Albums reviews: Heavy Metal Ninjas, Arc of Ascent, Meshuggah & Soulfly

The Heavy Metal Ninjas have released their debut four-track EP. Photo / Supplied

Scott Kara reviews the latest hard, fast and heavy albums

The Heavy Metal Ninjas is not just a wild offshoot and plaything for experimental roots reggae band Kora.

Two, perhaps even three of the Kora brothers are in HMN (it's hard to tell exactly because they wear those mysterious ninja face masks), but this band is led and powered by guitar supremo Richie Allan.

His guitar work goes from refined and grand (like on the beautifully wailing epic What If) through to hell-bent virtuosity and red-blooded heaviness - and it's all backed up by intense instrumentation and a bolshy, bollocking groove.

Though this is only a four-track EP it takes many thrilling twists and turns, especially on the flowery brutality of M45 and Redshift.

Also on the local front, but in a more muscular and imposing style comes Hamilton trio Arc of Ascent with their follow up to five-star debut Circle of the Sun from 2010.

The beauty of this band is the slugging grace they have to their unique sound. It's power music.

Search For Liberation morphs between tranquillity and wailing pestilence, the lurch of Redemption is bracing and brutal, and nine-minute finale Through the Rays of Infinity plays out like a ritualistic slaying.

If no one else sounds like Arc of Ascent in New Zealand, then no one on the planet sounds like the mighty Meshuggah.

This ruthless Swedish quintet conjure up a form of twisted and bruising metal, but with the complex and often awkward time signatures of improv' jazz.

It might all sound like chaotic and random bludgeoning, but on the meaty goodness of Marrow, the groove is there, it just takes a little while to emerge from beneath the evil spews and mangled majesty of this demented music.

It can be fast, like the frenzied pummelling of The Hurt That Finds You First, and then staunch and stoic as on I Am Colossus.

This is extreme stuff, and while not quite matching the classy brutality of 2002's Nothing, Koloss is colossal in scope and intensity.

Another prolific metal veteran is Max Cavalera, the former head of Sepultura and now of Cavalera Conspiracy and long-time leader of Soulfly.

Enslaved is the eighth album in 15 years from his groove metal band Soulfly (which also incorporates elements of world music and tribal rhythms), and throughout that time he's had some hits and misses.

This concept album - about slavery, with images of resistance and destroying "the chains of hate" abounding - is somewhere in the middle.

It has those trademark bullet riffs and neck-snapping beats, which make it just like any other Soulfly album.

However, it's at its best when Max and his men change things up a little, like with the harrowing squeal of intro Resistance, on the rampant rant and riff frenzy of American Steel, and with the poignant rage of Revengeance, about his stepson Dana who was murdered in 1996.

Heavy Metal Ninjas - Heavy Metal Ninjas (Warner): Four stars
Arc of Ascent - The Higher Key (Astral Projection): Four stars
Meshuggah - Koloss (Southbound): Four stars
Soulfly - Enslaved (Roadrunner): Three-and-a-half stars

- TimeOut