Rolling Metal 2018

Although Hyborian, Vol. 1 came out last year on a label called The Company, I saw it at a local record store new release shelf and that it was on Season of Mist who reissued it so I streamed it and I like it! Kinda like old ass Mastodon though a little less proggy than even that. Definitely sounds like a band that should have John Baizley do their art.

It never got even a mention in Rolling Metal 2017 so it definitely slipped under a lot of radars. They're evidently from Kansas City.

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/6/3/8/5/638593.jpg?4432

https://open.spotify.com/album/0OMhJ8tWNPcPAfe6nZSjjj?si=4UaXskhXQAaHX35Kv6hpng
https://hyborianrock.bandcamp.com/album/hyborian-vol-i

wow, they sound a *lot* like early Baroness

xxposts re: inquisition: http://www.metalsucks.net/2018/03/23/report-inquistions-jason-dagon-weirbach-plead-guilty-to-child-pornography-related-charges-in-2009/

Dropped from the label, shots of a criminal conviction for possession of child pornography. Welp, that's them done.

― my dreams in the hell-pits (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Friday, March 23, 2018 8:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

should have known after their landmark album Morose Cogitation of Neonatal Impurities

That is funny but also horrible
But funny

Incantation are coming like, within 3 miles of me for a headlining show Sunday. last time I saw them downtown O-Town, I paid like....$7, and it included Impaled and a headlining Nile. Today it's...still only $12! whadya know, nice in a time where even like a Lividity show costs $730.

(speaking of Lividity, like headlining one day of this brutal metal fest in Tampa and I'm like, snap guys, this crap is all you could get? But Morta Skuld another night so *shrug*)

(last time in downtown O-town was 2000)

Posted at my Facebook page but I figured someone here might enjoy this...

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZBiPzzW0AAMt43.jpg

In the new issue of Decibel Magazine I saw that Greg Pratt did the Hall Of Fame interview with Grief (sorta aka Come to Grief) and I wondered if the tour with Extreme Noise Terror came up and wouldn't you know - they unearthed a postcard from Century Media Records with the whole itinerary.

I know that itinerary well because I booked that tour.

I had moved to Raleigh, NC to be a booking agent even though I knew nothing about Raleigh or the booking business. Although I did some dates with Christian industrial metallers Circle Of Dust and hair metal reprobates Tuff - as well as middling southeast dates for Stuck Mojo - the ENT/Grief tour was my proudest moment.

I have that itinerary on the back of an ENT shirt. I also have the Grief shirt you see me in. It still fits although that is because I've always been a fat ass.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZBiRRwW0AAl1Ix.jpg

Best memories of the tour was when the folks at Earache were amazed that they got contracts from me and really wanted to work with me some more. Apparently booking bands at that level didn't attract superstars because even my learn-as-I-went and youthful enthusiasm was enough to stand out.

I also had other agents call me about how on earth did I know some of those venues? My secret was the old Maximum Rocknroll BYOFL book which I consulted as much as the Pollstar guide. It was fun talking to people used to doing basement crust punk shows about how they needed to send a deposit to me and a signed contract.

As for the tour itself, I am sad to say that it went as well as one could expect. Though I remember people such as Thomas Pascual, the old booking guy at Wetlands who was a bit of a mentor at the time, telling me he couldn't believe that I was able to get $600 a night for the package (the NYC Limelight date paid $1,500), ENT didn't seem to understand that meant they probably shouldn't have two hotel rooms every night.

Also, I made a mistake by having the contracts be for both bands. I assumed that ENT would give about $150 a night to Grief which seemed fair. Evidently that became a point of consternation between the two camps when ENT stopped doing that. Grief were damn near starving at one point. I felt terribly but there wasn't a lot I could do.

I caught a few shows on the tour. The Limelight went great - I was back in NYC, my old stomping grounds, guys from the bands were psyched, Earache and other NY metal industry types were around - I was psyched for the tour as was everyone else.

I also caught the Richmond date and of course the Raleigh one in my then-current home. It was all the first week and still, I remember only good times. There's a YouTube video of the Raleigh ENT set that can be found. And 1:15 of Grief!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mA36-jQco

The trip south and then to the midwest did not go as well. Longer drives smaller guarantees, smaller attendances, even with SOILENT GREEN jumping on a week of dates. I was hearing it from both bands but very far away and unable to do much other than tell them that the Milwaukee Metalfest would be great for merch and morale so just hang on.

I went out to Milwaukee - my friend Ann Kautz drove up from Minneapolis and crashed with me in the shitty dorms that us poor metalheads not on cushy expense accounts stayed at during the fests. Pascual was there too. I think both of them saw as members of ENT - disenchanted with America (and my apparently piss poor job booking the tour) glared at me threateningly and called me a wanker and other British euphemisms. I felt like shit. I do recall the Grief guys being a lot more understanding.

