Rolling Metal 2016

reviewing the Sinistro album (on Season of Mist) at the moment and while it hasn't blown me away it seems to be really successful at its attempted niche, which is Lana Del Rey type pop noir meets modish doom metal. think quite a few ILM types would be into this one off it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR1fILkvSlA

one-man blackened death metal project The Wakedead Gathering, surprisingly coherent (not sure I know other one-man DM bands), with a dark, old school vibe. Demigod is the first old band that springs to mind with this stuff, but thinking fans of the 2014 Domains album might also like.

https://thewakedeadgathering.bandcamp.com/album/fuscus-strings-of-the-black-lyre

and there's probably some Incantation in there too

I've not been much impressed by Howls of Ebb before but this new track is pretty good

https://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/cursus-impasse-the-pendlomic-vows

To me it sounds "squidgy." I don't know how that works or if anyone else knows what I'm talking about but there we are

― space prophet wogan (ultros ultros-ghali), Tuesday, March 1, 2016 8:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Think I get you. It's kind of slow and awkward and horrible in a really cool way, like it's dripping through the speakers or something

the Pazuzu album is so dense. like the layered shrieks that appear over the riffs towards the end of the opening track

I'm listening to it now on an Amtrak train while the sun is setting. I am seriously stoked for when it gets dark out as this is concluding

Just got the new Inherit Disease, their first in five years. I know there's not much love for brutal death metal with "what's wrong with the toilet?" vocals around these parts, but these guys are really, really good at it, so I'm very excited.

I love a lot of bdm but whatever fine line I have for enjoyable vox is crossed by Inherit Disease, at least on their last one. It might just be a combo of being mixed too loud and not having enough variation from a drawn out monosyllabic GLURRRRRRRRGH. But I'm sure I'll get around to the new one. I probably should relisten to their debut because I vaguely recall it being less in your face vox-wise.

There's an unintentionally hilarious bdm thread on ultimatemetal that's pretty much three or four easily disgruntled dudes flying the flag. It's where I learned about the Jenovavirus demo which is one of the more ridiculously awesome things I've ever heard.
https://youtu.be/bdc0ssOvs9I

Yeah, that Jenovavirus is amazing. Downloading it now.

Aluk Todolo's Voix is so good, and perfectly recorded. The cymbal work on track 4 alone.

yeah this is better than I expected, if not quite as monstrous (or fun) as OP. feels more like jazz if anything

and yeah, just reached the 4th part. this is great

the most obvious magma influence in bm history but they use it well

I hear the similarity to OP too, although more focused and restricted in terms of instrumentation. And I want to say more of a sense of chemistry, which might be because it's a live album.

yeah, where OP is a boundless cosmic opus, this is very much a performance, and a brilliant one too

I thought the Aluk Todolo album was mildly impressive on a superficial level but really pretty boring. I don't get the black metal connection either, it just sounds like noisy jam-rock which is fine but not something I personally want to listen to

it's pretty much a fusion prog jam yeah, but idk - do you like magma?

(obviously i prefer OP and the song 'vasemann käden hierarkia' has ruled my entire life for the last 2 days)

Magama are another one of those bands that I should like, probably even love but I can't get into. I've tried, believe me.

I also don't really understand how I can enjoy OP so much when AT leave me apathetic but it just depends on what I have a gut reaction to honestly

I don't hear Magma in Aluk Todolo at all. I hear Fushitsusha sometimes, though.

I still need to listen to the Oranssi Pazuzu album (someone else wrote the Burning Ambulance review).

oh man the Destroyer666 is fucking dope too

speaking of black metal that recalls Fushitsusha, check out the new Skáphe (again on I, Voidhanger, home of earlier mentioned Wakedead Gathering, Ævangelist, Spectral Lore) -- cold spacey, yet dead black atmosphere a la Darkspace, but with expansive psychedelic guitar. Swirling, claustrophobic, cosmic.

https://skaphe.bandcamp.com/album/sk-phe-2

another new Vektor track:

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/03/02/468701046/vikings-choice-vektor-charging-the-void

"Charging The Void" is the first track of the album and sets the scene for the story that follows. It begins with the lone astronaut from Outer Isolation, who is actually an Isolation test subject. He overrides the autopilot and is compelled to go forth on his own and search for his purpose. Years in isolation have twisted his mind, and he teeters between insanity and vengeance. His travels bring him to the now-exploded star, Alshain. Within the stellar nebula, he finds a life-giving molecule that revitalizes him and extends his life. With an entire haul of the newfound molecule, he believes he's found his purpose. He has an epiphany about life and death and decides to bring his life-giving molecule and his new way of understanding to the Cygnus Regime.

