Castle – Evil Remains Review

By Steel Druhm

I had quite a torrid love affair with Castle from 2011 through 2016. Their gritty, back alley take on occult doom really got into my bones and I was helpless to resist their demonic charms. Albums like In Witch Order, Blacklands, and Under Siege were in near-constant rotation at the House of Steel and I wanted more, more, MOAR. They were just so skilled at their chosen brand of minimalist street doom and Elizabeth Blackwell’s rough yet seductive vocals were nigh irresistible. By the time 2018s Deal Thy Fate rolled around, some of the bloom was off the black rose and things were starting to sound a touch less essential. Fast forward 6 years and we’ve survived a million crises and the whole occult doom trend has died down considerably, with acts like Jex Thoth and Sabbath Assembly going quiet. This new world order awaits Castle as they finally return with a fresh album. Will the long absence make my rusty heart grow fonder for Castle, or will Evil Remains fall victim to the insidious Law of Diminishing Recordings?

As opener “Queen of Death” kicked off I got a warm, nostalgic feeling in the empty void where my heart should be. It’s good to hear Elizabeth Blackwell’s demonic snarls and sultry crooning again and Mat Davis’ beefy leads are still aces. It’s the same hard-rocking doom they’ve excelled at forever and the big, burly grooves are a pleasure to be crushed by. Blackwell sounds great and she’s still unmatched at changing tones to suit the moment, moving from menacing to alluring. This one could have been on In Witch Order, which means Castle aren’t fucking around here. “Nosferatu Nights” is even better— aggressive and dark but chock full of hooks that pierce the flesh. Mat Davis shines brightly with some filthy, very Wino-esque playing and Elizabeth sings her witchy heart out. “Deja Voodoo” is also pure fire and one of the better songs in the Castle stable, fully leveraging the band’s strengths on a very good piece of mood-drenched writing. Elizabeth owns this song completely with her necromantic exhortations and the riffs are just the right amount of damn-nasty.

Evil Remains is a consistently spry album. “Black Spell” is almost NWoBHM in style, upbeat and urgent with Judas Priest-adjacent riffage, but it manages to keep the occult doom aesthetic intact. “She” is a badass song crackling with inky, doomy magik. The guitar playing speaks to the olden days of American doom but the hard rocking energy forces it into more vigorous, shambling action. A few songs feel less mighty, but none are bad or skip-worthy and the album’s tight 37-plus minute runtime is very easy to digest. Everything flows well and the energy levels are kept in that sweet spot between doom and rock to prevent your eyes from glazing over.

There are traces of Pentagram, The Obsessed, and Saint Vitus in the DNA of Mat Davis’ guitar work, and I hear a lot of Wino in his phrasing along with a deep love of 70s rock. He’s always been great at channeling the ghosts of doom’s past and shocking them with extra power and he does it again across the album. He’s especially good at locking into weighty grooves only to depart to hit a righteous solo or colorful flourish. Elizabeth Blackwell has always been one of my favorite metal vocalists and she’s on her game here. Her ability to chill the soul one moment and enchant the next has always been the biggest piece of the Castle puzzle and she’s lost none of her power. She gives it her all on “Nosferatu Nights” and “Deja Voodoo” and I can’t imagine anyone else doing it better. In the end, Davis and Blackwell demonstrate yet again that their stripped-down take on doom rock is a winning one and that I’m still a sucker for it.

It seems my days in the occult doom bubble are not over thanks to Castle. Evil Remains features everything I love about their sound and offers a collection of punchy songs with enough weight to convince. It’s good to hear Castle alive and well and I hope they can keep the wicked times rolling. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart
Websites: castlesf.bandcamp.com | heavycastle.com | facebook.com/castlesf
Releases Worldwide: September 6th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AmericanMetal #Castle #DoomMetal #EvilRemains #HammerheartRecords #InWitchOrder #JexThoth #OccultMetal #Review #Reviews #SabbathAssembly #Sep24 #UnderSiege

AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö: Sunnata – Chasing Shadows

By Dolphin Whisperer

“AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö” is a time-honored tradition to showcase the most underground of the underground—the unsigned and unpromoted. This collective review treatment continues to exist to unite our writers in boot or bolster of the bands who remind us that, for better or worse, the metal underground exists as an important part of the global metal scene. The Rodeö rides on.”

