Written by:	RaduP, musclassia, Abattoir, X-Ray Rod
Published:	August 13, 2023

Wait A Minute! This Isn't Metal! - July 2023
Metal Storm's outlet for nonmetal album reviews





We here at Metal Storm pride ourselves on our thousands of metal reviews and interviews and article; metal is our collective soul and passion, which is why we bother with this junk. That being said, we'd be lying if we stuck to our trve-kvlt guns and claimed that metal is the only thing we ever listen to. Whether we want to admit it or not, we do check out some other stuff from time to time; some of us are more poptimistic than others, but there's a whole world out there aside from Satan-worshiping black metal and dragon-slaying power metal. We do already feature some nonmetal artists on our website and have a few reviews to back them up, but we prefer to limit that aspect of the site to those artists who have been a strong influence on the metal scene or who are in some way connected to it. This article series is the place for those artists who don't matter to metal in the slightest but still warrant some conversation - after all, good music, is good music, and we all know metal isn't the only thing on this planet for any of us.

Down below, you might find some obscure Bandcamp bedroom projects or some Billboard-topping superstar; as long as it ain't metal and the album itself isn't a best-of compilation, it fits. Obviously, we're certain that not everything will be for everybody (you guys can be viciously territorial even when metal is the only thing on the menu, and we're all supposed to like the same things), but we do hope you find at least one thing that you can enjoy, instead of just pointing and screaming in horror "Not metal!" as if that would be an insult.

Here are our previous features:

June 2023
May 2023
April 2023

And now to the music...

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Enraged grrrlz from Ukraine, Death Pill, are offering to taste or rather consume a magic pill of savagery, being portrayed through their hardcore punk-driven wall of sound and sovereignty that even some of the established bands from the scene would most certainly acknowledge. It’s not a secret that the Ukraine-based trio is rather new to the scene, however, this debut full length unveils their self-confidence on a very high level. More that someone might expect. That can also be concluded from the uncompromising performance through their anti-commercial fueled attitude as well as shameless exposure of all the abilities that their powerfully tuned instruments can provide.

Even though hardcore/hardcore punk sets the tone of Death Pill’s music, the one can hear an intensive involvement of thrash metal inspired vibes within their song structures. The regular sequence of this alterations surely are not uncommon when combining it with hardcore/hardcore punk genre. Without exaggeration of the thrash metal input, this mix harmonizes just well enough and that’s also one of the reasons that this music output displays a proper strength and moderate originality. Leading the pack through all the obstacles is the singer/guitarist Mariana, whose vocals penetrates in several different, sometimes unconventional, manners. So, don’t be shy, it won’t kill you if you will give it a try with Death Pill. They are well-behaved, gentle characters, with occasional anger issues that need to be unleashed.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by Abattoir





Last time I checked in with Agusa was two years ago. Truth be told, I think I could rehash half the review I wrote in 2021 and the general idea would still be applicable here. But I think there are some key differences that are worth pointing out. For starters, their previous album, En Annan Värld consisted of two songs that ran for more than 20 minutes each. This time we have 4 songs with an average of 10 minutes each. Poser music, basically.

Bad jokes aside, this does make the music a bit more approachable for new-comers as well as allowing the band to explore more landscapes and textures without sacrificing songwriting consistency and coherence. This is not something easy to do and many bands within the instrumental/progressive rock niche fail to do it properly. But Agusa seem to carelessly waltz their way around their instruments. Music that is as busy as Prima Materia demands a proper job behind the knobs. With a pristine production that makes all their instruments stand out while avoiding a sterile sound, Prima Materia seems like the perfect album for Agusa to deconstruct themselves. While their previous categorization of “Psychedelic prog/folk rock” still holds up, many changes in structure and tone have occurred. The folk influences are now better distributed so they can no longer be attributed solely to the flute, which provides a much different sonic palette than on previous works. It joins the rest of the instruments by moving away from the nature themes and ethereal attitude and now embracing a more loose, experimental, erratic, yet still very playful vibe.

