Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes: B+

"I Follow Rivers"

Much has been written about the sonic change Lykke Li has made since her 2008 debut, Youth Novels. Where her first album was a set of quiet, unobtrusive love songs, Wounded Rhymes, her newest, is mostly raucous and rousing. Its backdrops are filled with romping shakers and toms, creating a sound that is primal, slinky and sexy, adjectives that few would have used to describe her work on Youth Novels. The interim between albums has yielded some significant image changes for Lykke as well. Her performances in support of Wounded Rhymes feature her in a black leather poncho with matching shorts and boots, her dark hair pulled back behind her head to look like a masculine crew cut. It would appear that Lykke’s transformation from shy songstress to boisterous vixen has been drastic, but organic. However, although Lykke may have made all the right moves in tweaking her appearance and her songs, something just doesn’t seem right to complete either picture. For however Lykke may try to extricate herself from the image of her first album, her vocal presence on Wounded Rhymes is still suited for the soft and calm, and, more often than not, her attempts to betray that are off-putting and awkward.

It’s unfortunate to say, because, basically, I am accusing Lykke Li of evolving as an artist. But, time and time again, when she moves out of her comfort zone, Wounded Rhymes comes off as just that: uncomfortable. The danceable toms and circus organ riff in first track, “Youth Knows No Pain,” provide excellent scenery for the image Li attempts to convey on the album. And it works right up until she takes the mic for the verses and chorus. When that occurs, though, her innocuous croon drags the song down more than if it were performed by a singer with a more dynamic voice. “I Follow Rivers” is a great song, Lykke notwithstanding, but it suffers from the same problems. Lykke’s accompaniment is convincing, but her voice doesn’t sell it past that vital last stretch. Much ink has been used up on the “I’m your prostitute / You gon’ get some” line in “Get Some,” but, when Lykke sings it, it sounds just about as evil as if the ETrade baby sang it.

The good news is that Wounded Rhymes is split evenly between the new and old Lykke. Where her sexuality may be forced in songs like “Rich Kids Blues,” her turns in quieter contexts are minimalist and sincere. In a song like “I Know Places,” she sounds more confident with just an acoustic guitar supporting her than all the maladroit posturing on Wounded Rhymes combined. When she evokes sadness as a lover in “Sadness in a Blessing,” it comes off as mature and heartbreaking, especially at the ending of the chorus, when Lykke concludes, “Sadness, I’m your girl.” These songs all deal with crushing amounts of disappointment and loneliness (“All my love is unrequited” goes one song’s chorus) and their brilliance in silence make the bloated songs of Wounded Rhymes sound more like overcompensation than fun.

In her song for the Twilight soundtrack, “Possibility,” Lykke Li embodied vulnerability with little more than a piano and some brooms, and, two years later, Wounded Rhymes proves that she can still pull off moments of such beauty. All the album’s quiet songs are excellent and the ones that strike a middle ground between that and the brashness of “Get Some” are good as well. Wounded Rhymes isn’t so much a misstep as a great album with a few songs that jump the gun. Lykke Li is one of those artists whose moderation suits them best, and, although I can respect the polarizing tracks of Wounded Rhymes, none of them appear without some unfortunate consequence.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes: B+

Delicate Steve - Wondervisions: A-

"Sugar Splash"

Rarely do I hear an instrumentalist with an excellent knack for the nuances of so many instruments like Steve Marion, the man behind Delicate Steve. His talent is exceedingly rare with most bands. Often, a member of a group will write songs from the perspective of the instrument they play, and, as a result, make music that exaggerates theirs and diminishes others, which causes a significant loss of depth and subtlety. One can imagine how compounded this effect can be on a group in which one man plays all the instruments. However, Marion does not just pull a decent Dave Grohl job in making sure every element of Wondervisions is distinctive and supportive (because, to be honest, I’ve always felt that their self-titled was the bad egg in Foo Fighters’s discography), but a Stevie Wonder level of instrumental acuity, and if the liner notes and the title of Wondervisions are any indication, that is a pretty big fucking compliment to Mr. Marion.

