Rolling Metal Thread 2008

In the mail today: The Gathering Live DVD, new (!) Bauhaus, Hermano, and Donita Sparks. Some/all of these might belong on the hard rock thread, though...

I should be listening to the Opeth back catalog, for professional reasons, but instead I'm listening to Fudge Tunnel's Hate Songs In E Minor. Their half-speed demolition run through "Sunshine Of Your Love" is one of the great cover versions of all time.

That Gathering DVD is really, really well done.

I'm currently listening to an incredibly dumb CD by a band called Chingalera. Sounds great, mixed by Albini and all, but damn, if this isn't the stupidest, most pointless Tool imitation I've heard in a long while. Zero depth, all just surface wank. I'm turning this off right away. Ugh.

Today while wandering on campus I saw a fellow in a Rhapsody T-shirt. Haircut wise he was rocking the Jeff Treppel (short hair, short beard) rather than the old school Skot (hair for MILES!).

Jeff just keeps influencing everything he touches

I've got the touch! I've got the power!

The Hermano album is really, really good. Only listened to it once, though, will have specifics later.

I liked it but no-one else seemed to (amongst the slsk stoner crew)

Just wrote a review of Hermano for Alternative Press. As ex-Kyuss member projects go, Hermano is way better than Queens Of The Stone Age (who I fucking hate) but not as good as the Brant Bjork & The Operators album.

Today while wandering on campus I saw a fellow in a Rhapsody T-shirt. Haircut wise he was rocking the Jeff Treppel (short hair, short beard) rather than the old school Skot (hair for MILES!).

omg he's behind the times they're RHAPSODY OF FIRE now!!!!

An update on the upcoming Opeth album - inspired by Scott Walker !

BLABBERMOUTH.NET - OPETH Confirmed For Germany's WACKEN OPEN AIR Festival

OPETH mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt recently spoke to Revolver magazine about the group's forthcoming follow-up to 2005's "Ghost Reveries", tentatively due in the spring via Roadrunner Records.

"The music is much more complex," he said. "The metal parts are even faster and a lot more technical than the last one. It's really hard to play some of this stuff. I mean, I wrote it and even I have trouble playing parts of it. I think it's going to be hard for some people to get into. It's definitely not a commercial-sounding record. The arrangements are exhausting. And it's much darker. Even the major patterns are very dark, while I think 'Ghost Reveries' had some light."

When asked if the songs were influences by anything musical, Mikael replied, I was hugely inspired by Scott Walker, who's an avant-garde artist and crooner. Last year he put out a record called 'The Drift', which is quite extreme and frightening, and it made a huge impact on me. Immediately, I wanted to do something like that. It just felt right. Also, with the situation the band has gone through over the last couple of years with the lineup changes, I just wanted it to be this way. I didn't want it to be a happy-sounding record."

I dont know if it really fits here but im not sure a Rolling Weird Experimental/Avant Garde on Sort of Metal Labels thread 2008 would get many posts, but if people dont think it belongs here maybe we could start one.
Anyway, this could either be great or awful, but hopefully some of you may get promos and can let me know

Paradigms is proud to announce two new special edition releases by Tropes and Somnam. Both are now available via mailorder exclusively from www.paradigms-recordings.com . Audio samples are available on the website. Also, new additions today to the Paradigms webstore from Dead Raven Choir, Aluk Todolo, Jagerblut, Godheadscope and Stroszek.

TROPES "Tropes" CD

A perfect soundtrack for long winter evenings. Tropes is the beautifully haunting work of German ethereal songwriter, Susan Bauszat. Eight celestial works of late night, candlelit songcraft with the shadowy ambience of maybe This Mortal Coil, Anja Garbarek, Susanna And The Magical Orchestra, Dead Can Dance and the output of the Rune Grammofon or 4AD labels. Guitar, flute, and violin shimmer alongside frosted electronica and the angelic tones of chanteuse Bauszat. Magestic. Presented as a limited edition of 750 copies only, in full colour card wallet and hand stamped Paradigms packaging.

