Rolling Metal 2017

well fuck

omg I spent the whole first track thinking "wow this guy sounds like Alan Averill". Well duh.

got Incubus's drum stick after the Inquisition set. the thing was beat to shit. he plays the hell out of them.

It's not just a little matchstick?

Lol kinda is now.

NBD just met Corpsegrinder

http://i68.tinypic.com/xmsizl.jpg

Overkill still rule live and they play the best two songs (#1 and #3) from the new album live.

Caught Anvil with Night Demon and Graveshadow this evening in Philly. The venue, Johnny Brenda's, doesn't do a ton of metal shows and it is in the hipster neighborhood of Fishtown so I kind of expected some ironic attendees at the show but instead it was filled with lifers who put me to shame. I wore a Diamond Head shirt (Night Demon's Jarvis Leatherby approved, I said I thought maybe he heard a song or two of theirs and he laughed, "Yeah, one or two.") and at one point was at the bar next to someone in a Budgie shirt causing me to exclaim that we were responsible for half of Metallica's cover songs. It was certainly nice to not be the oldest person at a show for once.

I missed locals Hound because I was eating a cheesesteak, but they're quite good if you ever come across them, solid shit-kicking rock and roll will be your reward.

I was intrigued by Graveshadow enough to make sure I caught them. They have a video out which is really cheesy, but it's also quite infectious and has stuck in my head. I post it here so those who were offended at my negative views of Disperse can mock me for my questionable taste.

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

Live the band was a lot heavier than the clip and debut album I checked out on Spotify and the singer was having a great time, shrugging off rude catcalls and winning over a lot of the crowd by sheer will and an ability to sing quite well and also growl at times, something that helps set her and the band apart from the bulk of female-fronted, gothic metal bands. The bassist spent the whole set playing from the area in front of the stage or wandering around the balcony area and the singer did this as well. They were utterly uncool but a lot of fun too.

I really love Night Demon's updated NWOBHM and the two new songs they performed from an April album makes me think that will continue.

Anvil was Anvil (which can be a posthumous album title since they seem to love those three-word deals) which is fine with me since I liked 'em before the documentary. Lips was smiling all the time, making crude sexual jokes that might be unbecoming from someone past sixty, but the dude still does a guitar solo with a vibrator so, yeah, and he told some cool stories about Lemmy and stuck up for Metallica for letting them open for them in Singapore a few years ago when some dude in the crowd inexplicably started screaming how they suck.

I would have liked to hear a lot more old songs, but I understand that is unrealistic, and looking at the setlist (Philly got the same set, save for an encore of "Born To Be Wild" because we were a better crowd than Boston, ha!) I think they did fine overall. But man, it would be great to hear them do "School Love" live.

Overall a fun night out with two young bands that sound old and an old band that is classic.

http://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17098345_10158308973450597_8305012159831817383_n.jpg?oh=9220055992aa8bc638ec108f1191648f&oe=593AA546 http://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17155682_10158309115105597_3495316403875898951_n.jpg?oh=50bf07c0592aa18e7452e765aa74213c&oe=596CA7DD

http://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17022136_10158309115000597_6566456682048178797_n.jpg?oh=1ab26c36c3b122bc513eb9d90f38c386&oe=59739CA2

Nice pic, Neanderthal! Surprised that you could get Corpsegrinder's neck in a shit and have room for you... :)

http://i.imgur.com/rU4W7FN.jpg

Man Corpsegrinder got some youthful hands, dude must SLATHER on the Oil of Olay

I MEAN BLOOD

Neanderthal that is a great pic. I have a similar merch table pic from a few years back, Fischer is a stand-up dude imo

yeah he's a stand-up dude. he wasn't acting aggravated about it or anything at all.

I saw Steve Asheim again as well but he's always at shows in that area.

nice pics of Anvil! they were fun the times I saw them a few years back. is their bass player still the goofy looking dude with missing teeth? I liked him.

surprised they didn't do "School Love" - they were playing that the time I saw it.

did they do "Mothra"? that was my fav of the night.

looking at recent setlists, I wish they'd stop playing "Bad Ass Rock 'n Roll", that's such a boring song.

did they do "Thumb Hang"?

