Yay! It didn't take me as long as last time to accumulate four reviews on Veil of Sound, so here's my final roundup up of my latest four "external" reviews this year - where available of course alongside pictures of the albums' physical copies:
This VoS review for sure is a long-ass read. Deservingly so, because as expected the new double album of Anna von Hausswolff, the first one with vocals - and a lot of those! - since "Dead Magic" from 2018 is just an overwhelmingly grandiose larger than life experience.
Including the introduction of saxophone and clarinet as a new central element of her sound beside mighty church organs, Rock music instrumentation and Electronic Ambient sounds, Anna opens the box widely, releasing a confidently powerful and heartstrings-pulling masterpiece of monumental artistic proportions. From Alternative Contemporary Gothic, Chamber Pop, Drone and Jazz to Prog Rock Anna pulls from an endless array of influences to form a work beyond comprehension.
And as if her own magical presence wasn't enough, "Iconoclasts" also includes duets not only with her sister Maria von Hausswolff, but also with Dark Alternative Americana star Ethel Cain and the man, the legend Iggy Pop.
You actually only needed half of this release with fantastic songs like "Facing Atlas", "Iconoclast", "Stardust" or "Struggle With The Beast" to justify buying this album, but from the shorter instrumentals with interlude nature over the Pop format ballads to the towering epics, every single one of the twelve tracks delivers the right - often abundant - amount, and the right kind of emotional enormity and phenomenal songwriting to add to a whole that feels even bigger than the sum of its already giant parts.
I guess at this point it wouldn't be a spoiler to tell you where you can expect "Iconoclasts" to land in my album of the year ranking, right?
The only thing which is almost repellingly unworthy is the CD release of the album. And I'm neither talking about the cover artwork nor the fact that it's just the simplest of digipaks. I could have been prepared for that, since for example the presentation of "The Miraculous" was the same.
No, what actually offends me is the four-page lyric booklet, which not only misses a jacket in the digipak, where you can put it, but seemingly just copies the layout of the vinyl version in an ant-sized scale. And since I just finally got my first pair of reading glasses I can safely confirm that even with aid (respectively a normal eyesight) the lyrics are still very hard to decipher - which is still much better than the credits, which are so small that you could almost suspect you're agreeing to a scam robbing you of your life savings by buying this album. Yeah, nonsense like this annoys me.
Including the introduction of saxophone and clarinet as a new central element of her sound beside mighty church organs, Rock music instrumentation and Electronic Ambient sounds, Anna opens the box widely, releasing a confidently powerful and heartstrings-pulling masterpiece of monumental artistic proportions. From Alternative Contemporary Gothic, Chamber Pop, Drone and Jazz to Prog Rock Anna pulls from an endless array of influences to form a work beyond comprehension.
And as if her own magical presence wasn't enough, "Iconoclasts" also includes duets not only with her sister Maria von Hausswolff, but also with Dark Alternative Americana star Ethel Cain and the man, the legend Iggy Pop.
You actually only needed half of this release with fantastic songs like "Facing Atlas", "Iconoclast", "Stardust" or "Struggle With The Beast" to justify buying this album, but from the shorter instrumentals with interlude nature over the Pop format ballads to the towering epics, every single one of the twelve tracks delivers the right - often abundant - amount, and the right kind of emotional enormity and phenomenal songwriting to add to a whole that feels even bigger than the sum of its already giant parts.
I guess at this point it wouldn't be a spoiler to tell you where you can expect "Iconoclasts" to land in my album of the year ranking, right?
The only thing which is almost repellingly unworthy is the CD release of the album. And I'm neither talking about the cover artwork nor the fact that it's just the simplest of digipaks. I could have been prepared for that, since for example the presentation of "The Miraculous" was the same.
No, what actually offends me is the four-page lyric booklet, which not only misses a jacket in the digipak, where you can put it, but seemingly just copies the layout of the vinyl version in an ant-sized scale. And since I just finally got my first pair of reading glasses I can safely confirm that even with aid (respectively a normal eyesight) the lyrics are still very hard to decipher - which is still much better than the credits, which are so small that you could almost suspect you're agreeing to a scam robbing you of your life savings by buying this album. Yeah, nonsense like this annoys me.
FLESIA - Achterbahnekstase
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
With the rather Punk or Grindcore aesthetics of its cover artwork and consisting of three longtracks which, despite the raw production, sound way too huge to even make you entertain the idea that the instrumental part of this music could actually only have been recorded with bass and drums, Flesia's "Rollercoaster Ecstasy" certainly offers a refreshingly rebellious undergound perspective on Black Metal. And when the trio steps on the break for some minimalist Doom or Post Metal, it makes this whole frantic banger even better. Wild shit!
ELECTRIC LITANY - Desires
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
Electric Litany are a Greek Synth Pop quartet based in London. On "Desires" they perfectly balance synthetic cold and electric warmth, minimalist keyboard arrangements and escapist Shoegaze influences. With a falsetto voice between Sigur Rós and Empire Of The Sun floating above a diverse landscape of both very catchy and surprisingly experimental songs this album feels like a yearning dream, in which you're slightly out of phase with the world, see all its beauty with heightened intensity, but can't quiet reach out to touch it. Achingly wonderful!
VEILBURNER - Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy (CD) (2025)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]
And here's the actual first test object (before trying the impossible "Iconoclasts" booklet) for my aforementioned new reading glasses. With a metallic reflection effect, a partly very small font size and some challenging background colour choices, this digipak actually was an ideal item for that job. And apart from being readable the layout and of course the cover artwork of Veilburner's "Longing For Triumph, Reeking Of Tragedy" are actually really cool, too.
Musically this album offers exciting Dissonant Blackened Death Metal with great riffs and leads, some banging Thrash Metal influences and a unique, completely deranged vocal performance. Sick sick sick and great!
Musically this album offers exciting Dissonant Blackened Death Metal with great riffs and leads, some banging Thrash Metal influences and a unique, completely deranged vocal performance. Sick sick sick and great!
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