Speaking of playful; some moments, especially in “Ur Askan”, are most festive and a welcome change of pace. The track it’s bouncy, charming, and in the right setting I could totally see it as a dancing piece. That is until the very ending before it slows down to a funeral pacing. The heavy tone set by the vocals, that make a very rare appearance on the album, was an intriguing touch. But to be frank, Agusa isn’t in any dire need of a vocalist anytime soon. All their instruments: From the inventive keyboards and soaring guitars, to the groovy bass, intricate drums and the aforementioned flute already sing in impeccable unison.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by X-Ray Rod







It’s been a whole month since we featured Yawning Man in this article series, with their new 3-track album on Heavy Psych Sounds Records, Long Walk Of The Navajo. This month, we feature Volume One, the 3-track album on Heavy Psych Sounds Records from Yawning Balch. If you think the two bands might be connected, you would be correct; Yawning Balch is Yawning Man with Fu Manchu’s Bob Balch on guitar, and Volume One is the result of a day-long jam in Joshua Tree in November 2022, which apparently produced two records’ worth of material, although the release of any Volume Two has yet to be announced.

If you did listen to Long Walk Of The Navajo last month, you’ll have a very strong idea of what to expect from Volume One, namely long-form instrumental psychedelic rock jams; the two records are even arranged such that each song on the tracklist is shorter than the one that precedes it. Still, Long Walk Of The Navajo offered some very pleasant mellow jams, and Volume One delivers much the same. If I were to say that Yawning Balch differs from Yawning Man in anything, I would perhaps suggest that this new album is a bit more evocative and tender in its tone, featuring fewer fuzzy riffs and more in the way of heartfelt emotions within its resonant guitar layers. It’s not a dramatic difference, but it’s there if you’re listening out for it, and that tenderness makes this a really rewarding psych rock jam to listen to.

Bandcamp | Spotify

by musclassia





Of the six albums I’m reviewing for this month’s edition, five are from artists I’ve previously covered releases of in Wait A Minute! That’s Not Metal! The sole exception is Staring Down On Incandescent Cities, the fifth album from Soundscapism Inc., the solo project of Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Bruno A. The easiest way to classify Staring Down On Incandescent Cities is as progressive rock; however, with most songs under 5 minutes, it’s not the epic long song style of prog rock, but more the modern, evocative sound that the likes of Porcupine Tree and Anathema have helped popularize.

From that base of mellow, emotive prog, Soundscapism Inc. can lean in different directions; opening song “Tell Me A Story” embraces heavier distortion in its passionate midsection and “Shooting For Stars” opens with a riff that could easily slide into an alt/prog-metal band’s repertoire, but at the other end of the spectrum, “Blurry Lights & Unfathomable Futures” jumps into indietronica, while “Cautionary Pale Pt. 1 - Fire In The Hole” features purely clean tones that offer mellowness and a hint of melancholia. The writing is solid here, with a tone that is moving but not drowning in misery, and an array of different guitar techniques that produce compelling textures.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







I'm in the unusual situation of covering a new album by an act that's pretty established in the underground but that I was so far unfamiliar with. Despite how much the genre should appeal to me, I never got that much into avant-folk, so names like Big Blood and their predecessors Cerberus Shoal are things I barely stumbled upon, even if the amount of genre tags you could apply to both of them is pretty large, and I can't wait to dig into them. So trying to grab a huge catalog by its tail with First Aid Kit, this is admittedly quite an oddity of an album, not only because this is a "couple" duo that actually turned into a "family" trio the moment the couple's daughter joined on vocals, but also because I really don't have much of a frame of reference for how this sounds.

