Progressive Rock genius Neal Morse is back with another masterpiece titled “Momentum”. Featuring Mike Portnoy and Randy George, this release is one hell of an album that no Progressive Rock fan can miss. Packed with six tracks that span nearly an hour of brilliant music, this release shows why Neal Morse is one of the best in the genre and that he still has the touch for creating fresh sounding music that will blow you away.

Opening with a very futuristic/space-ish vibe, “Momentum” gets down to business very fast with excellent melodic sections and very tight drumming. Neal’s vocals are excellent as always and very well arranged in this track. The guitar solos in this song are outstanding, showcasing Neal’s timeless ability to write and play excellent guitar sections in his music. “Thoughts Part 5” features a more playful nature with some very well crafted sections that showcase the excellent drumming of Mike Portnoy (as if we needed more proof) and very ethereal keyboard sections that set the mood very nicely, several guest appearances by Eric Gillette and Wil Morse greatly enhance this song as well.

Delivering her second solo release for Napalm Records, today we have Liv Kristine with “Libertine”. Utilizing her ‘gap’ year between Leaves’ Eyes releases, Lik Kristine and company (husband Alex Krull and Thorsten Bauer, both band mates from Leaves’ Eyes), manage to squeeze in eleven tracks of catchy Pop/Alternative Rock music that showcases Liv’s sweet vocals and knack for keeping busy writing songs all year round.

Opening with the very mellow and folk-ish “Interlude”, this release is off to a very solid start, unlike her previous 2010 effort “Skintight”. The power ballad “Silence” is a clear example of why most Metal heads that like female fronted metal love Liv Kristine, her vocals are angelic and with a simple combination of piano/cello/whatever string instrument, they are greatly highlighted and sound like a million dollars. Featuring very powerful and engaging guitarwork, we have to give a nod to the very entertaining but somewhat repetitive “Panic”.

Continuing providing insights into the mysterious ways of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, today we have Sabbath Assembly and their second release titled “Ye Are Gods”. Using the process and text from the churches holiest mass “Sabbath Assembly”, this release provides a unique insight into the intricate theology behind the church in a very authentic fashion thanks to the role of Genesis P-Orridge as the hight priestess.

The first track “Let Us All Give Praise And Validation” opens like a regular churche service with Genesis providing a few words before the choir takes the lead, this opening delivers the first of many goose bump moments in this very eerie release. Our first (and only) beef with this album is that Jex Thoth has been replaced with Jamie Myers (ex-Hammers of Misfortune). While both are extremely talented singers, we think that Jex’s voice is a bit deeper and thus better fitted for the music, but Jamie does a great job in capturing the essence of the music in this release.

The highly mysterious and anonymous Dutch outfit An Autumn For Crippled Children (AAFCC for short) returns with another dreamy journey into the depths of Post Black/Shoegaze music. “
Only The Ocean Knows” delivers eight magical tracks of very aggressive and ethereal sounding music. This release is by far the band’s best effort to day, and you should definitely check it out.

“Past Tense” delivers a very cool intro that made us believe the band was going to bust out an electro track, but it nicely shifts into fuzzy distorted guitars and very rhythmical drumming. The Post-Black influences are very evident and propel this song into atmospheric brilliance. Continuing the band’s atmospheric efforts, “Yes I Know… Love And Death… Always” delivers a bit of a change of pace with some excellent ‘melodic’ passages, but the majority of the time we have the guitars pounding away, keeping the album’s atmosphere flowing.

After the excellent full-length “A Glimpse of Glory”, Lustre returns to us with another killer full-length release titled “They Awoke The Scent Of Spring”. This one-man aural orgasm machine from Sweden has crafted four excellent tracks that have a very eerie atmospheric vibe that reminds us of Burzum’s “Filosofem” release. With 40 minutes of music, this release surely delivers enough bang for your money in the sense of creepy landscapes painted by the very minimalist music presented here.

Opening with the nearly 13-minutes long monolithic “Part I”, the atmosphere is set with very fuzzy distorted guitars that only get denser by the minute. The sparse vocals are quite hellish and will creep on you when you least expect it. We particularly love how the song transitions when it seems to ‘brighten up’ between all the heavy dark clouds that are painted by the painful riffs. The minimal use of keyboards is also another thing that is very similar to how Burzum uses them.

