Rolling Metal 2016

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.

McPhee played with C93/David Tibet last year, seemed fine.

The Drummer Groundhogs are pretty good, according to a mate that's seen them. I'm quite looking forward to them.

4-way split of bands on Unspeakable Axe called 4 Doors to Death, all in the old school, blackened death metal realm: https://unspeakableaxerecords.bandcamp.com/album/4-doors-to-death

Going to get that and the Inverloch soon. Had to pick up the new Begrime Exemious last night, though, which is surprisingly thrashy but without stooping to retro lameness. Also picked up the 2nd Uncle Slam album for a buck, which is pure retro (well, old) lameness and I loved every minute of it. Especially the dumbass cover of Dazed and Confused.

weird question, but who's the "bigger" band right now: Baroness or Machine Head?

Machine Head for sure. Baroness is playing 400-capacity rooms with other bands on the bill; Machine Head can sell out 1500-2000 person rooms with no opening act, doing an "Evening With..." show.

xxxpost Unspeakable Axe also put out that new Ripper album, which is, uh, a thing that rips.

Many thanks for the attention drawn to The Wakedead Gathering, whose most recent two albums I now have in my possession. Music, lyrics, general vibe are all incredible. Kinda wish they'd go a little less in the "cavernous" direction though, because, like Domains, I think this music is better when it's cleared of some of the cobwebs.

Also on the I, Voidhanger tip, that Suspiral thing is pretty mindbending. If you're not burned out on this style, that is, which I probably should be.

I wouldn't mind hearing the cavernous/clearer style used by a band, like going back and forth. Anyone do that?

styles, that is

cool, yeah that Ripper is def along a death/thrash axis that I almost always want to hear (also note to Atheist fans, you know who you are, it's kinda like early Atheist)

the cavernous thing seems particularly prevalent among one-man bands/studio projects, and I chalk some of it up to a production quirk that obscures the fact that it's just one guy. With Domains, I remember listening on headphones one time, and realizing that the drums are probably played by someone from a keyboard/MIDI pad (despite what the credits say), rather than a real person, and would sound pretty ridiculous without a good amount of room-y reverb all over them (and everything else).

Of course now I'm on my second listen of Fuscus and I'm already finding it way less murky and smothered than I did the first time through. The mind is a weird thing. Maybe it was because I wasn't following the lyrics this time and so wasn't focusing on the vox, which is where most of the reverb seems to be.

And that's weird about Domains, because one of the things I love about their album is how alive and real it sounds.

xpost I can't imagine two competing production styles on one album but I'd be interested to hear any examples. Hell I don't even like it when demos get tacked on to the end of a disc; I need my homogeneity!

yeah, it's weird-- I think at the least, it's an electronic kit, but some weird performance things, like a ton of snare+cymbal hits that I know as someone who played a fair amount of keyboard drums on tracks is a lot more likely to happen there than from a real drummer on a kit. Also some too-isolated cymbal spacing. Drum *sounds*, as far as the samples themselves, are pretty easy to mask in a recording.

but yeah, that Wakedead Gathering is my favorite record so far this year, and happy to hear someone else is digging it.

New Kvelertak song. They're touring North America in April, too.