The bands never played that last show in Cincinnati which was a damn shame because that was a MR&R show with some really enthusiastic kid who sent in the deposit with a certified check and was psyched but the band was so pissed at everything they refused to play. I sent the deposit back and apologized, the last time I had to apologize for something that happened or didn't happen on that tour.

It was a big part of me leaving the booking agency. In the pre-internet days, I ran up such huge long distance bills trying to book the tour, we probably lost money. The company I worked for was happy to see me go and i was happy to leave.

Still, I have a concert shirt with a tour I booked on the back, which is one of those silly "Accomplishment: Unlocked" things I kinda like. And even today, 23 years later, Grief mentions that tour in the best metal magazine in America. And I maintain that it was and likely remains the biggest disparity in terms of velocity between two touring bands.

And Albert Mudrian, sorry I didn't book Philly. I'll make it up to you someday.

megacool story! just read it on FB.

Count me on board with the Slugdge love. Tech death with dark space rock tendencies and actual songwriting? Sign me up!

I only like a couple of death metal albums every year these days and this is definitely one of them.

Count me on board with the Slugdge love.

Me three. Doubt I'll ever love anything they do more than Gastronomicon, but the new one is a lot of fun. Cleaner sound works surprisingly well, don't even mind the mucus-deficient clean vocals & djenty fretboard workouts (present on the last one, too).

Speaking of terrestrial enslavement, Xoth have a new single up on Bandcamp. Sound is much improved since Invasion of the Tentacube, still with the riff onslaught & slap-happy bass, but the chaotic weirdness is maybe dialed down a notch (for better or worse).
https://xoth.bandcamp.com/track/plague-revival

new Mournful Congregation is *fantastic* if funeral doom floats yer boat

― Simon H., Friday, 23 March 2018 01:38 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh god yes this is premier stuff. MC are one of the bands that got me listening to funeral doom, since they're as morose and glacial as any other band in that genre but they've got a sense of forward momentum, their ideas develop rather than just wallowing on one riff for 15 minutes at a time.

I feel like its weird that no one ever mentions that Damon Good of MC is also a driving force behind StarGazer and Cauldron Black Ram. I didn't even know until I was tooling around metal archives one day and discovered that.

Maybe it's mentioned all the time and I just don't read enough reviews and interviews and shit

Totally hanging w Steve Asheim right now!

new Xoth slays!

Really enjoying Dautha's Brethren of the Black Soil, plaintive historical doom with nearly-choral backing vox and crawling tempos

Man this Pyrolatrous record slaps

Rock Against Anything: How Metal Became So Fucking Reactionary and What to Do About It

An essay from Toilet ov Hell that's very much worth your time. (Unlike the comments, but that should go without saying.)

Thanks for that, Unperson, that was a really great read.

The very fact this person felt the need to write this the way he did, offers some hope.

A worthwhile grand narrative, to be sure, but I'd rather metal (the music, not the scene, assuming they can be told apart) remain as neutral as possible with regard to conspicuous, politically political politics.

Point me to what you see as the golden era when metal was politically neutral. Name specific artists, songs, albums, etc. Thanks!

"neutrality" is a sham

It never existed and never will sub specie aeternitatis but insofar as some music is more overtly political than other music, it's not too far-fetched to argue that the political in art is a spectrum. Hence my wish that metal 'remain as neutral as possible'. Deride it all you like, but I don't care about the politics of, say, Darkspace and the experience of listening to their albums does not strike me as closer to the left or the right.

eh

metal has both anti-political/escapist as well as knee-jerk anti-establishment characteristics so it's easy to write narratives supporting either stereotype.

Pretty much. I general prefer the former but am not averse to the latter, as long as there's more to it than just that ('this music is good because it supports good politics' is both aesthetically and politically naïve).

*generally

('this music is good because it supports good politics' is both aesthetically and politically naïve)

has anyone said or thought this in the history of saying or thinking things

Politics is prescriptive. When it takes over aesthetics, it does tend to separate the chaff from the wheat on the basis of extra-artistic (which is a misnomer since art qua art does not exist according to this logic) values. Very few people who condemn aesthetic neutrality would admit to it, but the implication is there (we all must take sides and said sides cannot be neutral, hence we must seek the political good even in music). My position is that there is politics in all music but that this does not make it inherently or essentially political. It is traversed by something else (some ‘thing’, which can be equated with politics but is not reducible to it). When all is said and done, this ‘thing’ is precisely what we’re lending our ears to when we listen to music.