Most of the accolades for Wondervisions will go to Marion’s guitar playing, which is absolutely appropriate. The guy wields his axe like the best guitarists do, which isn’t so much to show off with flashy solos, but to craft phrases that are so memorable in and of themselves, that they almost resemble the human voice in their hummability. In songs like “Welcome- Begin” and “Don’t Get Stuck (Proud Elephants),” the guitar melody progresses so beautifully, you could care less that neither features any vocal presence. In “Sugar Splash,” the man goes as far as to wring his high-register guitar lines to a squeal, making them resemble the emotive screams of a singer with an improbably high range belting their heart out. Despite its near complete lack of singing, Wondervisions is one of the most expressive albums you’ll hear all year.

However, the precision Marion exhibits on other instruments is just as impressive. Whether he’s playing a bass, manning a drum kit, or futzing with an effect pedal, Marion flaunts his restraint and confidence in a way that only performers who have exclusively played their respective instrument through years of practice have learned. The title track does not even feature a lead guitar line, Marion instead opting for a synth that is just as affecting as anything else on the album. Ambient exercises are interspersed throughout Wondervisions that are similarly excellent despite their lack of guitar presence. The album features no traditional percussion; only a few toms, some shakers and an 808 are used to propel each song. The result is a record that exudes wild-eyed innocence, the type of wonder that comes with an artist lovingly experimenting with the talents they possess. Delicate Steve resembles indie-rock optimists like Fang Island and Sun City Girls in this way, but Marion bests them both by crafting songs that boast the ambition of ten bands combined and not once sounding stretched thin of ideas.

Delicate Steve - Wondervisions: A-

Radiohead - The King of Limbs: A-

"Feral"

My enjoyment of The King of Limbs is still very much a surprise to me, considering how much I have made a point of putting on the record that I think Radiohead is a ridiculously overrated band, and considering how divisive this album has turned out to be. For a band that has made such an effort in their career to challenge how we view music, the initial response by many publications towards Radiohead’s newest album was astoundingly complicit, some releasing rapturous reviews for it mere hours after it was released. However, as the excitement over the surprising release has subsided, in addition to the requisite backlash that emerged a few weeks later, The King of Limbs seems to sit with overall derision from fans as an album that is not anything close to the quality of past favorites like OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows.

The reason why I believe The King of Limbs has not been viewed in such high regard as those albums, is because, in all its thirty-seven and a half minutes, it does not break any new ground or show any indication of where music will be going in the future, electronic, guitar-based or otherwise. The King of Limbs does nothing to conflate the zeitgeist or fellate the IQ of the music-listening community. It is, simply, a collection of good songs that doesn’t so much as make a dent in the paradigm of musical thought, like many Radiohead fans believe occurred with the other album that the band released in the first year of a decade. And that lack of creative overload that fans have come to expect from the band has seriously pissed some people off.

If anything, The King of Limbs is a rough summary of where electronic music is at this moment, or, more accurately, where Thom Yorke believes electronic music is at this moment. Ever since the man’s 2006 solo effort, The Eraser, Yorke has been concentrating more on the songwriting components of legitimate electronic music as opposed to the bleeps, bloops and screeches that I thought distracted from the sound of Kid A. As represented in the man’s various remixes of electronic artists and his guest vocal on “…And the World Laughs With You” from Flying Lotus’s excellent Cosmogramma, it is easy to see from whom The King of Limbs gets its inspiration. The skittering percussion that serves as the backbone for most of the album’s songs is reminiscent of Flying Lotus’s recent work and the vocal manipulation that occurs in “Feral” and other tracks is in line with the trend that has been prevalent in electronic music since Burial’s 2007 album, Untrue. Even the distant harmonies singing, “Don’t mind me” in “Giving Up the Ghost” sound like something Baths would write, and his debut album was released less than a year ago. The King of Limbs comes off less as a distinct Radiohead product than Yorke writing songs that sound like the music he’s been enjoying, lately.