SOMNAM "Melancholy's Masquerade" CD

Vast, dark forest ambient electronica filmscapes from Finland's Somnam. Cascading nocturnal melancholy which brings to mind the filmscores of Goblin, David Lynch's Twin Peaks and such, alongside the works of Ulver, Star Of Ash and other sprectral electronic visionaries. Organic, synth driven astral mindfog. Deep, rich, cinematic winter isolationism. Presented as a limited edition of 500 copies with full colour sleeve in white dvd box.

I have quite a few cds on this label and a few things i heard on mp3 and didnt like much so didn't buy. I do find it a good enough label to check out releases tho. Rhem and profoundlore have turned me on to things I may not otherwise have heard.
Hjarnidaudi - Pain-Noise-March and the Titan cds stood out particularly.

The above mentioned Aluk Todolo isn't bad btw. Kinda weird spacey black metal.

Wanted to like Emotional Coma by Lions Share (on Locomotive Records out of Spain, apparently) -- some hot riffs, but the album is dragged down and made unpalatable by, um...the singer? The lack of tunes? Something or other. Anybody think otherwise?

(...actually, probably more the melodic clunkiness than the singer, who did seem to at least have some aptitude for Geoff Tateness, amidst metal much heavier than Queensryche's. Not that I care about Geoff Tate-style singers all that much, I guess.)

I hate geoff tates voice and i've always found Queensryche to be a very boring band.

really digging mike hickey's Goatreign album. total low budget demo-sounding headbanging coolness. dude played guitar in Venom and even played guitar on Carcass's Heartwork tour. And he played bass in Cathedral on some of their tours. But he's a Yank. On the mighty Wabana Records in Brattlefuckingboro Vermont!

http://www.mikehickeyguitar.com/images/Goatreign-cargo1.jpg

the actual album sounds like a demo. and then at the end their are bonus demo tracks! they sound like extra demo-y demos!

oh and dude is a BAD-ASS shredder. know what i mean? not all fancy and frilly, just fuckin' wicked.

and i like it more than, like, black label society stuff. which is a fair comparison at times.

So can I sheepishly admit kinda liking the new Mars Volta in here? Also, the new Earth, even tho at this point it's uber-samey [nice keys/organs, but Hex pretty much sealed the deal.]

I don't love the new Volta, but the song "Goliath" is one of the hardest and straightest rock tunes they've ever done; the main riff sounds like a ripoff of Frank Zappa's "Stevie's Spanking," and the percussion/drum line(s), rather than being all hyper-complex like the rest of the album, are straight Santana circa 1970.

The new Opeth album is fucking amazing. I can't even describe how much of a simultaneous leap forward and left turn it is. One thing it's not is More Ghost Reveries. It opens with an acoustic song featuring a female co-vocalist (the new drummer's girlfriend, Natasha something). There's another song (sorry, I don't know titles on any of 'em - don't even know if titles are final yet) that sounds like the Moody Blues with occasional outbursts of loud guitar. And the second track on the disc (there are seven in all, adding up to a 55-minute running time) has possibly the most aggressive death parts they've ever recorded, plus a piano interlude, insane rhythmic shifts and unbelievable drumming from Axenrot - the whole track is like one big "here I am, fuck you" to anybody who's gonna bitch about Lopez's absence. Plus strings. Lots of strings on the album, and oboes, flutes, church organ and various other keyboard sounds. Seriously, it's such a melange of prog and symphonic rock styles and sonic touchstones, but at the same time it's heavy as fuck when it wants to be. Easily one of the albums of the year, already, I guarantee it. Out in June.

I cannot wait to hear that Opeth album! The way you describe it, Phil, it must be their boldest album in ages.

Does it sound anything like 'The Drift'?

noticed this: INVISIBLE ORANGES - Top 10 Most Anticipated Records 2008

Those most anticipated album guides are always so handy...I can never keep track of what's coming out.

I was on the fence with Broadrick/Jarboe's J2 EP, but over the weekend I was completely won over. A couple of the tracks bear a strange similarity to early Goldfrapp, while one in particular ("Magicgrl") is the best Swans song that Swans never recorded.

