Rolling Metal Thread 2009

can a dude live xpost

only once YOU vote too roxy!

no I am not voting in that poll, the ground rules confused me so I drank a beer

:(

You only have to choose and rank 25 albums from the nominations list and send that to the email provided

and the groundrules are the same ones from the big ilx poll

which I also did not vote in

sorry man not hating or nothing OK just ranking 25 albums - you gotta understand I am not a big fan of ordered music lists anyway (I know this makes me a freak on a music board), I hand 'em in faithfully but I am not really into 'em and when they're aggregate WHO IS THE WINNER I am just...that is not my thing you know?

kerr im gonna let you in on a little secret

when you remind people to do something 900x more often than not they're just gonna say fuck it

No problem. I'd be grateful if you (and others) did vote but if you don't that's fine. No worries.
It's just all designed to make things easier for the results to be tabulated. It's time consuming as it is.
x-posts

however here is my list of all the new autopsy 7"s I am gonna buy
1. new autopsy 7"

Pfunk: I'll do album- and voter-similarity analysis if you send me the ballots. And if that gives anybody a non-ranking incentive for voting...

Thanks! (I gave a fuller reply on the other thread)

Great essay, Glenn. I hadn't read any of your music writing up to this point, but I think now I'm going to have to read all of it.

Thanks! Although as you'll discover, "all of it" may be a little more than you want...

OK, I gave up on the new Saxon before getting through the second listen. Too much of it is half-assed AC/DC, and I'm not a fan of whole-assed AC/DC to begin with.

Ha ha, I like it -- better half-assed AC/DC than AC/DC are making now, as far as I can tell. Plus, one of the AC/DC-like songs starts out like "Panama" by Van Halen. And "Slow Lane Blues" and "Protect Yourselves" are more threatening -- three-quarters-assed Rose Tattoo, almost. "Demon Sweeney Todd" is a speedy NWOBHM style rocker, and album ends with a thick and inexorably grooving bottleneck boogie vamp ("Coming Home"). A few clunkified slogs in between, true, but also a couple of plaintive 40-second interludes for the deep-thinkers (i.e., "The Letter" and "Premonition In D Minor"). So I'm on its side.

George said the new AC/DC was the best album they had made in years

That's not saying a whole lot. (But yeah, I know George likes it. I liked maybe a third of it, but found most of it hard to twiddle my thumbs through.)

I don't think its had many votes in the ilx poll so far.

I'm intrigued by the unusually strong word of mouth the Saxon's been getting. Their last one didn't do anything for me. I haven't liked a new album by them in, well, ever. Remember Rock the Nations?

They got a feature in Terrorizer as well as in The Guardian.

Thumbs down from me, and I wanted to like it.

This BBC News item is mildly amusing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7826717.stm

aww.

the father/son relationship briefly touched on in that video reminded me of lars and his dad in 'some kind of monster'. kinda lame drummer son outshined by an awesome dad.

Saxon's album will
get a good haiku review
in new Metal Edge

Re AC/DC

I don't think its had many votes in the ilx poll so far.

I would be surprised if there were any since it's not in the nominations list!

New Khanate has leaked, for some reason I thought they'd broken up.

Khanate broke up in 2006. This new disc was recorded during the Capture & Release sessions; the band improvised a bunch of stuff in the studio, and then they waited three years for Alan Dubin to get around to recording vocals. Which is sort of why they broke up. (I was at James Plotkin's apartment on Friday interviewing him about something else, and this subject came up. I have not heard the new record, though.)

OK, listening to Clean Hands Go Foul now. It's fucking amazing. It may be Khanate's greatest achievement. The first track sounds like Fushitsusha, for fuck's sake. And the last track (which I haven't gotten to yet) is 33 minutes long!

Got a download link for the new Kylesa last night, but unfortunately the queue page it took me to was empty. Hoping to get that straightened out, I'm anxious to hear it.