This AV Club article on Nazism in metal is one of the best I've read on the subject. Worth checking out, particularly for the discussion of Profound Lore, who have put some really sketchy shit out while earning a seemingly unbroken stream of critical praise.

yeah that first paragraph, I had no idea

I miss when AVC regularly had good (any) metal content

If you're interested in the political morass associated with some ugly metal, the book The Lords of Chaos is a pretty gripping mostly-journalistic study, starting with Burzum and Norwegian church-burning and spiraling outwards into various kinds of nationalism and paganism...

I'm still disappointed that Sion Sono's proposed adaptation fell through

Ha, yeah. He said that he wanted to make it like 90210.

It is sad that so many people involved in Metal are fascist and/or misanthropic dicks. Definitely makes reading interviews much less enjoyable.

People need to be reminded that Craig Pillard is a full-blown Nazi, but it seems weird to conflate that with Charlie Fell saying some some dumb shit in defense of a misunderstood album cover.

I legitimately had no idea re: Pillard. granted I always think of McIntee when I think of Incantation and I have barely listened to the one Disma album I have, but like I think NS values are so often tied to black metal that non-black metal artists don't always get looked at as closely.

it is making me sadder each day to see the kind of plankton like this in the scene. had a convo with someone at the Overkill show Saturday and it was all fun until he defended Phil's 'white power' moment at the concert (even tho he wasn't expressing agreement w/ it) and talked about SJWs and all this stuff and I basically just talked to the other guys at the table the rest of the night. can these people please just leave the scene?

I've tabbed that article to read tomorrow, but it immediately reminds me of the whole 'I can listen to Burzum without endorsing Varg' thing and, well, can you? (Not that going down that path doesn't open up a whole can of worms.)

there are traces of that can of worms being opened and dumped on the floor of this board at least like...once every two years

Just wanted to say I really, really like Dying Beauty & the Silent Sky the Asphodelus EP that came out on Iron Bonehead last year. They're a Finnish doom-death outfit, used to be called Cemetery Fog. Don't think Dying Beauty got much notice, very few reviews online, but I keep coming back to it a year down the road. Anyone else?

AV Club article was great
Though I hate the Varg/Mayhem cru is "insane" thing, always feels like a copout they seem just like genuinely awful, hateful evil ppl who believe terrible things, but not crazy

had no idea about Pillard. granted when I think Incantation I think McIntee and I only have one Disma album, but seems like people with shitty beliefs not named Jef Whitehead fly under the radar if they're not NSBM.

Profound Lore link was an interesting one - artisan labels sometimes tend to make you assume they're mostly signing acts that are on the level but y'know...

That AV Club article bummed me out. One thing which surprised me was that the comments - and internet comments sections are notoriously a cesspool brought about by semi-anonymity emboldening - had a lot of good discussion.

When I worked at Relapse Records I was the buyer for the mailorder. I was also a buyer at an independent record store in Columbus, Ohio before that. My attitude was that I would stock things without judgement and people could vote with their wallets. I was fine with truth in advertising too - At the record store I remember making the bin card for Arghoslent "Richmond, VA Thrashy Death metal. Warning: Racist redneck assholes."

While at Relapse a left wing group started a campaign by actually emailing bands on the label or past bands pointing out some of the things we had in the mail order catalogue and how those bands were now associated with that. Apparently some of the bands - I never was told which ones - mentioned it to the powers that be at the label. They might not have been upset, they might have just given them a head's up, or maybe they were angry, I was never given details. I was given orders that I had to take down some bands and not stock them or similar ones ever again.

This was quite frustrating, and not because I was some paragon of allowing free speech (although that is a motivating factor) but the inconsistencies of who was included and who was safe. Someone with tangential innuendo would be forbidden to bring in but it was okay to stock other groups. I have always had issues with the contradictions of what was "allowed" in metal, excused because it's an extreme genre of music, and what wasn't. Bashing Christianity is almost a necessary component of many forms of metal, and metal has done this in very pointed ways, but of course Judaism can never be targeted (I am not naive to why this is the case). And violence against women is commonplace in metal, even sexual violence, but it's excused because it's metal. It made my job harder and one more than one occasion I was forced to explain why I stocked something that I shouldn't have.

