Ugh

Well, I meant to write about that Wolves in the Throne Room show from about eleven days ago but I didn't get around to that before I left for North Carolina. That's good, though. Right now that idea seems neither personally enriching to write about nor interesting. Here's a bullet point list regarding shows in from the tenth onwards...

PTL

Thou is (/art) heavy as fuck in person. Also, I experienced that thing first hand where the front-person is completely normal looking guy until the music starts and he gets this feral look in his eyes. Awesome.

Falls of Rauros is great. I wasn't aware of them before I went to college in the South but they're actually directly from my hometown. They're, to me, distinctly "American" sounding, sort of like Agalloch --especially their use of real riffs, huge, triumphant leads and folk influence. Sweet. I wish they didn't play first.

I came up with this analogy. Maybe this will resonate with you, if you like beer. The band that ended up playing before Thou is a Coors Light Band. For a second they are refreshing but once you stop to dissect their qualities, you find a band (or beer) totally devoid of character, and you're loath to drink more beer at all.

Wolves In the Throne Room has super nice gear. Oh shit, also this show was outside, behind a building, in case I failed to mention. They played a really amazing set. It would have been perfect if there weren't these two idiots who evidently payed $12 to come to the show to piss me off and try to talk over the quieter song parts right near me. I got out of the show and talked major shit.

GSO

Thou played "Smoke Pigs" and I caught them in a basement, with Bay of Pigs, who were fucking KILLER. (Hmm, recurring pig motif.) I greatly prefer that to when I saw them days earlier, to the tune of the backs of dozens of heads.

Wolves in the Throne Room played the same setlist. Crap, oh well. They sounded enormous in a club.

The openers (Megaton Leviathan) were totally tedious even before they lit herbs, which outraged my allergies and banished me outside to blow my nose.

I'd never listened to Mount Eerie, but they were really excellent.

Anywho...

Back to reality, back to Portland. Here's what I've been listening to lately. Try to deny the power of the chorus here.





Listen to this older Falls of Rauros album, if you know what's good for you.

"Ahhhhhh Ahhhh Ahhhh Ahhh Ahhhhhhhhh....AHHHHHHH AHHHHH AHHHH, AHHHHH AHHHH AHHHHH! OHHHHHHHHHHH"

Also, cough up some dough for some starving artists and buy a shiny new copy of their newest full-length. It will grout your tiles, if you know what I mean.

Fall of Big Cartel

Suck it, world!

-W.F.

....meanwhile, in the World of Punk

-W.F.

Job for a Manboy

Well shit, I've been busy. My internet is now repaired. In my spare time, when I wasn't dredging up things worth putting out in blog form or slamming hundreds of beers in single sittings, I got a job. Finally. The cushy, magical life of a student had not afforded me a money-job for about my last calendar year of study and it feels good to be on the clock, doing sometimes-stimulating things while thinking about all the videogames I want to play later. With jobs come more tattoo money. For about the first four days of work my arm was swollen right the hell up around the elbow (or "swellbow," as they call it in the biz) and it looked weeeeird and made my smoothie-craft slightly harder (that damn job..). Whatever, though. Jobs shmobs

Let us take a minute to enjoy an instant classic from 2001. If you are like me, you were probably watching a lot of Dragonball Z when this came out and didn't know fuck-all about black metal. Yes, whole episodes of grunting and yelling in place of dialogue, in fact.


Bam! I hope this shit is in your collection. Tara is the fourth in Absu's catalog of mythological thrashing madness, this album dealing with Celtic mythology (ergo: bagpipe interludes). While it doesn't have my favorite Absu song title ever ("An Equinox of Fathomless Disheartment") it does however have maybe their best songs, if not truly excellent songs. Much like my shift today, it's a frantic and chaotic, yet with great precision (unlike how I do anything at work because I'm the new guy who sucks at everything). And it's weird. Also there is at least one (1) shrill "Angel of Death" falsetto yell. Every album should have one, minimum. So, if you're interested in this American thrashing riff-machine, I'd start here, at least to get the chance to hear Proscriptor's amazing drumming. The. Fucking. Man. That's what a real drummer does.

Download and then buy. In whichever order.

"She Cries the-uh Quiet Lay-hay-hay-hake!!"

-W.F.