The 2015 Arsies: January 5, 2015

January 5, 2015

What is with these band names?!
Sweden's Soreption start the evening's action with an endless onslaught of twisting tempo changes and flurries of 32nd notes, the mainstay of their album Engineering The Void. Truth be told, their obviously well-practiced habit of abruptly shifting gears can come across as a cheap parlor trick, except for the fact that it's so consistently effective at getting your head to move. This band can and do thrill and shred, and they do it in 34 frenetic minutes that leave you exhausted, and then leave you wanting to come back for more.
Not to be easily humbled, Greek black metallers Aenaon begin their second full-length album Extance with appropriate bombast, before launching into their Mastodon-meets-Opeth-meets-Ghost brand of death metal. It's a potent and surprisingly cohesive mix, but halfway through the album the band start to lose their way; the tracks that follow the ill-named Pornocrates all lack the excitement evident in the first half of Extance. I do have to give a special shout out to guest vocalist Tanya Leontiou, who does a seriously uncanny imitation of 1970s-era Geddy Lee on Funeral Blues. But even with that, Aenaon are just no match for the bludgeoning force of Soreption, who will go on to challenge Agalloch on January 26th.
That's it for today! Tune in tomorrow morning, when Inter Arma try to outmuscle Old Man Gloom.