01. The Trend 07:04 02. Coward 04:21 03. Ambush 03:21 04. Betrayed 04:34 05. 25 Seconds 04:49 06. Nowhere to Go 05:07 07. The Other Side 04:19 08. Death In Your Eyes 05:58 09. Payback 04:47 10. Romeo Delight 4:25

Expectation is a funny thing. The better you prove to be at something, the harder it seems to please people…in the musical sense, it’s often the case of the bigger the band, the bigger the monkey clinging to their back. Metallica, Slayer, even Iron Maiden - they’ve all battled the monkey at one time or another.

Well, Annihilator have one of the biggest expectation monkeys of all, almost King Kong like in stature, simply by merit of being the brainchild of Jeff Waters. Continually named in the single-figure upper echelons of those “worlds greatest guitarist” rankings that appear in the music magazines pretty much every month, the man turned down a place in Megadeth twice so he could concentrate on Annihilator, who have churned out a string of classics since 1989’s ‘Alice in Hell’.
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Photos from the Fear factory, Sylosis and October File show in Glasgow Garage on February 2010. Photos by Gordy Jeans.

Photos from the Diamanthian, Achren, Co-exist and Bin Laden’s Daughter show in New Elgin Hall on November 2009. Photos by Gordy Jeans.

01. Havoc 06:42 02. Reason 06:55 03. The Stir of Seasons 04:01 04. For a Thousand Years to Come 06:46 05. Abrasion Tide 07:14 06. Fleshflower 03:28 07. Worldwide 06:39 08. My Domain 04:49

Borknagar are a Progressive Black Metal band. Let’s just think about that for a moment. If you’ll allow me to dust off the ol’ stereotypewriter, then Black Metal is going to involve a lot of spiked leather garments, face-paint, and possibly marching around in a forest with a burning torch and a grim countenance. You have to go some distance from this to prog; at least one guy in your prog band has an afro, and is wearing trousers that MC Hammer would declare to be just a bit much. He’s also so high that he’s trying to play a flute with his nose, and will only end up in a forest in the event of some kind of ‘Withnail & I’ situation. So…progressive black metal? How does that work, then?

Quite simply, Borknagar just make it work. They’ve just taken most of those ingredients and mashed them together, leaving furious double bass drumming going hand in hand with Hammond organ and spoken-word intervals. If by some chance you’re actually already Borknagar’s number one fan, and I’m just condescending to you right now, it’s been four years since their last album, and that was an acoustic effort (acoustic progressive black metal…the mind boggles). So I’d imagine we could all do with a little refresher course, right?
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Its been a while since our last show but Ewan and Victoria are back co presenting with north east based gothic industrial musician Synoiz.

Synoiz released his first album Ambients in October 2009 and has followed that up with a recent single release entitled Ever Emptiness. Much of his inspiration comes from video game soundtracks and produces what can best be described as ‘horror soundscapes’.

We hope you enjoy this foray into co-presenting and it includes an interview with Synoiz where we talk about the pitfalls of being an independent artist and where the ideas for the Ambients album came from.
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 Ragnarok Radio - Episode 49 - Synoiz [84:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

01. The One I Once Was 04:46 02. The Pain Infernal and the Fall Eternal 05:16 03. The Eye of the Storm 05:10 04. The Malice of Life’s Cruel Ways 05:02 05. The Wheel of Fire 04:09 06. The Chains that Wield My Mind 04:30 07. The New Desire 03:50 08. The Vile Bringer of Self-Destructive Thoughts 03:52 09. The Candle at the Tunnel’s End 04:00

Morten Veland is something of a pioneer in the world of Gothic Metal; he was one of the founder members of Tristania, and went on to leave them to form Sirenia. So it’s fair to say he knows his way around the genre, and it’s not much of a surprise that his solo project produces exactly that. For the sake of continuity, he’s even managed to end the band name in “-ia”.

