Rolling Metal 2017

according to metal-archives, they're some avantgarde black metal band who have two albums, but none since 2009

Laster
Ons Vrije Fatum
(Dunkelheit Produktionen)
One Sheet
Release Sate: 1/9/2017

http://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3187917951_16.jpg

http://open.spotify.com/album/6sCLWGWVQRPvTzbRKZK1YV
http://dunkelheitprod.bandcamp.com/album/ons-vrije-fatum

The band bills itself "Obscure Dance Music from Utrecht" to which I can only say, sure. Why not?

Ons Vrije Fatum (literal translation is "Our Free Fatum," so something about free will is my guess, but it's all Dutch to me), the band's second album, is an ambitious but unpretentious blend of atmospheric black metal and post-rock but the real unique facet to the group's sound is the infusion of Joy Division at their most consonant and claustrophobic.

The shortest song on the album "De tijd vóór" typifies this collaboration while the longest, "Helemaal naar huis," is post-punk free jazz replete with saxophone bleat halfway through the eleven minute opus. That's not the only odd instrumentation as "Bitterzoet" includes shimmering strings that perfectly augment the blackgazing guitars, and electronics - especially the percussive kind - round out the sound. Unusual samples from movies I never saw also show up, like noirish interlopers curious what the band is up to.

I have listened to the album at least five times so far and each time something new emerged from the mix, a melody line hidden away here, some cool instrumentation there, and I get the feeling that repeated listens will continue to unearth newly discovered subtleties.

The bio makes comparisons to early Ulver and Agalloch, which is correct in that if you like those bands you will find a lot here to enjoy, but Ons Vrije Fatum is captivating and wonderful and no two people will dance to it the same way.

I have no idea how Slagmaur made it to the top of a bill, nor how their whole thing's gonna go over live in NYC, but they're definitely a unique bunch. Some sort of conceptual black metal-ish band -- crazy costumes, crazy music, crazy artwork -- they sound like half a dozen horror movie soundtracks stacked atop each other and given a mechanical clockwork Blut Aus Nord styled beat. The songs are extremely monotonous, but because of the dissonances and weird details in the layering of sounds, they can become very creepy and affecting. Sometimes it feels like being put into a trancelike state by a hypnotist with very bad intentions.

Speaking of, here is said hypnotist, one "General Gribbsphiiser," lately fashioning himself after a Scandinavian granny who reads nightmarish fairy tales to the kids:
http://i.imgur.com/9XI2MJb.jpg
He seems to be the main force behind the band; I remember reading an interview years ago where he said something to the effect of wanting to create music that sounds like hell's symphony orchestra. He's also a photographer, possibly professionally so, and on the Slagmaur FB page leaves the occasional pic of where I assume he lives, the insanely idyllic Fosen, Norway.

Anyway, curious to see how this whole thing goes down.

http://i.imgur.com/Ed7mcda.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/slagmaurofficial/

*My fav of theirs, maybe because it was the first I heard, is the Domfeldt demo, but really there isn't any great variance between their releases; it all sounds like possessed marionettes marching down from the attic:
https://infernaprofundusrecords.bandcamp.com/album/domfeldt

Actually the little that's been released from their looooong overdue new album does sound somewhat different from the old stuff, but it's been a while since I listened to it. I just want the whole thing.

Def going to buy a Moon Tooth/Astronoid ticket. Reggies is getting all the good shows, I saw Khemmis night before last there. They definitely have the energy of a younger band still, everything enthusiastically turned up to 11, drowning out the vocals. It was fun. I'm looking forward to Truckfighters next on the 24th.

xp wow thanks for the info Dev... I'll check it out later tonight but I have this feeling it won't be my thing.

The new Ruins (Australia) album is my thing, though, or at least in the Celtic Frost-via-Panzerfaust wing of my things.

I'm liking this Laster album

https://laster.bandcamp.com/album/ons-vrije-fatum

― Dinsdale

Hey Dinsdale, did you have new things jump out at you on repeated listens too?

xp ok maybe Slagmaur is my thing. Definitely can see a Blut Aus Nord comparison in the... plodding ethereality of it? They really do like that slow beat though.

Beheaded's Beast Incarnate is out next Friday on Unique Leader - it's floor-punching death metal RIYL Vader, Lost Soul, etc. The first two tracks are streaming on Bandcamp.

Firewind's new album Immortals comes out on Friday on AFM. Here's the first video - say cheese!

