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Poor distribution by Hades Almighty’s Psycho Bitch Records representation has prompted a re-release of their 2001 album “The Pulse of Decay”. And understandably so - the at times clinical, at other times almost melodic brand of extreme black and thrash metal explored on the Norwegian group’s fourth album is worthy of wider recognition. There aren’t many metal records being released these days which really get my blood pumping, but this is certainly one of them, despite the fact that Hades Almighty aren’t ones to favour gruellingly speedy riffs or superfast blast beats. For the most part, they play somewhere near mid-tempo, taking their time to carefully build up an industrially cold atmosphere, and with a good set of headphones the high quality of production really complements this mood.

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On the “Felangus Box/Coelacanth” double-album, obscure Indiana-based Airtight Garage (presumably named after popular/bizarre French comic artist Moebius’ series with same title) tune up their brand of jangling, folk-punk/lo-fi indie rock which they’ve been busy polishing for the better part of the last 11 years. They prove themselves to be something of an undiscovered gem on their 4th full-length, consigned to self-promotion on places like mylocalbands.com and iuma.com where garage groups are a dime a dozen, an unfortunate thing because these boys and girls really do deserve better. I suspect the problem is no more mysterious than the fact that records with home-made artwork and a DIY-approach to music are systematically ignored at the big magazines.

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While Norway is infamous on just about every continent for spawning bucketloads of evil black metal acts such as Mayhem, Darkthrone, Ulver and Dimmu Borgir, the Stavanger-area has until yet not seen much action in the way of home-grown metal groups making it onto the wider international arena. It may be a little optimistic to say that Deathfare will change all that, but the group certainly show potential in reaching wider acclaim beyond the local gig circuit.

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“The Seven Dreams of Leviathan” is a remarkably pleasant listening experience, considering the breadth of musical ground covered by Kevin Hume and his Black Spartacus project. From sea shanties to lo-fi electronic experimentation to television theme songs, Hume flits easily from style to style with all the grace of a disciplined indie artist.

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I remember when I was like 10 and enjoyed “Dookie” (pauses for readers to calculate age). It was a great record, it was a good time to take you out of the occassional misery that is childhood. We would think nothing of the fact that most of the songs consisted of no more than 3-4 power chords. A lot of good things can be done with 3-4 power chords, after all. It’s just that it doesn’t really work all that well when it’s used for every single song on a 1-hour record, especially if it’s a band that’s been doing nothing but play 3-4 power chords since 1991. I guess I’ve aged and Green Day haven’t.

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It’s not every day that I get a relatively professionally packaged record all the way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in my mailbox. Unfortunately, I think Fat Boys Records could have saved themselves the stamps, and stuck to chugging out more imitation groups instead of sending their releases half-way across the world. Disagree’s debut “At the End of the Day” (cleverly, they decided to call themselves “Disagree” after a long session of brainstorming for names which none of the members could agree on) is chock full of melodic rock songs, at times angst-ridden and utterly unoriginal, reminiscent of certain popular nu-metal/emo groups plaguing the airwaves with their post-post grunge, overly commercialised and glossified music for the last few years. The vocals on “At the End of the Day” are at times identical to that of Creed’s frontman - I’ll let the readers decide whether that’s a good thing, although I suspect most will find it disagreeable. Citing Pearl Jam and the post-grunge movement as an influence to their music is little more than an insult to those groups playing under that banner. Production is clean, and the artwork is professional, but it is in the musical department which I find Disagree lacking.

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Myrkskog’s “Deathmachine” is a criminally underrated album in my opinion, and probably a big influence on Zyklon’s “World Ov Worms” released the following year. Of course, the two bands share a member (Destructhor - guitars), which may explain much of the similarity, but with an otherwise relatively unknown line-up (unlike Zyklon), Myrkskog were not able to gain the publicity for their debut album that they deserved.

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The Chairs have long dwelled restlessly as a prime example of the sort of underground band which deserved to make it, but were for one reason or another never given the chance by the music establishment to break into the wider consciousness of the dirty business that is rock ‘n’ roll. “Fly the Flag” is vocalist Simon Harmer & Co.’s attempt at rectifying this situation. The Norwegian group, based out of the small coastal town of Stavanger, have managed to put together a record laden with material showcasing their ability to tie together all the loose ends of their past years as something of an eclectic indie underground outfit and really clock in some solid, streamlined melodic rock songs. Shifting between well-fashioned, at times hard-hitting rock ‘n’ roll tracks with delightfully inspired melodies to more contemplative, melancholic material, the group show themselves capable of drawing on as diverse influences as a slowed down Ramones to Little Richard (although I suspect Harmer is laying it on a little thick when citing these as his prime influences for the record) to panicky, “Pablo Honey”-era Radiohead.

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