Another reason Radiohead fans might not have enjoyed The King of Limbs is that it does not have much value in individual songs. Its tracks do not invoke melodies so much as moods; if you’ve heard the first few elements of a song, chances are you’ve heard what the rest is going to sound like. I can see people getting very frustrated with a song like “Separator,” in which a drum measure is stubbornly looped for five and a half minutes, and I would dislike it too if I didn’t enjoy the arrangement the band crafts around it. On The King of Limbs, Radiohead may rely on one or two elements to thrust a song, but never does that guitar part or vocal melody to fall back on fall flat. Yorke does his dejected moan bit very well, layering songs like “Codex” and “Giving Up the Ghost” with harmonies that gracefully weave in and out of the arrangements, Johnny Greenwood’s guitar only adds more depth to the backbeats of songs and… well there are so few distinct drum parts on the album, I can’t imagine Philip Selway spent more than an hour in the studio recording them. The MVP of The King of Limbs, though, is Colin Greenwood, whose supple bass lines keep all the songs fresh and lively when the album’s repetition gets deleterious.

For me, The King of Limbs is Radiohead’s most solid product yet, but scores of fans will end up throwing the album into the poison-tipped iron maiden where their copy of Pablo Honey has been toiling for nearly twenty years. My only advice if you’re considering getting The King of Limbs would be to take the unfounded amount of criticism it has received with a grain of salt, because, if you hold any album to the comical esteem this band’s material’s garnered over the years, it will fail, spectacularly. And, if it sounds like I’m giving the album too much shit for such a high rating, know that it’s because I’m still grappling with the fact that a Radiohead album might make it on my top fifty list at the end of the year, something I never would have imagined. Chances are you’re going to enjoy The King of Limbs, despite its intense exaggerations from both sides of the spectrum. The good news is the that the absent pressure to declare it the greatest piece of music ever recorded might give you some strange comfort.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs: A-

Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine: B+

"Still Sound"

Toro Y Moi’s debut album, Causers of This, came out on the tide of haze that was late-2009 chillwave, and made no bones about what sound it was going for. It was dance-obsessed, sample heavy, and, all in all, above average. What turned Causers of This into an album worth listening to, though, were main man Chaz Bundick’s production skills. His technique of phasing out the music on each downbeat of a song is exhilarating to me, now, as it was when I reviewed the album, last year. It was also excellent foresight on Bundick’s part for where electronic music was going in the ensuing year, as albums like Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma and Baths’s Cerulean would utilize the technique to similarly great effect.

Cut to a year later, and Bundick has released his second album under the Toro Y Moi moniker. Whatever you may think of Underneath the Pine, it’s tough to deny that Bundick’s songwriting has matured significantly in the scant year he’s had to make new music. Where Causers of This had a more homogenous, just-for-kicks attitude towards its fluid interchange of electronics and live instruments, Underneath the Pine seems to be more comfortable in its own skin, relying much less on samples and more on Bundick’s voice. Bundick appears to have a better footing on what the Toro Y Moi sound is extricated from the chillwave movement that has long since passed. With Underneath the Pine, Toro Y Moi appears to be pressing all the right buttons in transitioning from a precocious beat-slider to an indie rock mellow machine.

That being said, Underneath the Pine, from a quality point of view, is not very different from Causers of This. In fact, despite a clearer focus in performance, I favor Causers of This slightly more. This is due to a few things, but what is most notable is that Underneath the Pine lacks that “pull the rug out from under you” style of production that, as I said before, improved Causers of This from decent to above average. The production of Underneath the Pine is straightforward, creating a live feel that treats Bundick’s voice as a focal point rather than just another instrument. The only time this is not the case is in “Good Hold”, when the song’s melody is smooshed into one of the speakers. It’s a surprising moment, and, consistent to form, the song's the most thrilling track on Underneath the Pine. The rest of the album lacks such surprises, and is less interesting as a result.