After blowing us away with their excellent debut release “Trails Out of Gloom”, Fen (the Progressive Rock/Metal one) returns with “Of Losing Interest”, a release that while heavier in nature it failed to captivate us as much as their previous release. With nine tracks of well-crafted Progressive Rock/Metal, this release is by no means bad, it just feels too straightforward and lacking the magic that “Trails out of Gloom” had in every track.

The opener “Riddled” is a quintessential Prog piece that sounds a bit too predictable and linear in our opinion. There are a few cool guitar sections and the bass guitar line is pretty solid, but the song as a hole seems lacking some creativity. Things pick up a couple of times during the tracks “Of Losing Interest”, “Nice for Three Days”, and “A Long Line”, with a few brilliant guitar sections and tight percussions, but nothing extremely impressive. We are kind of turned off that we are almost half-way through the release and haven’t found anything that really sticks in our head.

Arriving through Malevolence Records, today we have T.C.F a Dutch band playing some very well crafted Thrashcore. If you didn’t know the band is from the Netherlands, you would easily mistake them for any band from the late 80’s, early 90’s from the USA. Delivering thirteen tracks of balls to the wall Thrashcore, “Where Madness Reigns” is a pretty solid release for any fan of the genres.

With a very authentic vibe, the band opens with hateful riffs and powerful drums on “Face the Truth”. Keeping the initial vibe rolling, tracks like “Slave to the Suit”, “Mass Hysteria” and “Where Madness Reigns” feature very typical song structures that will have you jumping up and down immediately. It is quite funny to think that this is a fairly young band since they nail 100% the atmosphere needed to pull off this kind of music.

Formed by Mat "Kvohst" McNerney (ex-DHG, Code, etc, etc), this relatively new Psychedelic Folk band has made quite an impact with their debut album “Dawnbearer” and with “No Holier Temple” they show that their epic first release was no fluke. Featuring eleven haunting tracks that bring back the sultriness of the 70’s psychedelic music with a Folk/Doom edge that nobody else in the scene seems to be able to pull off, this album is well on its way to our top 10 of 2012 list.

With a considerably more ‘sophisticated’ sound that any of Kvohst’s older bands, his enchanting vocals reach new heights in this very well crafted and highly diverse release. After the mysterious intro “Heaven and Earth Magic”, Hexvessel sets sails with the eerie epic “Woods to Conjure”. In this track the band immediately establishes a very dense occult feeling with a very cool backdrop of choir-like vocals. Our favorite moment in this song comes around the 2:20 minute mark when a sexy saxophone comes into the scene making this song completely intoxicating.

With a ton of releases in 2011, Shroud of Despondency is falling behind in 2012 since this is ‘only’ their second one of the year. In this split release we have four track of Shroud of Despondency and three songs of Cholernik, a one-man band from the bass player of SoD. After reviewing SoD’s last release “Pine”, we are quite shocked to hear that the songs presented in this release are way more brutal and more straight-forward in nature.

Opening with some funky guitar structures, “Defeat” has a very direct approach with heavy Doom-ish riffs and very deep growls. The song suddenly shifts into 4th gear and delivers pummeling drums and hellish screams. This style indeed is very different to the band’s previous release, but still captures the sick guitar sounds that characterize SoD. Both “Pain Without Life” and “The Echo of Depletion” are very brutal in nature and border between the lines of Black and Death Metal at times, making them quite appealing for the more ‘brutal’ Metal music fan. “Shapes” goes back a bit into the more elaborate guitar structures with funky rhythms, leaving the listener totally puzzled by the weird but good tracks presented by SoD in this release.

With a very interesting musical proposal today we have Wisconsin’s Arbor and their debut release “The Plutonian Shore”. In the ten tracks presented in this first effort, the band mixes folk elements with Doom and Post-Metal sections in a very unusual and sometimes weird sounding fashion, but it all comes together in a very exciting way giving them a very fresh and unique sound.

Setting a very ethereal and folk-ish mood with opener track, the band quickly comes back with very aggressive vocals and a Doom-vibe on “Trees”. The music is very well crafted to not give things away too quickly and build momentum, allowing the atmosphere and expectation to grow with every note. The band’s clean vocals are definitely an ‘acquired’ taste and for sure need some work, but they are used to perfection to contrast the harsh screams and the rest of the more ‘growly’ vocals.