Slayer, Testament and Carcass Live at Boston’s House of Blues
Tom Araya is a man of few words, between songs at least. Slayer’s grizzled frontman barked lyrics at a frantic clip, but kept his addresses to the crowd to a polite minimum over the course of the band’s nearly two-hour set on March 6 at House of Blues in Boston, Massachusetts. The sold-out crowd, which spanned from giddy teenagers in Metallica shirts to scene veterans sporting well-worn battle jackets, needed no hyping up, and Slayer were committed to giving them exactly what they came for in a brutally efficient, no-nonsense performance.
Slayer are currently on the road with fellow California thrash mainstays Testament and Britain’s legendary Carcass, supporting their first studio effort since the death of founding guitarist and songwriter Jeff Hanneman. It’s tempting to think of Repentless and its ensuing tour, also less founding drummer Dave Lombardo and leaving just Araya and guitarist Kerry King as original members, as representing a lesser version of the band. In some ways of course, it is, but King and Araya’s decision to soldier on doesn’t ring hollow from the stage. There was a reverence for Slayer’s legacy apparent in how vicious and vital both the new songs and the classics sounded.
Araya’s vocals have lost none of their coarse effectiveness after all these years, and King’s wildly technical fretwork flowed with confidence. With erstwhile drummer Paul Bostaph standing in for Lombardo and Exodus’ Gary Holt doing an admirable job in Hanneman’s place, the rounded out lineup also has pedigree – and more importantly, chemistry. Standing front and center as the first notes of Repentless’ title track rang out and the physically overwhelming blast of low-end punched its way forth, there was no mistaking this for some invalid version of Slayer. The sheer sonic magnitude of the set appeared to overpower and temporarily cripple the venue’s rather robust PA system – a first in the many shows I’ve seen there.
Slayer’s setlists aren’t known for their unpredictability, but the guarantee of hearing “Raining Blood” and “South of Heaven” regardless of the night is certainly not a bad one. The latter remains a song so immortally badass as to spontaneously inspire a satellite mosh pit between three guys at the merch table. Repentless isn’t going to become anyone’s go-to Slayer album, but the selections slotted in here held up amid the fan favorites. After a 22-song set that delivered many of the essentials concluded with “Angel of Death” – and the stage backdrop switching up to bear a Hanneman tribute – it was hard to imagine anyone leaving unsatisfied.
That can be credited in part to the band’s impeccable choice in tour-mates, as well. Carcass’ melodic death was the genre outlier of the night, but the crossover appeal was evident in the room’s excited buzz before they took the stage. The Liverpool foursome mounted a comeback more successful than most with 2013’s excellent Surgical Steel, their first record since 1996, and ripped through four of its tracks along with pairs of Necroticism and Heartwork favorites in a furious opening set. Like Slayer, the band’s lineup now features a pair of original members in bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker and guitarist Bill Steer along with newer additions on second guitar and drums, but hardly sounds hindered by it. Walker was in fine gravel-voiced form, and the band made the most of the unfortunately brief time constraints of their set.
If Carcass were the night’s outliers in terms of sound, it was Testament’s air-guitaring, mosh-encouraging antics that incorporated a bit of a rock and roll partying vibe absent from the show’s first and last sets. Vocalist Chuck Billy was clearly having a blast playing ringleader while the band traversed its 30-plus year history, touching on six of its ten albums since 1987. Testament may have lacked the precision heaviness of Carcass and the grim intensity of the night’s headliners, but the touch of levity offered by their raucous set brought balance.
While the future of Slayer beyond the promotion of Repentless remains to be seen, a tour with curation and performances as strong as this one wouldn’t be a bad note to go out on. It’s an early contender for Q1 2016’s best package deal.
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Testament
Cult Of Luna: 10 Years ‘Along The Highway’
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Cult of Luna were hitting their stride just as the post-metal trend was entering its saturation point. By 2006, if you could get your hands on an extensive pedal board, a Sunn amp, and a short haircut you were only a favor from your graphic designer friend away from getting buzz from bearded eggheads. Shortly thereafter the genre began to reference only itself, and what was once cutting edge became dull and blunt, but Cult of Luna were still sharpening their blades. Somewhere Along The Highway is a snapshot of the genre as it stomped on its proverbial distortion pedals and went from a series of isolated incidents to an undeniable part of heavy music history, and it turns ten today. It also happens to be their best album. Their first three full lengths (Cult Of Luna, The Beyond, Salvation) all showed promise, and even scraped at greatness, but all suffer from clinical and mechanical execution. The band’s unique lineup of three guitars, two drummers and multiple members tinkering with keys and samplers gives them a wide palette of sounds, but for the first half of their career they underutilized this versatility in favor of an all-or-nothing approach. By choosing to record Somewhere Along The Highway live with little to no overdubs, Cult Of Luna forced themselves to be smarter with their arrangements. Simply burying the listener under low end density would no longer suffice. The first jaw dropping moment on the record isn’t when the band goes full bore on a single riff at the loudest point of “Finland” but what happens immediately afterwards: the guitars both slide up to shimmering leads in the upper register, leaving the bass to carry the low end, and it's as if the walls of the studio have been knocked down. This one moment redefines the entire sonic landscape of the album, allowing the band to play with a sense of scale and space. Cult Of Luna had previously been playing with dynamics in a strictly vertical sense, moving up and down in volume. On Somewhere Along The Highway they started thinking laterally. The album’s stripped down production gives you an unobstructed view at Cult Of Luna’s unique instrumentation. The band’s two drummer set up gives them a crisp and methodical approach to rhythm, and the rest of their sound builds on that mechanized consistency. Like many other post-metal bands, Cult Of Luna’s guitarists use delay and reverb based