Also, as I mentioned before, Underneath the Pine concentrates more on Bundick’s voice. Despite adorning it with many interweaving harmonies, the album does little to distract from the fact that Bundick’s vocal presence just isn’t very strong. As he did on Causers of This, Bundick sounds squeamish and noncommittal, fitting the music decently well, but giving each track a blasé quality that I’m sorry to inform is present to some extent on all of Underneath the Pine’s tracks. While nothing on the album is especially damning, with no strong vocal hooks for the listener to latch onto, much of Underneath the Pine cannot help but sink into anonymity.

That isn’t to say, though, that Underneath the Pine is an especially bad album. In a way, its songs are better than those of Causers of This, because the Toro Y Moi of that album relied on those aforementioned production flourishes to buoy songs that otherwise would have been boring. The chorus of voices on “How I Know” and “Elise” and the bassline to “Still Sound” are inventive and indicative of a heightening in songwriting prowess for Bundick. There’s more to be valued in individual songs on Underneath the Pine than for Causers of This, and Bundick’s improvement in that regard indicates creativity to spare for future releases. However, I don’t see Underneath the Pine turning more heads than Toro Y Moi’s debut, and, to be honest, Toro Y Moi’s debut didn’t turn many heads to begin with. Underneath the Pine may lean too heavily on mood instead of hooks, but its rewards far outnumber its flaws, so, at its very base, it’s consistent.

Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine: B+

Bayside - Killing Time: B-

"Already Gone"

If I told you that Bayside were an emo-leaning pop punk band that’s been touring off the MTV2-watching, misplaced-angst crowd for about seven years now, you might think that a rating such as the one up there would be appropriate. The truth is, I reluctantly regard Killing Time as “meh,” because I actually love the genre of music that bands like Bayside play. There’s something about those compressed guitar chords and feminine singing that gets me more enjoyment than I should when I come across a band that can perform it without succumbing to the immaturity that is incumbent upon that genre of music. Songs like The Starting Line’s “Best of Me” and Paramore’s “Misery Business” can seem to some like empty calories, but they are some of my favorite songs of the past decade. On their fifth album, Bayside do not get close to achieving this feat. Despite having most of the musicianship and looks of an MTV Spring Break act that I could respect, their flaws are the very same ones that have befallen countless bands before them.

On Killing Time, Bayside sound like a harder edge Motion City Soundtrack in more ways than one. Both groups write music nowadays with production that shines them of imperfections like marble and Anthony Raneri has a very Justin Pierre-like boyish shrill. However, what puts Killing Time into more of the ballpark of Motion City Soundtrack’s unconscionable dud, My Dinosaur Life, rather than that same group’s saving grace, “Everything Is Alright,” is that Raneri cannot resist attempting to be lyrically clever, a decision that often bears the brunt of my criticism of Killing Time. Raneri sounds overbearing when he boasts about writing a song about apathy in “Sinking and Swimming in Long Island” and snidely (at least to him) chastising a former lover with the comment, “I gave you all / You gave me less” in “Sick Sick Sick.” In Killing Time, Raneri calls girls “cyanide perfume” and “the black ice on my way home” and makes a chorus out of the line “Mona Lisa you’ve really done something / Done a number on all of my organs.” While these phrases could be worse (after all, they could be Motion City Soundtrack lyrics), they’re still terribly awkward, and damnit if they don’t take me out of the album every time I try to give it a chance.

If Killing Time will serve any purpose for me in the future, it will be as background music for a time when I get sick of replaying my copy of Bleed American for my emo-punk fix. Guitarist Jack O’Shea should be proud of his work on the album, because his riffs and arrangements are catchy and original, even brandishing some serious soloing chops on songs like “Already Gone” and “The Wrong Way,” but Bayside, as a group, cannot seem to overcome the lyrical pettiness that inevitably makes them sound unprofessional, no matter how much they compress those guitars. If you don’t take much stake in lyrics, I would recommend Killing Time. However, I’m more content to continue to wait for another group that can write hooks like Bayside and still cover most of their bases at the same time.

