Krogans

Fuh fuh fuh. I haven't thought much about music lately. I downloaded the Mass Effect 3 demo yesterday and I'm excited to play the shit out of that. I love science fiction and Bioware (Mass Effect, KOTOR, etc) is absolutely one of my favorite video game companies.

I might see Morne and Tombs in Boston at the end of the month, work permitting. Generally, I'm kind of indifferent-leaning-towards-skeptical of most "post metal" type bands but I think those two are generally pretty good. I also just finally found that most recent Tombs full length. I might give it a spin anticipatorily.

When speaking of Morne, I can't help but unravel all of the previous works of arguably the most well known member, Jeff Hayward (ex-Grief, ex-Disrupt, Noosebomb, et al), who's been a fixture of New England's metal scene for a long time. It seems like a rarity for one to be part of so many great bands. Usually you have to be Rogga Johansson.

So! One such band is Abhorred for whom Jeff Hayward played bass for at least one release. This group was interesting. The easiest description of them would be a very rhythmically tight, thrash-oriented blackened death metal band. Some years ago, I downloaded None Shall Be Spared off their myspace. They have a full length out that I, to this day, have still never listened to, so my impressions come chiefly from the EP, which I will be disseminating the link to. Oh, there I go ending my sentences in prepositions.

None Shall Be Spared is rock solid and another release loaded with good riffs. I especially love the galloping, palm-muted riffs of "Dispossess and Annihilate" and their interplay with the kick drum. I also really love how right at two minutes and about ten seconds, the drum pattern switches up from a thrash beat on top of rolling kick drums to a half-blast. Never-ending headbanging ensues.


This was a really cool band. I encourage you to check them out.

Fuck yeah, man.

-W.F.

Resuming

I'm back, baby. I've got some good stuff on the way. For now here's a video I just found of the guy from Ulcerate playing songs off of The Destroyers of All. Good thing I'm wearing a scuba suit.




-W.F.

Alternate Histories

(Yes, that is Dan Seagrave's doing)


Crappy Thanksgiving, America. As much as I would have liked to be current with Sweden's Death Metal explosion, I wasn't even a year old when Nihilist put out the Drowned demo. I've spent a lot of time gazing back and I have (and still do, typically) operate under a lot of safe assumptions/general understandings about certain times and certain places and how extreme metal evolved in these categories (earlier -- later, Stockholm -- Gothenburg, Sunlight -- Abyss, for some examples).

Until a few days ago I did not know shit about Seance, who have been around since 1990 and who absolutely defy my expectations for Swede Death from that time. Part of me always assumed there would be exceptions to the rule and here you go. Musically speaking they've got more in common with Suffocation and Deicide than any Swedish contemporaries. I've so far listened to Forever Laid to Rest, which is what I've stuck at the bottom of the post. This came out in 1992 and it is very good. Again, something I didn't expect for this time. Check it!





Out of here. Maybe tomorrow you might consider driving to a mall to see the darkest side of humanity, fighting for tablets and 3-D TVs.

Reincarnage

The only relevant official link I could find was to their Myspace. If you like Forever Laid to Rest a lot, I guess you can shoot them a message, in case they still check theirs.

-W.F.

This leaked in 2010

Man, it's weird to think how long Parasignosis has actually been "out". This album, which technically was released at the start of this year, has aged well. This is merely a refresher on what is for me, one of the more baffling, chaotic things that's come out with recent memory. Mitochondrion, like Portal, have an undeniable knack for impenetrably bleak, abrasive, crushing filth. Here's the title track.




-W.F.

Profound Lore

I'm Demiserable...

Like I was saying, Demisery and their first album are worth giving a shit about. It's likely that you've never heard of them, as this is a relatively new project by virtual unknowns, who just got an entry on the Metal Archives TODAY (11/16). You may ask why you should still be giving a shit and to that end I will break it down, as there are a few things at work here.