effects, but where other bands do this to create an indistinct and overwhelming wash, Cult Of Luna’s tightly gridded rhythm section forces the trails of effects to interact with the rest of the band on a rhythmic level. This is taken one step further by using programmed electronics to create an additional layer of syncopation during the climaxes of “Dim” and “Dark City, Dead Man.” Somewhere Along The Highway’s underproduction serves more than just an aesthetic function. By recording in a barn largely isolated from society they married the album’s creation to its thematic focus on what they referred to as male loneliness. Of course, “sad dudes alone in the woods” is hardly a novel concept for a Scandinavian metal band, or even music at large (shout out to Bon Iver), but this marriage of form and function served as a guiding principle for the band’s next two albums. On Eternal Kingdom, they crafted a story about the blurred line between reality and fantasy, and then fabricated a story about being inspired by a mental patient’s journal as a way of establishing themselves as unreliable narrators. And on Vertikal they constructed a rigid set of aesthetic guidelines (more keyboards, more downstrokes on guitar) as a way of evoking a harsh technological future. But while Somewhere Along The Highway was a watershed moment for Cult Of Luna’s career, it suffers from being one of countless albums playing with similar ideas. No matter how good the songs on Somewhere Along The Highway are (and they are very very good, even deep cuts like “Thirtyfour” are among the best of their kind) they do very little to change the paradigm that Isis established with Oceanic and Panopticon. If it weren’t so completely a product of Cult Of Luna’s collective personality, Somewhere Along The Highway could scan as the generic local brand to Isis’s designer product. Lengthy and linear songs with drastic changes in volume, a mix of down tuned aggression and twinkling high end; this description fits Cult Of Luna as much as it does other latecomers like Mouth Of The Architect, Rosetta, Russian Circles, Callisto, Red Sparowes, Buried Inside, or dozens of other bands. Somewhere Along The Highway is not an important record. But it is a quintessential record. One that is emblematic of its moment while remaining a product of its creator’s unique perspective. After the genre’s long build up, and before its gradual recession, Somewhere Along The Highway is the thunderous crescendo....
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Interview: Rynne Stump (Stumpfest)
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As we’ve covered before on this site: there is a surplus of small weekender extreme music festivals in the Pacific Northwest and particularly in Portland, such as Hoverfest and Famine Fest, which we have covered. Stumpfest is a little different. With no allegiance to sound or genre, Stumpfest is more about an atmosphere of familiarity. Think of it more as a family barbecue, just with fewer short ribs and more ear-fucking distortion. Festival founder and namesake Rynne Stump emailed with us about her history as a fest organizer, the value of annual headlining act Yob, and the importance of good vintage porn....
So, a good place to start would probably be the origin of Stumpfest. How did you get the idea of starting the event? Yob was touring with Tool the first time in 2011 and it came to me while I was watching one of their sets. I used to book and work production at the old Berbati’s Pan venue with my dear friend Chantelle Hylton early 2000s. So I reached out to her to see if I could get a night somewhere in town and have Stumpfest. If all went well & we were well received I would continue… now we are on our 5th year. I used to book my birthday parties too & Yob played my 23rd birthday with their “new” drummer [at the time] Travis Foster. And how did you get into heavy music? My father was a musician so I grew up with just about everything in arm's reach. mainly outlaw country stuff, bluegrass, which I started performing at around 3 years old singing with my sister Sara who helps me run Stumpfest, and my father playing guitar). Zeppelin was introduced to us at a young age. “No Quarter” was the tune that hooked me deep, far beyond anything I’d ever heard in my entire life. That song seemed to expand the cosmos of my mind with every listen and I rewound that sucker 1 million times. Queen too & Steve Miller Band. I would listen to News of the World over and over and over. At around 11 years old it was Motley Crue, Steve Vai , Alice Cooper and Guns and Roses that hooked me and ruled my bedroom walls. Headbanger’s fucking Ball, dude. For one, I was a giant Mick Mars fan. His Kramer guitar solos with the voice box had me obsessed, in fact I vowed to my mother I would marry him and get a Motley Crue tattoo at the fairgrounds. Neither happened thankfully. Although I will hug him tight & tell him how much I love him if I ever meet him one day. Then by 7th grade,1990 the crossover started. Use Your Illusion I was closely followed by Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana's Bleach. luckily my older sister Sara, who runs Stumpfest with me, would play White Zombie, Sonic Youth and Zeppelin. I would go up to her room and we would make bead necklaces. She was always cool sharing her music with me but not her clothes. I could go on forever about this subject but I think you get the gist. The evolution was there early on and I continued on my merry way skipping school, smoking doobies and listening to Tool, Deicide, Slayer, Pantera… What's the hardest thing about putting Stumpfest together? The toughest part is organizing and booking the shows. This is also the most exciting part. I like to get a good dreamy list together to get a framework built then start reaching out and see who can actually do it. Our budget is tight because we elect to have the intimate environment and reasonable ticket prices. The primary challenges are the parameters that keep us within certain boundaries. Of course the inevitable scheduling issues and an occasional canceling of bands can interrupt the flow but we’ve been so lucky each year with minimal issues. It's like landing a giant bass when you get your nights lined up. When you're booking a fest, how do you balance looking for bands you want to hear vs. what you think an audience will like? I book bands I really want to hear. Usually bands that I love, with humans I love in them, bands I don’t get to see very often or bands that I am curious to hear and I go from there. I’ve found our festival has had good diversity with great continuity. we all know a good show is one where everyone is vibing on badass energy and I think we do that consistently by providing loving supportive awesome terrain for that to be cultivated....
