Rolling Metal Thread 2010

For those of you that haven't sworn off "conventional" black metal, I'm really enjoying the new Temple of Baal album, Lightslaying Rituals. Big, punishing production, not the trebly/creepy old-school style, but still plenty of swirliness and blastiness. French, but not really part of the dissonant Deathspell/Blut sound.

ksh re Celtic Frost: The compilation Parched With Thirst Am I and Dying is a pretty good intro/overview, in my opinion. In term of original albums, since you've already heard Monotheist it might make sense to work backwards(ish) in time: Vanity/Nemesis, then Into the Pandemonium, then To Mega Therion. And if you're still having fun, after that, Morbid Tales makes the transition into Hellhammer. Cold Lake, the missing album, is a quasi-commercial digression whose badness (and weirdness) has been overstated, I think, but I'd still put it last in the priority order...

that temple of baal sound cool, glenn. I will be checking it out, thanks.

also,

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

if you've been listening to that a bunch, the 2009 album (Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars) is highly, highly recommended. my favorite album (not just metal, favorite period) of last year and my fave blut aus nord as well. it's phenomenal.

Am I the only one who can't stand the cover of "Mexican Radio"? Pandemonium is otherwise great, but that track has always bugged me.

KSH, based on your list, you are going to shit your pants when you hear YOB.

Also, the first two Celtic Frost are so much better than Into the Pandemonium. I'd buy them in order, starting with the ultra-classick Morbid Tales.

Listening to the new October File album. It's a good thing Alex in NYC doesn't post around here anymore, because I'm gonna come right out and say it - these guys do Killing Joke better than Killing Joke do nowadays. Plus, there are JK Broadrick mixes of the first four tracks appended. They're not super-different, just a little harsher.

alex does still post on ILM, just not on the metal threads as he's either got old or went soft..

FYI late pass, I got heavy into the Baroness album for like a month; I love the unifying theme so much.

october file: the band anything like october file: the awesome die kreuzen album?

(confessional time: I've never listened to killing joke, so the ref point is lost on me)

argh, make that "confession" time. I need to spend some more time at the grammar rodeo.

You should get the first 3 Killing Joke albums today.

Especially if you like Die Kreuzen.

if you've been listening to that a bunch, the 2009 album (Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars) is highly, highly recommended. my favorite album (not just metal, favorite period) of last year and my fave blut aus nord as well. it's phenomenal.

otm. that album is their crowning achievement imo & I say this as a guy who had work which transforms God at or near the top of my year-end list.

Am I the only one who can't stand the cover of "Mexican Radio"? Pandemonium is otherwise great, but that track has always bugged me.

you know, my sense of it is so completely tied to the time in which it happened - I wasn't the biggest metalhead in the world, but I got into CF about a year before Pandemonium, and I had this feeling that great shit was going to happen (because: the Tragic Serenades EP is probably one of the ten greatest releases in the history of metal imo). ("probably" because it would take me months to work out what the rest of that list consisted of.) but to me, then, anyway, the concept of the from-left-field cover version was pretty damn new, and it was a shocking move, and then I saw them on that tour, and the long beach metalheads totally transitioned their energy from moshpit of death to we're all bros havin a good time for that number - they all yelled "what! does! he! say!" in the ridgeway cadence instead of the tg warrior "whatduz he SAY!" and it was like...I don't know. from that track, you can hear a dialogue between cf & Bay Area thrash, almost. it's a cool move, and a really interesting tossed-off way to kick off an album that proceeds to take no prisoners.

xpost for the love of God yes get at least the first two Killing Joke albums, which are among the best albums of their time.

"it was like...i don't know" = it was such an incredible concert moment that the song was sort of reimagined permanently for me.

In addition to the first two Killing Joke albums I also recommend the EP collection Chaos for Breakfast (early singles, even dubbier and more fucked-up than the first album) and the live album Ha!

alright, sounds like I need some killing joke in my life! I'll definitely be looking into their early stuff. thanks, guys.

If you're US-based, Chaos for Breakfast is crazy expensive; if you're in the UK, though, you can get it pretty cheap through Amazon. Don't know why that is, but it is.

i will also join the first 2 killing joke albums chorus. so so great (i like some of the later period stuff too, but its uh different. i think im the only person left repping for Extremities, Dirt And Various Repressed Emotions, and i will even on a strange day say some posi stuff about outside the gate).