Demisery play modernized, meat and potatoes, old school Death Metal. Check. For their LP, Demisery effectively bridges the gap between classic Swedish and American Death Metal very well (not to suggest those two international scenes didn't cross-pollinate. Tape trading. Heavy metal nerds of yore) -- you'll pick up moments that are very Morbid Angel alongside visceral, buzzsaw Dismember riffs, all of which mesh together very well. It's more of a soup than a salad, if you catch my drift. The vocals and drums are both pretty decent but they play second banana to the guitar playing on this album, which is impressive without being overly technical. Maybe the only flaw that I can pick out is that during my first listen through there weren't too many memorable moments but on the other hand, it is consistently very strong for the duration of the album. There's also a Death cover. Good. Also, by dissecting the mechanics of this, I don't want to sound un-enthused because I'm not. This is top shelf Death Metal and speaking as a guitarist, it's always exciting (and sometimes a little bit frustrating) to hear a person or a group succeed in hitting that sweat spot between aggression and precision, dissonance and consonance, etc. etc. etc.




Nice. It's Death Metal. Not reinventing the wheel or anything like that but it's definitely well-conceived and exciting.

The other aspect of this project that is so interesting is it's status as a studio project by two musicians. This is, as I understand it, mainly a side project of Keith Merrow, who's better known for instrumental metal compositions that kind of remind me of Cloudkicker (Check it. Cloudkicker.) and may or may not be associated with djent (though truthfully, what solo material I've listened to has been much more interesting than quote unquote djent groups/artists), which may or may not be a little bit of a silly trend with some redeemable qualities. To me, the redeemable, interesting, and otherwise important qualities that seem endemic to what has been referred to as djent in particular are to what extent processes that yield a complete product, musically speaking (recording, mastering, distributing, etc.), are done DIY by fewer and fewer people with less pricey, "professional" equipment in favor of software, musical production suites, digital drum plug-ins and what have you.

This is in some ways almost the spiritual opposite side of the coin to the explosion of bedroom Black Metal bands in the Myspace age, who in many cases may well have had the requisite passion but in no way possessed the technical knowledge to make an even remotely listenable project. Speaking from my limited experience in digital home production (postponed indefinitely), it's a pricey hobby but far less expensive than paying for time in a studio or investing in the kind of recording and production equipment you'd find in a professional studio. It's a really promising idea, giving one full creative control in every aspect of the final product with a sliding deadline. All the more time to dial in the most suitable guitar tone, refine one's riffs. Everything. I somewhat facetiously tagged this post as "the future" because I think this will only become more common. It's more than likely established bands will do as they've always done and go to trusted studios for what they need but I'm counting on more groups like Demisery popping up, having produced sonically perfect albums all by themselves.

Bleccchhhh, this is really poorly written but you get what I'm saying. I don't really care to proofread this since I'm already past my self-imposed deadline. Don't do as I do.
I recommend checking out Demisery, as I keep saying. You can stream/download Hives of Mutation on Keith Merrow's site, as well as order a copy on CD.

KM/Demisery

-W.F.

Smithing Lvl. 30/Total Nerd Shit

Well, first and foremost, for some dumb reason I bought Skyrim. Not much else to say, I'm just trying to keep that from eating my brain/ruling my life.

Also, Sunday's game against the Jets was really cool. I can't say as to whether it was more a case of the Jets skidding or some major improvements by the Pats or a combination of both, but this may have been the most convincing win all season and I'm pretty happy about that. We actually got sacks. Amazing. The Jets' offensive line isn't a bunch of slouches either -- Nick Mangold is a pro-bowler. I couldn't believe it. One thing that I can give the Pats credit for without any reservations is working Gronkowski and Hernandez in the back field. The Jets have a pretty decent secondary (especially Darrelle Revis, who I still think gets away with some absurd fouls pretty regularly -- Oh, also for a bit of fun, check out Darrelle Revis' incredibly slanted Wikipedia page where someone left out the huge touchdown pass Randy Moss burned him on in the 2010 season. Digression.) and seeing our tight ends using their physicality and reach to make those huge catches was really gratifying.

Anywho...Here's a video. Why should you give a shit about it? Find out tomorrow...




W.F.

Realm of Chaos

Another frustrating Sunday. Were the lows not so low, I don't think the highs would be quite as high. Football season.

Here's something worth revisiting.



What I really enjoy about Realm of Chaos (1989), by the one and only Bolt Thrower can be summed up in a few features. First, the sound, even today, is heavy enough to flatten a human being into paste. Not to use a buzz word that is often utilized for retro and period death metal, but the sound is "cavernous" and is a perfect compliment to Karl Willetts apocalyptic soothsaying. The guitar is appropriately reverbed out and the tone is appropriately muddy and thick.

