Wolves in the Throne Room live at Portland, ME’s SPACE Gallery
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As the Pacific Northwest’s preeminent black metal act, Wolves in the Throne Room carry a mythical air. A press release for the recent reissue of their 2005 debut Diadem of 12 Stars paints a portrait of brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver composing their hymns of “lunar sorcery” and “wild spirits” in a “windowless, black room over the long dark nights of winter.” Their visual aesthetic focuses on cryptic and eerily beautiful forest imagery. Their Wikipedia page notes that they prefer to perform by firelight. If a black metal band somehow factored into the universe of Twin Peaks, it’d be this one. And should there be any doubt, rest assured that their live show manifests all of that Cascadian mysticism quite successfully.
Establishing a mood seemed to be on everyone’s mind on September 26 at Portland’s SPACE Gallery, where Wolves made a sold-out stop on their first expansive U.S. tour in several years. New Hampshire trio Northern Curse opened the night illuminated by ghostly projections and ripping through a blistering, blackened set that made space for the occasional mournful piano interlude. Feral, who hail from Portland, then received a warm hometown reception for a dark, densely layered performance anchored by the intensity of otherworldly vocalist M. Alex.
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Minimum light and maximum volume had already characterized the evening, but the attention to atmosphere was upped considerably as members of Wolves began lighting candles and sage while a fog machine gradually filled the room with a thematically appropriate mist. The Gallery was more reminiscent of some woodland ritual setting than a nonprofit contemporary art space by the time the band opened with Diadem’s “Queen of The Borrowed Light,” and that’s precisely how they wanted it.
The Brothers Weaver, founding and constant members of Wolves, were joined by two auxiliary guitarists and a keyboardist to properly flesh out the complexities of their studio creations. For the duration of a nearly 90-minute set, that lineup traversed the band’s catalog in immensely satisfying fashion. The result wasn’t just crushing, but measuredly, precisely so. It’s rare to hear a triple-guitar live lineup that sounds as crisply defined as this one did. All the fog and flame ambiance was a key factor in the performance, but this live iteration of Wolves truly shines on technical merit. They sounded massive and entrancing, and the collective experience of the set was to feel transported to those haunted forests that the band so frequently evokes. Snapping back to the reality of the quiet city street outside was jarring after so effective a spell had been cast.
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Northern Curse
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
Northern Curse at SPACE Gallery
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Feral
Writers’ Choice: 11 Top Metal Albums of 2019 + 73 Other Surefire Bangers
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We ran 11 individual year-end lists for 2019, representing an impressively wide gamut of tastes and appreciated styles among those who chose to contribute this year. It was heartening to see, following some quick tongue-out number-crunching, that there was actually minimal overlap among the selections. And while it's very not surprising that Blood Incantation's Hidden History of the Human Race came out on top -- mostly because the album is just that goddamn fantastic, but also because not listening to it would be rotten negligence -- this expected result points to a bigger truth about the current state of heavy metal. There's just too goddamn much of it for any one person to listen to. Hence why we talk about heavy metal to begin with. Discovery. It's one of the core pillars of the heavy metal scene, quite literally the glue which keeps it all together: sharing new music with others. The pleasure is clearly both selfish and altruistic, we do it to make both ourselves and others feel good. The year-end list is the perfect space to practice just that, doling out slices of another metalhead's mind to bolster our own understanding of what this music might actually mean overall, personally too. And it's in the year-end list where subjectivity reigns truly free, which is why applying some quantitative shackles to the thing seems pointless and daft despite still illuminating how effective (and viral) discovery and sharing are. I try to think of it more of this way: here's a gigantic list of really fucking splendid heavy metal albums, with 11 especially splendid albums highlighted on top. These 11 top picks were albums selected by two or more writers across our (coincidentally equal) 11 total year-end list contributions. Think of the whole thing, though, as a shopping guide, or a way to burn an hour or two clicking through random selections, or something to churn through more procedurally if that's your style. This collection features everything from super-underground gems to goddamn Rammstein and everything in-between. Most importantly, it's been vetted by a plurality of tastes, meaning that whatever albums you discover within have a higher chance than usual of sticking with you. Here's to another wonderful year of heavy music. It just keeps getting better and better, and there's no way in hell I'm getting off this train.-- Andrew Rothmund
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Top 11 of 2019 (Albums Chosen More Than Once)
Blood Incantation -- Hidden History of the Human Race (x4) Blut aus Nord -- Hallucinogen (x3) Big|Brave -- A Gaze Among Them (x3) Bonus: read Langdon Hickman's full review of A Gaze Among Them. Krzysztof Drabikowski -- Панихида (x2) Bonus: read Thomas Hinds' Batushka vs. Batushka comparison review. Idle Hands -- Mana (x2) Bonus: read Joseph Aprill's interview with Idle Hands mastermind Gabriel Franco. Friendship -- Undercurrent (x2) Funereal Presence -- Achatius (x2) Bonus: read Jenna DePasquale's review of Achatius. Crypt Sermon -- The Ruins of Fading Light (x2) Bonus: read Brian O'Neill's live report. Brutus -- Nest (x2) Lingua Ignota -- Caligula (x2) Bonus: read Jenna DePasquale's interview with Lingua Ignota mastermind Kristin Hayter, plus Brian O'Neill's live report. Inter Arma -- Sulphur English (x2) Bonus: read Brian O'Neill's interview with drummer TJ Childers and guitarist Trey Dalton, plus Langdon Hickman's full review of Sulphur English....
73 Other Amazing Heavy Albums Released in 2019
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A Pregnant Light -- Broken Play Alcest -- Spiritual Instinct Angel Witch -- Angel of Light Bask -- III Borknagar -- True North Botanist -- Ecosystem Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze -- Offerings of Flesh and Gold Candlemass -- The Door to Doom Car Bomb -- Mordial Cattle Decapitation -- Death Atlas Cave In -- Final Transmission Chelsea Wolfe -- Birth of Violence Cherubs -- Immaculada High Cosmic Putrefaction -- At the Threshold of the Greatest Chasm Cult of Luna -- A Dawn to Fear Darkthrone -- Old Star Dead to a Dying World -- Elegy Devourment -- Obscene Majesty Disillusion -- The Liberation Eternal Storm -- Come the Tide False -- Portent Fluids -- Exploitative Practices Frozen Soul -- Encased in Ice GEAR -- GEAR Hath -- Of Rot and Ruin Haunter -- Sacramental Death Qualia Heilung -- Futha Herod -- Sombre Dessein Immortal Bird -- Thrive on Neglect Ithaca -- The Language of Injury Knocked Loose -- A Different Shade of Blue L’Acéphale -- L’Acéphale Laster -- Het Wassen Oog Liturgy -- H.A.Q.Q. Magic Circle -- Departed Souls Mayhem -- Daemon Mizmor -- Cairn Monolord -- No Comfort Mork -- Det Svarte Juv Nasheim -- Jord och aska Nebula -- Holy Shit Neptune Power Federation -- Memoirs of a Rat Queen No One Knows What the Dead Think -- No One Knows What the Dead Think Obsequiae -- The Palms of Sorrowed Kings Orville Peck -- Pony Petrol Girls -- Cut & Stitch Pig's Blood -- A Flock Slaughtered Rainer Landfermann -- Mein Wort in Deiner Dunkelheit Rammstein -- Rammstein Red Beard Wall -- The Fight Needs Us All Repugnance -- Shrouds of Deceit Riot City -- Burn the Night Sanguine Eagle -- Storm Mysticism + Shores of Avarice Sanguisugabud -- Pornographic Seizures SeeYouSpaceCowboy -- The Correlation Between Entrance and Exit Wounds Spirit Adrift -- Divided by Darkness Sunn O))) -- Life Metal The Callous Daoboys -- Die on Mars The Coathangers -- The Devil You Know The Lord Weird Slough Feg -- New Organon The Wraith -- Absolute Power Tomb Mold -- Planetary Clairvoyance Tool -- Fear Inoculum Torche -- Admission Tzompantli -- Tlamanalli Véhémence -- Par le Sang Versé Violet Cold -- Kosmik Waste of Space Orchestra -- Syntheosis Wear Your Wounds -- Rust on the Gates of Heaven White Ward -- Love Exchange Failure Workshed -- Workshed Wormwitch -- Heaven That Dwells Within Zig Zags -- They'll Never Take Us Alive...
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Sleep Christens the Dawn of Legal Weed in Illinois (Live Review + Photos, Chicago)
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Sleep are nothing short of legendary in the hazy realms of stoner doom, or all stoner music for that matter. They're so good, in fact, that you don't really need to smoke weed to enjoy their onslaught of fuzzed-out monster riffs, rhythmic chants, and bombastic drumming -- though, and I can attest to this first-hand after my first-ever Sleep show last night, being a bit baked certainly ups the enjoyment factor of witnessing the masters practicing their craft. This final show on New Year's Eve in Chicago was important for two reasons: 1) it was the last Sleep performance before their newly-confirmed hiatus, and 2) it ushered in legalized recreational weed for the state of Illinois....
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And, of course, as Sleep pummeled through the night, they paused a few minutes before midnight to welcome a new year (and decade) as shouts and screams of "legal weed!" burst from the crowd. Then came the hotboxing astronaut man, as expected, before the band returned to their low-end assault on our minds and bodies....
[caption id="attachment_68432" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Sleep at midnight, ushering in 2020 with a hotboxing astronaut.[/caption]...