Bayside - Killing Time: B-

The Dears - Degeneration Street: B+

"5 Chords"

Degeneration Street hits the mark for an above-average rock album so fucking well, there is barely a thing I could say about it that wouldn’t sound inane or contrived.

(Metaphor, adjective, metaphor, analogy, adjective)

The Dears sometimes sound like an Arcade Fire cover band fronted by Kele Okereke of Bloc Party.

(Influences romanticismofthepast influences romanticismofthepast influences)

It works quite well most of the time; “5 Chords” is the best track and its arrangements would not sound out of place on Neon Bible.

(Don’tmakeitseemlikeyou’verunoutofideas Don’tmakeitseemlikeyou’verunoutofideas)

But, sometimes, the emulations become too overt as Degeneration Street gets through its second half.

(CONVERSATIONAL. Do it then smile, do it then smile)

Geez, those lyrics are bleak, amirite?!

(HoW tHe FuCk Is AnYoNe SuPpOsEd To KnOw iF YoU LiKeD iT oR nOt If YoU dOn’T ExPlIcItElY sTaTe WhEtHeR yOu WoUlD rEcOmMeNd It?)

I recommend Degeneration Street, even if the fact that reviewing 35 albums in three weeks has stretched my writing ability disconsolately thin within an inch of its lifeEe!

* * *

Bear with me, folks. They can’t all be winners.

The Dears - Degeneration Street: B+

Sic Alps - Napa Asylum: B+

"The First White Man To Touch California Soil"

The concept of a lo-fi double album fascinates me. The idea of making a sprawling LP of scrappy garage rock tunes that only barely clock in at two minutes seems to me like the biggest musical oxymoron since The Ramones started singing about Nazis over major chords and “hey ho”’s. Napa Asylum, the third album from San Francisco group Sic Alps, has often been analogized as the garage rock Exile on Main St., and those comparisons are warranted. Napa Asylum is a surprisingly consistent collection of ramshackle love songs, and the first lo-fi album that can be safely called an “experience record.”

One might also be reminded of London Calling when I describe Napa Asylum as a sprawling record, but Sic Alps’s work on their album is far from it, in form. Where The Clash used their record space to experiment with different genres, Sic Alps strictly play simple rock songs that are most similar in style and fidelity to The Velvet Underground. Never on Napa Asylum does the group stray from that line. In fact, due to the brevity of most of the songs on the album, Sic Alps usually keep you engaged by implementing one indelible hook per track. Sometimes, it’s the annoying repetition of “eat” in “Eat Happy” or the playful guitar pull-offs in “Zeppo Epp.” It’s a risky strategy, as it would be nearly impossible to defend against arguments that claim the album’s songs are one-dimensional, but, more often than not, Napa Asylum is entertaining as it progresses in sound from acoustic to distorted to ambient to acoustic, again.

Less than a handful of Napa Asylum’s songs run over three minutes long, the first of which arrives ten tracks into the album. One would assume these few songs would be the album’s highlights, as the group would have more time to develop more than just a hook, but they are no more affecting than the rest of Napa Asylum. “The First White Man To Touch California Soil” is probably the most realized track of the bunch, even featuring a guitar solo within its ragged bluster, but “Ball of Fame,” a cute ditty in which singer, Mike Donovan, warns a girl she “better play the game,” is just as memorable, and, at just over a minute, is little more than a third of “First Man”’s track length.

Ultimately, I may enjoy the concept of Napa Asylum better than the actual music. All the album’s tunes are great, but its source material can seem overwrought at times, and the short track lengths occasionally turn promising gems into transitional missed opportunities. Still, it’s hard to complain about an album as reliable as Napa Asylum. It’s far from revolutionary, but it’s one of the most replayable lo-fi albums I’ve ever heard. I may have my qualms, but I would not mind if Sic Alps kept releasing workhorses like Napa Asylum that can keep you satisfied at a low production cost.