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

wow, Beheaded did take a turn toward the Lost Soul sound, didn't they. I went back and checked out their last album, which seems to be when it happened; they used to be one of those errrp errrp errrp brutal bands -- not that there's anything wrong with that. Sounds good.

I'm kind of in an errrp errrp errrp brutal phase now. Going through the New Standard Elite bandcamp to see what the irascible youth of today are vaping to or whatever. And at the newly hatched NSE forum I saw that Brodequin are working on new material. Neat. Can't get enough of the aluminum bat snare sound.

The Afternoon Gentlemen
Still Pissed 2012 - 2015
(Give Praise Records)
One Sheet
Release Sate: 1/13/2017

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0941/5810/products/a2296935364_10_large.jpg?v=1479485767

http://open.spotify.com/album/5YUNKz0EEb5xZsxuWWTTOi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aSqKfmiVDY

Some places have this as a 2016 release but it didn't get much ink that I noticed and other places have it a January release. Not sure it matters except for semantics since it's a compilation from a UK-based self-described grindcore/power violence troupe. I noticed it because it's on the same label that released Columbus crossover crew Killed In Action. It's very solid stuff, aside from the vocals very clean sounding - the guitars are crisp as well as crispy which is not a common thing for this kind of stuff. I am a sucker for discography CDs too which makes it more endearing to me than it might be others, but it's super-fast and super fun.

xp ok maybe Slagmaur is my thing.

hang on, does that imply there's some news about the long rumored new Slagmaur? (I feel like I ask this every year...)

sorry ignore me I thought I'd scrolled back to where I'd left off, but I hadn't.

If you don't mind your metal slathered with pop exuberance, the new Battle Beast song is pretty tremendous:

https://open.spotify.com/track/7eCw8ZXslDD5C5B6bRHc1H

I am listening to the new Immolation album. It is awesome. More later.

Aww fuck yea!

Aargh what a tease

hah this Battle Beast track is great! very false, very fun.

New Mord'A'Stigmata track is pretty hot, weird, epic, Polish:

http://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hope

The Black Anvil album's really good!

just Mick Barr things
https://ocrilim.bandcamp.com/album/srilimia

Iron Maiden touring with Ghost!

I might have to splurge and get good tickets from a scalper. Something I have never done before except for sporting events.

they're coming here again, this time two hours closer! w00h00!

This is the kind of stuff that doesn't really get a genre tag that makes any sense to me, like progressive sludge or stoner prog or something but this new Jagged Vision is shaping up nicely.

http://jaggedvision.bandcamp.com/album/death-is-this-world

Uniform
Wake In Fright
(Sacred Bones Records)
Release Sate: 1/20/2017

http://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16105500_10158094442650597_4408646075777939833_n.jpg?oh=ee3c2cd00e476f01c376491c6c60b941&oe=590B6306

http://open.spotify.com/album/5clvJZcsu9jRhk6S0XFiIn
http://unifuckingform.bandcamp.com/album/wake-in-fright

Although I liked (and still do like) old industrial music, as a self-identified metalhead and punk rock fan I always wanted that stuff to be more evil. This band (duo, apparently) were made with me in mind. The whole record is thrashy with electronic beeps and screeches cutting through the mayhem. If old school Ministry was aping the then-current thrash metal scene, Uniform takes cues from the chaos of our times accordingly. Pummeling Armageddon on the dance floor the way it should be.

Someone mentioned the Lorn up-thread as an upcoming I, Voidhanger release. It's now out and worth a listen. I can't tell if the drums are real or programmed - definitely getting a bit of a Bathory circa "Blood Fire Death" vibe:

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/arrayed-claws

Wake in Fright is both a great movie and a great name for an industrial metal album

that Lorn sounds good

Not metal, exactly, but some folks here will like it: Japanese noise guitarist KK Null and Hungarian grind/free-improv drummer Balász Pándi have just released a collaborative album, Demon Core, on the Ohm Resistance label, for only $2.

https://ohmresistance.bandcamp.com/album/demon-core

nice!

I was just reading the wikipedia page on Massacre's "From Beyond" and learned this

Walter Trachsler played rhythm guitar on this album but was not credited.

Which is weird because he's also in one of my favorite demo-only bands, Rotting Corpse out of Texas and was a super-nice dude when I met him (gave me an RC demo and shirt). Kinda weird that they wouldn't credit him and kind of plays into the rumors at that time that Rick Rozz wasn't a super-solid guitarist.