Witnessing Sleep perform their magic is a must-see event for anyone who strongly associates weed and music. While Sleep clearly belongs to the brand of stoner doom that makes their dank connections clear and known, they're not stupid or fake-psychedelic about it. Sleep represents the best way to toke: with friends, with music, with groove in your heart and passion in your mind. And floating on iridescent waves of edible and smokable goodness, I let the band churn my mind and contort my body with their low-frequency jam and sensational wall of pure crunch. What a way to welcome a new era for the state; here's to hoping the rest of the country follows suit and pursues legalization. Until then, hopefully we see more of Sleep before too too late. Shout-out to opening act Big Business as well, who kept a packed house completely captivated during a behemoth-sounding set....
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From Above (and Below): Five Easily Missed Death Metal Bangers from Last Year
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As the old year has now closed and the new year has dawned, as list season has come and gone and all the best records have been catalogued not only here but elsewhere, some obvious questions arise. In a list of ten, how do you cover everything? How do you cover even a decent spread? Would 25 help? 50? 100? For any who've attempted to grapple with this issue, making a total compendium of every record that caught the eye or is worth a minute of time, it becomes apparent there is no real solution. Every attempted fix leaves a gap elsewhere, while doing nothing feels like deliberately leaving certainly albums to moulder unjustly. This is compounded by that persist feeling, one anyone who's drafted one of these lists or sent in a ballot knows well, which is remembering a record minutes, hours, days after submitting, kicking yourself for a full year that you forgot such an obvious record, swearing you'll never do so again, only to inevitably fuck it up the next year too. So, this is an attempt to bridge that gap, just a bit. This isn't a "best of" nor is it a ranked list. This instead are a handful of death metal records worth your time from 2019 that managed to slip through the cracks for us but now hopefully won't for you. There are of course more records of value than what follow, ones that didn't get proper full reviews or looks otherwise. It's a matter of interest of mine to do these more informal dives more often, especially where it privileges interesting releases over merely the good or great. Last year was, like all years, one of great depth, some buried deep beneath the surface in demos and micro-labels while others were obscured purloined letter-style in big labels and prominent groups. It's of value, I think, to have these kinds of informal dives to chart and note these releases as often as possible as a supplement to the deeper critical dives we sometimes do on specific albums or with our lists or columns or features. There's simply too much great and wonderful and interesting heavy metal, which we all love so much, and despite fitting as much as we possibly can in with all the different kinds of pieces we produce and run here, we're always looking for ways to fit more in, especially in a way that isn't just a never-ending perpetually-updated list of albums with no real notes. This is an imperfect but sincere stab at that kind of form, something I hope to do more often. Heavy metal deserves it. Heavy metal fucking rules....
The Acacia Strain -- It Comes In Waves EP December 26th, 2019 I'll admit forthrightly that I've never been a big The Acacia Strain fan. This is not their fault; from what I understand from fans, they nail the middle space between metalcore and deathcore with aplomb and, for fans of the style, deliver the goods consistently with a weighty emotional kick to match, and for that I'm happy for them. The problem is with me: we all have our genre blindspots, and the school of metalcore they draw from has always left me cold in a way that it hasn't others that I know and respect. As a result, I typically keep my mouth shut regarding not just their work but other bands of the style. People who love and value this music deserve competent and invested critical writing about it, something I can't honestly give. That said, there have been two releases by the band that have caught my eye in the past. The first was the Above/Below EP, a brief 8-minute release that played like a single longer song. That piece exchanged metalcore/deathcore breakdowns for doom metal and switched up the timbre of both the guitars and the vocals, giving the piece a sludgier feel that I felt more at home with. Their following full-length Coma Witch was a double disc record, the first disc of which was metalcore and deathcore of their standard while the second disc caught my ear again, being a nearly 30-minute long sludge/death-doom track. I can't honestly evaluate it in the context of sludge and death-doom more broadly, but the fact that it was executed at all and executed well to boot, feeling like it could sit comfortably next to something like Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Arc, was pleasure enough for me. The It Comes In Waves EP is effectively the followup to that piece of music, once again being a 30-minute long song, this time freed of being the second disc to unrelated musical material but instead presented on its own from the wonderful Closed Casket Activities. The shift in venue and scale seemed to open up the band a lot more this time around; I'm convinced that if this were the first release of a new group or, like Stomach Earth's incredible debut, were released as a newly-named side project rather than under the main group name, most underground extreme metal fans would find it mighty satisfying. As it is, as the EP was released at the tail-end of 2019, outside of standard list or review season, and so slipped through the cracks more on timing than on merit. But it's a good album, one that makes me eat crow on every bad word I've said about bands of this style. It's good to be proven wrong; that means there's more great music in the world....
Wilderun -- Veil of Imagination November 1st, 2019 It's shocking to me that I wasn't made aware of both this band in general and this record in specific sooner, though I would caution it's better to start with the group's discography here than earlier. The early records of this group are symphonic folk metal, with death and black metal arriving but only as brief colors to the affair, similar to how Thin Lizzy or Judas Priest or Iron Maiden twin leads can appear on any given type of metal record without necessarily making the album feel like traditional metal. Veil of Imagination, though, not only is Wilderun's most death metal release but also, incidentally, their best. It plays like a single long-form song or song suite, albeit one with tremendous dynamic ebbs and crests rather than a single continuous roar, often sounding like if Opeth were produced by Devin Townsend at his most grandiose and symphonic. The sense of influence of those two legendary forces is severe here, but not to the record's detriment; it feels at once both loving and a satisfactory and logical extension of those styles, producing a vast and panoramic sweep within the style. There are moments that feel almost like musical theater, staging and dramatic pose becoming apparent in the enunciation of lines and swooping and glittering of the orchestration, before it tears into Still Life-era riffing again. The cover does the record favors, too; Wilderun are obviously a band that sees death metal as capable of doing a great deal more than what it is sometimes asked to do....
Scythelord -- Asclepius EP December 21st, 2019 This is a short release, being only two songs in just over ten minutes, but the Asclepius EP's sense of dynamic range and the breadth of its emotional arc feels much more substantial. Once again, this was released just before Christmas, meaning that between the life duties and pleasures of the holidays it was passed over for a more proper look, but it feels only right to mention here. The proceedings seem to draw equally from German thrash, early Voivod, and something close to the heady sci-fi prog-death of Horrendous. The riffs have a technical snap to them without feeling inhuman, keeping that necessary tie to death metal's roots in thrash to keep things dirty and punky. This is, from the looks of it, a look at an upcoming LP, one that's now on my record on the back of the strength of these songs. If Voivod-touched proggy death-thrash delivered in under ten minutes doesn't perk up your ears, we can never be friends. This is the stuff I fell in love with heavy metal for....
Xoth -- Interdimensional Invocations October 18th, 2019 Fun fact: I was strongly urged by several editors and friends to dig into this record for a proper review but declined. In retrospect, what the hell was I thinking? Much like the Scythelord but on a bigger scale, this is a mix of death, black, thrash, and prog metal, often sounding like Watchtower or Toxik or any of those tek-thrash cats from the late 1980s tapping into the extreme metal ideas that would come later. Like many of the greats of the style, however, Xoth make sure to keep a degree of punky roughness to the record, be it with some nasty chugging downpicking here or just a bit of sonic roughness in the mix there, enough to keep the album from feeling inhuman in an uncanny way. If heavy metal is the greatest music on the face of the planet due to its intense imagistic power, then Interdimensional Invocations is an insane transcosmic hyperstellar sword and starship sci-fi low fantasy epic, like "Conan the Barbarian" but half-cyborg laying waste to the anarcho-technoid scourges of the lawless planets of dead space. Killer....
Cryptae -- Vestigial August 16th, 2019 This kind of dense, opaque music has always appealed to me. It's elusive in an intellectual way but immediate to the senses, like a surrealist painting rendered in extreme metal. There are some quarters that would classify Vestigial as black metal, and I don't think they'd necessarily be wrong, but it feels more related to death metal to my ears, deliberately filtering the brutish directness of death metal through a million abstracting layers, not unlike Portal or Mitochondrial or the like. While this has a great deal of sonic similarity to those deeply abstract and avant-garde death metal bands, Cryptae has moments of transparency and orchestral percussion/timbres next to the mossy smears of distortion and unintelligible gargling vocals that shift it ever so slightly away. This, plus the fact that it's a single lengthy song, not to mention the stark and intriguing cover art, places it emotionally for me closer to the surrealist films of Maya Deren, the bizarre anti-fascistic horror of Giorgio de Maria, or the abstract philosophies of Eugene Thacker. It's relation to death metal feels similar to the relation more esoteric post-punk releases have with the Ramones or MC5, one clearly indebted to the other but applying Dali-esque mutations to the textuality of the canon of death metal, here focusing seemingly on the Demilichian wing of avant-garde death metal....