Does Poland evoke the heated and stinging breeze of the open desert to a lost mind? No? Sunnata likes to think otherwise, or at least it’s their life’s mission to expand on the ideas of exotic scales, eerie harmonization, and chanting repetitiveness to match the power of shifting sands in their homeland. Back in 2021, our very own Cherd had a tough time coming to terms with what these Eastern bloc mystics conjured on Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth. But now a few years wiser, ever iterating,1 and pursuant of their own self-produced visions, can Sunnata sway both our grumpy grandpa Cherd and his crack rodeo crew with Chasing Shadows? – Dolphin Whisperer

Sunnata // Chasing Shadows [May 10th, 2024]

Cherd: I wasn’t terribly keen on Sunnata’s 2021 record Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth, so I passed on reviewing their follow-up when it landed in the promo sump. Then Dolph decided to go and write a whole damn Rodeö about Chasing Shadows, so I figured I’d better give my two cents after all. Chasing Shadows is a definite step up, thanks to the heavy dose of 90s grunge these Poles have injected into their psych/stoner doom. I’m sure you’ll be sick of reading the name Alice In Chains by the end of this article, but good god do the vocal harmonies call them to mind. The strongest tracks, like “Torn” and “Saviour’s Raft” rely heavily on these. Meanwhile, when the band leans into their “exotic” side—vaguely Middle Eastern motifs—as they do on “Wishbone” and “The Tide,” the songs drag. There’s fat to trim across the album’s 60+ minutes, especially the throwaway closing quasi-dance track. That said, the eight-minute “Hunger” earns its entire runtime with a hypnotic tempo and the record’s best build up. There’s a lot to like in Chasing Shadows, even if there is some bloat. 3.0/5.0

Maddog: Sunnata’s Chasing Shadows is an hour of shameless psychedelia. Take Dvne riffs, add a pinch of Mayhem in Blue-era Hail Spirit Noir, and pour a bucket of fuzzy stoned melodies on top, and you get the gist. This recipe is a blessing and a curse. Chasing Shadows’ most well-formed pieces hit hard. When Sunnata focuses on developing melodies, they hold me transfixed, like on album highlight “Torn.” When Sunnata focuses on buildups, they whisk me out of the world and onto a dramatic ride (“Chimera”). When Sunnata focuses on rhythmic sections that hypnotize the listener, they conjure a beautiful soundscape, like the primordial chorus of “Hunger.” When Sunnata focuses on rock-solid bass lines, they add power and depth to their atmosphere (“Adrift”). But sometimes, Sunnata focuses on nothing. Even the strongest cuts overstay their welcome with meandering fuzz. As the album progresses, some full tracks get swallowed by tedium, and the moaned vocals become grating; neither undivided attention nor psilocybin can save songs like “The Sleeper” from fading into the background.2—Still, Sunnata has a talent for writing sludgy psychedelic passages that stand out from their peers. If they can trim some low-hanging fat and focus on their strengths, their next record could be a gem. 2.5/5.0