Sic Alps - Napa Asylum: B+

Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise: B+

"Space Is Only Noise If You Can See"

On his debut album, New York electronic artist, Nicolas Jaar, finds himself in a stylistic bind. No matter how effectively he tries to split the difference between slinking dance music and minimalist techno, he cannot end up drawing comparisons to either Matthew Dear for the former or James Blake for the latter. On songs like “Keep Me There” and “Problems With the Sun,” Jaar employs a deep and bubbly vibrato that has significant interest value, but one that reminds me far too much of Matthew Dear’s work on his 2010 album, Black City. Similarly, the slower songs of Space Is Only Noise, like opener, “Colomb,” are spare with dabblings of handclaps and light bass, but I cannot listen to them and not think of the shy dubstep of James Blake’s newest self-titled release. It also doesn’t help that Jaar heavily auto-tunes his voice on “Colomb,” which only draws more attention to Blake’s use of it on his album, which was employed to significantly greater effect.

Space Is Only Noise is a very good album, but what holds it back from being excellent, aside from that originality issue, is that Jaar utilizes a certain restraint that tempers the album’s material to the point where the most rambunctious numbers are seriously lacking in the exploitation of their inherent creepiness. “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See” is the album’s focal point, and rightfully so, as it is the only song in which we see Jaar let loose, railing off non sequiturs in that Dear-like intonation like “Replace the word ‘space’ with ‘drink’ and forget it/Space is only noise if you can see.” “Grab a calculator and fix yourself” is such a gloriously random line in the song, and Jaar does not waste it by diluting the listener’s singular mood with calming falling-sea-shells-on-a-window-sill percussion that was characteristic of Pantha du Prince’s Black Noise, as he does on much of Space Is Only Noise. Jaar clearly knows what he’s doing here, but he needs to figure out how that “what” is going to be different from that of the formative electronic artists making music these days. Space Is Only Noise is a good start, but one that indicates some clear space for improvement. And if that space is only noise, then Jaar can just tune my critiques out… but that’s only if he can see them, and I’m not sure that he can. God I hate when I get punny.

Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise: B+

East River Pipe - We Live in Rented Rooms: B-

"Tommy Made a Movie"

So, apparently, the guy who is East River Pipe, Fred Cornog, has been building a music career by making one-off albums in the basement studio of his New Jersey home and giving them to a label, whereupon they are released to the public and the man has no obligation to leave his family or his actual occupation to tour or do any promotional work, whatsoever. With that knowledge in mind, We Live in Rented Rooms, Cornog’s first album in five years, pretty much sounds like it came from a guy who makes one-off albums in a basement in New Jersey between stints at an actual work place; his newest is passive, mundane, and painfully boring.

We Live in Rented Rooms is a near spitting image of the vaguely electronic hipster pop that Eels has been making for more than a decade, except Cornog has an even more voracious penchant for awkward lyrics. In fact, the only thing that makes the album stand out at all is the fact that Cornog feels the need to accompany his bland folk songs with lyrical concepts that do not fit the material at all. Album opener, “Backroom Deals” attempts to simplify the government’s reaction to the financial crisis through the repetition of the title in only the most vaporous way. Not only does it come off as shallow (which I can’t necessarily blame him for, as nothing really rhymes with “no-credit default swaps”), but it doesn’t even sound like Cornog believes what he’s saying, as if he’d just walked into a studio and figured he’d make something up while he strummed his gui-tar for a couple minutes.

“Conman” has similar political aspirations. It’s difficult to tell what the point Cornog’s trying to make when he sings, “The priest’s making love on his knees,” but it’s just as well, as I come out of the song not giving a rat’s ass as to what it could possibly mean, anyway.