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Doomed to the Underground: Three Underheard Behemoths Released in 2019
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As one of the oldest subgenres of heavy metal, doom metal has experienced numerous evolutions, subdivisions, and combinations since its genesis at the hands of Black Sabbath all those decades ago. The result is that two bands today can both label themselves as doom metal and sound completely, utterly different, despite claiming the same parentage -- uptempo stoner doom versus bleak funeral doom, for example. But there's still no mistaking either of those doom subgenres for anything other than just doom; provided there's some remaining trace of slower tempos, thicker tones, and/or bluesier riffs, doom as a whole can be widely experimented with. That experimentation continues today, though plenty of bands stick to the tried-and-true with exceptional results as well. Of course, doom metal has plenty of stale tropes and forgettable releases that bog it down; let that not distract from the amazing material coming out of the woodwork every year. Last year was no exception. Here are three underground doom metal releases you may have missed before the new decade dawned.-- Ted Nubel
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BUS Never Decide February 28th, 2019 BUS hails from Greece, a place which has more than its share of metal bands but not too many notable acts that fall into the stoner doom bin. As such, there's not really a template for what "Greek doom" ought to sound like, but I'm hoping that BUS can help change that, if only because I selfishly want more stuff like this. Never Decide spends its first 15 minutes convincing you that it’s just really good stoner rock. But just like the band’s name -- which stands for their earlier, more cumbersome and equally baffling name "Bus the Unknown Secretary" -- there’s more to it. As the album surges on, BUS goes off the goddamn rails, straying from their bucolic, flower-filled pastures to plummet into much heavier and stranger lands. The defining track for this plot twist is “Lucifer” which starts off as a mournful ballad and ends up a lot closer to ballsy NWOBHM, gradually shifting gears as it goes. On repeat listens, it’s really not a surprise: even the first track “You Better Come In You Better Come Down” has a dark side to it. The title belies the nihilistic vocals within, the lo-fi vocals of Bill “City” Politis, which are loaded with reverb and have a particular insanity to them that only gets more sinister as Never Decide progresses. Meanwhile, the band's stoner side never fully disappears, preventing their genre-bend from fracturing the record's cohesiveness but also injecting tantalizing bits of bluesy swagger into the heaviest passages. The extra-crunchy guitar tones and punishing drumming also add extra weight to the more swing-driven numbers like “Into the Night.”...
Flesh of the Stars Mercy June 21st, 2019 Mercy, the fourth full-length from Chicago group Flesh of the Stars, is a melodic doom album that teeters on the edge of funeral doom from time to time but is perhaps too hopeful-sounding for that label to fully stick. Its 22-minute title track opens with a standard cavalcade of fuzzy harmony -- pleasant, but hard to latch onto for long. After a short while, it's all replaced by clean guitar and soft vocals straight from an early King Crimson epic, creating a rich and complex melody that grows into a full-bodied thunderous hymn when the heavy guitar comes back in. As the dynamics of this long-running song swell and diminish repeatedly, the carefully-crafted melodies and intricate orchestration demand complete attention but also prompt eagerness for what's next. There's a feeling of reverence in these tracks that I can't shake, a dedication to creating beautiful doom metal. While Flesh of the Stars may employ formulas similar to those of bands like Pallbearer and Khemmis, those bands craft emotional material that relies more on vocals and guitar. This band, though, built Mercy from the ground-up to tug at our heartstrings, using samples, ambience, and varied instrumentation to deliver their message. Notably, the vocals are usually heavily layered and choral, so there's less of a direct impact than with the more focused vocal delivery of other bands in this ilk. In fact, I think the album as a whole could have been mixed to be much more hard-hitting and modern sounding, but there's no telling if that would have dispelled the sacred aura that enshrouds it. The shorter tracks pull their weight just as well as the title track, allowing elaboration on some of the musical themes and a tighter focus on specific elements. I especially enjoyed the placement of the short interlude "Wisteria," showcasing haunting vocals and guitar for a few peaceful minutes before the last track immediately brings back the low-end rumble as an action-packed finale. In my mind, putting your longest track first is a risky move, both because casual listeners might be alarmed by the extreme lack of brevity, and because it might cast a shadow on the rest of the album if it ends up being the highlight. Fortunately, that's not the case here -- Flesh of the Stars have written solid material from start to finish....
The Lone Madman Let the Night Come October 25th, 2019 Let's say that you've found yourself trying to get a friend into old-school, traditional doom metal -- you might think to start with the classics, such as Finnish masterminds and pioneers Reverend Bizarre, but be careful. Although the output of bands like that include some of the best traditional doom written to date, it can also be especially slow and brutally methodical compared to today's more streamlined approach. Diehard fans will claim that these sections only make the changeups that more amazing, and that's true, but if your friend bails on you 20 minutes into "They Used Dark Forces / Teutonic Witch," can you really blame them? The trick is inoculation via gateway bands: ones that are still slow, but with a more consistent string of payoffs, letting listeners savor delicious riffs more often than not. We saw a great candidate this year in the form of The Lone Madman's debut full-length Let the Night Come, yet another Finnish doom metal album worthy of classic status. I wouldn't label Let the Night Come as "approachable" in any sense that diminishes its quality: it's still a traditional doom album that favors ten-minute-plus runtimes and thoroughly old-school production values. And, in keeping with the ways of traditional doom metal, The Lone Madman's slow riffing maintains a measured pace and a low timbre, leaving room for Turkka Inkilä's rich and despondent vocals to swell and harmonize with the guitar melodies. It's easy to sink into the rhythm of these songs, somehow, as the vocal parts emphasize the catchy patterns behind even the most diabolical of riffs. The production, then, is remarkably supportive of all these elements: everything is where you expect it to be and everything that needs to be heard. The snare during driving portions, the sing-along-ready choruses, and the ever-impressive riffs -- everything is perfectly audible. In many cases, mournful, minor key progressions are followed immediately by unforgettably non-traditional riffs, something more in line with the Maryland doom scene: bluesy and often with a shuffle feel, but doomed all the same. Some of these riffs, such as the one that pops up halfway through closing track "House of Mourning," are certifiably the best I heard all year. This doesn't feel like a cheap bait-and-switch or a case of "wait until it gets good," but instead both cadences fit together and interlock to form robust song structures that don't stay in a particular mode for too long. Further toying with experimentation, the third track, "Häxan," busts out a flute for a regrettably short period and then proceeds to flip the script by allowing Turkka to full-on scream for a change. Over the simplest, cruelest riff imaginable, he chokes out the song title with unbridled rage, a far sight from the florid and even whimsical construction of the rest of the song. Touches like these help define Let the Night Come as more than a by-the-numbers doom record and set apart their sound as their own concoction, not just a tribute to the past....
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The Jesus Lizard and Plaque Marks @ Union Transfer, Philadelphia (Live Review + Photos)
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Buncha fucking clowns. No, seriously, that’s what Plaque Marks were repping: bassist Doug Sabolik sported a rainbow wig while guitarist Gene Woolfolk looked sweet with an oversized jaunty bow atop his head. At the side of the stage, someone – a roadie, perhaps? – had a full-fledged Bozo outfit on. He stood next to a dude in a flamboyant red suit who added trombone to a couple of songs. They came out onto the stage for a few bits, with the red suit guy for some barely-audible-over-the-din horn and Bozo for moral support. Someone else not in costume came out and juggled while someone else entirely blew up balloon animals because that is what one does when the lines between circus and insane asylum are as blurred that much. Plaque Marks serve as a new vehicle/side project for some Philly scenesters of note (Fight Amp and Creepoid alumni fill out the lineup). The group’s noise alternates between being bludgeoningly chugging and chuggingly bludgeoning -- a perfect way to kick off a night of noise rock royalty....
[gallery ids="15412,15416,15413,15415,15417,15414" galleryid="846:68444" galleryindex="0" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no" ]...
And that’s what The Jesus Lizard is, really. They emerged to spearhead a noise rock renaissance during the height of alt-rock 1990s, Lollpalosers who snookered Capitol Records to subsidize their arts. Sure, they benefited from timing, but they benefited from being timeless more than that. They still kick off their set with “Puss,” their biggest hit thanks to sharing a split with Nirvana. Within seconds of the churning riff that kicks it off, frontman David Yow is already sitting on the crowd – yes, that is the best way to describe his interaction with an audience that seems to view being sat on by Yow as a rite of passage. Before the song is over, he will be tossed back on the stage, his beer belly distending from underneath his shirt that reads "Fuck Trump” in capital letters. This would not be an isolated incident. Yow spends as much time off the stage as on it. It’s not simple nihilism at work; when he laid atop the front row repeatedly chanting “Will you bury me?” as “If You Had Lips” creaked to a halt, he showed solidarity with the throng....
[gallery ids="68451,68453,68455,68458,68460,68459,68454,68457,68456,68452" galleryid="846:68444" galleryindex="1" enablefullscreen="yes" showthumbs="no"] https://youtu.be/0hPRuCVNuVo...
As much as he captivates and capitulates, he isn’t what makes Jesus Lizard worth seeing over 30 years after they crawled out from Austin, ten years since the first reunion shows. It’s cool if he lands on you, sure, but Duane Denison is stoically and rigidly wringing every ounce of distorted staccato skronk from his guitar while Mac McNeilly is locked in with David Wm Sims keeping the chaos in perfect syncopation. “Bloody Mary” and “Blue Shot” alone put them front and center and makes it quite clear they are up there with any extreme music rhythm section you can name). Anyone who thinks noise rock is all crass, no craft don’t know Jesus Lizard. If that person was at Union Transfer, they got to know the band pretty well. The band churned out visceral gristle for well over 90 minutes culled from the band’s entire discography save for the Blue swansong that I am pretty sure they have disowned entirely. Standouts among the 28 (!) tracks included the film noir police chase “Glamourous,” the fucked up blues of “My Own Urine,” the thrashing “Boilmaker,” and (to this day) watching them cover Chrome and The Dicks is life-affirming. Helmet got a lot of accolades for jazzy precision and hyper-pretension plus they sold a ton more records, but Jesus Lizard has always been just as controlled, concise, and on-point. They only lacked the ostentation and who needs that anyway? In their prime they were just as accomplished as that classic, scintillating Rollins Band lineup, and the Lizard hasn’t seemed to lose very much from those halcyon days. If anything they’re even smarter now, having learned how to pace themselves throughout long, intense sets. With a dozen songs over two separate encores, that was kind of important. This was actually the second Philly show since the Jesus Lizard reformed for the second time. The novelty is over. The Jesus Lizard couldn’t rely on nostalgia now, not anymore. Fortunately they don’t have to....