('this music is good because it supports good politics' is both aesthetically and politically naïve)

has anyone said or thought this in the history of saying or thinking things

Yeah, I'd like one specific example of a band pomenitul thinks makes shitty music, but gets a political thumb on the scale from critics or fans. Just one will do.

I love how you’re all just focusing on the straw man. Anyway, socialist realism, which was an official, state-sanctioned ideology being the Iron Curtain (and still very much exists in various parts of the world today) would be a classic example.

*behind (sorry, on my phone).

That's nice, but can you name a socialist realist metal band? We're talking about metal here.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TRV9i9S27VQ/UVB49vxrCuI/AAAAAAAAK_g/nBHJTYLqiOM/s1600/who-gives-a-shit.jpg

I do. A lot, in fact, as you've no doubted noticed. I care because it defines the way we talk about music (and art in general).

That's nice, but can you name a socialist realist metal band? We're talking about metal here.

That wouldn't prove your point (we're talking about listeners' attitudes, so reception trumps production here), nor are you engaging with the fleshed-out version of my argument which, incidentally, leaves more than just a bit of wiggle room for the political. Anyway, to reiterate before I get back to work: if neutrality is merely a 'sham' (as Simon put it – and I'm assuming he was referring to a musical and hence aesthetic context, as I agree with him if he meant it on a purely political level) then metal is thoroughly defined by the partisan politics not only of those make it but also of those who consume it, as if there were nothing in excess (something potentially apolitical or extra-political) that isn't merely reducible to the battle between left and right. Like I said, very few people who express contempt for aesthetic neutrality actually believe this, because it's an absolutist position that is quite hard to enact in practice.

if neutrality is merely a 'sham'...then metal is thoroughly defined by the partisan politics not only of those make it but also of those who consume it, as if there were nothing in excess

even on a purely logical level this isn't the case. the absence of an ideal neutrality, assuming "ideal neutrality" makes sense as a thought, would apply across every cultural product and therefore would just be a given when dealing with ways of receiving and creating them. that doesn't imply it's the entirety of reception or creativity any more than concepts like texture or subject or performance are. there isn't a quintessential substance, just a mesh of concepts.

sorry, shorter: "everything is political" is rarely used with the unspoken thought "and only political" tacked on

I'm certainly not arguing in favour of some quintessential substance (what I call the thing's 'excess' cannot be that, by definition, and neutrality, well, neutralises substance, as it is neither this nor that – it is a kind of ambiguity, if you will, which is precisely what draws me to art). As for the shorter version of your point, usage varies quite a bit, and the statement 'everything is political' does all too often imply an absolutist exclusivity (imho): 'nothing isn't political', i.e. 'solely nothing escapes the omnipotence of politics', which makes the aspiration towards aesthetic neutrality seem nihilistic. Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread.

Awful news about Caleb Scofield. RIP.

Metal thread's probably the wrong place for it, but Zeal and Ardor has a new track out: bandcamp.

No obvious trace of BM in the sound. Basically just a big, booming gospel-industrial stomp. Don't particularly care for it, tbh.

New Lychgate for people who like their death metal with a massive Castlevania church organ vibe.

http://blood-music.bandcamp.com/album/the-contagion-in-nine-steps

This Inhumankind album on I, Voidhanger is... something.

http://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-extinction

Double bass, flute and vocals. It's quite insane.

So Ad Hominem is pretty much unapologetic NSBM and therefore irredeemable, is that correct?
Google searches has me 90% sure this is correct but I welcome opinions here.

That's a hilarious metal band name.

In other news, anyone making the trek to Philly for the Decibel metal & Beer Fest?

http://scontent.fewr1-4.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29542823_10160236218730597_1995971344426030973_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&_nc_eui2=v1%3AAeFy1I5tWEdl8j6dz9ZgH5TxUEokUHR-XW4nWGobFcsohpPtxjOvEKKl2e-rSuczTZZC4gOo-stFN05EPSrrzKEupo20yEB1SSt1EqbKSx23uw&oh=89bdc59ffc26f02f1002cabbb22d7494&oe=5B6A9F6B

Oceans of Slumber, whose new album The Banished Heart is out now and fantastic, are touring the US with Insomnium in May and June.

Awful news about Caleb Scofield. RIP.

― wronger than 100 geir posts (MacDara), Thursday, March 29, 2018 1:05 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i learned this during my band's set last night and suggested we abandon our current setlist to just play until your heart stops straight through (we are not capable of playing anything like until your heart stops straight through)

this is so sad and awful

Dont know what the guy’s private views are but I never got an NSBM vibe from Ad Hominem, their records are all over-the-top misanthropy clearly aimed to be as offensive as possible, with songs like Glory Hole Jesus and Anus Of Yahweh & all that so I’d stay clear of them if that isn’t your thing.