Stylistically, what's really interesting here is that while it's unmistakably Bolt Thrower playing Bolt Thrower-isms -- those distinctive riffs, that certain rhythmic emphases -- there are features of their playing that would gradually be ironed out by ...For Victory, five years later. One such feature is the loose, frantic blast sections that aren't all that unfamiliar to their contemporaries Carcass and Napalm Death, which nods to the primordial soup that all three came from. Also in Realm, between the riffs that are, again, so unmistakably Bolt Thrower originals, the album is replete with vestigial thrash riffs that wouldn't sound out of place on Seasons in the Abyss, not even mentioning the atonal, whammy-abusing, squealing solos.

Eventually the songs got a bit slower and more triumphant and the leads became a little more consonant. This is a great "throwback" (awful, awful, awful pun) from a band who I've never heard a single bad song from. The 'Thrower. While it's not my favorite, this album is definitely worth a spin and not a bad place to start if you've never listened to them. They're still around. Go see them! Buy some albums?

Title track, live 1991




Fantasy War Nerds

-W.F.

Double Feature

I'm still privately being a big, pissy baby about my Rosetta post getting mostly deleted, so I'm going to put a cap on tonight with the new Burial Invocation split.



I had no idea this even came out but I really love Burial Invocation and their side of the split continues with their A+ death-gloom -- for new listeners, kind of like Incantation in a cave sitting on a pile of Autopsy-isms. Dark, cosmic mysteries. I haven't even bothered to listen to the other band (Anatomia) but if their Metal Archives profile is accurate, there's a chance they could sound like Coffins.

I've already dropped what I was doing to order the 7" and you should do the same because at least one half of the split is crushing, evil death metal done by professionals.

Buy this

Try This (Thanks to Prophet of Death)

WF

Another Half-Post

This video just got dumped onto my Facebook.

Listen to this fucking monster! This is Verminous (SWE), they have a full length which I just downloaded as hard as possible and there's not a lot I can say that the music wont say for me. This is the vilest thing I've heard in weeks. Insane.



As I said, other posts are in the works.

-W.F.

Not Bloodbath

It's beyond moot at this point: the best album of 2011 will most likely be Watch the Throne. In light of that, I'll try to divvy what genuine enthusiasm I have left for things that don't feature Jay-Z AND Kanye West rapping together for a whole album and direct that towards Sweden's best national export, Death Metal.



Torture Division is Jorgen Sandstrom, the best vocalist ever to grave Grace; I mean "grace Grave" and two other guys (the "other" bald guy with a goatee and long-hair good-drummer, aka "That guy from Vomitory") best known(?) from The Project Hate whatever-the-fuck, who I've never cared to check out but could very well be great, only instead of playing maybe-good Industrial+Death, they kick out raw, punkish Death Metal, which kicks ass.

"Great," you might be thinking, but there is more. Torture Division, as an enterprise is largely free. Not "free" as in "I've got a few minutes to spare, I'm going to hit the blogs and see what sounds worth downloading" but "free" as in "take our music, please." Yes. Torture Division pumps out songs, plays select shows and prints small runs of merch and, utilizing the revenue generated therein, records more demos. Voila! And while "demo" has the connotation of poorer quality to some (unless if you're weened on black metal), all the demos are mixed by none other than the super-producer and ultra-prolific Dan Swano (ex-everything), so they sound great.

I will say that, some of the lyrical content is insanely misogynistic. And while that comes with the territory and I don't make any excuses. This is something I feel conflicted about often. If you take my stance on it and view as objectively as art representing all aspects of life, good or bad, as art does not and should not always depict only things we agree with (because where's the conflict in that? Where's the drama?), then you will be alright. Sorry, that last sentence has a lot of clauses. Or, you can pass on it.

I'm dead serious about Patriarchy and if you feel the same way, you may skip this altogether or not even listen to Death Metal at all, who knows?

Download their music directly from their site. Read around, too. It's entertaining. Link below.

Rrrrock

Check out this fucking band

I'm in the middle of fine-tuning a longer post, so for now, here's something else.

ILSA is from the DC area and sound like some kind of unholy alliance of Bolt Thrower's post-grind menace, the raw hatred of Canada's Cursed (RIP), and the sheer filth one finds in Sunlight Studio.

