Rolling Metal Thread 2012

Ok that's not fair, but unlike the anvil doc they never turn liebling into a cartoon. Which is why I didn't like the anvil doc at all. Whatever, watch it, it's good.

I wasn't as overwhelmed as I'd hoped by my first listen to the new Evoken, but now that I know what it sounds like, maybe the second time will be magical.

In the meantime, my latest addition to the year's astounding roster of good albums by vaguely-gothic female-led bands is the Hungarian band Dharma, whose regrettably titled new album Dharmageddon is sort of a gothic-metal/hard-rock/electro hybrid, maybe closer to Asrai than anything else I can readily think of. They use a lot of doubled lead vocals, and the singing style is more rock than opera, but there are synths and drum-machine-y beats. More Paradise Lost than Christian Mistress, for example. I wouldn't have identified them as Hungarian just from listening, but they definitely give me that sense that some old things feel new to them, which I get disproportionately from bands that live in non-traditional-metal-power countries.

Just finished Wag's prog metal book Mean Deviation, which I purchased from the Decibel table at MDFX. Time for a new toilet tome!

Okay you guys I've been listening to some awesome music and I wanted to tell you about it.

Arkhamin Kirjasto - Torches Ablaze: I don't know, I think this involves one of the guys from Circle or something, but it's super God damn awesome NWOBHM as filtered through Finnish death metal with killer grooves and a song,"When the Light Is Dead and Gone," that sounds like a Judas Priest cover but ISN'T but is still good enough to be a Judas Priest song!

Seremonia - Seremonia: Female-fronted throw back occult doom, super fuzzy with a pretty lady singing in a language I don't understand and with lots of psychedelic flavor that sounds like it could be from the early 70s but ISN'T, but not in a derivative way like The Devil's Blood.

NWOFHM!

Bless you.

I'm listening on bandcamp to the Arkhamin Kirjasto and the vocals suck but the band is hot shit. Can't have everything, I guess. Gonna look for some tracks from the Seremonia.

Okay, Seremonia is pretty fun. They have a video!

Rock 'n' Rollin Maailma

[I hate embeds in big rolling threads]

Alcohol in a Pepto-Bismol bottle, that's a new one to me.

I'm going to assume from all the vowels that the language that they are singing in that I don't understand is Suomi.

re xpost Rolling 07 what is metal, the earliest use of the term I've seen re music is in '70 Metal Mike coverage of Humble Pie, Of course for the heavy part, there was the phrase Bob Segerm by his own account, lifted from a Deeetroit DJ and got into trouble cos Seger went into this "Deeepah, deeeepah" and some other DJs thought it suggestive. Speaking of the 70s, here's the Hype Of The Last Half-Hour, at least! This fucker better be like it says:
Status Quo, Budgie and Black Sabbath albums are piled on top of the hi-fi; torn centrefolds from Playbirds and Whitehouse are Sellotaped to the walls; Richard Allen's Suedehead, William Burroughs' Junkie and Francis King's Sexuality, Magic & Perversion tumble from the window sill; crushed Courage Light Ale cans and Players No 6 packets form a tower in the corner; filthy, tight-fitting T-shirts and patched-up denim bell bottoms are strewn all over the floor. And there, in the centre, like a Biblical king surveying his domain, is the music lover – a stick-thin, back street Jesus, engrossed in the rolling of his last spliff, flowing hair all but obscuring his chops, the opening bars of The Groundhogs' 'Cherry Red' blowing from the speakers around him like a sucker-punch from Heaven.

Get the picture? Good. The Shovell, as their friends and fans know them, belong spiritually to a time and place we'd all like to believe still exists somewhere – maybe that's why their no-nonsense take on the progressive metal sound of the early-mid '70s is so damn accessible. You don't need a degree in doom-rock or a Masters in metal for their incorrigible clatter to strike a (power) chord – you just need ears, feet and some appreciation of what makes bands and music GOOD.

Some statistics: the Shovell are named after a 17th century English naval commander; Bill Darlington plays drums and is too thin, Louis Comfort-Wiggett plays bass without his glasses falling off and Johnny Gorilla plays guitar and shouts, both loudly; they have been together as a band since 2008 and mates for donkey's years; their lineage includes more neo-psych, garage, freakbeat and powerpop combos than you could shake a stick at; there are people in Catalunya, Spain still recovering from the Shovell's May 2009 tour there; their 2011 Rise Above 7", 'Return To Zero'/'Day After Day', sold out instantly and now commands up to £100 a copy; their debut long-player will tear your face off and put it back on inside out, using spit.