Falls of Rauros - Vigilance Perennial leaked early and I'm liking it a whole lot. Very cool mix of post-rock/folky interludes/atmospheric black metal stuff.

The Chasm, again on their FB, and in response to a comment, say that the new album is in fact going to be totally instrumental, which I can't say I'm looking forward to. The last one was really pushing it by being about 50/50. Here's to hoping it'll be some kind of psychedelic trip, I guess. (I'm just not a fan of instro metal.)

Seems to be a lot of it around now and yeah, I feel the same. It either encourages wankery or invites the listener to wish they had a vocalist IMO.

man I do not feel the same. I always welcome a break from DM vokills

like i prefer them to black metal but still...don't feel like there's a lot of interesting ground to tread. instrumental dm with cosmic solos will work for me fine!

DM really needs its next Sylvian Houde or Lord Worm

JCLC any instrumental bands you rate?

In other news this forthcoming release on I, Voidhanger sounds potentially interesting.

CELESTIAL BODIES "Spit Forth From Chaos" CD

Out on March 17th, 2017

With such a premise – a cosmic war between monstrous deities from an ancient, mythological past – it doesn't come as a surprise that Celestial Bodies' debut, “Spit Forth From Chaos”, is one of the most intense, hallucinating and mind-shattering sonic experiences ever put on record.

A duo based in The Netherlands and comprised of members from NIHILL and Dead Neanderthals, CELESTIAL BODIES are exactly the fruit of their unholy union. From Nihill they inherited the pitch-black and noise-drenched sound, as well as a conceptual approach with deep roots in gnosticism and occultism, while from Dead Neanderthals they borrowed the avant-garde sensibility and a free-jazz nature built on improvisation.

The result is “Spit Forth From Chaos”, a blasphemous and cacophonously disturbing blend of anti-cosmic black metal and raw noise, propelled by an imperious drumming that breaks through the gates of perceptions, tossing the listener into a nightmarish, sense-altering dimension where everything is Chaos, and Chaos is everything.

Nihill and Dead Neanderthals in the same band? And it's out on St Patrick's Day? Sign me up right now.

Anomalie
Visions
(Art Of Propaganda)
Release Date: 03/17/2017

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/6/2/6/8/626825.jpg?3030

The album doesn't come out until March but here's a video that the band/label put out there recently.

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

I am unfamiliar with the previous output of this Austrian project, essentially a solo undertaking of Marrok, though unlike on the previous two releases (all on Art Of Propaganda) he enlists the assistance of two studio musicians on Visions. The album takes Pagan black metal and tempers it with contemplative post-blackgaze. The video that was released for "Vision IV: Illumination" illustrates the nature of the band perfectly. As the song title alludes to, it seems to be a conceptual piece with every song a chapter of the story. It's ambitious and grandiose and very, very epic, but manages to avoid hyper-pretension despite the lofty goals, mainly because it's all done so stunningly well. The percussion is especially good, really driving the speedy metallic parts but letting the more delicate passages - sometimes augmented with piano or female vocals - take hold of the listener.

I would put this album up there with anything Alcest has done and they are only my favorite band that does this kind of thing, though Anomalie embraces metal in a way that French forefathers have somewhat abandoned as of late.

post-blackgaze? man, we're gonna run out of modifiers and hyphens

Well, I evidently didn't coin it, but it fits.

New Orthodox album is weird, crushing... jazz.

http://utechrecords.bandcamp.com/album/supreme

Yeah, it's great - I reviewed it for The Wire. A single 36-minute piece. Reminds me of Naked City's Leng Tch'e.

yet another amazing-sounding pre-order from Avantgarde

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/nessun-luogo

I know Brujeria are kind of a novelty band but there's something invigorating about listening to "Viva Presidente Trump". for that song alone I'm goin to check em out tomorrow........(I do like their first album too)

A track from the upcoming Dodecahedron album

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QyQNvDt8Jk

Well that's nuts. Season of Mist seem to like the weird discordant stuff lately.

New Lantern track posted. I know I'm the only person who likes them, you don't have to say it. But they're Finnish, you see.

http://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ii-morphosis

I was just listening to that Lantern track, and yeah I'm not feeling it too much, I'm afraid.

In other news, the new Falls of Rauros album is really nice.

The first new Lantern track I don't like as much as their first album but I'm hopeful.