When Trumbiten made their first appearances on streaming services during the global pandemic of 2020, their first recordings almost seemed to set up the musical project as a bit of fun; something of a necessary distraction for the musicians involved. A cover of Ghost (BC)’s ‘Rats’ and a heavy reworking of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ both suggested the Swedish father/son duo had some strong musical chops, but as with a lot of covers – especially when played fairly straight, heavied up or otherwise – they didn’t really suggest a band thinking in the long term.
Tag Archives: metal
Watch ‘To The Moon & Back’, a new video from Lord
Back in March 2021, Aussie metal band LORD released an expansive covers album, ‘Undercovers, Vol. 1′. The project spanned 23 tracks and for those who bought the download, it also came with two hours’ worth of bonus audio where the band discussed the making of the record.
FISH HEAD – Ain’t Dead Yet
The unfortunately named Fish Head, a metal obsessed band from Royal Tunbridge Wells, care not for fashion. Like another Kent based band, Sacrilege, they seem perfectly happy to exist in a little bubble where metal stopped evolving somewhere around the late 80s. Unlike Sacrilege, though, their 2021 release ‘Ain’t Dead Yet’ actually includes a few decent songs and a lot of energy.
TERRA ODIUM – Ne Plus Ultra
Formed from the ashes of Spiral Architect, Terra Odium is a prog metal band from Norway. Their debut album features some strong technical playing displayed across seven lengthy arrangements. For the more forgiving fans of the style, this will be enough for ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ to be reasonably entertaining. For other listeners who expect flashy solos and other indulgences to be balanced out by memorable songs and important things like actual melodies, the near-hour of relentless riffing will wear thin rather quickly.
Unfortunately, despite very obviously being able to play, Terra Odium also seem painfully unaware of most of the genre’s developments in the twenty first century. This album shows no obvious knowledge of the dark riffs of Awooga, the technical mechanics of Tool or even the complexities of a newer breed such as TesseracT. There are a few fantastically heavy moments that show a modicum of bravery – especially for a band signed to a melodic rock label – but approximately half of the material merely beavers away relentlessly, as if played by men with beards and leather trousers who still consider Symphony X’s ‘The Odyssey’ – at this point almost twenty years old – to be ground breaking.
GREEN JELLŸ – Garbage Band Kids
Green Jellÿ will be forever remembered as the makers of the metal version of ‘Three Little Pigs’, a minor novelty hit back in 1993. They also amused various seventeen year olds with a claymation longform video that introduced the MTV generation to ‘The Misadventures of Shitman’ and the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Pumpkihn’. Then, as far as the world at large was concerned, they just…disappeared.