Ok, let me try. I've seen this described as "The Shaggs if they didn't suck" and I think that's sort of accurate. There's a lot that goes into this, and a lot of genre tags you could apply to this, but I guess I could describe it as 60's-ish psychedelic folk pop merged with the explosion of avant-garde that the post-rock and neo-psychedelia brought in the early 90s merged with the avant-garde explosion that post-rock brought in the late 70s. There's a bit of tongue-in-cheekness to it all, with the dual vocals being quite voluminous and the pop aspect of it does contrast in very specific ways with the oddity of how psychedelic the production is.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





The Devil’s Trade’s last appearance in Wait A Minute! That’s Not Metal! was courtesy of Dávid Makó’s collaborative performance with John Cxnnor at Roadburn. This time out, it’s a standalone album from the studio, coming courtesy of Season Of Mist. Despite SoM’s reputation as a metal label, they do occasionally take on non-metal acts, particularly with darker sounds, so the dark folk of The Devil’s Trade’s The Call Of The Iron Peak, with ominous clean electric guitar and heartfelt vocals, fitted the label’s vibe. Nevertheless, Vidékek Vannak Idebenn arguably takes this project a step closer to the more traditional template of a Season Of Mist act.

What do I mean by that? Well, this isn’t a metal album, but it’s certainly more of a rock album than its predecessor (not least due to the full-time presence of a drummer in the form of Gáspár Binder), bringing post-rock into the equation, and on a couple of tracks, Makó does spill over into more metallic sounds. Examples can be heard on the title track and “Liminal”; the former’s ominous tom-heavy atmospheric drum builds and explosions of dense distorted sound owe plenty to post-metal, and “Liminal” works its way slowly to a similarly dense and heavy climax. If Vidékek Vannak Idebenn signals the beginning of a shift towards post-metal by The Devil’s Trade, it’s one that they could well pull out thanks to Makó’s compelling vocals, but this album still remains engaging during the tracks that more closely resemble the material on The Call Of The Iron Peak, such as the eerie opener “Én Felkelék” and acoustic ditty “All Kings Must Fall”.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Two years ago, I first came across Osi And The Jupiter courtesy of their album Stave; what appealed to me about this album was the mix of Nordic-inspired neofolk (which had been the dominant force on preceding records) and folk that drew greater inspiration from Sean Kratz’ roots in the US, particularly Americana. While Cedar And Sage: Riders Of The Gallows Vol. 1 continues to see the prevalence of Americana in Osi And The Jupiter’s music increase, there’s still a nice mix of folk from different origins here.

This is demonstrated early on by the touching, acoustic melancholia of “Devoured Sun”, a song that could easily have been born from Agalloch’s writing sessions for The Mantle, and subsequently the dark Americana folk sound of “Afterlight”. In addition to regular collaborator Kakophonix on cello, Kratz is joined by several guests on Cedar And Sage, several of whom share a metallic background (of note, this album is released by Eisenwald); Mitochondrion’s Shawn Hache embraces the folk side of his other project Tithe in joining Kratz on the acoustic-strummed duet “Abyssal Woods”, while Aerial Ruin’s Erik Moggridge features on “Hollowed”, a track that is both more spacious and sparse-sounding than most other songs here, while also featuring a more powerful swell from the cello. I prefer Stave to Cedar And Sage due to the former’s increased range of sounds, but this new album is a fine collection of acoustic folk songs from the Western side of the Atlantic, particularly the movie soundtrack-style instrumental “Out Of The Darkness And Into The Fire”.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





More of a critical darling of the 90s that I wish got more attention for how much her music continued to stay consistently worthwhile even through the recent decades, PJ Harvey's alt rock 1990-1995 run of albums like Dry, Rid Of Me, and To Bring You My Love is what she's most remembered for, but experimenting more with art rock and chamber folk and various other singer / songwriter stuff since has lead to some pretty great albums, with at least one amazing album in each decade. The most recent of those, 2011's Let England Shake didn't really tackle new genres, but it felt like a reinvention of sound that the follow-up, 2016's The Hope Six Demolition Project, didn't really live up to. And now we have the longest gap between main releases, with I Inside The Old Year Dying.

