It's really clear and adds to the sci-fi mood they're going for lyrically. I never really heard much Immolation on their debut (and Roman doesn't either lol) as much as I did a weirded up Adramelch/Demilich approach to lead playing in very general terms.
Yeah, there was definitely a whole lot of weird alien OSDM present (lots of Timeghoul too), but I definitely heard a whole lot of Immolation on the debut even though the riffing vibe was not at all similar. It's difficult to explain, I guess. It's also kinda interesting how Phil was running off of a lot of the same influences with Chthe'ilist, yet that band sounds completely different from Zealotry.
Immolation to me tend to use a lot more dense, choppy, "jerky" rhythms and oblique dissonant riffing patterns while Zealotry have a lot more The Chasm/Alf Svensson-era At The Gates like harmonies that dance between dissonant and melodic fairly frequently. Hell I think Roman put up a status once where he outright said the Immolation comparisons for reviews of the debut confused him at one point.
I think the Immolation similarities that I see come from the eerie, mournful beauty of songs like "Close to a World Below" and "The Great Sleep" rather than the stuttering, uneasy polyrhythms that characterize their sound. There's also a whole lot of Neuraxis and Anata (it's no accident that Roman originally wanted Conny Pettersson to record drums on The Charnel Expanse before he got Lille Gruber to do them) present with the constantly-shifting melodic structures that make careful use of dissonance without actually being dissonant.
I know he loves Anata but I'll have to ask him about Neuraxis.
Go and see Metal Church on their current US tour. DO IT. Mike Howe sounds absolutely pristine (outside of John Arch, I can't think of a single vocalist who has held up quite as perfectly as he has) and does a hell of a job as a frontman, and Chris Caffery is doing an equally amazing job at filling in for Rick van Zandt. It is absolutely a can't-miss show, trust me.
Me and my buddy are going to see Amon Amarth when they come to MI. And it shall be awesome.
On that note, holy FUCK, Jomsviking is goddamn amazing.
New Metal Church sounds pretty sharp; Howe's voice doesn't seem to have aged a day and the riffs are still fresh and punchy although not quite as thrashy as the pre 1991 material. Still, they've clearly kept in shape.
Also I asked Roman and apparently he's not into Neuraxis at all.
Then I guess Roman just has a lot of the same melodic sensibilities as Rob Milley and friends. As for XI, it's definitely better than Generation Nothing and is at least as good as most of the other Munroe output. Live is definitely where their strengths have not diminished at all; hearing the real deal singing "Fake Healer", "Date with Poverty", and "Badlands" and getting the entire room to sing along with him was definitely a bucket list thing for me, especially since Munroe was never particularly good at singing the Howe songs.
Maybe, kinda? All the Neuraxis I've heard has been way closer to modern tech-death to me as opposed to the weird experimental vibe I get from Zealotry. I believe Anata would probably be a better comparison (perhaps not surprising as Roman was originally trying to get Anata's drummer to play on the debut) as both share that rich harmonic sensibility and twisting, coiling melodic patterns.
edited 27th Mar '16 11:28:26 AM by StillbornMachine
Neuraxis sounds like modern tech because they codified so many of the tropes that define modern tech. They were one of the first bands to play tech in an overtly melodic context without riding Gothenburg's dick, and a lot of bands over the years have at least taken inspiration from their riffing style and rather distinctive manner in which they weaved melody and dissonance together without allowing either side to overpower the other.
I'd say the "shred metal with blast beats" approach to tech-death idea was kind of inevitable - Necrophagist's debut is where I can find it in its earliest form but we can say that later Death and Cynic pretty much laid down around maybe 50% of its foundations. Then again when tech death was still developing as a genre melodeath was too (or more accurately, regressing to its pre-death metal influences) so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of ideas bled off into one another or were a part of the same over-arching compositional trends of their time.
Yeah, Neuraxis was never a shreddy band. At all. They had some fairly busy leadwork here and there, but most of the tech was in their riffs. They came out around the same time as Quo Vadis and Martyr and there's definitely some bleedthrough, but they were never as conventionally melodic or progressive-leaning as Quo Vadis or as thrashy as Martyr.
edited 28th Mar '16 7:38:36 AM by HasturHasturHastur
In all honesty the only Neuraxis I really remember was their debut which is a bit closer to classic tech death and Trilateral Progression which on a second listen through sounds a lot less chaotic and "fun" than I remember and a lot more like a mix between chunkier death metal and some of the more noodly stuff with its more melodic trad/prog style lead riffs although yeah, doesn't quite go into full blown Spawn of Possession territory.
But on to the topic of similarities, if we take tracks like "Oracle"
and "Clarity" and compare them to "Blighted" and "Yliaster" they might as well have come from two different evolutionary lineages. Zealotry are less about the pedal riff heavy catchy lead twirling of the former band and way bigger on a lot of layered harmonies that frequently travel between more consonant and dissonant voicings a la Ulcerate and Univers Zero, with a really strong influence from Finnish death metal a la Demilich/Adramelech in terms of the doomy, slowly unfurling themes and weirdly mangled tonalities while Alf Svensson era At The Gates/The Chasm is a clear point of comparison for the long, fluid twin-guitar lattice networks of technique they paint, both in the careful way both their guitar lines crawl and circle one another and how riff density morphs almost liquid like to suit the needs of the song.
edited 28th Mar '16 9:27:12 PM by StillbornMachine
Speaking of stuff that Tougas does, First Fragment finally got a new song out after Erik Lindmark sat on Dasein with his dick in his hand for close to a year. If you don't like shreddy tech, you're going to hate it, but the dude's ear for melody and knack for writing parts that make you go "okay, that's wicked cool" both shine through here. It's apparently got 36 separate lead parts, so anyone into guitar acrobatics will be in for one hell of a feast, and the people I know who have heard advance copies have said that it's a blast.
I spoke with Phil before and he said he'd be up for doing some shreddy 80's style power/thrash metal. That is, assuming he can find someone whose voice is in the John Cyriis range.
One of those posts showed up in my newsfeed as well, though he was looking for someone who sounded like Midnight in the one that I saw. Kelly Sundown Carpenter would probably be able to pull off something Cyriis-esque, but Midnight would be a harder one.
Quebec doesn't seem like a good place for that sadly. Maybe he'd have more luck in Montreal.
edited 22nd Apr '16 3:53:53 PM by StillbornMachine
Phil lives in Longueuil, which is basically just a really large suburb of Montreal. The problem is that Quebec is mostly just into tech-death (and black metal, to a lesser degree) and there's a major shortage of power metal vocalists, let alone vocalists with the range he's looking for. He's not really going to find anyone with that range down where I live either, to be honest. The dude from Amadis (down in Burlington, VT) is probably the only relatively nearby person I can think of who could maybe pull it off vocally.
What do you guys think of The Chronicles of Israfel?
Not memorable to say the least.
Sneering Imperialist
New Akercocke! First new material since 2007, and there's an album on the way.
Pleasant surprise, to say the least. Thought the band was gone forever.
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.
Roman seemed really proud of it the last time that I bumped into him at a show. Definitely liking the preview track; it's a little less Immolation-y, but still has all the things that make them one of the best bands in the Northeast. I also like how they went with a meatier production this time around that doesn't sound like the same production that every caverncore band ever goes for.