This is a proper solo project, no messing about with guest musicians or even producers - Veland has done literally everything himself, all of the instruments, music, lyrics, even the recording, engineering, mixing and producing. In his own studios. The one concession he’s made to the existence of the rest of the musical world is to use a choir, but I bet that’s just because he didn’t have time to multi-track himself singing all twenty parts. Yes, this is the Morten Veland show, his musical vision finally put straight from his head to record in its purest form.
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01. Snakes for the Divine 08:23 02. Frost Hammer 06:07 03. Bastard Samurai 06:37 04. Ghost Neck 05:01 05. The Path 01:20 06. Fire, Flood and Plague 06:08 07. How Dark We Pray 08:06 08. Holy Flames of the Fire Spitter 04:13

It’s hard to believe that it’s coming up on three years since the last High on Fire album was released. That founder, guitarist and vocalist Matt Pike takes this long to produce an album is always going to instill a note of fear in his fans, most of whom are still traumatised by the saga of “Dopesmoker”. Pike’s old band, stoner metal legends Sleep, attempted to release “Dopesmoker” in 1995, but it didn’t see the light of day until eight years later, by which time the band had long since broken up. Pike has actually been busy with a Sleep reunion in the last year or so, but fear not, High on Fire devotees: “Snakes for the Divine” has actually been released, at long last!

Notably, “Snakes for the Divine” was produced by Greg Fidelman, famed for his peerless work on Slayer’s “World Painted Blood” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”, when he rescued both of those legendary bands from sounding like nu-metal ponces. He’s once again gone for the crisp, precise, dry kind of sound he brought to those albums, so it’s a slight departure from the explosive High on Fire sound we all know and love. However, if you take a moment to get used to it, this new style actually works really very well.
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01. The Ballad of Solomon Eagle 05:17 02. Vagrant Stomp 04:49 03. The Ale House Braves 03:49 04. Cities of Frost 05:34 05. Hot Knives and Open Sores 04:21 06. Hounds Ditch 05:30 07. Mortlake (Dead Water) 02:11 08. They Come Back (Harvest of Skulls) 04:43 09. Beginners Guide to Suicide 08:05

The racket Orange Goblin specialise in tends to be referred to as ‘stoner metal’. Indeed, they’re reputed to be the UK’s premier exponents of that particular sub-genre. They epitomised that style on their standout third album, 2000’s ‘The Big Black’, but since then have been moving in a more traditional heavy-metal direction. By the time their sixth album, 2007’s ‘Healing Through Fire’ rolled around, staple traditional stoner tracks like ‘Scorpionica’ were a thing of the past. Sure, there are hints of it at various points on ‘Healing Through Fire’, it’s definitely still an influence, but to be honest you’d be hard pressed to actually define this as a stoner metal record. I don’t know what you’d call it, really…it’s just really fucking metal.

‘Healing Through Fire’ is all brash, swaggering aggression, a rousing drunken salute to heavy music. That lively, stomping tone is set right from the outset with ”The Ballad of Solomon Eagle“, which is by no means a ballad in the traditional sense. Although from Orange Goblin, I doubt you were expecting “Total Eclipse of the Heart” anyway…which isn’t to say I wouldn’t give a kidney to hear them cover that. It’s hard to explain, really, but listening to this album makes me feel like my hair isn’t nearly long enough, and gives me a sudden impulse to grow a large mountain-man style beard, behind which I can stomp around glaring at people. Tracks like “Ale House Braves” and “Hounds Ditch” typify this kind of feeling; it’s the kind of song you expect to find playing in one of those dingy bars populated entirely by bikers and stereotypical ‘road people’ out of Kerouac novels who hop freight trains. Even the barman has a denim jacket, and tattoos on his face, and there’s probably an underground fight club in the basement. It’s pure attitude music.
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Photos from the Mastodon show in Newcastle on February 21st. We also met the folks who caught Brann Dailor’s drumstick see the first picture! Photos by Victoria Baker and Ewan McNulty.

01. Badge And A Gun 3:40 02. In The City 3:10 03. You Belong To Me 4:06 04. Mrs. Operator 3:12 05. Higher & Higher 4:53 06. Too Much 3:34 07. Fortune And Fame 3:00 08. Superman 4:32 09. You 3:20 10. Champagne, Chicks & Rock n’ Roll 2:28

‘Fuck me, not another band covered in tattoos.’
- Christopher Persuad-Jagdhar, The Wildhearts

Originality seems to be something of a problem in music these days; regardless of which genre a band are considered to be a part of, more often than not there will be older acts with whom they share similarities. This is largely true of the recent wave of Swedish rock och roll seen on Ragnarok of late, but is it true of Mama Kin?

Named after a track on Aerosmith’s first album, they play soulful melodic rock. The album starts with a police siren (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’) and goes on to paint a sleazy picture of the rock ‘n’ roll city of… erm, Karlstad (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). The band’s personnel have a cool glam image (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). However, it sounds very little like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’, and to be fair, it would be extremely difficult for a band to live up to such a seminal work - but hey, no one said they were trying to, and who says that unoriginality strictly has to be a bad thing?
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