That Nasum live record could be a good one. I'm still kicking myself for missing them when they supported the DEP at Eamon Doran's back in 2002. I had an exam the next morning, true, but that didn't stop me from going to see Yo La Tengo two years before...

While I'm at it, I have to thank an former work colleague for getting me into Nasum. He was the drummer in a kick-ass grindcore band whose second album was, incidentally, produced by Mieszko.

I'm really pumped for new Arsis and Neuraxis. I saw them on a bill ages ago and was blown away.

Have you heard the recent Neuraxis live album? It's one of the best live discs to come out in quite some time. The new vocalist does a solid job, too.

I am now home from tour and I am dying to hear that new Opeth.

Oh yeah. New Danava video has just been posted.

http://kemado.com/artists.php?req=show&artist=11

Are you the Nate Carson that was in Witch Mountain?

Still am. 10 years!

Ha ha, awesome. I picked up "... Come the Mountain" in the bargain bin at Amoeba when I was there with Ned on a whim, didn't know that a fellow ILXor played on it.

Founding member. Our new trio format and material is heavier and less polished than that record...

Playing with WM is like going fishing with my buddies.

BTW, did you get the English Rage of Acchilles version or the deluxe US Mountastic edition?

The deluxe one. I'm good at sniffing out awesome stoner-type rock just from looking at the cover/label/names of the band members. And don't feel bad that it was in the bargain bin -- all sorts of great stuff that they don't know what to do with winds up in there. (And I picked up the album on a whim, I wasn't at amoeba with Ned on a whim. Grammar is fun!)

I am whim. By default.

I don't feel at all bad about being in the bargain bin. Our whole goal at this point is to become a future nugget from that whole Man's Ruin era...

"Rock on/420" is a total nugget.

On another note -- holy fuck, the Gathering DVD is amazing. I heart this band.

New Meshuggah album is kicking all kinds of bottom just now. Almost makes up for that cover.

Yeah, I don't quite get the Meshuggah thing.

Well, if you don't get Meshuggah, surely you must dig the new Sword. Pretty big improvement over the good debut, which I though wasn't quite as great as so many other critics claimed.

Lost out on the sword album, unfortunately. Going to have to wait to hear that one, I think.

On further listen, the Hermano album would make a phenomenal EP, but there's too much aimless filler in between the awesome rock songs.

I hope to get that Hermano disc sometime after reading about it so much here.

Also got the mediocre Tarja Turunen disc in the mail. I must have mentioned it in the 07 thread...her cover of Alice Cooper's "Poison" is a fascinating trainwreck.

i've been downloading relapse stuff that i haven't heard via their promo streams. ghengis tron sounded cool. kingdom of sorrow sounded ho-hum. haven't listened to DEP yet. or disfear. see, this is how long it takes me to hear stuff if people don't send me CDs.

oh and the J2 album wasn't doing anything for me. i was kinda hoping it was gonna be more guitar-based and less beatz-based. but maybe i'm just not in the mood. my cough/cold that i've had for a friggin' month is really bad tonight. gorge will have to recommend me some patented cough syrup rock. we've got the good stuff in the house too! (FYI: single malt scotch is NOT an effective substitute for cold medicines. just so you know. it DOES make a Democratic presidential debate a whole lot more entertaining though!)

oh and the J2 album wasn't doing anything for me. i was kinda hoping it was gonna be more guitar-based and less beatz-based.

Yeah, that really came as a surprise, but I really wound up warming up to it. Especially the Goldfrappish "Let Go" and the Swans-ish "Magicgrl".

Man, Akerfeldt looks like a total B.A. in the new(?) promo pics (stolen from Wacken website):

http://www.wacken.com/typo3temp/pics/a3c1feb5bb.jpg

Velveteen jacket confirms them as a prog band, in case anyone was still in doubt.

Bachelor of Arts?

Haha, perhaps. But I meant Bad Ass.

I don't know, he looks more like a BFA to me.