Such is the plight of We Live in Rented Rooms. If it weren’t for Cornog’s numerous lyrical gaffes, the album would be a pointless listen. At least it’s a little interesting to see how the guy screws up the revenge ballad concept of “Payback Time” (He’s cacophonous right out the gate when he leads off with the line “Yeah, I saw you with the commandant”) and the resemblance of “Tommy Made a Movie” to a minor-key “Tommy Can You Here Me?” has a fleeting entertainment value, but most of We Live in Rented Rooms sounds half-assed and complacent. I would say that Cornog shouldn’t quit his day job, but he seems to have a much better grasp of his artistic longevity than I do.

East River Pipe - We Live in Rented Rooms: B-

Omnium Gatherum - New World Shadows: B+ / MyGrain - MyGrain: B+

"Everfields"                                                                            "Shadow People"

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not so negligent of metal that I just slap the same grade on pairs of metal albums and put them out in double reviews. The reason why I grouped the new albums by Ulcerate and Mitochondrion was because the two albums were quite similar, in both general sound and my disdain for them. I cannot help but notice clear similarities between the new albums by Omnium Gatherum and MyGrain, as well. Both are solid albums by groups hailing from Finland, the melodic death metal capital of the world. They are worthy additions to both groups’ respective discographies, even though they don’t necessarily progress the genre further.

Of the two, Omnium Gatherum is more indebted to the style of traditional melodic death metal. Produced by Dan Swanö, the man who helmed the boards for Barren Earth’s classic Curse of The Red River, New World Shadows displays many of the signifiers that have characterized the efforts of various melodic death metal acts in at least the past year. Growling vocals laced with harmonious guitar lines and atmospheric synthesizers are all over New World Shadows, but Omnium Gatherum make some attempt to diverge themselves from the genre that has experienced an explosion in productivity over the past couple years. ­­­­­­Markus Vanhalla's guitar parts are particularly euphoric, whether as songs’ aural decoration or main riff. However, as New World Shadows progresses, the similarities between it and Curse of The Red River become more apparent. On both albums, the first and last songs are the longest, and, like Red River’s title track, New World Shadows’s opener, “Everfields”, diverges into a Nordic folk jamboree before continuing with the metal that dominates their album. Both albums frequently delve into the balladic, but Omnium Gatherum shoehorn slow parts into places where they don’t comfortably fit, as if they see the melodic aspect of their sound as a necessity rather than a logical musical progression. Also, New World Shadows might be the first metal album of which I prefer the growled vocals to the clean ones. The actual singing that takes place in “Deep Cold” and the title track sounds laughably forced, reaching Trans Siberian Orchestra levels of cheese. New World Shadows is a good album, but its trivialities may be a bore to those who are already familiar with their genre of music.

MyGrain’s third album does not reach the highs or lows of New World Shadows. The band has an unfortunate knack for choosing awful song titles (“A Clockwork Apocalypse”? “Shadow People”? Really, guys?), but they perform their brand of melodic death metal at a consistently enjoyable pace. MyGrain is interesting in that its sound both strives for something more aggressive, but, through the band’s choruses and vocal techniques, sound like an attempt to reach the mainstream. For this reason, I see MyGrain as an album that takes much of its influence from modern American metal. The band’s clean vocals sound like Atreyu’s Brandon Saller and the faint drum machine blips that begin “Eye of the Void” sound like Disturbed’s “Indestructible”. Still, there is one band that I cannot help but link MyGrain to, and that is Trivium. Most of the clean vocals on MyGrain sound like the adolescent gruff of Matt Heafy. The screaming often sounds like the band circa Shogun and the “this mortal coil” line in “Shadow People” could have been written by the band for The Crusade. Now, I’m aware that “Atreyu”, “Disturbed” and “The Crusade-era Trivium” are all loaded words, but MyGrain has the clout to make these influences push their music in more mainstream directions without sacrificing their authenticity. With their self-titled album, MyGrain have made a good iteration of the Trivium sound, which is something that not even Trivium can wholly lay claim to.

Omnium Gatherum - New World Shadows: B+ / MyGrain - MyGrain: B+