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Wolves in the Throne Room
Lotus Thief, Passionate Storytellers of Night, Bring Us “Libation Bearers”
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Lotus Thief first captured my attention with their 2014 debut Rervm, a delightful exercise in postmodern space-rock which felt psychedelic sans pretense. Above all, though, it was resolutely a dark album despite its occasional shimmer and glimmer, seating it perfectly in my genre-sorted library of albums under the category of "night music." I reserve this category for music which sort-of defies categorization any other way; sure, Lotus Thief's upcoming third full-length Oresteia crosses paths with doom, post-rock, and post-metal, but how it weaves within and throughout all these varied cornerstones is the real story. It does so again under the darkness of night, through the veiled shadows in and out of which mysterious spectres appear and fade. But now, musically and vocally, the band has absolutely blossomed into so much more. Check it out for yourself with an advance stream of the album's longest song "Libation Bearers" below....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymDAV_JPA8&feature=youtu.be...
The dreamy intro on "Libation Bearers" soon gives way to a building surge of rock, then metal, as frontwoman Bezaelith's on-point clean vocals give way to equally on-point screams. The song feels like one behemoth arc rather than a verse/chorus deal; for sure, one thing I've always loved about Lotus Thief was their ability to flow like water when most bands churn like engines. This new album sees this more than ever, especially as instrumentation, production, and everything else has been given a huge boost since their second full-length Gramayre. "Libation Bearers" is easily the strongest song by this band to date, and the new album shows substantial progress from an already-strong position, opening the taps anew and really letting some beautiful inspiration flow. Oresteia hits shelves next month, but in the meantime, check out our exchange with Bezaelith about the new album and the band's direction from this point forward....
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You sound killer on this new album. How do you feel your singing style has progressed since the prior two albums Rervm and Gramayre? Have you adopted any new techniques, or is there any new emotionality behind this year’s voice? Thank you. The overall feeling is that the vocals are coming forward and becoming more clear and crystalline. In my early work in metal, a lot of the musicians I worked with preferred their female vocals "buried" in the mix, which stylistically means treating the vocals like you would treat a high guitar-line in a black metal song. It was a stylistic preference at the time of Rervm, and when Gramarye came along, the vocals got pushed forward a bit. When it came time for Oresteia I felt like the vocals were not just a pretty instrument dingling along a melody or some whispy girl vox thing: they were driving the songs and telling the story. They needed to be front and center to do that. Musically, how does Oresteia progress or transcend prior Lotus Thief albums? Or, maybe it lives in a more mutual relationship with those older releases, each one showcasing a facet of the band? Oresteia takes a step forward from the previous albums, namely in the number of hands it has passed through to get to its final form. Rervm and Gramarye were primarily the work of two composers. Oresteia is a collaboration of five composers -- myself and four new players, each tempering the album with their own personalities. I drafted the demos, but from there Kore, Tal R'eb, Romthulus, and Ascalaphus were weaving their threads into the whole piece. Kore rewrote his own drums and gave them such a raw beauty and power. He's one of the toughest dudes I know, and this comes out in his playing. It's like a stone foundation. The guitars are different too -- instead of just me, there's a blend of myself, Tal R'eb, and Romthulus, giving the guitars a wider field in general. Additionally, three males sing on this record: Tal R'eb, Romthulus, and Ascalaphus. Ascalaphus can be heard the most. His hellish screams and dark low vocals are awesome counterpoint to the female lead and chorale. Also there is Tal R'eb, who basically stood up and co-produced this whole thing with me. His work is all over guitars, and most particularly synth -- most specifically the ambient tracks on this album. The responsibility of making this album feel like one long experience from start to finish fell to him. His synth gives me chills when I listen to it, particularly "Banishment" and "Woe." We work really well together on coming up with parts and writing the main components of songs, and this will be even more obvious in the albums to come. I felt like with these guys standing with me, my vocals could ride in front and tell the story. Lastly, this album was mixed and mastered with Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts) at his studio, The Thousand Caves, in NYC. Colin and I met years ago on tour. He gave me sound advice when I was holding a demo of Rervm and it just made sense when I moved to NY to see what our sound would evolve into with him behind the desk. He gave this record a kind of controlled burn that truly served the music. Is there a story behind Oresteia, a narrative, or other meaningful tale, whether embedded in the lyrics or held within the personal lives of the band’s members? What can listeners expect to uncover, at least emotionally, and maybe even concretely? Lotus Thief's albums focus on words from the past. A lot of history is discarded without lessons learned. This is perhaps the hardest thing to do -- to think on what the past is telling us. Oresteia is the first Lotus Thief album to tell a story -- in this case, the story is Aeschylus' 5th Century B.C. tragedy, "The Oresteia." The play deals with violence and the birth of law as something handed to us by a higher power (like Hobbes' "Leviathan," "State of Nature" requiring governance to save people from themselves -- highly debatable stuff). For the first story we told, I wanted to do a piece that appears in almost every American public school classroom. A text probably 80% of the kids read and maybe only 20% are given a chance to think or care about depending on quality of instruction and reduced attention spans unbridled consumer-driven technology has yoked upon the young. That we have such instances of actual bloodshed in our classrooms is indicative that the question of violence needs re-framing and debate. It is extremely difficult to channel our anger and pain into something that serves rather than destroys. Oresteia is a story about people who inflicted a lot of pain upon each other, but the making of Oresteia was the reverse. We worked together in spite of the inevitable stuff that happens in life. That's the achievement of this album, and its successors. We go into more depth on the players, our history and Aeschylus's tale in the artbook release of this record, which was an honor to create. That Prophecy is doing these books is imaginative and shows great faith in our work, for which we are incredibly thankful. How do you feel about the re-release of the debut album Rervm? Is there something about that album in particular special to you that you’d like to share with listeners? It's great to see Rervm come full circle again, most particularly because it gave us the chance to reimagine some of the songs in acoustic and ambient forms, namely "Aeternvm" and "Lvx." It's a faint glimpse into what spending a few days in our studio is like -- we are constantly tossing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. As Lotus Thief progresses, we are likely going to continue adding trying new ideas. The spirit of Rervm was one of experimentation, so an artbook reimagination of this album was perfect. We go into the story of this album mostly through the eyes of a teacher. Another thing is the addition of a new female vox, that of my best friend whose chosen name for this project is "Mohrany" (go ahead and scramble them letters and you'll get it), joining me in the singing of "Lvx." We met during college, and despite keeping ourselves in a good degree of mischief, much of what we do is art-based in our adult lives. I hope one day to tour with her and to give the audience the full blast of her storm of vocal power, which is not even the tip of the iceberg on the ambient "Lvx." Most importantly, the artbook edition of this thing gave my students a chance to feature some of their artwork as well, which is the highest honor a teacher can receive, to be trusted with someone else's work as part of a larger concept. Rervm was such a great starting point for Lotus Thief. It gave me a place to grow from, and philosophically, "De Rervm Natura" is a wonderful first concept in setting the bar for its successors. What’s on the horizon for Lotus Thief? Are you ushering in anything special for a new decade of music, aside from the new album of course? We've got three more albums lined up to be hammered into final form over the next decade. We are notorious for taking our sweet time in the studio, and we've thought long and hard about opening the doors of a Patreon or something, to give the listeners a chance to walk through and see the partially-forged pieces become something bigger, to see the players in their creative elements. There is nothing I love more than touring an artist's studio, seeing what makes them tick, which person is OCD neat, which person is the chaotic but productive mess-maker, all of the little bits of personality and fragility that ultimately become something beautiful and meaningful. Currently, I am building a recording studio on my property, so a large chunk of future albums will be recorded there, and I hope to grow into something of an engineer myself as time, successes and mistakes instruct. I've also got my fingers in several non-Lotus Thief pies, which I am stoked to unveil in the near future. One thing is for sure: I've stopped listening to Oresteia because I can't stop listening to the one coming next. That is a very good sign....
Oresteia releases January 10th, 2020 via Prophecy Productions....
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Wake Releasing “Devouring Ruin,” Share “The Abyssal Plain”
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Canadian extreme metallers Wake are releasing their new album Devouring Ruin on March 20 via Translation Loss. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Dave Otero, and the song "Mouth of Abolition" features a guest solo by Ben Hutcherson (Khemmis, Glacial Tomb). The first taste is "This Abyssal Plain," which covers a lot of ground in its four-minute running time, from a brutal blend of black, death, and grind, to harsh noise to beautiful post-metal, and beyond, and it all comes together seamlessly. What can't they do?...
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Tracklist 1. Dissolve and Release 2. Kana Tevoro (Kania! Kania!) 3. This Abyssal Plain 4. Elegy 5. Mouth of Abolition 6. Paean 7. Torchbearer 8. In the Lair of the Rat Kings 9. Monuments to Impiety 10. The Procession (Death March to Eternity)...