OK, so that last bit may be open to conjecture but make no mistake – Don't Hear It… Fear It! finds the Hastings threesome delivering the kind of greasy hard-rock thrills rarely heard in this climate of blind nostalgia and misjudged authenticity. It's hard 'n' heavy, without the marshmallow; it's old-fashioned yet so NOW that it hurts; it has three songs on side one and four on side two; it has yer actual Tony McPhee off of the aforementioned Groundhogs on it – it's a rock 'n' roll album made by people who give two shits and who've earned just a little "me" time in the company of your ears. OK?

Yeah, I just got that thing in my inbox, probably not going to live up to the hype, but it is on Rise above, and those guys are pretty good curators.

Seger...lifted "Heavy Music", sorry Bob

That 7" is pretty great, regardless of the £100 value wish I'd bought one.

So th pentagram doc streaming on Netflix right now is a+++ (last days here?)

I'm ten minutes it and finding this really hard to watch. The Anvil doc left me happy, and happy for them. Is this thing going to kill my soul?

Wow, so glad I stuck it out, but I don't have the heart to do any "where are they now?" research.

they had a (crap) new album out recently and Bobby is still clean and touring.

Yeah, the Pentagram doc is like 80 min. of the dude self-destructing followed by 10 min. of him getting himself together, it's a rough watch.

Last Rites is the best Pentagram album. Their canonical albums are so overrated it's not even funny.

I don't think they were ever really an "album" band. More of a "rehearsal demo" band. Those Relapse collections are untouchably awesome.

I watched the Pentagram doc last night but can't join in on the recommendations in this thread. It's another junkie asshole cleans up and becomes slightly less of an asshole story. Good for him, as he seemed to be in a much better place at the end. Glad to hear he's doing okay still. I'm just tired of junkie stories as they're all basically the same. Having gone through it with a friend I have plenty of sympathy for those around him but little for Liebling himself.

But take my opinion with a large grain of salt, as I've never been a Pentagram fan though I really like some of the bands they've inspired.

Well, I got more of it out of that. If anything, I see a parallel to your alluded to experience, which is how important it is for friends to stick by addict friends if the addict friend is trying to get clean. This guy wasn't hurting people, or robbing and stealing, or really even being an asshole. He was self destructive, a lifetime user, but unlike many junkies had people who still loved him and believed in him. Most junkies -that is, the junkie stories that are "all the same" - don't have that going for them at all, which is no doubt what leads to the "all the same" element. You know, dying, or taking people down with them. This guy ends up clean, married, with a kid and his band back. That seems to be the opposite of most junkie stories. No?

I think maybe it's the behavior triggering my own memories of the persecution complex, the fine line between helping and enabling, the constant excuses for using and broken promises that I went through. I see the same thing with Bobby, read the same shit in the Keith Richards book, etc. He's lucky as hell to have the people that love him put up with the behavior for 30+ years, to still believe in the talent and support him through it all. I thought it weird that Pelletier isn't seen again after the show, so I decided to read some stuff today. An article in Spin said that he left Bobby for a year because Liebling accused him of embezzlement, but came back in the end because Bobby's like family. That's the same kind of shit that made me cut the ties with my friend when he got clean, he couldn't deal with me having seen him at his worse and associate that with the "fresh and new" clean version. And he was an asshole for breaking O'Keefe's heart. He was the one I had the most sympathy for in the movie.

sorry that reads like a total mess. Cut some stuff that's too raw for me to get out there and didn't edit it well.

No, I get it. I mean, I've never had any junkie friends, not really, and I don't know if I'd have the patience to put up with any degree of shit. But that does dovetail nicely with the band's story, a group that self-destructed but which still generated new fans that supported it for three decades, plus the man at the center of that band who had a similar, more personal support network of new blood.

Nicely put. The parallels are both creepy and illustrative.

Perhaps my real issues with it are my own raw nerves this movie picked at. I definitely have a hard time accepting any redemptive junkie tale that ends so cleanly in a good place. I think the movie I want to see now is one where Bobby has to deal with the 30 years worth of people that tried and did help him and his music when he was a junkie mess.

The parts with all those people (his parents, his former bandmates, Pelletier, etc) are what I enjoyed watching, and I wish they, not Bobby, had been the true focus.

yeah i get all that, i had a junkie friend (now RIP sadly) and idk if its possible to get what a fucked up deal it is unless youve been through/around it. like the whole "never trust a junkie" meme is so completely inarguably true - they will, no matter what, eventually fuck you over.