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Is there any kind of sound that you think unites Stumpfest? Definitely heavy, unique and estranged from the mainstream. Children of a different path, connected by a universal vision. To you, what are the factors that make a great live performance? it is so difficult to pinpoint. There is no formula because the vibe has to be right. The gods have to be smiling on everyone, everyone has to be open to create the space to leave their bodies and fill their spirits with the magic of the moment, something new. Vulnerability must prevail on both sides, raw energy and bands giving their all. Are there any performances from past Stumpfests that stand out to you? Yob. every time. The world stops turning when they play and for those moments we all rock together in unison like babies. I’ve never felt anything so hypnotizing, so seductive and enlightening in the collective conscience experience than seeing them live. They are my absolute favorites. They make me levitate. There's a surplus of great mini festivals in the upper west coast of the US: Black Twilight Circle, now Migration Fest as well, and Stumpfest being among them. Why do you think fests like these are held here? I’m no festival guru, in fact I think Stumpfest may be the only festival I go to unless my man is playing one and we’re on tour. I would imagine though the concentrated talent in the pacific northwest would be reason they are so prevalent. What do you think makes Stumpfest unique among all those fests? I know my fest is unique in spirit. Stumpfest isn’t about branding or money. It's the antithesis of those things. Stumpfest is friends coming together to connect on the same plane, to share, to laugh and hug. Mainly it's a lovefest. Can you tell me about the custom lanyards that you make for Stumpfest? This was all my sister Sara’s idea. Sara started contributing her talents to Stumpfest the second year, helping out where I needed her to. The festival evolved with the addition of multiple nights and lots of bands. We had upwards of 50 band members to keep track of. So, she thought it would be great to give them personalized lammies, maybe collage a bit of porn on the backside and then it just got crazy out of control from there. It helps of course that we have a solid crafting background. We make about 75 + hand collaged laminates a year. I know you use a lot of vintage porn to make the lanyards. There's no more nude Playboy centerfolds. How has that affected your ability to make lanyards this year? Well i’m a sensitive new mom right? And the playboys are a perfect balance of classy cute gals with great lighting, great asses and awesome photography. I just can’t stomach the Hustler/Penthouse vibe. It’s like looking at road kill raw hamburger. who wants to eat that?...
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Stumpfest starts today, April 21, and runs through Saturday, April 23 at Mississippi Studios in Portland, OR. Tickets are $20/day or $45 for the whole weekend....
Upcoming Metal Releases 4/24/2016 – 4/30/2016
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This column marks my one-year anniversary writing for Invisible Oranges. Can you believe I started simultaneously annoying the lot of you and ruining what was left of my mind a whole year ago? If you don't remember, I thought I had essentially left the whole "music blogging scene" with the dissolving of my former music blog, The Inarguable, but I guess I can't stay away, huh? Here's to another year if my brain doesn't catch fire! Below is a brief list of metal-and-related musics slated for release between April 24th and 30th, 2016. It's hard to write about everything, and especially difficult to keep up with the random nature of metal releases in the digital age, so please feel free to fill in any gaps with nice, complete sentences in the comment box below. Do you have a release coming up which you would like to see in a future column? Shoot me an e-mail - it's in my signature!...
ANTICIPATED RELEASES
Kawir - Πάτερ 'Ηλιε Μήτερ Σελάνα | Iron Bonehead Productions | Folk/Black Metal | Greece Ah, the epic sounds of Hellas. Kawir has been a consistent source of giant, folky majesty, for over twenty years now, and Therthonax isn't about to change that. Πάτερ 'Ηλιε Μήτερ Σελάνα, which translated to "Father Sun, Mother Moon," draws upon the ever-thickening atmospheres once perfected on Ισόθεος and brings them to new, hedonistic heights. Though Kawir's body of work has been largely overshadowed by their contemporaries, bands like Rotting Christ, Varathron really perfecting the early Hellenic sound pioneered in Kawir's early work, but Father Sun, Mother Moon's epic scope and passionate delivery marks itself as the band's crowning achievement. Unfortunately, the grandeur of the album's first few tracks don't pervade its latter half, which leads to an imbalance, but, overall, the Hellenic glory found in Kawir's latest effort is a definite reminder that the progenitors of a sound are bound to perfect it with time. Ithaqua - The Black Mass Sabbath Pulse | Iron Bonehead Productions | Black Metal | Greece A powerful backwards glance to Hellenic black metal's formative years. Though definitely paying homage to Rotting Christ's Thy Mighty Contract's beauty in melodic simplicity, Ithaqua's vampyric, keyboard-laden Gothic-isms belie a much more sinister sonic backdrop to what is otherwise a bouncing, excitable listen. Though this EP's brief 16-some minutes fly by, Ithaqua's many hooks warrant many repeat listens. Darkestrah - Turan | Osmose Productions | Folk/Black Metal | Kyrgyzstan (Germany) Impeccably performed, epic black metal with a traditionalist scope. Come back on Wednesday to hear Turan's Kyrgyz strength in its entirety. Verdun - The Eternal Drift's Canticles | Throatruiner Records | Sludge/Doom Metal | France From my premiere of "Self-Inflicted Mutalitation":"No doubt following in the unmistakable footprints of fellow doom metal greats Burning Witch and the aforementioned Dopethrone, Verdun crushes and mesmerizes with their steady, organic plod. Make no mistake, Verdun is definitely a stoner doom band, as evidenced by their meandering psychedelia and strong feel for head-bobbing groove, but The Eternal Drift’s Canticles shows a much more mature approach."Plebeian Grandstand - False Highs, True Lows | Throatruiner Records | Avant-Garde Black Metal/Hardcore | France Pure, unbridled chaos from France's best kept secret. Shifting further and further into black metal-dictated realms, Plebeian Grandstand's frenzied, darkness-fueled black metalcore bears simultaneously close resemblances to black metal genre garblers Aosoth and chaotic mathcore legends Botch. Though madness in dissonance manifests itself as a constant between those two otherwise unrelated extreme genres, Plebeian Grandstand's mastery of modern black metal's reckless brute strength with early-2000s hardcore's "from chest to eardrum" emotional nudity treads new ground on both sides of the fence.