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Chris Butler’s Top Albums of the Decade
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One of my greatest fears has always been running out of time. There are so many fascinating and rewarding pursuits in the world, and true mastery of any of them requires more than a lifetime of dedication. An album can take weeks, months, or years to create. Though this may seem like a long time, the time of creation is dwarfed by the potentially endless amount of enjoyment an album can provide listeners once complete. As listeners, we should take full advantage of that potential. In a world with an ever-growing population and constantly decreasing production costs, the music market is flooded with amazing releases. This poses a problem for completionists like myself. There are simply too many great albums out there. It is impossible to listen to them all, let alone achieve a note-for-note level of understanding of them. I wish I knew every album I enjoy as intimately as I know Revolver by The Beatles. I know that will never happen and that bothers me. It takes hundreds of listens to know an album that well, to know every lyric, every note from every instrument, even every mistake, by heart. That is the point at which a listener can claim to truly understand and love a work of art. The following is a list of metal albums from the past decade that deserve this kind of dedication along with a recommended film pairing which may or may not be taken seriously. Though my efforts may be in vain, I can’t wait to keep listening.-- Chris Butler
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Honorable Mentions
Yob – Atma (Profound Lore, USA) Thantifaxath – Sacred White Noise (Dark Descent, Canada) Aborted – Retrogore (Century Media, Belgium) Tomb Mold – Planetary Clairvoyance (20 Buck Spin, Canada) Ihsahn – Arktis. (Candlelight, Norway) Archspire – Relentless Mutation (Season of Mist, Canada) Artificial Brain – Labyrinth Constellation (Profound Lore, USA) Vildhjarta – Thousands of Evils (Century Media, Sweden) Mgła – Exercises in Futility (Northern Heritage, Poland) Khemmis – Hunted (20 Buck Spin, USA)...
“This is Between the Buried and Me’s best album,” a friend told me in a bar the night The Parallax II: Future Sequence was released. I was aghast but my friend turned out to be correct. The way the band weaves melodies from earlier tracks into later tracks is unmatched on this album, not to mention that they are the strongest of Between the Buried and Me’s career. I regularly find myself humming the main hooks to “Extremophile Elite” and “Silent Flight Parliament” even if I haven’t recently spun the record. Mix these catchy hooks with all the spastic prog acrobatics you expect from Between the Buried and Me, and you wind up with a record that has nearly unlimited relistening potential. Between the Buried and Me’s discography is incredibly dense at this point but this album cannot be missed.
Recommended film pairing: "Thor: Ragnarok" (2017)
The scope of III is immense. It is the Skyrim of black metal. The fact that all of III is the work of one man is mind-boggling. Suffocating black metal, medieval acoustic guitar passages, chant vocals, and snails-paced avant-garde sections are all present over the nearly one-and-a-half hour epic. The second half of this record is where it becomes truly extraordinary. After the dissonance and density of the first several songs, it is breathtaking the way III opens up from “The Spiral Mountain” through to the album’s melodically triumphant conclusion. This is my favorite record to listen to on a cold winter morning’s drive. It is the consummate musical manifestation of the Northern winter landscape.
Recommended film pairing: "How to Train Your Dragon" (2010)
Bonus: check out Andrew Rothmund's five-year anniversary article on III plus interview with project mastermind Ayloss.
Behemoth got their edge back on The Satanist. They announced both the defeat of the stagnation of their sound and the remission of lead singer Nergal’s cancer in one exultant work of art. Behemoth are as obsessed with Satan as ever, as the album title gives away, but there is an air of positivity here. “Messe Noire” and “In the Absence Ov Light” sound more revelatory than depressed. Take pleasure in blackened death metal, take pleasure in life, take pleasure in The Satanist.
Recommended film pairing: "Spotlight" (2015)
Luc Lemay is more than a metal guitarist and vocalist, he is a composer. That statement is not hyperbole. Lemay wrote and arranged “The Battle of Chamdo,” a five-piece string piece, that sits in the middle of a dissonant technical death metal album. Whether you want classical music with your death metal or not, it illustrates the level of musicality behind Colored Sands. Each note and change of tempo has been thought out here. It is not a group of guys randomly flailing away on their instruments with the goal of being faster or more brutal than everyone else. Colored Sands exists to pull emotion from you, and it will succeed if you allow yourself to become immersed in its delightfully impenetrable wall of sound.
Recommended film pairing: "Seven Years in Tibet" (1997)
Панихида fills every second of its runtime with compelling black metal. The Russian Orthodox chants remain as haunting as they were on Batushka’s Litourgiya, but the metal itself is much meaner. The nameless vocalist sounds rabid on tunes like “Песнь 3,” which contrasts diabolically with the clean female vocal parts. The guitar melodies sound like they were plucked from actual church hymns, except they are being played on distorted eight-string guitars instead of a church organ. This was my favorite album of 2019 and it is one of the best the decade has to offer.
Recommended film pairing: "Eastern Promises" (2007)
Bonus: read our Batushka vs. Batushka review from earlier this year.
It’s astonishing how many different emotions Deftones conjure on Koi No Yokan considering their relatively restricted sonic palette. The star of the album is vocalist Chino Moreno, whose ethereal vocals emote senses of yearning, desperation, and adoration throughout the album. Moreno may not be the most technically gifted singer, but his ability to create an atmosphere is invaluable for an album that features variations on the quest to find the ultimate love. Like love itself, Koi No Yokan manages to be beautiful, sensitive, ecstatic, and occasionally crushing. This alternative metal masterpiece is a prime example of what can be achieved when form is used to properly follow function.
Recommended film pairing: "Spirited Away" (2001)
Sometimes there is no greater solace than sadness. It can be a comfort when despair wraps its arms around you like a warm blanket. Sorrow and Extinction expresses this “joy-in-sorrow” feeling with massive detuned guitar riffs, crawling slow tempos, hints of psychedelia, and emotive wailing vocals. The organic production leaves enough space for the occasional rocking guitar riff to rise from the muck and inject a little life into the gloom. If this is what the end of the world sounds like, we are in for a beautiful conclusion.
Recommended film pairing: "Melancholia" (2011)
Dim and Slimeridden Kingdoms slithers into listeners ears with a creepy harpsichord introduction before accelerating to top speed with stellar melodic death metal riffage. Slugdge were on a tear this decade. They released four stellar albums, three of those in consecutive years, yet this one is the perfect cosmic mixture. It adds the right amount of technicality and tightness without becoming robotic. The album artwork, baroque waltzes, and uncomfortably detailed songs about clam harvesting combine to create an uneasy and perverse atmosphere. Slugs are gross and so is Slugdge. Listen to them on Halloween.
Recommended film pairing: "Slither" (2006)
Monolith of Inhumanity was a game-changer when it was released. It catapulted Cattle Decapitation to the top of the deathgrind pack and introduced a vicious and bizarre new screaming technique to the metal genre. On tunes like “Dead Set on Suicide” and “A Living Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat,” Travis Ryan’s pitched-screams added a new injection of melody without compromising the brutality of the end product. Detractors may refer to this technique as “clean singing,” but it is hardly “clean.” It is filthy, and more importantly, it is unique. Cattle Decapitation achieved something on Monolith of Inhumanity that innovative bands of every genre strive for -- an instantly recognizable sound.
Recommended film pairing: "28 Days Later" (2002)
Kvelertak’s eponymous first record is stacked top to bottom with black-‘n’-roll bangers. It must have been an intimidating task for the marketing team at Indie Recordings to pick the singles because nearly every song on this record has hit potential. From the straightforward stomp of “Mjød” to the epic classic rock riffs of “Liktorn,” Kvelertak never slows down and never stops rolling. It is the metal party album to end all metal party albums. If the world is ending and you want to have one final rager, you should put on this album. Simply put, Kvelertak is the most fun you can have listening to a metal record from the creatively fruitful 2010s. Bravo Kvelertak, and bravo heavy metal. Cheers to ten more years of amazing music.
Recommended film pairing: "This Is the End" (2013)
Chris Rowella’s Top Albums of the Decade
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Well, here we are. While this list comprises what I believe to be the best metal (and metal-adjacent) albums of the last ten years, 2019 also marks a full decade of my contributions to Invisible Oranges. Things looked a little different in September 2009, for both myself and this site; I believe we’ve been through some heavy shit since then, highs and lows, and those things have made us stronger and better at what we do. As for the world at large, despite the dour headlines, it continues to become a better, safer, and more prosperous place. Optimism has slowly eaten away at my lifelong commitment to cynicism. Perhaps that is personal growth, or maybe it’s a residual effect of being a husband and father (three times over, no less). It could be a combination of these, and other disparate things, but the source doesn’t really matter. The future is bright. In terms of heavy music, the same notion applies. I don’t know if there’s a common thread connecting the last ten years, other than an ever-expanding output. More bands, more labels, more albums, more spontaneous subgenre booms. While there has inevitably been an increase in clunkers, this exponential growth has also led to a number of amazing releases. The 1980s may always be the sacred ground, but the 2010s have been a pretty special time to be a metal fan....
Honorable Mentions
Mastodon – Once More ‘Round The Sun (Reprise Records, USA) Carcass – Surgical Steel (Nuclear Blast, UK) Coffinworm – When All Became None (Profound Lore, USA) High on Fire – Electric Messiah (eOne, USA) Alice in Chains – The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (Capitol Records, USA) KEN Mode – Loved (Season Of Mist, Canada) Quicksand – Interiors (Epitaph, USA) Messenger – Illusory Blues (Svart, UK) High On Fire – Luminiferous (eOne, USA) Crowbar – Sever the Wicked Hand (eOne, USA)...
The first great album of 2010 still holds up as one of the best albums of the 2010s. Eparistera Daimones is just as much a spiritual as musical follow-up to Celtic Frost swansong Monotheist, continuing its themes of crushing, impending doom and hopelessness. From the funeral dirge of “Abyss Within My Soul” to the headbanging might of “A Thousand Lies”, it still stands alone in its singularity of vision and label-free heaviness.