I really thought I had put my anger and frustration to bed but this proves I surely haven't. I wanted to yell, "Fuck you you total asshole!" at Bobby repeatedly through the movie.

Me too! And probably did!

New Early Graves record!! Red Horse.. out Oct 30th via No Sleep Records.

Best part of the post-film Pentagram story is Victor Griffin rejoining the band. The first few reunion lineups were not impressive.

This is a post from my Facebook I wanted to share here:

While driving to Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, we listened to Bathory, Týr, Finntroll and Ensiferum. It just made sense. Why doesn't some smart promoter or label package some awesome Pagan Metal bands and on the weekends have them perform at the Renaissance Faire's throughout the country, playing traditional venues on the weekdays? How often does a band get a chance to play to groups of people who never heard of them but who are predisposed to becoming a fan?

Are you allowed to use electric guitars at a Renaissance fair?

Most people at those "Faires" don't want to hear screaming guitar.

It's a nice idea but metal is still a scary ghetto. Even to LARPers.

But you should definitely go see the Primordial / While Heaven Wept / Cormorant tour! ;)

Oh, good. Neurosis are gonna release another morose, overlong, boring-ass album every metal mag/site will jizz in their pants over.

Shouldn't you include some derogatory clarifying adjective about the pants?

I dunno... I saw a lot of folk wearing metal bands. I cannot help but think a lot of them would dig the Pagan Metal stuff if they just got exposed to it... Also, RenFaires are fucking huge. It wouldn't be difficult to put the bands in a place that other attendees could escape if they were so inclined. (Maybe some of them are small; the ones I have attended in Pennsylvania and Maryland are huge.)

Despite Evoken and Ea both having new albums, my favorite funeral doom records of the year so far are Ankhagram's Thoughts and now Tempestuous Fall's The Stars Would Not Awake You.

I was also just listening to the new Thormesis album again, and whatever you call this Germanic anthemic/cathartic pagan/black metal thing, like Agrypnie does, Thormesis also do it really, really well.

Just downloaded new Cryptopsy self-titled. According to the press release, "The band has said that Cryptopsy will be their most brutal, technical and dynamic offering as of yet." I am skeptical.

Yeah, they've always been good for the first two of those adjectives, the third one not so much.

Gonna download the new Witchcraft and Bullet albums tonight.

I like the Cryptopsy album. It's not a classic, but it's a huge improvement over The Unspoken King. Having Levasseur back on guitar has clearly made a big difference.

The Witchcraft is great, but despite a few good tracks the Bullet album feels a little tepid in places.

Oh, good. Neurosis are gonna release another morose, overlong, boring-ass album every metal mag/site will jizz in their pants over.

There are a shit tone of bands that wouldn't exist without Neurosis.. I, for one. are fucking stoked for a new record from them.. There is nothing boring about them. It took 15 years or so for bands to catch up to what they've been doing for almost 30...

In fact, I think you might be the first person I ever read not like them... Whats wrong with you?

its like not liking breathing.. Their integrity alone is that of legendary prowess. Not too many bands are daring enough to push themselves into genre defying waters over and over again. No two records are alike, minus the first two. And the song writing is very smart, both musically and lyrically.. The only people I've ran into that don't like em are usually the ones thatwere with wem in the very very early years, and are crusty hardcore punks that couldn't change with the band as they grew and morphed..

They are my all-time favorite band, and really can do no wrong in my eyes..

A metal band would have to have a very very heavy Hobbit sound to do the Renn Faires

I saw Neurosis in '89 on the Pain of Mind tour. And I've seen them pretty much every tour since. But I haven't gotten excited about any of their new albums since Times of Grace.

Well I'm very much looking forward to a new Neurosis.. Given to the Rising came out in '07.. its been too long!!

Yeah I guess you can hold Neurosis directly responsible for even more mind-numbingly tedious bands like Tool, Mastodon, Isis, Jesu, Boris, Meshuggah etc - these guys sure have a lot more to answer for than just their own records.

I'm not a much of a fan, really.

They always fucking bring it live though. Though sustaining a whole performance generally requires a brownie or other tranquilizer.

In fact, I think you might be the first person I ever read not like them

plenty of people don't like Neurosis dude. not everyone is as desperate to let you know about it though

Siegbran I was more or less with you until you went in on Meshuggah