This probably belongs in the last thread, but I finally got around to the new Wetnurse thanks to Seventh Rule's big 5 year anniversary sale over the holidays. You guys were right, awesome awesome album.

I'm looking forward to new Kylesa

Adrien, I was just reading the new Decibel and I saw your Architect/Architects UK review. Thought it was interesting that my similar combined review for Phil drew some very similar conclusions.

Ha, that'll happen, especially considering how great one album is and how awful the other is. Gotta say, I think front to back, the Darkthrone issue is the best Decibel to come out in quite a while.

Meanwhile, I'm still obsessing over the incredible new Cobalt album. Along with the Neurosis, Swans, and crust influences, I kept hearing siliarities to Tool popping up every so often, but I wasn't too sure what an underground black metal band would think if I started mentioning Tool in the interview, but whaddya know, if Erik doesn't start bringing up Tool in our conversation. Gotta love any band that's willing to piss off the USBM scenesters.

Similarities, I mean.

i skimmed the darkthrone article while killin time in the record store yesterday; looked liked a really good read.

Just got a Play MPE link for the new Mastodon. Apparently I can stream it five times before it self-destructs or whatever.

I got my shipment from Seventh Rule recently, too. Good thing I like the Wetnurse album so much, as thing other stuff I sprung for isn't faring so well. Light Yourself on Fire and Plague Bringer both make the classic judgment-error of putting long dialog samples in their songs, ensuring that I get sick of them almost instantly. Still pondering Akimbo and Indian...

Let us know how the Mastodon is! Metal labels are getting pretty good at the cloak-and-dagger advances...early leaks of the big albums are really decreasing.

I enjoyed Plague Bringer and the Indian. Still wondering what the big deal is about Akimbo, however.

listening to the new Buried Inside. what a fucking great band. kinda hate the vocal style but it doesn't really matter, the music is so wondeful.

still, would 100% buy an instrumental version of this album and/or a version with a non-boring vocal approach

Yeah, they really improved on this one, it's like Ballou forced the drummer to calm the hell down. The lyrics are so pompous it's almost comical, but they obviously mean well.

Real-time notes on the new Mastodon:

Oblivion – Slow ominous start, not the usual roar out of the gate like the last three records. Gets heavy pretty quick, but it’s more of a High on Fire vibe (“To Cross The Bridge”) than earlier Mastodon stuff. Tempo doubles before vocals come in. Vocals very clean, reminiscent of stoner rock bands I can’t remember exactly. Lots of twang in second vocalist’s voice. Guitar solos slow, lots of sustain – this is an arty hard rock song a la Baroness, not a metal song. It doesn’t get Mastodon-y until after the guitar solo, when a big deep crunching riff comes in very briefly. Then there’s another chorus. This is not the kind of adrenaline rush you wanna open your album with, on first listen. It kinda lurches along like second-tier Neil Young & Crazy Horse, but obviously played with tons more skill and technique.

Divinations – Starts with banjo of all things, but gets fast right away and Brann Dailor is whipping the shit out of his kit like we expect. Vocals nasal and piercing, kinda sounds like David Thomas of Pere Ubu. Clean chorus, which is weird. Then back into David Thomas-ism for the verses. Lots of nice guitar interplay on this one, and some very cool bass action. Over too soon at 3 ½ minutes.

Quintessence – Again, more Mastodon-ish than the first track. Don’t know why they opened with that one. Vocals super-nasal. Rhythmically tricky. So far, not a single song as instantly awesome as “Blood & Thunder,” but also nothing as boring as some of the lowlights of Blood Mountain.

The Czar – This song is 11 minutes long. There’s some cool distorted organ at the beginning, which is replaced by a super-repetitive guitar figure of the type they’ve done a zillion times before. Vocals almost Ozzy-esque, very keening. Song keeps shifting, but never slows down or gets ponderous or pretentious. It’s just variations on an intricate, fast-paced rockin’ theme. Guitar solo preceded by more Ozzy-style vocalizin’ over piano and electric guitar. Man, this really sounds like late period solo Ozzy. What the fuck?