End of Mirrors is, as the kids say, a mood. Drawing from an inky black well filled with post-punk, goth and psychedelia, Alaric found the sweet spot on their second album. Restrained, tribal drum patterns and heartbeat basslines lay the foundation for shimmering layered guitars and Shane Baker’s haunted vocals. It’s the soundtrack to a thousand rainy days.
“Time to wake up.” That’s the sample that starts album opener “In Our Blood," and it works as a clarion call to anyone that thinks they can put a YOB record on for background music. Following up the slightly uneven Atma, Clearing The Path To Ascend is YOB at their very best. Alternately melancholy and pulverizing, methodical and inventive, it puts more raw emotion and intensity into four songs than most bands can put into four albums. The hypnotic hammering of “Nothing to Win," the ethereal journey of “Marrow"; the peaks and valleys here are palpable, and the album is unforgettable.
Chris Spencer’s abrupt departure from Unsane earlier this year was sad news for the passionate fanbase they’ve grown over the last 25 years. As the godfathers of New York City noise-rock, Unsane could always be counted on to deliver the goods, both live and in the studio. Wreck represents the best of their post-millenium output, chock full of barbed-wire riffs, harmonica solos, and a dead-on cover of Flipper’s “Ha Ha Ha." Intensely emotional and about as subtle as a street fight on East Broadway, Wreck does exactly what its title sets out to do.
Death rock for the people. In an instance of seemingly divine intervention, the Fenriz-approved Beastmilk found superfans in the members of Converge, leading one Kurt Ballou to bring them stateside and producing the best post-punk album of the decade. Climax is not a grower; from the first thirty seconds of “Death Reflects Us,” listeners know they’re hearing something special, a dark vision of the past and a boldly energetic step into the future. Beastmilk’s subsequent demise is lamentable, but like Joy Division before them, the instant classic they created eclipses that and everything else.
Unsane is dead; long live Whores. The most exciting, intense, and fun noise-rock band to hit the national scene in years, if not decades, the Atlanta trio found perfection in the ugly, imperfect sludge on their debut full-length. The bloody, nihilistic “Baby Teeth” puts a ten-ton hammer into your brain, equal parts catchy and bludgeoning, while rubbing up against the serpentine grooves and pitch-black humor of “Mental Illness As Mating Ritual." Every song is an instant earworm, never overstaying its welcome, and feels at home in any hardcore, metal or hard rock playlist. Gold will still be in the conversation when the “best of the last 20 years” lists come around in another decade or so.
It happens every time: the gentle, acoustic lilt of “He Comes” lulls the listener into chill mode, despite the subtle tritone inflections haunting the background. Then wham! “Death Knows Where” bursts from the relative quiet, Mercyful Fate + Candlemass heaviness wrapped in aesthetics cribbed from The Cure and Coven. Evolving from the classic metal catchiness of their self-titled debut to the moodier, Gothic overtones of 2011’s The World. The Flesh. The Devil., In Solitude perfected their sound on Sister. The title track sounds just as much at home on an Argento soundtrack as it does on the mainstage at Wacken, and closer “Inmost Nigredo” traverses the metal landscape from ambient ballad to pulsating proto-doom to soaring epic. A modern classic.
Classic rock has never really gone out of favor, to the point where some of its oldest revivalists have been around longer than the original bands ever were. Of all the bands that have worshipped at the Zeppelin + Stones + Lizzy altar over the last several decades, Tony Reed’s Stone Axe sits head and shoulders above the rest. Despite its status as a side project to Reed’s main gig in the more prolific Mos Generator, Stone Axe is the vehicle that tracks closest to the mutton-chopped godfathers of yore, and their second album distills those influences into the best classic rock album since 1979, never mind 2010. “Old Soul” makes II’s intentions clear as crystal, while “Chasing Dragons” reinvents the FM rock radio staple and “Live for the Day” is as close to a long-lost Free b-side as anyone can get. The magic of II is in the details: yes, “Those Were The Golden Years” is a Thin Lizzy tribute, but not in a typical duelling-guitar fashion. It delves into Phil Lynott’s songwriting-as-storytelling style, a characteristic missing from too many would-be Lizzy worshippers. It’s one detail of many that makes II special, an enduring rock record in its own right, beholden to no era but that of its listeners.
A lush, cinematic, fully realized piece of musical art. Blood Lust is the short ends of Easy Rider left out in the desert somewhere after Fonda and Hopper drifted out into the ether, discovered by Crowley devotees, and then melted into copies of the Beatles’ self-titled album and Coven’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls. “I’ll Cut You Down” is a foot-stomping boogie born too late for the Manson crowd; it’s too good for them, anyway. “Curse in the Trees” is a doom crawl that rivals anything Rise Above has ever released, and perennial live staple “13 Candles” takes the word "jam" back from the musical cringe lexicon. Without a single bogus track, Blood Lust is Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats at their absolute best, solidifying a sound and aesthetic often imitated, but yet to be duplicated. It’s easy, and foolish, to dismiss Blood Lust as a throwback or a 1960s rehash. The only retort: okay, go find a classic rock record that’s both this heavy and catchy, at this level of musicality, produced this well. Granted, there are a few. They’re the best the golden era of heavy rock had to give. Blood Lust is their peer.
Lovecraft. Time travel. Jesus twins. Black lotus. Microhazing? Look, this is a High on Fire album. It’s best to not ask questions and just roll with it. But this isn’t just a High on Fire album (is it ever?) -- it’s their best album this decade, and since they’re the best band of this century, math tells me De Vermis Mysteriis is the best album of the decade. There’s no fuckery to be had here: Des Kensel’s opening thunderous tom rolls in “Serums of Liao," followed quickly by Matt Pike’s furious tone of the gods and acidic Lemmy howls, all announce Mysteriis to the masses as a big, bold statement of heavy metal. Before the listener even has a chance to breathe, “Bloody Knuckles” kicks down the doors in all its descending-riff beatdown glory.
De Vermis Mysteriis is nothing if not relentless. Even the relatively chilled instrumental “Samsara” is a showcase for bassist Jeff Matz’s insanely underrated playing chops, as well as Pike’s underutilized solo skills. “Spiritual Rights” kicks off the b-side with a vengeance, thrashy and tribalistic; when Pike bellows “I’ll scourge your ghost!” you believe it. “King of Days” is the metal ballad we don’t deserve, but desperately need. “Romulus And Remus”? Does an epic doom track about mythical Roman noble demigods and lyrics like “Geminis suckled of the wolf” need any kind of justification? Of course not, and neither does placing this glorious, infinitely listenable album at #1. De Vermis Mysteriis encourages us all to drop out, tune down, turn it up, and take a trip. Enjoy the ride.
Montecharge’s “Demons or Someone Else” Sure is Something Else
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Nothing charges hardcore beyond its already high-voltage capabilities better than some righteous blackening; so demonstrates the debut full-length Demons or Someone Else from Swiss quartet Montecharge. The album goes totally ballistic throughout its runtime, thriving in a garden of blasts, synths, and hardcore vocals that feels more lush after every listen. Despite its complex underpinnings, though, Demons or Someone Else can just as well be enjoyed passively, owing of course to its onslaught of body-moving grooves and catchy hooks. Whereas some bands chose certain genre blends for stylistic or even aesthetic reasons, this release makes Montecharge feel like blackened hardcore is their one and only blood. Spin the full thing below before Friday's official release.
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Inside, you'll find 11 jet-powered blackened hardcore songs that blend together seamlessly despite soaring by faster than expected -- it all has to do with how densely Demons or Someone Else is packed. No idea or concept seems over-milked; Montecharge feels plenty agile and nimble enough to dart between varying tempos and intensities to produce this particular blend. This adds a dynamic feeling which helps take the album beyond something that will simply rip your head off and leave it at that (though it will, if you let it). Instead, there's a treasure trove of content to pick apart on this release, availing itself to curious minds without over-mentalizing the music, spoiling the sporadic and spontaneous nature of the hardcore which grounds it.
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Demons or Someone Else releases Friday via WOOAAARGH.