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OF NOTE
Schammasch - Triangle | Prosthetic Records | Avant-Garde Black Metal | Switzerland Swiss weirdos Schammasch are further proof that the latter half of the 2010s possess one of black metal's most striking bouts of punctuated equilibrium. From the longform, melody-and-atmosphere-driven sounds which dictated the latter half of the past numeric decade, such a sudden penchant for the bizarre, dissonant, and aggressive is a complete about face for a slow, calculated evolutionary crescendo. Schammasch is that strangeness incarnate, rife with bizarre chanting, surreal dissonance and vaulted ceiling atmosphere. It isn't very often Prosthetic really "wows" me with a release, but this is definitely a band I need to investigate further. Abhomine - Larvae Offal Swine | Nuclear War Now! Productions/Osmose Productions | Black/Death Metal | United States Pete Helmkamp is back, and the result is gross. No new ground broken here, but thus is the story of every post-Order From Chaos Helmkamp band out there. And that's okay. As I've said in other "war metal" writeups on here, stuff like Order From Chaos and Blasphemy aren't there to be new, and war metal is more a display of power in place of progression. Pete Helmkamp's songwriting talent and putrid gurgling rasp essentially excuses himself from the binds of time - he can stay in 1991 and I'm perfectly fine with that. Fister/Teeth - Fister / Teeth | Broken Limbs Recordings | Sludge/Doom Metal / Death/Doom Metal | United States Two of the heaviest bands in doom metal's underground join forces for a most suffocating ten minutes. Fister's atmospheric blend of grace and Grief finds an interesting match in the hardcore-infused old school death metal of Teeth, but the consistent worship of lower, rumbling frequencies finds a common denominator. Qrixkuor - Three Devils Dance | Invictus Productions | Black/Death Metal | England Suffocating, nightmarish murk in three lengthy parts. I normally write off cavernous din of Qrixkuor's jumbled ilk as "thick distortion hiding mediocrity," but the nightmarish Three Devils Dance manages to embody the amorphous, Lovecraftian horror which so many attempt to capture. Expect none of the cartoonish superlative clockwork which defines much of the "cavernous" scene here. Mistur - In Memoriam | Dark Essence Records | Folk/Viking/Black Metal | Norway I really, really miss Windir. You should, too, and I hope most of you feel the pangs of inadequacy upon remembering project mastermind Valfar was just twenty-four years old when he met his frosty demise. Continuing in Valfar's fusing Edvard Grieg's folky orchestrations with black metal's ire rose Mistur, who boasts former Windir guitarist Stian Bakketig among its roster. Mistur's melodic, folky black metal is essentially par for the course...
FOR THE ADVENTUROUS
Wöljager - Van't Liewen Un Stiäwen ("On Living and Dying") | Prophecy Productions | Neofolk | Germany/Iceland Stunning, pastoral neofolk from the minds behind Árstíðir lífsins and Helrunar. I am no stranger to the many works of multi-instrumentalist Árni Bergur Zoëga's body of work, Dysthymia and Skendöd are longtime favorites, so this sort of "spillover" leaves me ecstatic. Wöljager's minimalist approach is infectious and spacious, building momentum off of Zoëga's careful composition and Marcel Dreckmann's deep, warm baritone. Van't Liewen Un Stiäwen is a dreamy album, the beautiful, slight sounds of nature and the calm which comes with distancing oneself from civilization. Sacramence - Lovers Seek Dominance | Knife Vision | Darkwave/Industrial/Drone | United States Originally a psychedelic black metal band (anyone want to help me find a copy of their split with Golden Milk?), Sacramence made a very punctuated about face and re-manifested itself as a miserable, atmospheric mixture of post-industrial music, drone, and ambiance which evokes Coil, Raison d'Etre, and even Burzum's electronic works. Fans of Sacramence's previous works might be left a little dumbfounded, but Lovers Seek Dominance is catchy enough and performed with a tenderness to leave a lasting mark....
FROM THE GRAVE
Malokarpatan - Stridžie dni | Invictus Productions | Black Metal | Slovakia Slovenian folklore and black metal fit together perfectly, much like Malokarpatan's mixture of Masters Hammer's Ritual-era strangeness with and Andy LaRocque sense of rhythm and catchiness. I slept on the tape version of this one (shame on me), but Invictus was kind enough to make a larger format CD release. He should re-release the Remmirath albums, while he's at it. Ultha - Pain Cleanses Every Doubt | Translation Loss Records | Black/Doom Metal | Germany Though I wasn't the biggest Planks fan in the universe, Ralph Schmidt's latest artistic endeavor, Ultha, makes me want to revisit his discography with a more open mind. Ultha's ethereal, doomed black metal blends the dreaminess of Amenra's droning post-metal with Bethlehem's early desperation (especially vocally, Schmidt destroys his throat with a very convincing Rainer Landfermann screech)....
