First Listens With Three-Star Ratings

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Anciients — Voice Of The Void

✦✦✦✧ This sophomore effort from Anciients feels like a strong document of a band in transition. This album is more of a grower than their debut “Heart Of Oak,” but it’s got all the same meat on the bone as its predecessor. But their homages to Mastodon and Baroness are more subtle this time around, as the band’s witches’ brew has taken on new flavors; some are additional nods to bands like Tool and Kylesa, and some are clear signs of the band zeroing in on their own voice.

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Periphery — Periphery III: Select Difficulty

✦✦✦✧ The first two tracks? Super strong shred. Exactly what I want from Periphery. And then the band revert to their personal blend of emo cleans and GIT-type noodling. The emo stuff sounds pretty, but lacks the emotional resonance of a similar move from TesseracT. The ship gets righted in the back half of the album, though; there’s more heaviness, and the band’s melodic side comes back in a more tempered form.

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Giraffe Tongue Orchestra — Broken Lines

✦✦✦✧ This is one of those cases wherein the supergroup is very recognizably a sum of its constituents (you can very clearly strong echoes  of DEP, Alice In Chains, The Mars Volta, and Mastodon on the track “No-One Is Innocent” in particular). But there’s novelty here too, a perverse cohesion that melds into something unlike anything presaged by the bandmember’s other bands.

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Sumac — What One Becomes

✦✦✦✧ On their sophomore effort, Sumac retreads their ponderous tonal territory, but one-up themselves by allowing more room for exploration, if you can believe it. There’s just a hint of thoughtfulness here, which serves to rein in Aaron Turner’s self-indulgent tendencies only slightly but to great effect. Whereas the songs on their debut “The Deal” sprinkled heavy passages across a bleak but sometimes forgettable landscape, “What One Becomes” puts more stock in the in-betweens.

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Haken — Affinity

✦✦✦✧ Barely metal at times, but a very good prog offering nonetheless. It’s a great fusion of 80s and current sounds, at times sounding as much like latter-era Yes or UK as Porcupine Tree or Leprous. It’s an unlikely combination of sources, which I first heard on their previous EP, but this time it totally works without sounding too much like a gimmick.

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Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas — Mariner

✦✦✦✧ While not entirely groundbreaking, this culmination of Cult Of Luna’s post-metal instrumentals and Julie Christmas’ melodic meanderings is undeniably fresh, winsome, and emotive. The music feels like a synthier fusion of Isis and The Ocean, and the vocals are as entrancing as they are dynamic. This one is a must-listen, and a shoe-in for Arsie competition.

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Krallice — Hyperion

✦✦✦✧ Krallice’s style of prog-in-sludge’s-clothing metal is more cohesive and captivating on this EP than their previous album “Ygg Huur,” with hints of Thought Industry and ELP alongside more dominant strains of Agalloch and Pallbearer. I even got a whiff of Meshuggah’s “I” at times. It’s definitely an interesting set of tunes.

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Death Angel — The Evil Divide

✦✦✦✧ Bay Area thrash is alive and well! This album sounds like vintage DA, mashed up with some Machine Head, Racer X, Exodus, Sick Of It All, Metal Church… in other words, a melange of vintage early 90s metal. As such, don’t expect any innovation, other that crisp, updated production. You’ll still be quite happy with the expertly delivered headbanging.

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