CF is tied to the time and experience of discovering them for me, too. Celtic Frost, Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth -- I moved from Dallas to Boston for college in 1985, so the second half of the 80s, musically, for me, was all about pushing deeper into worlds I'd had only cursory notions of before.

And yeah, "Mexican Radio" came along way before it was routine to hear serious metal versions of seriously non-metal songs. I think Anacrusis did a New Model Army song around the same time. I have a basically unlimited appetite and tolerance for that kind of thing. Just broaching the subject kicks my mind into a groove of thinking up combinations I want to hear. The one that just occurred to me would be Evoken doing Thomas Dolby's "The Flat Earth".

Also, having said above that Cold Lake isn't so bad, I felt obliged to listen to it again, since I hadn't in a good long time. I stand by my opinion. It's got bad parts, and embarrassing parts, and I won't be surprised to read lots of depressing stories about it in Warrior's next volume, but plenty of decent bands have made far worse albums than that.

From day one I've had a weird, perverse admiration for "Cherry Orchards".

As for Killing Joke, although the first two albums are undeniably great, I actually prefer the Fire Dances/Night Time era that followed...

I got into them via Extremities (Money Is Not Our God via 120 Minutes) and then Pandemonium a few years later - which will always hold a special place in my heart. Can't beat the first two + Night Time, though.

i think im the only person left repping for Extremities, Dirt And Various Repressed Emotions

rockapads likes it! i like it, too! it was also my first KJ record.

Killing Joke: First two albums, Ha! (great call), Extremities, Laugh I Nearly Bought One (singles collection with some killer tracks), second ST album with Dave Grohl on drums, Hosannahs From The Basements Of Hell and the new stuff sounds amazing. You should check out their non-Jaz project Murder Inc as well. A few people have taken on Killing Joke and done it quite well including Ministry and Prong. The best stuff with KJ is often B-side and rare material... 'Change' (Requiem B-side), 'Psycche' live (Ha!), 'Turn To Red' (various mixes) 12"...

I really like the new Soulfly album. There. I've said it.

So the new Darkthrone album is on Spotify, no one mentions having listened to it upthread, anyone heard it yet?

I played it once, it didn't make much impression.

I love it to pieces myself but Darkthrone is so high-concept now it's difficult to talk about them

if you're a Transilvanian Hunger or Funeral Moon fan, be aware that Darkthrone has lost all interest in that kinda stuff - they're kind of historians or custodians of metal now

custodians of metal

Now I'm picturing Fenriz as the janitor in The Breakfast Club.

I am just irrationally in love with the last few darkthrone albums - fuckin "Canadian Metal" is an all time jam, so is "These Shores Are Damned" and the new one is loaded w/gems to my ears

i love 'hiking metal punks' off the last one. so great. and 'witch ghetto'!

At this point I think I like Fenriz/Darkthrone's music taste more than their attempts at replicating it on their recent albums.

Stanning for old British crossover hardcore bands = <3 from me, but the albums are IMO just OK. Not bad.

Listening to the new October File album...these guys do Killing Joke better than Killing Joke do nowadays.

Had no idea October File had a new one, but that's pretty much what I was saying about their last album, from a couple years ago:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/05/not-the-end-of-the-world-for-killing-joke-fans.html

Killing Joke's best album is their first one, then their second, then their third (Revelations); never cared about them after that, but yeah, that early live EP Ha! is good too. Never heard of the B-sides comp mentioned above, but then, in the U.S., "Change" (their best song) was on the debut album, which I guess it wasn't in England.

Celtic Frost, I'm more or less with Glenn -- Into The Pandemonium, then To Megatherion, then either Vanity/Nemesis or Cold Lake, which I've been calling underrated for years, and yeah, Parched With Thirst etc. is a good overview. Have never had any use for their first album and EP, Hellhammer, or their last album (but then I'm a wimp who probably hates metal so don't ask me.)

Just tried to listen to the one song October File has on their MySpace page, but it must be malfunctioning, because all I hear the singer saying is "Advil, advil, advil", over and over again. I turned it off and took some, and feel better instantly. Man, that advil works fast!

ksh please also hear some Agalloch and the Shrinebuilder album from last year. This is urgent.

Opeth 20th anniversary show last night was killer awesome. First set was the Blackwater Park record, second set was 'Evolution- An Opeth Anthology' where they played one song from each record, in chronological order, with avuncular stage chat from Mikael in between each number.