OTHER RELEASES
Fallujah - Dreamless | Nuclear Blast America | Technical Death Metal/Deathcore | United States "Technical Death Metal/Deathcore." Chains/Suton - Balkanian Narko Doom | Ordo MCM | Doom Metal / Drone/Doom Metal | Slovenia/Bosnia and Herzegovina The fact that Chains's half of this split is titled "Fire Walk With Me" is enough for me to love it, but let's look closer. Chains's Eastern-flavored, dark doom hypnotism definitely evokes the red-tinted, wooded isolation and spirituality of its namesake, performed with just enough sloppiness to really drive the Lynchian atmosphere home. Suton's psychedelia-inclined death/doom metal is a nice refresher after the surrealism of its release predecessor, melodic and crushing, but with a mechanical feel (likely the fault of a poorly mixed drum machine) which makes it oddly harsh. Germ - Escape | Prophecy Productions | Black Metal/Shoegaze/Electronica | Australia There are few instances in which I enjoy the whole "new school of post-black metal" performance of shoegaze and post-rock at black metal volume levels. Germ has never been one of those instances. (Bring back Austere!)...
WHAT WE MISSED
Carnis Vale - Carnis Vale | Knife Vision | Black Metal/Punk | United States The men behind Crippled Sound and Slave House offer up a short, sharp shock of harsh, minimal blackened stomp with an absolutely unhinged vocal performance. Knife Vision releases don't happen as often as they should, and J Neumaier's projects are always ace examples of classic US black metal, so Carnis Vale is definitely one to notice. Malphas - La terre disparue | Knife Vision | Black Metal/Punk | Canada Malphas's brand of black metalpunk is definitely of a more conservative sort, pissed and distorted to all hell, but La terre disparue is a catchy and infectious listen. Blizaro - Cornucopia della morte | I, Voidhanger Records | Progressive Rock/Doom Metal | United States Giallo doom? John Gallow is way too good at fusing the strange synthesizer sounds of Argento and Fulci with the classic heavy psychedelia of Black Sabbath and Paul Chain (two Paolo Cadena namedrops in two weeks? What a world!)....
Grey Aura – “Bedrog” (Song Premiere)
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Drawing upon the "ideal work of art," a "gesamkunstwerk" focuses on interdisciplinary completion through stylistic synthesis to demonstrate art in its totality. Music has seen gesamkunstwerks in the text/visual/audio work of Common Eider, King Eider's Sense of Place and the integration of drama and fluid stage setting Wagner's Der Ring operatic cycle (as opposed to static stage settings of Italianate opera) being prime examples, but "gesamkunstwerk" is seldom touched upon in black metal. Black metal draws upon relative subtlety and secrecy, bands eschewing publishing lyrics, relying on minimal art, and remaining anonymous as part of building a sort of mystique, and, while aesthetic can be an aspect of the ideal "total art work," the large empty spaces left to the listener's interpretation prevent "totality" in the eyes of the ideal gesamkunstwerk. In a rare attempt, Dutch duo Grey Aura's debut effort, the two disc, hardbound book, and audio epic Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort, makes a solid case for the merits and passion of artistic completion in black metal. Setting the story of Arctic explorer William Barentz's third, troublesome Northern expedition, Grey Aura sets out to embody the feeling of winter's bite, the isolation of being stranded on a distant Arctic island, the human feeling of frustration, and man's ultimate betrayal by nature itself. Concentrating specifically on "Bedrog," which is the situation in the album's latter half, this track tells a particularly frustrating tale of Barentz's stranded crew, which can be read below. Using crystalline, luminous black metal melodies, Grey Aura constructs a false dawn, a reflection off distant ice crystals in winter's dark midst. The bright-yet-cold sound of "Bedrog" is characteristic and breathtaking, but uniquely frustrating in its singularity, hinting at the warm sense of fruition in a climax but ultimately remaining cold, dry, and crystalline. You can really feel the hopes of Barentz's crew being dashed, resigning themselves to the lengthy winter ahead. When listening to the audio clips, which actually features primary source audio recorded by voice actors, the resignation only hits harder (though I can't speak Dutch, so I'm going specifically by voice tone here). When looking at the album as a whole, "Bedrog" could very well be a turning point before the story sadly stagnates, which puts the track in an interesting position. When pitted against the album's dynamic, cinematic sense, "Bedrog" is oddly conservative, but that is also representative of its point in the story arc. It's hard to view these tracks individually, but that's kind of the point. Though "Bedrog" is a very enjoyable listen, Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort is meant to be listened to as a whole, and I wholly suggest doing so. Works like this, total artworks, are meant to be experienced as such. Absorb all which is given. Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort will see its official release as a two-disc hardbound book on the awe-inspiring Blood Music this coming June. Listen to an exclusive premiere of "Bedrog" and read a supplemental statement from the band below....
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Lord Mantis – “NTW” (Song Premiere)
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Photos: Behemoth & Myrkur @ Webster Hall
Ordem Satânica – “Ventos de Ódio” (Full Album Stream)
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From the murkiest depths of the ever-explosive Portuguese black metal underground arises Ordem Satânica. Though a relatively smaller act in comparison to fellow countrymen found on the Altare Productions roster, the Order's small handful of raw, brackish devotion have proven them to be an act to watch. The weathered hatred found on their debut Ventos de Ódio is both hideous and mesmerizing. With a rounded, crackling distortion resembling the sound of an aging, warped cassette, Ordem Satânica's full-length debut bridges the gap between France's Les Legions Noires grotesque rawness with the devotional majesty of Sweden's anti-Cosmic Ancient Records scene. Primitive, traditional black metal rage meets earnest, ambient expanse, culminating in the side-long 17-minute epic closer "O Negro e Eterno Vácuo". May First will herald the winds of Ordem Satânica’s hate on Altare Productions. Listen to an exclusive prerelease stream of the full album below, and, as always, be sure to support your favorite artists and labels....
Ordem Satânica does not believe in direct interaction. You will not find them on social media....