Dolphin Whisperer: Chasing Shadows seems to know exactly what it is—a dry, desert-wandering, bass-heavy affair that leans into psychedelia via shifting repetitions. And Sunnata seem to have figured out exactly how they want to explore this meditation—heavy and dark Alice in Chains vocal melodies, twangy stoner guitar refrains, and song drives that creep ever faster into their snaking swirl. Though, throughout this dusty adventure, guitar passages resemble less of the easy-to-digest percussive draws of a band like Kyuss and more of the modal and trilling explorations of similar sounds that you’d hear in an occult act like Sabbath Assembly. (“Chimera,” “Wishbone”). And on longer cuts, at least before Sunnata achieves maximum throttle, doom inflections, fat bass rumbling, and laser-pointing drone that bubbles and bakes and broils the experimental madhouse of Obake. But most importantly, as a fever dream like this sound, Chasing Shadows maintains a warping yet consistent tonality that slowly and sneakily lures as the rattle of a hissing pit viper to a lost and dazed traveler. It does, however, require a hefty dose of patience and practice to maintain a footing the whole way through its hour-long trial, its various interludes and strange darkwave closing adding little. To curious ears, though, Chasing Shadows will be an easy listen, despite its limited bag of tricks and hefty presence, and those who buy in fully to its tonal landscape may find even more rewards. 3.0/5.0

Itchymenace: Chasing Shadows reminds me of the Albert Camus story, The Adulterous Woman. In fact, the cover art seems plucked directly from the final scene in which the protagonist runs out into the Algerian desert a changed woman after realizing life with her husband will never fulfill her. The music provides the perfect soundtrack for the existential metamorphosis she goes through, or that anyone might go through when they peel back the delicate layers of life and search for deeper meaning. I did not expect to like this as much as I do, but Sunnata has created a masterpiece. This album drags you across a jagged desert landscape and drenches you in rich, dreamlike musical passages that leave you questioning your very existence. The music is complex, varied, heavy and meditative. The arrangements are deceptively simple to make the journey seem easy—until you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore. Especially noteworthy is how the bass guitar drives the compositions. Bassist Michal Dobrzanski’s tone is massive but somehow leaves plenty of room in the soundscape for Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski’s intricate guitars and vocals. Drummer Robert Ruszczyk keeps a ritualistic tempo that seamlessly moves the caravan forward through the heart of darkness. If I were to try to describe this to a metalhead, I’d say imagine Alice in Chains trying to play Gorguts by way of Earth. Brilliant! Original! Frightening! And a new experience with every listen. 4.5/5.03

Mystikus Hugebeard: True to Sunnata’s desert prog premise, Chasing Shadows is a mirage: captivating, frustrating, and an incomplete vision of something spectacular. At sixty-two minutes long, the length will likely prove to be as controversial as it is intentional; repetition is key to Sunnata’s songwriting, as it weaves a surreal soundscape through thick, drawn-out riffs. Sometimes, it’s entrancing. Other times, I’m just bored. The more evolutionary tracks are where Chasing Shadows come to life. The off-key vocal layers and thick, fuzzy guitars are in “Chimera” and “Saviour’s Raft” take their time to progress into explosive riffs that feel earned by the buildup. Even a less progressive track like “Torn” works just by nature of how palpable the desert atmosphere is, with the chugging bass, elusive guitar lines, and hallucinatory vocals hypnotizing the listener. “Hunger” and “The Sleeper” also have a satisfying chug to them but feel emptier, with resolutions that are satisfying in the moment but still less memorable than those from earlier tracks. The worst offenders, “Wishbone” and “The Tide,” are almost completely aimless and are fully devoid of the strong atmospheric qualities that makes the rest work. The emulation of an endless trek through an endless desert is uncanny, and the aimlessness can work when paired with hypnotic songwriting like in “Torn,” but overall the lack of a meaningful destination or payoff within the already less engaging tracks only gets worse as the album drags on, and it slowly begins to drown out the parts that work well. I really love the thematic intent behind Chasing Shadows, which only makes the final result all the more frustrating that it falls short of being a truly great desert odyssey. 2.5/5.0

#2024 #AliceInChains #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo #AngryMetalGuySUnsignedBandRodeo2024 #ChasingShadows #DoomMetal #Dvne #Earth #HailSpiritNoir #IndependentRelease #Kyuss #Obake #OccultRock #PolishMetal #PostMetal #PsychedelicDoomMetal #PsychedelicRock #SabbathAssembly #SelfRelease #StonerRock #Sunnata