Rolling Metal 2017

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.

It's really great. I don't know if it's their best (it fizzles out a teensy bit near the end imo) but it's very damn close.

Since 2013 Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu has released two critically lauded full length albums via 20 Buck Spin in North America, 2013’s ‘Valonielu’ and 2016’s ‘Värähtelijä’. Both albums showed the boundless enormity and remarkable uniqueness that Oranssi Pazuzu alone create. Are they a Psych influenced Black Metal band or a Black Metal influenced Psych band? No one knows for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway. No other band has the ability to bend these genres into such an extraordinarily cohesive whole.

For most in North America the Oranssi Pazuzu black hole only came into focus with the aforementioned last two albums. However the band had previously recorded and released two full length albums and a split LP. With their growing reputation here Oranssi Pazuzu’s back catalog has become increasingly in demand. 20 Buck Spin will now present the band’s back catalog on various formats domestically for the first time.

The ‘Farmokologinen’ MLP contains Oranssi Pazuzu’s songs from a split album they did in 2010 between the time of their first and second full lengths. Four tracks and nearly 27 minutes in length, even on a split album the band showcased their growing immensity and burning cold bleakness. Now released as a stand alone Oranssi Pazuzu release with all new artwork on vinyl and digital formats.

http://listen.20buckspin.com/album/farmakologinen

also WHAAAAOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHWWWWWW

thanks for the heads-up, gp. have wanted copies of muukalainen puhuu and kosmomonument for quite a while, but haven't been willing to pay the going rate. less interested in the ep, but w/e.

This YouTube channel has suddenly uploaded every Danzig video in HD quality. Don't know how long they'll be there - they all went up on March 3 - but there you go.

John D4rnielle on Church of Misery in NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/09/magazine/25-songs-that-tell-us-where-music-is-going.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news#/church-of-misery-make-them-die-slowly-john-george-haigh

Playing the new Body Count now. There is some serious fucking shredding going on on this album.

If there is someone who id read write about CoM ...its jd

Fen
Winter
(Aural Music/Code666)
Release Date: 3/10/2017

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/6/2/8/4/628426.jpg?2634

http://fenuk.bandcamp.com/album/winter

Video for "Winter II"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OenMFgZGE94

I fell in love with the British band's 2013 release Dustwalker after reading about it in the Rolling Metal Thread 2013 thread right here and I have a feeling that I will do the same with the new release which comes out tomorrow once I get to spend some time with it. Islander of No Clean Singing did get to spend time with itand streams the entire album of which he opines:

If it’s “self-indulgent”, it is so only in the sense that it indulges deeply felt emotions, memories, and creative impulses of the selves who made it. It’s ambitious in its reach, of course, seeking to capture the sensations of ancient landscapes and near-mystical revelations, but FEN’s ambitions haven’t exceeded their grasp.

While the spine of the music is atmospheric black metal, in its fully fleshed-out form it’s very much a prog album, intricate and rich in its textures and elaborate in its ever-changing instrumental variations. The drums will blast, the guitars will swarm, and the vocals will claw at your throat in abrasive snarls and impassioned cries. But the harsh, savage energy in the music is more than counterbalanced by other elements that become kaleidoscopic in the cascade of their sonic colors.

Trying to map all the ways in which the music changes over the course of these journeys wouldn’t serve much point. What might matter more is to say that despite the considerable distance the music travels both in time and in the range of its emotional resonances and instrumental and vocal variations, the songs are cohesive, and that might be the album’s crowning achievement. Everything seems to belong, and to integrate and unfold in ways that are fascinating, natural, and wholly immersive. Many minutes will pass, but if you’re like me, you won’t be counting them. By the end, you’ll wonder where the time went, and be glad for the time you spent with Winter.

I haven't really checked them out but I love that logo.

New Skaphe, wherein he gets all metal on us: https://skaphe.bandcamp.com/album/untitled-3

digging this Apostate Viaticum album:

https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/before-the-gates-of-gomorrah

Before listening to the song you’re about to hear, “In the Shadow of the Monolith”, I was seduced by Invictus‘ comparisons of the album to the likes of Diocletian, Bölzer, and Zom — along with Gospel of the Horns, Vomitor, and Throaat. And then the song itself seduced me. A melding of black and death, it’s a twisted piece of savagery that doesn’t unfold in a predictable straight line. It squeals, groans, vaults, and veers. It becomes a meat-grinder of morbidity and then a head-nodding, bone-mangling lurch, with a burst of frenzy at the end. My kind of nastiness.

Got a press release about Black Death. After forming in Cleveland in the late '70s, the group is reputably the first all-black heavy metal band.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-prnA3p2iVfo/U2hnUiVHd1I/AAAAAAAAHgY/aTvsIqDrXcw/s1600/blackdeath-thumb.jpg

The one album the band released, a self-titled album that came out in 1984, will be getting the reissue treatment from Hell's Headbangers sometime this year, presumably. It "consisted of a seven-song main LP and then a two-song 7", both of which Hells Headbangers will reproduce down to the same detail," says the press release.

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/8/6/5/4/8654.jpg?1734

Not to be confused with this Black Death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqteDk15Ud8

Psyched about that... Auburn was supposed to reissue that like ten years ago but it never happened, it's a fun heavy metal record.

Power Trip + Iron Reagan was v satisfying. IR's drummer didn't make it past the Cdn border, so there were a trio of fill-ins, incl the drummer from Skull Fist!

digging Funeral Chant (which should surprise nobody), reminds me of Vampire from Sweden

So apparently Nachtmystium are reuniting to play Louisville Deathfest? Anyone know anything about this? I can't imagine it'll happen.

Mentioned above, finally available to stream:

http://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/spit-forth-from-chaos

Free black jazz metal? With a little bit of Mind Flayer? I dunno how often I'll listen to it but I did order it.

This may already be known to all but Sweden's Sarcasm is putting out a new album at the end of next month (on Dark Descent ofc) and the advance track sounds exactly like where they left off over 20 yrs ago

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

this forum and metal-archives use the opposite youtube url's for embedding (or not embedding) vids and I always get them confused. dammit.

The Australian grind label Blastasfuk has put out complete-discography CDs by Assück and Mortalized (Mortalized being GridLink guitarist Takafumi Matsubara's previous band). Links:

https://blastasfuk.bandcamp.com/album/discography-1989-1998

https://blastasfuk.bandcamp.com/album/complete-mortality

That's fucking great! Will definitely pick up the Assück!

I bought the physical versions - $12 postage paid from Australia was too good a deal to pass up. And I can wait for the discs to arrive.

$6 digital Assück!