Ghost of Karelia – Another half-familiar riff quickly replaced by high-speed Mastodon intricacy. The core riff of this song sounds copped from early 80s Metallica – I think it’s something from Ride the Lightning. This song has no chorus. It does have really cool analog synth drones, though.

Crack the Skye – Anthemic in a very 70s AOR way. Starts out sounding like Bad Company – acoustic guitar shadowed by electric and Dailor comes in with a big thumpeta-thumpeta-thumpeta tom roll sure to get arenas pumpin’. When it gets heavy, though, it gets really heavy. This is the best song so far – too bad it’s number six of seven. Slows down for a very classic rock solo, and Mellotron and treated vocals. Wow, this is the Sound of the Seventies, for real – none of that imaginary 70s of the mind that lesser stoner bands do. This is some wayback machine shit.

The Last Baron – This song is 13 minutes long. Second half is all crazy dual guitar action. No solos per se, just prog-meets-the-Allman-Brothers riff frenzy. Vocalist sounds like Pat Todd from the Lazy Cowgirls. Go, Dailor, go! Okay, the end slows down into drones and sustained guitar notes and…now it’s over.

Seven tracks, 50 minutes, no long stretches of silence followed by dumb jokes, no guest spots that I noticed. I didn’t love it right away, but I like it a lot and it’s definitely better than Blood Mountain (have I mentioned lately how much I hate Blood Mountain?).

The title track looks interesting.

I got my shipment from Seventh Rule recently, too. Good thing I like the Wetnurse album so much, as thing other stuff I sprung for isn't faring so well. Light Yourself on Fire and Plague Bringer both make the classic judgment-error of putting long dialog samples in their songs, ensuring that I get sick of them almost instantly. Still pondering Akimbo and Indian...

I've only listened to the Wetnurse and Akimbo albums from my shipment. I really liked the Akimbo. Liked the Indian too, but I got that a few months back on a whim. Still have the Plague Bringer, Sweet Cobra, and The Makai to hear.

New Cobalt is pretty badass like Abe says. Time will tell if I like it more than 'Eater of Birds'. I think BM dorks will probably get annoyed. Like the first thing I put on this morning was the new Tombs album 'Winter Hours', which is also pretty badass, and between the two there's very few signifiers which definitively say 'this one is the leftfield BM album' and 'this one is the epic crusty HC album'. Which is cool, to me

If an album by a BM band makes BM geeks mad, chances are I'm going to like it a lot...

Lazy blastbeat zing crew http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/16/popandrock

(this is quite readable actually thanks mainly to being chiefly made up of quotes from people who actually have an interest in the subject. I thought Atilla, as in Billy Joel's band, were widely repped for by enthusiasts of proto-metallers, rather than being considered "famously dreadful", though.)

jon/via/chicago, do you ever go in metal haven at damen and montrose? i live pretty near it and every six months i go in there and wander around for 15 minutes and never buy anything

I've listened to that Atilla album and do not remember it having blastbeats on it!

Don't get this bit either:

Scandinavian bands point towards a Swedish anarchopunk band called Asocial
I've got the Asocial discog CD and it's your standard Discharge influenced hardcore, don't get why they'd pick that band over Anti-Cimex or Mob 47 etc.

xpost

jon/via/chicago, do you ever go in metal haven at damen and montrose? i live pretty near it and every six months i go in there and wander around for 15 minutes and never buy anything

Not as often as I'd like. Which is probably for the best,as I usually end up overwhelmed and wanting to buy 100 different things when I go there. But the selection is fantastic and the owner guy is super friendly once he sees you are likely to buy stuff from him.

According to some sources, the blastbeat was invented not by a hardcore band in the 80s, but by either free jazz drummer Sunny Murray on a 1965 recording with Albert Ayler or Attila, a famously dreadful late 60s psychedelic band who dressed as Attila the Hun and were later dismissed as "bullshit" by their keyboard player, Billy Joel.

uhh, what?