Top 7 Most Metal Fantasy Premises
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We’ve talked about genre fiction on this site before when Doug Moore listed the Top 7 Most Metal Science Fiction Premises. Today, though, we’re talking fantasy. Fantasy has been a part of metal since its inception. Black Sabbath wrote about “The Wizard” on their debut album, for starters. That said, fantasy hasn’t always been very metal. After The Lord of the Rings was released, the genre was overtaken my similar stories: teams of good guys from disparate races unite and travel along distance to defeat some vaguely satanic, though less frightening, evil force. C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia with its aesthetic references to the nicest parts of Greek mythology and Christ metaphors, is even worse. No wonder Dragonslayer shortened their name to Slayer—fantasy was mostly safe and feel-good for a long time. Not so much any longer. Mainstream fantasy has grown progressively darker, more violent and consequently more metal. I’m sure many of you either stayed up on Sunday night to watch the premiere of the sixth season of Game of Thrones, or hopped right onto Bittorrent to pirate it. The dire-but-exhilarating sensation at the core of extreme heavy metal lives on in that fantasy series. Last season’s penultimate episode “Hardhome” culminated in a 10-minute action sequence that seemed more like a high-quality black metal music video than something aspiring to be one of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. While we’re waiting for HBO to give us something equally metallic as “Hardhome,” here’s the seven most metal fantasy scenarios. There may be spoilers below....
Celebrated pulp author Robert Howard’s Hyborea first appeared in Weird Tales magazine, the same publication that released much of Lovecraft’s Chthulhu mythos, and is the template for probably the most metal sub-genre of fantasy: sword and sorcery. Think burly dudes and curvy women in leather bikinis and you get the idea.
In Hyborea there is no objective good, but magic and the people who wield it are almost always evil. Life is incredibly hostile, and even for people with selfish but not always malicious intent—like mighty Conan—the only way to thrive involves a hefty amount of violence.
Conan remains a popular figure in metal circles, especially in the doom genre, whose slow tempos and bottom-heavy sounds reflect the tedious and grinding nature of Hyborean life. Several bands mine the Conan mythos for song lyrics, and one popular contemporary band is named after him. As influential, maybe, are the Frank Frazetta paintings which frequently accompanied Howard’s work. Several bands have also used Frazetta paintings as covers, including High on Fire whose red-hot distortion and tribal drum rhythm reflect the crass meanness of the Conan mythos.
Now where’s our doom band singing Red Sonja songs?
There’s no escaping Tolkien's influence on heavy metal, particularly on European black metal. Bands like Burzum and their ilk idolize forests. Their music is as pastoral and repetitive as the lengthy sections of outdoorsy exploring in The Lord of the Rings. Likewise, Tolkien's fascination with pagan European heritage and the obvious influence he drew from northern European mythology and Wagner’s Ring Cycle keep his work relevant in the pagan black metal scene.
That said, while Tolkien's mythology is as multilayered and complex as the actual pagan folk tales he took influence from, his work is hardly as grim and advocating of inhuman evil as black metal is. Especially in Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's morality remains resolutely christian: Frodo resists temptation, Gandalf sacrifices his own life and rises from the dead, and eventually the forces of sin are purged from Middle Earth.
Dig a little, though, and you can find traces of a darker side to Tolkien’s mythos, particularly in the origin stories of Morgoth and Sauron in The Silmarillion. It’s no surprise both have bands named after them, but only Austria’s Summoning have dedicated their entire career to reflecting his work.
Some people call Glen Cook the father of “grimdark” fantasy, and it’s no surprise that some people use that same word to describe the most murky black metal. The world he presents in The Black Company and its related books is morally pitch black, even moreso than Hyborea.
Inspired by Cook’s time in Vietnam, the books detail the history of the titular brand of mercenaries, who routinely engage in ethically reprehensible acts like burning down villages, as well as a whole lot of treason. If someone were to graph the number of double-crosses present in a given set of novels, I’d bet that Cook’s would wind up at or near the top.
The Black Company novels balance two distinctly metal themes: on the one hand they detail the brutality of war and on the other the value of fraternity between the members of the company. The rivalries and humorous jabs between characters like the wizards One-Eye and Goblin make the cavalier violence of the series, often described in a clipped and sarcastic writing style, all the more charming. War metal musicians may dress more like the vaguely cro-magnon characters of Hyborea, but the spirit of the genre dovetails well with Cook.
It would be a grave error to compile a fantasy series list without some inclusion from the world of comics, and when it comes to longevity, few American fantasy graphic novels can stand up to the 28-years-and-counting run of Berserk.
Kentaro Miura’s Midworld is far from a unique fantasy setting—it’s mostly a stand in for Dark Ages Europe. Just look at the name. Originality is not the point for Berserk, or for many death metal bands. For a more creative—and intellectually stimulating—Japanese comic scenario, look to Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan.
What separates Berserk apart is its affection for gratuitous violence, and the truly disgusting designs of its villainous demons. The protagonist, Guts, cleaves armored enemies and massive monsters in two with a sword that’s nearly as big as he is—violence is more metal when it is ridiculous. His antagonists, the God Hand, are Cenobite-ish demons that convince people to massacre their loved ones in exchange for powerful demonic bodies of their own. Faustian bargains? Metal.
Brutal and satanic, Berserk is death metal to the core, especially when Guts begins to use the cruel berserk armor that gives the series its name. The one ring will always be the most iconic magical item that comes with a steep cost but the berserk armor is so much nastier. It gives its user incredible destructive power. If you break a bone while wearing it, it may just set that bone by driving metal spikes into your flesh. In Berserk the only way to beat the forces of evil is to become a killing machine and be “Pierced from Within,” which means that it’s ideally read while listening to Suffocation.
