TAINT
Secrets and Lies
(Candlelight)

RIP KC
Spinguolf
(Alone / Influx)

CLERIC
Cumberbund
(Sound Devastation)

ZODIAK
Sermons
(Translation Loss)

ACHENAR
All Will Change
(Earthen)

HELRUNAR
Baldr Ok Iss 

(Lupus Lounge)

YOG
Years of Nowhere

(Get a Life!)

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Taint’s previous The Ruin of Nova Roma was a fantastic record. That’s why I bugged the shit out of the record company until about a year and a half after its release they caved and agreed to send me a copy. Reviewing a record with an expiration date that old violated Deaf Sparrow’s policy but those are the advantages of not having an editor to respond to. In other words, I am my own asshole. Which is the prime reason why I started the website. Needless to say, I had high expectation for Secrets and Lies. For a long while I wondered if it was titled after the 1996 Mike Leigh movie and for weeks on end I shivered when I saw the cover appearing in European magazines while I could hardly wait for it to be released Stateside. I am elated to say that Cardiff’s best trio once again has hit its mark. It doesn’t necessarily surpass the auspicious crunchy metal hardcore (don’t call it metalcore, because that is not) of The Ruin of Nova Roma, but is just as good, and for now, that’s enough.

In many ways, Secrets & Lies exaggerates the best qualities of its predecessor. The musicianship is tighter than a Norwegian clam. And Taint doesn’t waste time to express itself through hook-laden aggression and the level of violent outbursts that have made of Baroness one of the leading bands of the American extreme underground. Both bands, share many of the same elements, except where the latter’s latest seems to fiddle with prog –rock, Taint has decided to stay within heavier and dirtier realms. The highly elaborate structures are still here, but the band grooves and sends giant guitar waves that often find themselves at such an exhilarating point they just can’t top themselves. The solo on “Born Again Nihilist” is so infectious you can call it unshakeable. And how about “Goddamn This City”? That’s one of the coolest riffs I’ve heard this past two months. It sounds like the string are walking down the stairs and then rapidly falling off, time and time again until.

It’s the fact that Taint has refrained from moving into new territories a disappointment? It depends on the listener. This band has clearly concentrated in their songs and has left progression for those willing to clean up their sound. That could be taking as an advantage. Their riffs are now so eloquent they simply would have thrown prog-laden constructions off balance. Plus, with a singer as mc gruff as Welsh lad Jimbo, you’d be missing big time if you put him to sing and intonate cleaner songs. Rough is nice.  

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Read our review of The Ruin of Nova Roma