The first time I heard the full-length, I thought the production might have been a little too unpolished, I had wished that the guitars were pushed a little closer to the front, and, most importantly, I wished everything got reverbed a least a little bit. I still feel that way but it's definitely grown on me since. At the end of the day, this is still a very enjoyable slab of unrelenting, raw, punkish, doom-like death metal.

They've got a split coming up soon with Hooded Menace, which is plenty exciting.

If you enjoy the full length, cough up some dough for them if you see them on tour, or perhaps pick up the split.

All the Colors of the Dark [Link]

In other news...

I figured out a mounting solution (that's what she said??) for my smaller rack tom on my drum kit and it's working GREAT. It's the first time in a while I've been able to figure out a way to have all three rack toms up in places where they "work."

I found a refurbished Xbox 360 and I bought it. This is such a fucking mistake. I'm just going to play Fallout 3 for the rest of my life.

I'm confused by the Cavalier's draft pick. Williams, to me at least, seemed like a sounder choice than Kyrie Irving. No one seems to agree with me on this, maybe there is something I'm missing.

I'm hungry.

-W.F.

Istanbul, Pt. 2

One thing I like about Istanbul in general is that it is like any regular city (at least to me) only all the squirrels have been replaced by cats who like being pet.


And just like that I'm leaving tomorrow. This visit has ruled. A major highlight was taking the metro, and then a funicular (I didn't know those existed until I got here) and then a tram to Gulhane (all of this is still inside Istanbul, which is outrageously big) to walk around in the park before I went into Topakapi Palace, which used to be the Ottoman seat of power but is now a fittingly gigantic museum. That place was nuts. It was total sensory overload, I couldn't even believe how stunning the architectural features and exhibits were. Google that. All that amazement was fatiguing.

Moving on...

I present: a brief featurette on Turkish metal. All of these bands are from Ankara. For that matter, Ankara seems to be the place for metal here, as all the forthcoming bands that I happened to listen to well before coming here came from that city. I'm making a rough estimation but it would seem as though maybe a whole fourth of Turkey's metal bands hail from the capital. Cool! Here are three..

Cenotaph



CENOTAPH formed in the nineties and plays grinding, slamming, gurgling murder music, that makes them right at home on Sevared Records. Speaking of "Cenotaph,"are all these bands (and trust me, there are plenty) named after that Bolt Thrower song or is that a thing? I've never bothered to look that up. Digression. Their most recent release, Putrescent Infectious Rabidity was a personal favorite Brutal Death Metal release for me last year owing to its excellent performances across the board (featuring the dude from Defeated Sanity on drums). If you're into Disgorge, Cerebral Effusion and all those other relentlessly crushing bands, well.... you know what you like, and you know you will like this.

Next is a band who's song titles are almost as absurd as Absu's or Emperor's

DECIMATION




DECIMATION play a hyper-technical, convoluted, rhythmically-complex, vaguely "Eastern" sounding, brand of death metal. To state the obvious, this band is pretty Nile-esque but don't write them off just yet. Places where Nile becomes tiring, like during some of their pointlessly long and seemingly directionlessly written songs are generally avoided on Decimation's 2010 album, Anthems of Empyreal Dominion (which has no reviews on the Metal Archives, wtf??). One thing that kind of grates me is how high the vocals are in the mix, as well as their general froggy-ness. Disclaimer: I LOVE Wormed.

Burial Invocation



BURIAL INVOCATION is my favorite of the bunch and features (ex??) Cenotaph members, though they couldn't sound any more different, as you can already tell. Rituals of the Grotesque is a perfect EP. I've been dying for more ever since. To me, the quickest point of comparison would be the morbid middle ground between the menacing, crushing weight of Grave circa Into the Grave and the disgusting, cavernous, evil stench of pre-Shitfun Autopsy (Okay, I think I've made it abundantly clear how much I like Grave and Autopsy..). Fuck, this band fucking rules. I bought this, which is rare. What can I say? I'm a product of the information age. This band is relatively new and this is their only release, you'd be doing them a solid if you ordered the ep as well.

I'm le-sleepy and I have to prep myself for a full day of sitting around on airplanes. If my flight on Turkish Airlines is anything like the last one I took to get here, there will be a million screaming babies and the interior will be Easter Egg colors.

-W.F.

I live with my parents, again

In short, I love refrigerators full of food, dogs leaping into my lap, and New England weather.

Anywho..