If Berserk is about the horrors of the Dark Ages, then George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted for television as Game of Thrones, is about a failing renaissance. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are enjoying years of peace and increasing intellectualism at the beginning of the series, only to watch a sick game of multiplayer political chess thrust them back into war and famine.
Other series may be more violent (emphasis on may) but there’s never any real sense that Conan or Guts will die by the end. In contrast, Martin kills main characters with relish, and in metal no one is safe. Like Slayer, Martin shows no mercy.
The central question of the books is not, “who will sit on the Iron throne?” It is, “When will everyone realize that ruling does not matter when faced with a bunch of demons, their undead army, and the frigid climate apocalypse they bring with them?” As said above, the villainous White Walkers seem lifted wholesale from melodic black metal iconography, both in their affinity for sub-zero temperatures and their hatred of all living things.
Texan doom outfit The Sword were actually the first metal band that I’m aware of to use Martin’s work as lyrical source material (“To Take the Black,” “Winter’s Wolves,” “Lament the Auroch,” “The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone,” “Lords,” “The Black River”), but their warm and languid tone does not suit the series. The Immortal bard of Westeros, pun intended, is Abbath.
Restricting this list to literary worlds was tempting, but D&D’s shadow is just too large and too long to ignore. If Tolkien innovated the 20th century fantasy template then Gygax & Arneson perfected and codified it. Middle Earth was the first cheeseburger, but Forgotten Realms is the Big Mac.
But how did they make fantasy more metal? Putting aside D&D’s role in the Satanic Panic of the '80s (very metal), the most evil thing about the RPG is its gallery of evil monsters. Especially at the onset, playable characters in D&D borrowed too much from Tolkien, but the Monster Manual is more cosmopolitan. The smorgasbord of beasts within draw from such disparate sources as middle ages folklore and H. P. Lovecraft. Better, it contains its own original oddities like the cycloptic and laser-tentacled Beholder.
When fantasy themed traditional and power metal bands try to invent their own fantastic settings, they invariably wind up sounding like highly customized D&D campaigns. There’s even metal songs about playing Dungeons & Dragons and even-even a band dedicated to that practice. Of course they’re called Gygax.
That said, when it comes to metal songs about D&D, Salt Lake city’s Visigoth did it best.
At its best, extreme heavy metal is potent because it is uncanny. It may present elements lifted from other perhaps more widely-appreciated genres, but in this musical context they provide no security. They are unnerving.
Few in recent memory know how to be unnerving and uncanny like China Mieville. His fantasy world Bas-Lag is as punishing as the remainder of this list, but pulls from a wider range of influences and is dedicated to discomforting weirdness. Like Tolkien, Mieville presents a panoply of nonhuman races, but Bas Lag’s are alien and unknowable: cactus men, women who have massive scarab beetles in the place of heads.
Bas-Lag, though, takes the class conscious London of Charles Dickens and the leery anarchist underground of G.K. Chesterton and stylized them into an industrial hellscape. In the wilderness, his monsters draw from Lovecraft not in tentacled design but in their unknowability: steampunk AI’s that hide in massive garbage dumps, playful demons of motion, and massive moths who feed on the dreams of sentient races.
But Mieveille’s most metal concept, and his saddest, are the Remade: criminals often guilty of petty crimes who are sent to punishment factories to have their bodies painfully altered. Mantis limbs and pistons replace arms and legs. A dead child’s tiny arms are grafted to his mother's face like bull horns. Third-class citizens, the Remade are sentenced to tacit and sometimes-sexual slavery. The Remade are the modern music lover’s affinity for piercings, tattoos and modification turned into classist body horror.
Avant garde and progressive metal share with Mieville their affinity for splicing other genres into metal in the interest of keeping things off-kilter. In particular, San Francisco's Giant Squid, shared Mieville’s interest in the human struggle as well as his fascinations with marine megafauna.
Ghost Live at Long Island’s The Paramount
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Ghost’s “Cirice” won the Grammy for “Best Metal Performance” in February, but the group has had a sizable cult following here since at least 2013. They played and drew well at Terminal 5 (a 3,000-capacity Hell’s Kitchen venue) last time they were in the area, so it was a little startling to be heading out to The Paramount, which packs out at half that number, on April 15. What the Paramount lacks in size, though, it makes up for in sound and lighting quality; both areas of constant complaint for Terminal 5. The crowd was large, diverse, and incredibly enthusiastic, with many concertgoers in artful skull makeup....
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There was exceptional turnout for the opener, psychedelic shredders The Shrine, who have a comfortable and endearing “just your neighborhood nice-young-man headbangers” stage presence. They introduced and contextualized each song in their 30-minute set and had a lot of spunk, smiling beneath their bandanas and curls. Their sound, self-described as “psychedelic violence rock and roll,” is heavy and competent, if a little under-developed. Their best tracks were “What’s Left For Me” and “Nothing Forever.” Ghost’s set begins with a long lead-in of ominous chanting tracks (Gregorio Allegi’s "Miserere em, Dues” and Jocelyn Pook’s “Masked Ball”) and an overpowering amount of incense. Right when this reviewer began to get impatient and lose consciousness from smoke inhalation the curtain rose, a fully-adorned Papa Emeritus III entered for “Spirit," and all were immediately transfixed. Their show was divided into two distinct parts: “Spirit,” “From the Pinnacle to the Pit,” “Stand by Him,” "Con Clavi Con Dio,” “Per Aspera ad Inferi,” “Body and Blood” were pure doom and deliciously blasphemous Catholic japes. Around the time they started “Cirice,” Emeritus III shucked his Papal robes and laid aside the scepter, switching gears for a more playful second act. Forsaking the sweeping gestures and menacing gaze of the first half, Emeritus III danced suggestively, blew kisses and even engaged in some flamenco over the course of “Year Zero,” “He Is,” and “Absolution.”...