I am really torn and the current state of affairs in this country with white supremacy in the White House doesn't help. Just last night some guy working a a grocery store saw my Agnostic Front shirt and asked if I liked metal. We had a brief discussion where he admitted to being open-minded as far as metal fans go (he liked AF and said he was listening to Dissection on the way to work but also said his favorite band was Epica) and he seemed like a nice enough guy, but I didn't give him my Facebook handle because in the back of my mind I was like, what if this guy's an asshole? I will be seeing Metallica in a few months and I know that I will be among a lot of racist asshole who voted for Trump.

I have a lot of music from sketchy bands in my collection. Some of it is quite good - Burzum is classic, the last Inquisition record was excellent. I even own that Arghoslent album and it's a shame they're such fuckheads because it's amazing. Part of me wants to just throw it all away, but where is the line drawn? But if it's that hard of a line to draw, why do I like metal and other art that I like to begin with?

I rationalize it this way: I don't think that anyone who has a Cannibal Corpse album in their collection is anti-women and pro-rape but that band (and many others) have graphic lyrics about those things and has for decades. And I don't buy that line about how death metal lyrics are like horror films, obvious over the top fiction, whereas white supremacists are all too real. Last I checked women get raped, women get murdered. That's real life as well.

I realize that I have my own inconsistencies. Ted Nugent is a piece of shit whose political views have made it difficult to listen to his music, but I don't feel the same way with other sketchy artists. I am not even sure why, as I type this. Maybe it's because Ted is mainstream and Varg isn't.

There is no easy answer here. I think that ultimately everyone makes their own decisions with their own morality and I think that quibbling over where the line is drawn is not going to help anything. At the end of the day the most benign art has influenced heinous acts and some of the most extreme art has been cathartic and allowed me to look at the world differently. I think the responsibility for the art someone consumes is not to the art, but to what they get out of it and what it inspires in them. But I'm a grown-ass man, not an impressionable kid.

It bums me out and may impact my consumption of some bands, or it may not. But I can rationalize whatever I wind up doing - to myself, and that's all that matters to me, frankly.

the plankton in the metal scene has to go. I have started way too many conversations with fellow metalheads at shows lately that have started innocently enough and then moved into some form of racist horseshit.

not remotely the majority of them, but more than enough for me to think twice about talking to some of them.

I have a lot of music from sketchy bands in my collection. Some of it is quite good - Burzum is classic, the last Inquisition record was excellent. I even own that Arghoslent album and it's a shame they're such fuckheads because it's amazing. Part of me wants to just throw it all away, but where is the line drawn? But if it's that hard of a line to draw, why do I like metal and other art that I like to begin with?

You should comment on my FB post. I'm asking people to list their favorite Nazi/racist bands, and explain what they like about them. After all, if it's not the ideology they're responding to, it must be the riffs, and if the riffs are that awesome, I don't wanna miss out!

Since I'm not on Facebook these days...

In February, an Hell's Headbangers co-released the latest from Goatmoon, a well-established Finnish NSBM act. The new album is okay, nothing special, but before I'd heard it or knew much about the band (which, of course, is just one guy), I gave a curiosity listen to Finnish Steel Storm, their 2007 "masterpiece". It's kind of incredible, flawed and at times rather silly, but also unique and palpably inspired. The songs, which owe as much to punk and folk as traditional black metal, are catchy, inventive and hugely energetic. It's honestly one of the best albums I've heard in the genre this side of the early 90s.

So, what do I do with that? I won't buy the album or support Goatmoon in any way. Apart from this mention, I won't talk FSS up, add it to playlists, or dig any deeper into the scene that produced it. But nor can I deny what I heard. Is it silly to cut yourself off from "great art" with shit values? Maybe, but it seems worse to swallow poison just because it tastes good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNl_18Kr56g

I remember glenn once saying something along the lines of, for every band you stumble on, there are a hundred similar bands you've never heard of.

So with a few genre-defining exceptions, my general take is that for every NSBM band with awesome riffs, there are probably a hundred non NS BM bands whose riffs are almost as awesome, and I'd rather support them instead.