What Harvey did in the meantime was focusing more on soundtracks and poetry, which is definitely reflected on this album, with the sound being a lot more introspective and mood focused, while the songwriting is built mostly around the reciting of poems. This does create a pretty interesting dynamic with the lyrics focus, sometimes leading to the actual song structure feeling a bit neglected, but often times creating some compelling moments nonetheless. The atmospherics often take from something like slowcore or post-rock, and it's interesting to hear these sounds coming into Harvey's music, even if some moments feel too experimental for their own good. It's an interesting record for sure, but we might have to wait a while for the amazing PJ Harvey record of this decade.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





It has been a hell of a long time since Julie Byrne released 2017's Not Even Happiness, to the point that I almost mistook her for Julia Holter when I saw The Greater Wings when scouting for new releases, and I almost forgot just how much I liked Not Even Happiness and it's very sparse singer/songwriter sound, something that works very well despite its simplicity due to Byrne's vocals and lyricism. Even with just two albums under her belt, anticipation for new music was pretty high, and six years later, and more than a decade after her first EP, we have a new Julie Byrne album.

The most important thing to notice about The Greater Wings is that it is still a pretty sparse album, but not as sparse as its predecessor. Vocals and guitars still form the backbone of many songs, but there's a lot more in terms of instrumentation, sometimes its ambient synths that really do create an ambient electronica soundscape, sometimes it's orchestration that moves the sound closer to something like chamber folk. The latter does create some of the album's most relatively cluttered moments, but The Greater Wings still thrives as a result of what always made Julie's music great, the extra instrumentation is a nice plus on top of that.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







I've mostly gotten into Anohni through her debut solo record Hopelessness, an album that was very lauded at the time, but that I'm only now really getting into. I was only later aware of the work she did with The Johnsons under her previous name, so it is nice to finally have her name for the first time on an album with her old band. It's certainly been a long time since 2010's Swanlights, with only Hopelessness since then. And with social activist Marsha P. Johnson on the cover, apparently the actual namesake of the band, it makes sense what themes this record would tackle.

It being such a lyrically focused singer/songwriter record and the themes of discrimination, it makes sense that the lyricism would be a big point here, coupled with Anohni's vulnerable vocals and the sparse instrumentation, some more soulful some more art rock-like, that accompanies it. In theory it's not that much different from a lot of other albums aside from its theme, but it handles talking about being trans struggling in the current landscape in a way that feels very somber and heartbreaking, and it's the way these lyrics are performed that make it so easy to emotionally connect to this album.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I was pretty close to skipping listening to this one, because who needs another singer/songwriter debut album, but upon giving it a try I figured the vocals sounded really familiar. It was after searching a bit that I figured it's because Grian Chatten is the lead singer of English post-punk band Fontaines D.C., a band I've already covered here. Post-punk and chamber pop? Maybe not so different after all, and hearing Grian's vocals in a context that is perhaps not that different from the already art rock inspired sounds that Fontaines D.C. tackled feels pretty natural.

The biggest change is obviously in the instrumental side, with the rock instrumentation being more subdued and accompanied by a bunch of chamber orchestration alongside some pretty tasteful touches of electronica create a pretty neat mood-enhancer to Grian's introspective vocals. There's some variety to the instrumentation, with some parts leaning towards something more folky as well, but the sounds work really well together instead of separating tracks as the synth one, the folk one, the rock one, the chamber one etc. The strongest point though still lies in Grian's vocals and the way his inflexions somehow manage to make his voice sound even more emotionally resonant.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





For some, Blur is the band behind that "Woohoo!" song. For others, it is Oasis' biggest competition for the britpop crown, and for others it is just what Damon Albarn did before Gorillaz. The latter especially seemed to be my go-to, since there have only been two other Blur albums since the release of the first Gorillaz album, and the first of which was in 2003, so that doesn't even really count, and 2015's Magic Whip didn't make as huge of a splash in the long run. So I wasn't really expecting a new Blur anytime soon, especially now when we're nearly at a decade's difference since the last one.