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Andrew Rothmund’s Top Albums of 2019
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Sometimes you just have to lean back in your chair, close your eyes, slowly draw in large volume of air, and wonder out loud in utter exhasperation: "what in the ever-loving fuck is going on?" I suppose I could go on some brilliant but ultimately convoluted diatribe about extremism, about fascism, about racism, about run-amuck capitalism, rampant consumerism, ravenous chauvinism, and all the other bad-isms in this world, plus the wanton ruination of nature which will soon really fuck us over if nuclear annihilation doesn't just moot the entire problem first, plus all the vast economic and structural inequalities among the supposedly born-equal peoples of this planet, yada yada yada. But diatribes are dumb as much as they are brilliant, becuase they relate to nobody, and nobody really can relate to them -- they are, deeply and truly, just a writer jerking off, aiming to nail that primal climax where simply feeling and sounding correct overcome all other considerations. I'm the first to agree: even in a world whose wick burns ever faster, having a wank is great and definitely not a total waste of precious time. But some things are just for sanity while other things are also for salvation; unless we can turn masturbation into real/actual art or some kind of perverted source of renewable energy, we're going to have to rely on something heavier than the helium that inflates our egos to extract us from the dawning murk of non-existence, the hell of a ceaseless and total void that looms closer and closer every single goddamn day. I, for one, wish to continue living; I know there's that void over the edge, and I try to keep in mind that feeling something is better than feeling nothing at all, even if that true-sounding statement completely breaks down the moment you're forced to choose between, say, being stabbed or being shot. Both bad feelings, of course, and sometimes they're all there is to choose from (or be subject to). I suppose what I'm saying is this: sometimes life feels like a contest to see who can take the most bullshit before rage-quitting or going completely insane, and the current state of affairs in the world is not helping diminish this conception of things. But neither is my internal state, which this year became increasingly tumultuous and unpredictable -- I seldom find those precious moments of strength anymore where I can apply determination and keep my head down, it seems, leaving me disarmed and chronically behind on responsibilities. I can't help but think that the horror-chaos of the world has gotten to me, but I know there's something existential beyond even that which continues to haunt my ether. In my year-end list last year, I wrote about how heavy metal has been my armament of sorts, a battle-suit to protect me during skirmishes with myself and the world at large. It's my artform of choice, keeping me in check with what feels really real as opposed to dystopian and false; while thus an escape, heavy metal is also a lens which can be focused and defocused at will. It's also an oftentimes morbid, dark viewport for the world: it's horror, hell, and halloween in one, a place where the sinister and savage are brought to the forefront for examination and, ultimately, understanding and coming-to-terms. I don't think I'm alone in this audience in thinking about death a lot -- I can't escape its inevitability nor can I manipulate its discretion. But I can funnel those thoughts through heavy metal which, thankfully, does involve lengthy libraries of content and comes with a volume knob and on/off switch. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it's all I've got and it's all I know, something which I know is also true of many who write heavy metal and about it. This is all very me, though, and for many, a relationship with heavy metal can be markedly different, even totally opposite. In my mind, this speaks only to one truth: music is as varied as all the people in the world are, and scaling it down to specific genres still doesn't diminish this truth. This is such a beautiful thought, to me, all styles of music being a virtual infinity, each one alone always more than one person can reasonably consume even in numerous lifetimes. We talk about infinity out in space, or infinity in mathematics, but what I'm talking about are the infinities we create for ourselves out of necessity, not theory. Music must exist because we must exist, and for no reason other than existence itself and its concomitant experience. This is why music has always felt truer to me than any dogma, ideology, religion, or platitude out there. This is why music goes so far beyond anyone's criticism of it. This is why music is symbiotically personal and collective (and this is why nobody's year-end list is better or worse than anyone else's). This is why music is really about meaning, with what we consider music's substantive content more like a cortex surrounding deeper and more mysterious (and sometimes primal) mechanizations. Bottom line: music can't save the world, but it needs to try, because if it doesn't, then we're sure-as-fuck fucked. This doesn't mean music needs to be political, though certainly it can be overtly so (Rage Against the Machine's return is my favorite news of the year). Music need only be real, and not fake. The only defining line between fake and real is in the heart and mind of the creator, not the listener, and most definitely not the critic. Where I've found the most authentic artists, at least in my estimation of character, has been heavy metal; how we specify authenticity, though, is individual to all of us, leaving the map wide truly open for appreciation. It eventually leads to a web of connectivity which also preserves real diversity; as long as you have fairness and compassion in your heart, and so does another, your love together for music will vibe and mirror. Heavy metal is just one type of music, music is just one type of art, and art is just one type of the meaning-generating machines which we need to crank to overdrive to begin rebuilding some of the broken tethers of humanity. I'm far more interested in connection than division; I love year-end lists not because of winners and losers, but because everyone gets to showcase and share an entirely unique taste. It's one time of year we all sort-of chill the fuck out and just talk about all the killer shit we heard and loved. It builds community, togetherness, and all that bunny-rabbit shit that actually is quite important for music, heavy metal specifically with its strong in-group cohesion and multifaceted subculture. And we act and simulate brutality, violence, and gore, but only because we're doing it together to make sense out of something actually brutal, violent, and gory: the real world. Maybe in a far less problematic iteration of humanity down the road -- here's to hoping we get there -- heavy metal won't really need to exist anymore. But heavy metal sure as hell exists now, and the reason, at least to me, seems clearer than ever....
Honorable Mentions
Xoth – Interdimensional Invocations (Independent, USA) Waste of Space Orchestra – Syntheosis (Svart, Finland) Gomorrah – Gomorrah (Willowtip, Canada) Iapetus – The Body Cosmic (Independent, USA) Wolvennest – Vortex EP (Ván Records, Belgium) Nusquama – Horizon Ontheemt (Eisenwald, Netherlands) Earth and Pillars – Earth II (Avantgarde Music, Italy) White Ward – Love Exchange Failure (Debemur Morti, Ukraine) No One Knows What the Dead Think – No One Knows What the Dead Think (Willowtip, USA) Warforged – I: Voice (The Artisan Era, USA)...
Only legends can take a nearly ten-year gap between albums and remain relevant. It might also help to be known as one of the bands with the greatest stage performances in all of heavy music. Rammstein's return in self-titled form shows us the most dynamic slice of this household-name band to date, honing hard rock's edge with razor-grade industrial metal then cleaving you to bits with it. Rammstein also sees the first instance in the band's history (correct me if I'm wrong) of screamed vocals from Till Lindemann -- album midpoint "Puppe" has the famed baritone achieving significant distortion and grit at high volume as the song opens up into something… unexpectedly layered? Seriously, this is the heaviest Rammstein song to date, and also the thickest, and it's just one of ten other virtually perfect songs that comprise Rammstein's almighty German girth. "Puppe" is my favorite, in part because of the harsh vocals, but also that goddamn wall of fucking noise that I've never heard from Rammstein before.
Even the opening track and first single "Deutschland" (a mirror, sort-of, of "Amerika" from 2004's Reise, Reise) demonstrates this band as literally incapable of growing soft, tame, or lame. The music video shows this clearly: Rammstein's members are now quite obviously older, but their senses for groove and melody are still on brand. Like the Rammstein that I discovered super-early on in my metal phase (which has yet to cease), this new album totally excited (and satisfied) me; like Duffman from The Simpsons, Rammstein never dies, only the actors that play it. I was so much different back then, almost two decades ago now, yet this band has maintained that sensational appeal all the while -- I'm not alone on this either, Rammstein ticked the highest on US charts in the band's history at #9 (but obviously #1 peak throughout much of Europe). Fick ja.
True, bare fact: Liturgy would be treated and understood just like any other cutting-edge experimental black metal band out there (though few they are); however, because project mastermind Hunter Hunt-Hendrix maintains a completely harmless but nonetheless somewhat pedantic and contrived media presence, people write the band off as equally pedantic and contrived. This is sad, mostly because such a write-off relies on understanding Hunt-Hendrix as a boxed, digital personality first instead of a storied, human maker of music. It's almost as if some music "fans" are actually more interested in the eccentricities of artists than the actual music; it's almost as if we're subscribed to only one way of artists interacting with their music in public. Above all else, I think, hating on Liturgy is old hat nowadays, so even if someone polishes their rod so shiny that their opinion about this band is more imposing than the sun, they're still behind whatever edge they think they're honing. Not liking Liturgy's music is totally fair; not giving it a fair chance is a huge mistake, especially if you're a little bored of black metal.
So, this year saw the surprise release of H.A.Q.Q., Hunt-Hendrix's absolute top work to date. Not only is this new brand of Liturgy much more accessible, it's far more emotive and bare than albums prior. It achieves its surging nature by more strongly fluctuating the wavelengths of the music's entire ensemble, not just modulating individual pieces to achieve a certain sound. The "burst beat" thing is on H.A.Q.Q. far toned down, replaced with groovy but still super-saturated choruses that beg for headbangs. Gone are the clean chants of The Ark Work, an element which arguably played to that album's favor but wouldn't find comfortable home on H.A.Q.Q.. That said, Hunt-Hendrix imbues some extra melody and polishing, adding to the album's dreamy, hypnotizing aura.
H.A.Q.Q. will not transcend you, and there is no such thing as transcendent music, as long as we conceive of transcendence from a standpoint favoring empericality. However, humans do not experience the world through purely empirical senses, and I'll venture a fair bet that H.A.Q.Q., if heard appropriately, can disconnect your conscious mind from the past (depression) and the future (anxiety) in all the right ways. This can happen with any music really -- achieving an in-the-moment presence with the music, hearing it second by second -- but Liturgy have never made it so easy to cross the boundary between listening and hearing, understanding and feeling. As for, specifically, the philosophy or philosophies or anti-philosophies or whatever which are purposefully embedded within the music (and adorning H.A.Q.Q.'s cover artwork)... beats the hell out of me.
Everything about Car Bomb is radical in an angular, artistic way, accomplished by mainlining the most radical band in all of metal -- Meshuggah -- without copycatting, emulating, or otherwise ripping off the Swedish legends. In fact, Car Bomb is the purest antidote to djent discovered to date, something fresh and new while still grounded in established radical metal theory, plus that lovely dose of mathcore. This means the band is at once totally fresh yet totally relatable; indeed, that is what's radical about them. Mordial as a successful Car Bomb album, at least, comes as no surprise: it sounds like Car Bomb. As a successful post-mathcore (?) album, well, it checks every single box, then adds a few more boxes, then checks those, then lights your pants on fire, then laughs maniacally while breaking down harder and wickeder than most deathcore but instead with actual style.
Mordial is a modern art painting that punches you in the fucking face.
Semi-interesting story: it was actually former Invisible Oranges Editor-in-Chief Ian Cory who turned me on to Car Bomb; he called them "one of the most criminally underrated bands in heavy music," and he was and still is 100% correct. Car Bomb aren't unknown, but diving deep into their discography reveals so many dynamic angles and protrusions and weird grooves and headbangy chugga-chugs that the band feels huge. No matter, popularity is dumb, and so is waxing too much poetic about something better listened to than read about. Spin Mordial so it can spin your head.