He cautioned the crowd not to overlook the first Darkthrone album ('when they were death metal!), mentioned how he had writer's block between Damnation and Ghost Reveries but overcame it by starting to experiment with alternate tunings, and introduced the selection from My Arms Your Hearse by saying 'at this point we were getting totally sick of all the melodic death metal, which was huge in Norway by this point, like Roxette or Ace Of Base. So we sounded like this...'

Sound was tubby with no highs for the first two or three songs of Blackwater but someone sorted it by mid-set at which point everything sounded awesome. Walk-on music for the second set was Popol Vuh's hammer-on spectacular 'Kliener Krieger'-- love this guy's taste in records. The last two tracks, one from Ghost Reveries and one from Watershed, really kicked it up even higher, you could tell the band is still really in love with this relatively fresh material.

Jealous! Opeth has gotten SO good live, in such a relatively short time.

He's right about Soulside Journey. By far my favorite Darkthrone.

As for the Killing Joke debate, I'm shocked at how little love there is for album 3 Revelations. It's so dark and morose and grinding. Love it equally to the first. I always thought the second album was the (very slight) sophomore slump.

Nate I owe you a CD-R of barbaric film scores argh sorry for forgetting!

ooh share with all of us! i love film scores.

Opeth has gotten SO good live, in such a relatively short time.

Yeah, this is actually why I skipped the show - I don't think they are very good live. Impeccable performances of music I enjoy, yeah, but it just feels more like a recital than a rock show.

xpost Hmm well maybe I can do it as a series of uploads then and share the links privately with those interested. Probably about 600 MB of stuff I am thinking.

Phil, it was interesting, the more recent the material the less recitalish it got and the more on fire with r&r.

Also the performances of tracks off the earliest albums were pretty fierce, it felt like they were excited to revisit that stuff.

Nate: I couldn't not love anything that had The Fall Of Because, Madness, Tension and Follow The Leader on it but Revelations is good.

In fact I only actively dislike Outside The Gate and am not fussed about Brighter...

my webmail works if you decide to share...
i'm mostly a lurker here but i pop up now and then, i swear
so excited about new nachtmystium but have no idea when it's going to be available?

these guys do Killing Joke better than Killing Joke do nowadays

I'll see you in Hell.

june
xp

NACHTMYSTIUM Announce Track Listing, Guest Musicians and Bonus Tracks For The Much Anticipated Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II

Few bands today embrace their own individualism to ultimately craft something truly unique and genre defying regardless of the sales potential. Enter the Chicago-based NACHTMYSTIUM who embrace the true spirit of individuality and intolerance forming solely as an outlet to express the extreme musical visions and dark invocations of all those involved.

This vicious, uncompromising group’s (led by mastermind Blake Judd) much anticipated new full-length offering, Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II, is set for a June 8th, 2010 release. As with 2007's critically praised Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. I, the album was recorded once again with Sanford Parker (Minsk) at Volume Studios. They have enlisted the talents of Wrest (Leviathan, Lurker of Chalice, Twilight) to record all drum tracks as well as Will Lindsay (Wolves in the Throne Room, Middian) on bass for this new album, which was hailed by Decibel Magazine as “One of the 25 most anticipated albums of 2010.”

Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II track listing:
1. Cry For Help
2. High on Hate
3. Nightfall
4. No Funeral
5. Then Fires
6. Addicts
7. The End Is Eternal
8. Blood Trance Fusion
9. Ruined Life Continuum
10. Every Last Drop

There will also be a limited edition, double gatefold vinyl featuring the bonus track “Macrocosmic” and an iTunes exclusive bonus track featuring “Every Last Drop” remixed by James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher). The album's artwork was done by Jimmy Hubbard and Seldon Hunt, and the album features guest vocals by Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and guitar solos by Russ Strahan (Pentagram) and Matt Johnson (Pharoh).

Judd further describes his excitement over this upcoming album: “Our love for post rock and industrial (a la Ministry, Killing Joke, etc) is even more present this time around. We feel that we made a record that will continue to push extreme music into uncharted territories. We hope to see you all soon.”

NACHTMYSTIUM kicked off their 2010 touring cycle by joining up with Kreator and Voivod, are currently embarked on their European with Jarboe, and will be touring the U.S. with EyeHateGod this June. Check out the band's full routing on their official Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/nachtmystium
http://centurymedia.com

ok so june 8

this is my favorite kind of painfully overzealous music writing ...who embrace the true spirit of individuality and intolerance forming solely as an outlet to express the extreme musical visions and dark invocations of all those involved.

why because it sound intersting

new screenname
chose dark invocations because i have more of those than extreme musical visions tbh