom barrage and demonic gurgle conjure a crooked-lipped, missing-tooth visage of nihilism. I haven’t a footing for any lyrics across this beatdown—this worldview rests in action not speech. It’s not elevated. It’s diverse enough for its sub-30-minute run. Carceral Warfare’s only question is whether you accept Jarhead Fertilizer in all their scummy glory. And if you don’t? Well, you better learn to sleep with one eye open.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Closed Casket Activities | Bandcamp
Website: jarheadfertilizeroc.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: December 8th, 2023

Phobocosm – Foreordained Review

By Steel Druhm

Montreal’s mega-heavy death metal merchants Phobocosm have a distinguished track record here at AMG, scoring high marks both times they were featured. It’s been a long time since their last appearance for 2016s Bringer of Drought, which Lord Kronos himself blessed with a righteous 3.5. He appreciated their nods to Incantation and Ulcerate and the no-nonsense way they steamroll and crush the listener with grim atmospheres and a massively heavy sound. Not the most productive of acts, nearly 7 years have creaked by since then, but we’re finally poised to receive third album, Foreordained. Have the years mellowed the monolithic caverncore style Phobocosm are known for? Not a chance! Foreordained finds them at their most murky, lurky, and nasty, as if the time off only made them more unbalanced. This is a good thing, though it may cause you some problems this December.

Listeners will be greeted by massive, doomy riffs on opener “Premonition.” Said leads feel threatening and dangerous, and you can sense that deep-dish insanity waits just around the next dark corner. The song is essentially an intro piece and a tease, laying down a dark, evil mood with a doom-centric, unhurried presentation that sets you up to be flattened by follow-up “Primal Dread,” which will knock your fucking head clean off with its unhinged blasting and ungodly riffing. This thing is a 10-minute fight to the death with an eldritch horror and all you brought was a 9-iron. That’s not nearly enough club and this thing will rip you apart with nasty nods to Immolation, Ulcerate, and Incantation. The sound creates a feeling of oppressive weight and claustrophobia, almost like a panic attack caught on tape, yet somehow the song doesn’t feel like it’s 10 minutes despite being so harsh and unrelenting. This is such a great and gruesome piece of repellant death, I want to devour it even though it will make me die of dysentery. And the goods keep on seeping under the door from there. “Everlasting Void” is an oversized dump truck full of horrific dissonance and brutal aggression with nary a nuance to be found. It swings from merciless blasting to slow, grinding paces that hurt just as much, and at no point can you untangle yourself from the ponderous web it weaves.

Track after track beats you with a grave spade and dumps you in a military-grade de-skinner and you’ll thank them for the kindness. The remorseless hostility of “Infomorph” will make you feel like you got run over by every Bolt Thrower and Just Before Dawn album, and the nearly eight-minute closer “For an Aeon” is a masterclass in tempo shifting for maximum impact, delivering a completely pulverizing and epic experience that will leave you wanting more wiolence. Speaking of wanting more, the album’s 41-minute runtime feels surprisingly brief despite the length of some of the compositions. The production is properly murky and muddy, but it doesn’t conceal what’s happening music-wise. Downsides? Sure, a minute here and there could be trimmed from the longer tracks, but the slick, intelligent way Phobocosm composes their music and packs them so full of compelling moments keeps things from feeling bloated. This is death metal made for death metal fans.

The bone paste that holds the Phobocosm show together is Samuel Dufour’s excellent riffcraft. The man uncorks a tremendous amount of slimy and abrasive leads and seasons them with dissonant phrasing to terrify the listener. Immolation and Morbid Angel often come to mind as touchstones for his playing, yet traces of Neurosis-esque bleakness still linger around the edges. His slithering riffs infect every track and I can’t get enough of his unsettling style. Jean-Sébastien Gagnon’s overpowered and abusive drumming is also a huge feature, with seemingly endless waves of blastbeats pounding you into the cavern muck. He also demonstrates surprising nuance in the slower moments with interesting fills that catch the ears. Etienne Bayard’s caustic, sub-basement death roars are the perfectly diseased cherry on top, feeling phlemy and vile while projecting great force.

Phobocosm are back and Foreordained is a mighty reminder of what they’re capable of. Massive, harrowing, and unmovable, this is the kind of scuzzy caverncore that vomits all over your carefully curated year-end lists. It’s certainly one of the best death metal releases in a year chocked full of high-quality genre entries. Thus, it is Foreordained that you’ll see this again during the impending list season.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/foreordained
Websites facebook.com/phobocosm
Releases Worldwide: December 8th, 2023