I don't like Voivod, and Krallice bores me, but I love Vektor! Weird...

Can't imagine either of those bands pulling a move like this track does in the last 2 mins

Wow, that is epic.

Man, new Howls of Ebb already. Love those dudes and their pioneering work in shitty guitar sounds.

"Shitty" with regards to standard metal guitar paradigms, I mean. I think they way out of the infinite regress of HM-2 or Incantation derived sounds is through textural guitar weirdness.

Funny how Jenovavirus came up, I was listening to that on the way to work couple of days ago... I'm not usually one for BDM but that demo's pleasingly fucked up. I've been digging Wormed recently too, they have a new album out pretty soon.

Yeah, I love Wormed and can't wait for the new record. I think there's a preview track out there but I haven't listened to it, I'm waiting for the full album.

need to check out that Howls of Ebb, which is also on I, Voidhanger -- quickly realizing this is my favorite new metal label

For work reasons, I find myself having generated a very long list of fairly-new metal songs by bands with almost no listeners (but whose few listeners are serious metal fans). And I've been listening to it for hours. And it's relentless and mind-blowing and awesome.

https://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/0OHKkcE4alE0JcaaZeTBlO

(The experiment I was doing was seeing if I could generate genre-coherent lists of music by artists for whom we have so little data that our usual genre-coherence methods don't work. So the fact that this is consistently metal, at least for the first few hours, is a major and surprising victory.)

full R.I.P. album is streaming:

http://www.cvltnation.com/cvlt-nation-streaming-r-i-p-in-the-wind/

I think I'm on like my tenth or eleventh listen of that new Vektor song! Pretty remarkable how much they've broadened their tonal/ melodic palette without sacrificing virtually any edge.

Listening to the advance of Metal Massacre 14, which is coming out on Metal Blade in April or May, compiled by Alan from Primordial, and...well, the original series was supposed to promote up-and-coming underground metal bands who theoretically had potential to reach broader audiences, but this one is part of the whole '80s cosplay thing that's been going on for, like, 15 years now in metal, and it's as lame as any other deliberately closed-off retro gesture, despite the actual songs being in some cases kinda decent.

Man. I've been listening to Savage Master a lot lately and mentioned to someone that "Ripper in Black" sounds like something that would be the best track on one of the less popular Metal Massacres... turns out I'm right.

new Church of Misery is pretty great, though the production isn't so overwhelmingly deafening this time, which is interesting.

anybody been following the fucked up shit going on at Frankfurt Deathfest? granted, not a major festival (Avulsed were one of the biggest names there if that gives you any indication), but apparently the promoter promised airfare to the bands and didn't deliver, so they bailed like, day of. In one case, the promoter Mario bought plane tix for Avulsed and gave them confirmation numbers, but the band found out at the airport he had cancelled the reservation months ago and gotten a refund.

That sucks. Can't be too huge an amount of money, right? Seems stupidly shortsighted.

And I just want to say I failed to pay attention to the Black Twilight Circle dudes in L.A. and I kind of regret it... listening to the second Arizmenda tape and shit is crazy, vicious chaotic black metal with proggy elements; like Lust (the Canadian one) if they were into pre-DSOTM Floyd and Magma.

Anyone who's still a bit miffed that Morbus Chron split should definitely hear this

https://pulverised.bandcamp.com/album/temisto

Proggy OSDM. Many riffs.

Yesss, I heard that on Glenn's (awesome) Spotify playlist above, had never heard of them before but it's great stuff.

If you like the HIM school of gothic love-metal, I highly recommend this new Beseech album. https://open.spotify.com/album/7HIENHqz4iq3AAUe0NBoAV

There's a band called Groundhogs playing between Arabrot and Bongzilla on the second day of the Temples Festival this year. I really doubt it's the legendary late '60s/early '70s blues-rock trio, so WTF?

I believe it is them

very popular with the doom and stoner rock crowd and the melvins headline that day.

If it is them, that's actually even weirder, as they're the only band of that vintage on the entire three-day bill...

The festival organizers responded to me on Twitter - apparently it's a lineup led by original drummer Ken Pustlenik and some dudes from the band Gonga.

that's weird. Tony McPhee still tours as the groundhogs

Inverloch: Distance | Collapsed -- idiomatic doom/death from half of Disembowelment.
https://inverloch.bandcamp.com/album/distance-collapsed

I guess it's like how there are multiple versions of Goblin. I can't say I'd go see any lineup of the Groundhogs in 2016 - McPhee had a pretty bad stroke two years ago, I hear.