The Ballad Of Darren is pretty different from the rest of Blur's catalog. Not as rock as most of their alt rock stuff, while also the pop side doesn't feel like the britpop of olden days. It's more something that has a dash of chamber pop over the artsy indie pop that feels like an even moodier version of what Damon has been doing lately, but with some instrumentation that sounds even more ornate and honestly pretty interesting. Moody as it is, it's still very song focused, with the lyrics feeling pretty vital, the runtime being concise, and it already having more memorable moments than Magic Whip did.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Cornelius is the pseudonym / musical project of Keigo Oyamada, originally a member of indie pop band Flipper's Guitar back in the late 80s and early 90s, and has been making a very Japanese blend of indietronica and neo-psychedelia since then. I'm not very familiar with his back catalog, only having heard 1997's Fantasma (his landmark record and one I wholeheartedly recommend) and 2001's Point, so I have no idea how to contextualize Dream In Dream, even if the catalog is not as huge as 30 years of releases would imply. So I'm taking a two decades leap blind.

The sound here is not fundamentally different for Cornelius. A lot of synth sounds that sound a bit dated, but have a wobbly charm of their own. Alongside the hazy vocals, it's definitely the kind of mood evoking music that one has to be in the mood for, and there is something in its oddity that makes it a bit hard for that to happen. It is a "you get it or you don't" kind of album, the kind I expect I might like more with further listens, because the songwriting is clearly there, but there's something a bit too bold in the production and synth sounds for me to really immerse in its vibe.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





When I covered The Rise Of Emperor Var by Tales Of A Liquid Dawn at the beginning of this year, I mentioned how Anthony Yip’s instrumental progressive rock project at times flirted with prog-metal sounds (hence, presumably, the presence of a Tales Of A Liquid Dawn profile in our database), even if the music owed more to psychedelic rock and space rock. On the project’s second release of the year, the term ‘psychedelic’ still feels very relevant, but rock far less so. See Beyond breaks with precedent by abandoning the monochrome album artwork of the project’s three prior releases in favour of an eclectic colourful cover, and it’s an artistic change that very much lines up with the shift on the music front.

Yip and collaborator Ben Plater intentionally took a break from prog rock craziness in favour of exploring influences from World music, psytrance, post-rock and other atmospheric and psychedelic styles. The 10-minute opening title track, while not sharing obvious musical similarities with psybient artists such as Ott and Globular, could arguably embody ‘psychedelic ambience’; a background hi-hat rhythm offers a slight sense of momentum as the track plays with psychedelic electronics, spacious guitar noodling, ambient synths, and smart use of vocal samples. It’s a lengthy album, and subsequent songs explore tribal percussion (“Sacred Geometry”), synthwave (also “Sacred Geometry”), 80s style smooth guitar soloing (“Passage”), and trippy electronica (“Integration”). Not every track quite works here (the 10-minute guitar solo/drone closer “Scenery Of Contemplation” is a bit much), but considering how big a departure it is from the preceding albums, See Beyond is a successful musical experiment for Tales Of A Liquid Dawn.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





An artist that's pretty synonymous with IDM at this point Aphex Twin has been making weird electronica, usually dabbling in acid techno, ambient techno, drum & bass, but with other oddities on top that might not feel as odd now that the genre has pretty much cemented itself, but must've felt revolutionary in the 90s. However the 90s are far gone, and Aphex Twin has been more on the quiet side since 2001's landmark drukqs, with only one studio album since then. The space has been filled by a couple of EPs though, the last of which, Collapse EP, came out in 2018, and five years is a pretty long time to wait just for another EP.