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For a band with a reputation for the mysterious, Ghost were engaging and interactive, and had a very approachable air, even going so far as to gently remind the crowd to behave. There were several funny moments, such as when the Nameless Ghouls went acoustic, sitting on the edge of the risers and swinging their legs in unison for a cover of Roky Erickson's “If You Have Ghosts.” To say that Ghost’s performance was theatrical would seem trite and obvious, but it’s the most appropriate adjective. A less expressive group, or one that took itself too seriously, would be utterly unable to pull off their schtick with any dignity. Emeritus III and the Nameless Ghouls provoked nearly 1,500 people in Long Island to chant “Lucifer” in unison, to laugh at themselves for it, and then to agree to “group orgasm” in the form of their traditional closing track, “Monstrance Clock" in the same 90 minutes, all with a wink, a nudge and a poke from an upside-down cross. Now that’s owning a room....
The Shrine
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Ghost
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Beastwars – ‘The Death of All Things’
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There’s nothing subtle about the title of Beastwars’ latest album, The Death of All Things. This release concludes the post-apocalyptic trilogy that the New Zealand-based sludge band began on their self-titled debut in 2011, and also reflects that the album was originally intended to be Beastwars’ last. While they’re intent on continuing for now, spurred on, no doubt, by enthusiasm surrounding The Death of All Things, that certainly wasn’t their original intention. In recent years, Beastwars have been on the receiving end of increasing amounts of critical and commercial success. At home, the band’s been nominated for multiple music awards. In New Zealand and Australia, their shows regularly sell out, and they’ve been first pick to support many heavy rock and metal bands touring Down Under. But all that goodwill has come at a cost. The band’s members are older. Their success sits alongside already established lives and responsibilities, meaning they haven’t been able to spend months on end touring the globe to capitalise on their success. But the temptations of being under the spotlight have remained. Overindulgence, interband tensions, and the inevitable pressures on the band’s lives have resulted in some bleak personal consequences. You can hear that on The Death of All Things. The album is the darkest release yet from Beastwars, and, as the band noted on their Facebook page recently, “no ending is perfect, strewn with unfinished hopes, ambitions and dreams.” That mood framed the writing of The Death of All Things. However, while it’s an album born from chaos, it benefits from the creative courage Beastwars have shown when facing what they supposed was their demise. The safest option for Beastwars would have been to wave goodbye with another album like 2013’s much-celebrated Blood Becomes Fire. That album proved to be a smash hit at home, with only Canadian crooner Michael Bublé standing in the way of Beastwars reaching number one on New Zealand’s album charts. A similar album would have ended the band’s career on a satisfactory note, and softened the blow to fans. But Beastwars haven’t delivered a repeat of Blood Becomes Fire, and it’s a credit to them for not doing so. While they’ve built their success on sludge and doom at home (where band’s of Beastwars’ ilk are rare), internationally, fans of blown-out sturm und drang have plenty of similar music to choose from. It’s crucial, especially when reaching out to an audience half a world away, that Beastwars offer something different. Beastwars are often compared to riff monsters like Kyuss or High on Fire, and sure, there are plenty of guitar and percussion parallels to be found. But the band’s real musical talent lies in the hands of bassist James Woods, whose low-end, churning playing calls to mind KEN mode, Unsane, or Killing Joke. Beastwars have heavy metal accoutrements to burn, but they’re a far more interesting band when they bring the thick and dirty abrasiveness of AmRep-indented noise-rock or steel-edged post-punk into play. On The Death of All Things, the band’s chosen to do just that. The album reveals the depth of their musical marrow further by displaying a much wider spectrum of influences. That’s why clear-cut ’90s psychedelic rock has been injected into “Witches”. That’s why “Disappear” displays such an upfront bluesy rock swagger. That’s why Beastwars have included “The Devil Took Her”, an acid-folk amble, of all things. And that’s why tracks like “Devils of Last Night” and “Call to the Mountain” bring to mind the early years of the Jesus Lizard and Melvins, rather than retreading the same old sludge and doom pathways. What will be most familiar to Beastwars’ fans is how The Death of All Things aims to match musical heaviness with a corresponding emotional weight. In this case, the torment and madness expressed by frontman Matt Hyde hits harder than on any other Beastwars release. Hyde is a charismatic frontman, and his default live stance is to prowl the stage, arms aloft, calling down the Gods like a crazed preacher. That unhinged energy hasn’t always transferred to Beastwars’ recordings, but Hyde howls bloody murder on The Death of All Things. That’s where those smashed hopes and dreams are heard. That’s where the chaos of lives crumbling is exhibited. Hyde, and the band, have never sounded so tortured or fucking angry at the world. It would be understandable to presume that the personal troubles Beastwars have faced, and the uncertainty about their future, would have bled into The Death of All Things in negative ways. However, there’s no evidence of Beastwars limping off into the sunset on their new album. The hardships Beastwars faced have been transformed into artistic strengths, seeing the band boldly push past genre restrictions and incorporate far more influences from outside of metal. Beastwars have shows lined up in New Zealand and Australia to support The Death of All Things’s release, they are the band’s only shows for 2016 and “maybe even longer...”. If The Death of All Things is the final chapter in Beastwars’ creative story, it is, by far, the most interesting one of all....
https://play.spotify.com/album/7Dm7SgfxThJcYlxdEKgNuM...
The Death of All Things is out now via Obey the Riff. Buy limited vinyl direct from band. Europe: shop.bilocationrecords.com Australia: www.nervegas.com.au New Zealand: jbhifi.co.nz Follow Beastwars on Facebook....
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