Something I noticed is the promotion for the upcoming Black Dahlia Murder album. A lot of metalheads bash this band and they have been labelled as metalcore since day one. I don't particularly mind them. To my ears, this band has been consistently melodeath for as long as I've ever known them, which is FINE, it's just not my thing anymore. Sure, when I was 16 and I had heard maybe two death metal songs in my life, "Elder Misanthropy" was the shit. Truthfully, listening to that song again, I definitely prefer it to anything more recent Ive heard from them. It must be the vocals. In short, I think that band is a completely inoffensive, authentic-if-not-somewhat-derivative group (then again, what band isn't derivative in some way?)

For some reason, though, they were always pigeonholed with the more egregiously unoriginal and commercialized metalcore bands of the mid-2000's, even if their actual music had less in common with said groups. Maybe it's Metal Blade -- think of all the crap bands Metal Blade began to pick up around 2005. It could be the band's sometimes jocular song titles, especially on Miasma. "Statutory Ape*." That speaks volumes. Obviously song titles and subject matter in your average death metal band are reasonably tongue and cheek, to a point (and I'm just using this one song as an example). Having a pun right in the title kind of butts up against the requisite air of mystique one's band is expected to have. Breaking kayfabe like that may very well strike some metalheads as flippant. Me, personally, I don't care much but maybe that's one thing about this band that pisses other metalheads off.

(*It should be said, this line of thought forced me to go back and read their lyrics, which are actually pretty good. Surprise! Cool.)

Anywho, starting around Nocturnal, I, like many people no doubt, began to notice a return to more "classic" aesthetics: songs about fucking dead bodies, generally macabre/occult lyrical content/song titles and spooky album art. I haven't listened to that in years and I was pretty over it by the time the next album came out (2009??) but evidently it's more of the same in that respect.
(Interestingly enough, by around 2008 I was really burnt out on death metal, mainly due to the sheer fatigue of listening to all these modern bands like TBDM and Behemoth, with their overly-loud, hi-fi production. Had I not meandered into classic Floridian and Swedish death metal, I might have been off of death metal forever. I digress.)













I wish to now approach the heart of what have in mind. The promotion and artistic approach of Ritual seems like the most extreme logical conclusion of this push for authenticity, in a way slightly similar to how the newer Job For A Cowboy began sounding like something between Morbid Angel and Suffocation.

The album is evidently a concept album about Satanic rituals, which may be a gross generalization of the thematic content, pardon. Quoth the band: "All of the lyrics to Ritual are bound by a common thread of black magick and the occult, the worship of darkness, and the preservation of inner strength and will." They continue: "Yes, we are an evil band. Yes we sing about Satan. But really, how I see it, our evil is for your own good! The character Satan in our music represents the freedom to think for yourself… the strength to see through the facades of the norm that is presented to us at birth, and the courage to live your own way, free of the burden of guilt and shame. That’s how it’s always been for us and this record is no different."
Gotcha. That's par for the course, considering the ubiquity of Satan in metal, in general, and that is totally a-okay with me. Satan, as a concept representing individualism and the rejection of blind faith, etc etc has always been very poignant to me, so, I don't have any qualms there.

What strikes me as somewhat fishy is the very sudden shift from this somewhat light-hearted approach (see their dvd) to selling a deluxe edition of their upcoming album with a ouija board, incense, and powdered dragon bones or whatever the hell. It seems somewhat incongruous. Maybe I'm alone here. Or, maybe I'm creating a false dichotomy where a band can't joke around and sell a deluxe version of your album with special occult artifacts, like demon farts in little glass vials, but the whole thing seems just a little too forced and somewhat unnecessary. While on the one hand, most of the criticism against this band also seems fairly misguided, besides them being sort of unoriginal (which is FINE! It's completely okay and there is nothing particularly bad about TBDM), but on the other hand, it seems like this lingering stigma of them being phonies (which I don't buy, again) has forced them to really ham it up on the occult/whatever-the-hell-else department, which is a shame, because I think the music spoke for itself well enough, which I concede to, even though I don't really dig melodeath anymore.

I think that's all I had in mind. Now, I'd like a beer.

-W.F.



For more on the release:
http://grafwall.indiestar.tv/2011/04/black-dahlia-murder-bdmmetal-discuss.html

Holy shit

Here's a cover of Funebrarum playing "Into The Grave," which is one of my favorite songs by, uh, Grave. That rules. Real posts coming up, including contemplative shit.

Dig it.