Any new Aphex Twin music is welcome at this point, even if this one is kind of an in between, being almost a single since one of the four tracks is a remix of another one, and the title basically listing two of the tracks on each side is pretty telling. Still, this is about 15 minutes worth of new Aphex Twin, and even if there's nothing here that's that different from dqukqs or syro, the metallic chords, bouncy percussion, and airy synths are combined in a way that feels like Richard's trademark, though not really as wacky as one might expect from someone who's known for their oddity. Still, I hope EPs won't be the only form through which we'll get new Aphex Twin music from now on.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







The last time Mega Drive appeared on Metal Storm was in the May 2021 edition of this article series with Neuroframe. Two years on, the Texas synthwave artist returns with 200XAD, a sequel to 2014’s 198XAD and 2019’s 199XAD; at this rate of release, Mega Drive will have reached the future with 204XAD. Like Neuroframe, this is a substantial body of work; 15 tracks comprise over 70 minutes of music, 70 minutes crammed with synthwavey goodness.

200XAD starts off strong with “Mnemonic Head Trip”, a pulsating display of up-tempo hacker electronics and infectious grooves that exhibits the virtues of synthwave in all their glory. Subsequent standouts on the record include the more subtle, smooth yet still brooding “NARC³”, the moody tones of “Nakatomi Night Assault”, and the speedfest “Arc Ascension”. With 15 songs, there’s room for variety, which comes frequently; “Shadow Dancer” has a quirky looseness to it, “Black Katana” opens with new wave synth tones, “Infrared Icon” shares DNA with dancefloor music. Considering its length and variety between tracks, 200XAD is impressively consistent, and is rounded off by a captivating and multi-faceted 9-minute closer in “Memoria”; this will surely be one of the highlights of synthwave in 2023.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





EDM duo Disclosure are ten years past their debut album, Settle, definitely one of the best albums of its kind in that decade, and a lot of what made Disclosure's three albums so far hit so hard were how well they worked with the guests they integrated, from Sam Smith to The Weeknd to London Grammar to Slowtai to Jessie Ware. It's not like Disclosure couldn't work without guests, since there certainly were songs without any, some of which are their best songs, but there being slightly more songs with guests and the star power of those guests did contribute to a tipping of the scales. In comes Alchemy.

The prospect of a featureless Disclosure album is certainly interesting, especially one that is less than 40 minutes in runtime, and is thus straight to the point in its sounds. There are vocals on the album, but they're a lot less in the center of attention than they would be otherwise, leaving a slightly more muted impact. This does make Alchemy feel a bit more like a nice background listen that something that occupies the foreground, and the EDM styles that are approached feel less high energy without necessarily being moody and minimal, creating a sort of in between that is pleasant and does show Disclosure's skill at the sound, without being something to be too excited about.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





As Metal Storm's pop apologist in chief, I'm mostly indifferent to the billboards, so Carly Rae Jepsen always ranked among my pop favs for her Emotion album rather than for that one song, and even if that was a pretty great pop record, she's still a pop artist, therefore things are a bit more song-focused than album-focused. For each of the following records, there have been songs I returned to, but much rarely full albums. She also has a tendency to follow-up records with B-sides records that are often in the same quality range. So here, The Loneliest Time is followed by its sibling one year later called The Loveliest Time.

And just like with The Loneliest Time I was fully expecting to really like some songs and ditch others, something that would continue the various ventures into different sounds that its predecessor had, which could result in some messy songs in the process. More or less, that's what I got, except even in the songs that I did like, there were always production choices or vocal passages I found annoying in the way I generally find pop annoying, so hearing something that stood out from the crowd struggle with consistency is not a pleasant sight. All the house and disco grooves, and the slightly more muted hooks do sound good, even great, and I haven't had much of a chance to figure out which songs are worth revisiting.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP

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And that was it. You've made it through still alive. Congrats. See ya next month. Here's a Spotify playlist we compiled out of stuff featured here: