Caliber 666, Feral, Funerus, Inner Fear, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Satanist

Caliber 666 (Sweden): Blood Fueled Chaos (Ibex Moon)
Caliber 666 owns up to the label “Swedish death metal” with gusto.
The guitar tone is straight from the Dismember Book of the Art of Guitar Sound. This band has read that book a lot! Some 42 minutes of music and 10 songs.

Speed. This operates at three different speeds. One is a midpaced, double-bass, doom-ish parts that are meant to be as heavy and dark as can be. In these moments, the band adds some hooks, so that’s it is not boring.
Their fast speed is based on the Incantation Book of Tight, Fast Drumming (when Incantation plays fast). Their third speed is an uptempo style that is conducive to headbanging: not too fast, not too slow, just right for getting a sore neck.

If Dismember and Incantation could write some songs together, they might sound something like this: faster, tighter than Dismember, doomier than Dismember, and maybe as fast as the fast elements of Incantation, but with more hooks, licks than Incantation during the slower parts, so that the “death doom” parts are a bit more spicy or moody.

Caliber 666 is death metal from top to bottom. The growling is definitely low and gruff, and it makes you growl along with them. They want to keep it low, for sure. If Caliber 666 manages to keep it together for more albums, they will get on the radar of the people that like classic death metal. www.myspace.com/caliber666sweden

Feral (Sweden): Dragged to the Altar (Ibex Moon)
Feral sure loves their “death ‘n’ roll.”
Feral focuses on big, downtuned riffs that function on heaviness and simplicity, to achieve their goal of “groove” in every song. Likewise, the drumming is loose and concentrated on a beat, and stays focused on the beat, and not on speed, technicality or double bass attack.
In this sound, the bass guitar is easy to locate: it is the audible low-end that goes with drumming, to create the feeling of heavy, steady rhythm.
The vocals are low, gruff and relatively easy to understand.
The guitar solos have a—as you would have guessed—a rock n roll vibe.
It is not a surprise that Entombed’s “Wolverine Blues” comes up in reference to Feral.
In a way, that might be an immediately positive or negative point for approaching Feral, depending on your tastes. So, if you wanna get your death ‘n’ roll groove on, you know what to do. www.myspace.com/feralswe

Funerus (U.S.): Reduced to Sludge (Ibex Moon)
Funerus goes for, basically, some of the heaviest death metal sounds that they can make with the format of guitar, bass, drums and low growling.
The riffs are often some of the fattest, thickest to be heard in this style. Simplicity and slowness are major factors in the Funerus game plan.
In a way, this is the opposite of fast and technical death metal: the speed is used sparingly, the vocals do not try to be weird and schizophrenic yelling and burping. This is just low growling that does not deviate from the objective of keeping things super heavy.
The guitar player in Funerus is the John McEntee from Incantation, so this shares central components of the style of death metal with doom passages.
Well, about the melody? There is none. This is monolithic, monotonous, just like the doctor ordered. It is fugly, fugly music for heaviness, brutality and simplicity. This does sound like sludge, so we can’t say that we didn’t know!
www.funerus.com


Inner Fear (Czech Republic): First Born Fear
To contrast the energy of black metal with the mood of gothic metal is the objective of Inner Fear.
To do that, they have utilized several main foundations, amongst which are:
1.A black metal vocalist and a gothic metal vocalist. During the moments of clean singing, of course, the feel of the band is melodic, catchy, while during the black metal vocals it’s angrier.
2.Speedy, fast, blasting moments in the context of a symphonic atmosphere, for a lush black/gothic sound.
3.Sharp guitar riffs for the speed, melodic guitar solos, that work in conjunction with keyboards for some different shades of the band’s sound, speeds and moods.
Inner Fear’s album is available for free from the band at the site below or simply go to Facebook.
Inner Fear takes Dimmu Borgir to its logical conclusion? Maybe. But this has a younger energy to it and the gothic moments are more present throughout. www. bandzone.cz/innerfear

Knights of the Fallen Empire (U.S.): The Awakening - Chapter 1
1. This album of traditional heavy metal is a bit more than 50 minutes long and there are 9 full songs.
2. The overall feel of the band tells you that this band has worked hard at the compositions.
3. They have a production that is appropriate for their sound. The band themselves will probably be the first to tell you that this album does not have the big-budget production.
4. If you support bands that ignore all trends and just stick to playing heavy metal with no nonsense, then this band is worthy of checking out.
5. A friend of mine heard this and did not like the vocals. However, if you like traditional, old school heavy metal and you like to support the “little” bands, you could at least check out the band and hear for yourself and decide.
www.knightsofthefallenempire.com

Satanist (U.S.): Sadomasochrist (Negativity Records)
Yup, that’ll do it, for sure. That’s a name, alright.
The lyrics of this band might make King Diamond blush and say, “Now, now, there, chap, you’re getting carried away, aren’t you?”
The music, to make it easy, is black metal. That really doesn’t mean that much though. For one thing, the vocals, while grim and angry and all that, are easy to understand. Enunciation is important to Satanist!
The guitar is several things at once: dissonant, anti-melodic, then catchy and memorable. There is a variety of other background sounds added for atmosphere, too. Sometimes the music sounds deceptively simple.
However, the real surprise may be the musicality of the band, including some ear-candy moments. Check out “Eliphas Levi” for an example.
Hot diggidy dog, Satanist has some nice tunes! www.myspace.com/satanist666