Death metal is super in-vogue right now, which in my opinion is badass. The glut of fantastic death metal this year is almost overwhelming, but think of the alternate reality: a lack of new death metal? Fuck that, more is always better. That said, I don't think Cosmic Putrefaction's entry into the death metal annals this year really fits the vogue. I mean to say that it leans away from OSDM characteristics in lieu of spacey blackening, plus it's a little more chaotic and spasmodic and even abstract than the more concrete (albeit progressive) sound defining the genre at the moment. Multi-instrumentalist G.G. masterminded this project, but contracted Brendan Sloan of Convulsing for vocal duties (along with a second guest too). Altogether, At the Threshold of the Greatest Chasm scorches and slices like Satan jabbing at a misbehaving demon with his flaming trident, only in space, at absolute zero. And, of course:
BLEGH!
-- "The Ancient Demagogue"
I'll be honest, too: At the Threshold of the Greatest Chasm is a lot. I'm actually glad it's less than a half-hour long. I can barely take the entire album at once; it's a mental overload with few breaks. But it really roars during its pithy overture, climbing to densely layered highs and sinking to guttural, plodding lows. It favors short-burst fluctuations over grand, sweeping movements, but the range of this album is by no means limited. It also coheres nicely, not so much as a story or narrative but more like a string of connected variations on the same straightforward goal: to fuck your mind up with death metal.
A Gaze Among Them isn't metal outright, but who gives a shit, this album will wreck your goddamn heart and soul. Big|Brave do not hold back or veil any emotionality here; the album is basically a bleeding wound, and listening to it is like being bled on. That alone qualifies it for honorary metal status, in my mind at least. With a heartwrenching vocal performance and unabashed postmodern/post-rock style, this band went far above and beyond its genre's usual trappings to deliver something much more universal and potent. And it's not like Big|Brave grounded themselves in easy-sell grooves or generalized noise-walls with tons of embellishment; A Gaze Among Them feels explicitly raw despite its production and polish. Think lens wide open. Think blurry cityscapes through fogged-up car windows on a rainy night after a funeral. Think the warmness of tears on a frostbitten face.
Botanist's Ecosystem is sheer magnificence not just for black metal, but all extreme music. Replacing distorted guitars with hammered dulcimer obviously impacts Botanist's sound in relation to genre peers, and it also solidifies their idiosyncrasy even though writing music about/for nature is nothing new at all. The band's approach has never felt more honed and tuned: Ecosystem is Botanist distilled and finely packaged. The album shimmers and dances about, calling to mind ballerinas in the forest when most black metal feels either like a gamma-ray burst or being tossed straight into hell's maw. It's actually impressive how accessible all of Botanist's music is, especially Ecosystem, which is one reason of many why I appreciate and adore this band so much and always recommend it for newcomers to black metal who want a different path inward.
The concept of beauty in metal often gets convoluted somewhere between "real ugliness is pretty" and "fake beauty is ugly" -- Botanist, however, throw the question out altogether. Ecosystem feels natural, of nature and for nature and with nature; it feels like when I journeyed across Iceland's desolate landscapes or when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. You don't so much listen to Ecosystem as stand inside of it, becoming part of the music if you let yourself, owing to the album's trance-like undertones and ethereal atmosphere. Black metal, yeah right, actually. Green metal is where it's at.
Hail Earth. Or at least we better, lest Earth eat us alive.
Of all the 20 albums mentioned in this article, Disillusion's stupendous decade-plus return from full-length dormancy with The Liberation is by far the most likeable. It is the most things to the most metalheads; if it's truly as good as I say it is, it might as well be all things to all people. This album cuts through the staleness of its genre like an iron-hot machete, solidifying melodic death metal as capable of being hyper-modern, super groovy, and a motherfucking blast to listen to, all sans cheese. It's just plain fun, but without being goofy or daft. Disillusion have written a dead-serious death metal album that functions brilliantly whether through headphones in bed at night or through the car stereo on the highway -- its guitar/bass-lines feel timeless and shimmery, the drumming scales back when necessary but goes full-tilt at the most opportune moments, and lead singer Andy Schmidt's voice burns like a tire fire.
For nearly an hour, The Liberation delivers all the entertainment value of a blockbuster but without the hollow recycledness that accompanies most big-name releases nowadays (both music and movies). I set it next to Kalmah's The Black Waltz in my head as an album nearly impossible to resist headbanging to, especially alone, despite its proggy complexity -- Disillusion integrated a ton of nuance and production into this album, and it all works to enhance the physical impact of their music instead of masking it. It's engineered to exacting precision (let's call this the Porsche of metal albums), but feels superhuman without being robotic or mystical. I am so sold on this album; just buy the damn thing and rock it a thousand times over.
Simple talk: GEAR is some top-quality shit. This album is the kind you find while sifting through endless pages of would-be/could-be releases on Bandcamp, and just when you're about to give up, you click one odd-looking album as a last-go before just putting on some rando black metal or whatever because you couldn't find anything both new and decently interesting. What you get instead of the rank stench of musical disappointment is a 20-minute instrumental motherfucking masterpiece that vacuums your mind into a veritable hole where it is massaged, vibrated, and undulated like the squishy mass it is. GEAR pulses with energy most viciously raw; this band needn't vocals simply because their music is just so profoundly catchy and groovy that even the greatest vocalist ever would still tarnish its right-out jam. Penultimate track "Radiation Judge" does it perfectly in one go, too, acting as summation, climax, and coda in pithy breath, but leaving you breathless with its assaulting groove and saturated atmosphere.
Basically, I can't tell whether this music is superhuman or inhuman; it chugs along with machine-like intensity but creates such beautiful auras in its thickened wake.
The work, all-in, is a DIY collective of ten: guitarists (four), synth, bass, drums, recording, mastering, and visual artwork. Well, to you ten, here's my message: thank you, holy shit, and please make more of this stuff. If you can't tell from my esctascism about this release, I pretty much consider it musically flawless. It might actually be my top pick if it were a full-length (not that this brevity detracts from the music itself, but rather that GEAR could definitely tell even grander stories with more room to work). Suffice it to say: this release captures so very rawly the musical energy that most, if not all, metal conveys, and does so transparently and without pretense. Think of it as concentrate; I, however, never add water.
The collectivity of music is inherently ritualistic; all music becomes ritual on the personal level as well. Few bands outright, though, call to mind the actual capital-R Ritual (or even ceremony) that Heilung does, opting instead for something which doesn't involve lots of chanting in obscure ancient languages, a legion of tribalistic drummers, and an immensely captivating stage performance. Futha is definitely not metal, and even though some of the vocals are harsh, I think Heilung is sort-of doing their own thing here. And what a wonderful thing Heilung is, because I simply do not have any other music which can zonk me out into oblivion like their latest album Futha can. It's the kind of magic when you try to mentally compile the album in your head, you find yourself completely unable to capture its raw essence without having it playing.
The intensity that Heilung imbues into their sound is definitely shared by metal, and again, I think an honorary metal certificate is warranted here. As much as Futha is a showcase of beat and energy, it's also certifiably intoxicating with its huge variances in mood, vocal styles, and pacing. Getting lost in this one is pretty much a given no matter what the situation; there's no casual listening of this album or any Heilung album for that matter. I appreciate this level of fastidiousness when it comes to creating something that sounds truly special; Heilung have already made a name for themselves as exacting scientists of sound, not just creators of it. And, special news from last month, the band will be touring North America next year. Consider me already there.
A slight bend to the traditional rules of lists: here are two albums as #1, not one. However, these twins were released together, and separating them (or picking one over the other) just seems pointless when both, taken as one, comprise something so profound and so moving that the choice just had to be clear. Storm Mysticism and Shores of Avarice represent some of the finest black metal ever laid to tape; Sanguine Eagle take everything into consideration, combing the genre for just the right pieces before arranging them into something completely unexpected. Much of these two albums is occupied by not-metal -- the artistic ambiance we're gifted before, between, and after the black metal is just as important. When given full attention, these two albums dole out swaths of energized, traumatic, and textured noise (whether harsh or gentle) on wavelengths so powerful, sometimes it blows you back in your chair a bit.
I suppose when it comes to music that I like and appreciate this much, there's only so much I can really turn into verbiage. Sanguine Eagle just happens to nail those sweet-spots of polished rawness and clamoring silence, all without even feeling like they're trying. It's the effortlessness of Storm Mysticism and Shores of Avarice that gets me each and every time: Sanguine Eagle does a lot without sounding like they're about to boil over, a problem I think most black metal of this ilk contends with. And when the highs break and fall into depthless valleys, or when you're rocketed out from hell into space at lightspeed, Sanguine Eagle always feels there with you, not playing to you, but for you.
It's the closeness of music I was talking about above. I felt that with Sanguine Eagle the most this year, hence its position on this list. These two albums feel like they could bridge any two disagreeing black metal fans; together, they feel like a culmination of a genre's work, not just a band's individual work. Whether they succeed on this level is yet to be seen, but for me, success is already here: Storm Mysticism and Shores of Avarice moved me in ways more positive than I can describe with words or that the band themselves will ever really know. And so, of course, there's always a bit of a mystery to music too, between the creators and consumers of it -- I'm all for that mystery, why some things work for some people and not for others, and champion any band who can bank on the intrigue of what feels like pure magic.
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