In that spirit, here's a label whose bands I've been digging this morning that seems to have a fairly high bar for non plankton ness:
https://replenishrecords.bandcamp.com

After all, if it's not the ideology they're responding to, it must be the riffs, and if the riffs are that awesome, I don't wanna miss out!

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱), Monday, March 6, 2017 7:47 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk i think we could all stand to miss out on awesome nazi riffs

Eh, every band you can find another band that's better until there's only one.
I want more than one album from every genre in my collection, thanks.

As I said on 誤訳侮辱's Facebook thread: I never understood why I had to endorse the band's ideology because I liked their music. Lyrics were never that important to me to begin with.

A ton of great metal bands sung about Satan, yet somehow other than some ultra-religious types, I never am told I have to account for Satanism in my record collection.

You might say that Satan is not real, but white supremacy is all-too real. I would agree but then again so is misogyny and sexual violence against women. Whole genres such as porno grind can be indicted here, but also most of death metal - certainly some of the biggest names in the genre (Cannibal Corpse) are guilty of this. Does having reviewed death metal bands with those kinds of lyrics means I am accountable for our rape culture?

I abhor that a lot of metal fans are fucking stupid. But whatever it is that the stupid metal fans get out of the music that makes them stupid, I'm not seeing it and more importantly I am living my life in a completely different way.

Goatmoon is really good and I was really bummed when I found out they were nazis. Are Ride for Revenge also nazis? Finland in general has a whole bunch of these dudes. But fuckin' RfR make incredibly good droney bass metal imo

Eh, every band you can find another band that's better until there's only one.
I want more than one album from every genre in my collection, thanks.

iirc this is not how music or numbers work

You recall wrong.

Pyriphlegethon
The Murky Black of Eternal Night
(Iron Bonehead Productions)
Release Date: 4/14/2017

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/922/Qe4hxe.jpg

"Monument Of Death" (Streaming at CVLT Nation
"The Serpent's Tongue" (Streaming at YouTube)

Yet another project for Maurice de Jong, Mories to his friends, whose best-known project is Gnaw Their Tongues. Believe it or not, Pyriphlegethon - named after one of the rivers of Hades - is actually more primal and minimalistic than Gnaw which is a feat in and of itself. "Monument Of Death" is straight-forward enough: Putrid vocals, mechanical drum machine, strangled riffs, claustrophobic mix. "The Serpent's Tongue" is a lot more chaotic and has a fuller sound reminding of the first creaky steps that black metal took when riff repetition morphed into atmospheric soundscapes.

It's not among the first couple of songs released, but my favorite song is the penultimate track on the album, "The Coldest Grave," which is a bubblegum pop song set to clanking industrial bludgeon, I shit you not, replete with memorable chorus and even a lead guitar break that sounds like something Helios Creed could have conjured up if he was into Satan instead of 'Shrooms.

I am unsure if this is getting a CD release but it is coming out on vinyl and I assume digital as well.

you can listen to "the coldest grave" here, right after hail conqueror's "heaven piercing phallos" and "necrolactation unborn goat" by perverted ceremony. i was disappointed to find it less bubblegum-sticky than i'd hoped (black metal shonen knife), but it's alright.

Well everything's relative... :)

i have a harder time with bands whose lyrics are intelligible that include hate rhetoric in their lyrics music. even though it's just plain ol conservatism and not "Nazi" stuff, I had a hard time listening to early Agnostic Front for a while cos the lyrics are so damn ignorant and right up front.

the whole 'giving money to these people' is a bit easier sidestepped of course in the digital age.

it's also just really hard to tell who's a piece of shit. recall the guy from Pyrexia last year that murdered like three people.

(ok well it's not ALWAYS hard to tell)

yeah, the third murder really gave it away

well they all happened at the same time so

guess we shoulda seen it coming since his last name was "Shute"

aw fuck he's one of those sovereign citizen assholes (https://www.google.com/#q=erick+shute+murder&*)

finally checked out one of the songs on the new Six Feet Under.

christ...I thought Barnes sounded bad on the previous album. he sounds like The D.O.C. trying to do death vox

Crude black/death, not war metal, kinda crusty:

http://funeralchant.bandcamp.com/album/funeral-chant

Although they're not a metal band per se, metal people have enjoyed Pissed Jeans in the past and I have to say the latest album Why Love Now is fantastic.