Rolling Metal Thread 2009

for roxy
http://www.blinddaterecords.de/typo3temp/pics/ce3d4070b2.jpg

Shadow of the Torturer – marching into chaos LP.....11 EURO
ULTRA DOOM. All star project with members of aldebaran, yob, hc minds etc.
Ltd. 300 copies. 100 in white vinyl

ultra d♥♥m

stay classy, seth putnam.

anyone catch one of the rorschach reunion shows? I found out too late and missed out. :-/

Shadow of the Torturer: I turned those guys onto the Gene Wolfe novel of the same name. Still haven't caught them live though.

Devin Townsend and Anneke: two great tastes that taste great together!

I take back what I said about Anvil upthread, I'll never trust a listen through shitty Borders headphones again.. the record is indeed pretty good. Not great, the lyrics are sometimes painful, but some of the tunes really hit me. "Thumb Hang" was on repeat for a bit last night.

Devin Townsend and Anneke: two great tastes that taste great together!

I just love their new song. Agua de Annique's new album is very nice, though there's not an ounce of 'metal' on there, which makes reviewing it for Decibel kind of strange.

i completely (well, almost completely) take back what i said about The Gates of Slumber above. wasn't really feeling it after the first couple of listens, tbh. but now, i kinda love it...and Conqueror too.

and so you should!

i think i like the Shrinebuilder disc even more tho.

shrinebuilder will depend on how good the missing track no5 is i think

I want to love GoS' Conqueror-- I love the sound of the band and I really love the sound of the dude's voice and I love that it's about goddamn Conan, but there's something too samey about the way the songs are put together, it feels like each one does the same RIFF-five syllables-RIFF-four syllables call and response pattern. Gonna listen a few more times though. Have not heard the new one.

I'm really enjoying Addicted!, the aforementioned Devin Townsend Project. It's definitely his most poppy record in a while, down to the electronic beats. And, of course, Anneke sounds great, especially on the cover of Townsend's transcendent "Hyperdrive" from Ziltoid.

Ah, you're taling about the collaboration on that album...I'd only heard the one on Anneke's album, not the DTP. I'll give it a listen straightaway.

got the secrets of the moon album the other day and loved loved loved it. you can listen to the whole thing here apparently:

http://www.terrorizer.com/radio

very heavy. very groovy.

The Secrets of the Moon album is occasionally really good, but it's also really long and the songs are very samey to me - they blur into one another.

it is long. i mean, most albums are too long. but i had it on in the store while i was doing stuff and it sounded really good. the guitar sound they get is just one of those immediate pleasures for me. i have a pretty high capacity for things that sound like that, but i can see some people thinking some of it is kinda tedious or whatever.

I have exactly the same thing with Dismember. Got all choked up during their guitar sound check once.

The three-CD Swedish Death Metal compilation Prophecy is putting out is awesome. A fit companion to the book, which everyone here should own.

i would like that comp. yes i would.

this is the comp i'm listening to right now:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-LvJQKf6B5U/SAEEL8OUUfI/AAAAAAAAAuo/bL6c29WgSEY/s1600/comps_easternfront3.jpg

Vol. 1-

1) DRI "Yes Mamma"
2) DRI "Soup Kitchen"
3) Stone Vengeance "Malice"
4) Violence "Gutter Slut"
5) Hexx "Edge Of Death"
6) Sentinel Beast "Dogs Of War"
7) Raw Power "Fuck Authority"
8) Laaz Rockit "Awesome"
9) Fuhrer "War"
10) Tyrannacide "Unknown Soldier"
11) Forbidden Evil "March Into Fire"
12) Morally Bankrupt "Malinger With The Devil

Vol. 2-

1) Sacrilege "Skinned Alive"
2) Anti-Momb "So What's Up"
3) Ruffians "Run For Cover"
4) Heathen "Goblin's Blade"
5) Death Angel "Mistress Of Pain"
6) Chronic Plague "The Inquistition"
7) Legacy "Reign Of Terror"
8) Blood Bath "Blood Bath"
9) Messiah "The Temper"
10) Blind Illusion "Smash The Crystal"
11) Aftermath "Win Lose Or Draw"

but it came out in 1986, so don't look for it at Best Buy.

Album cover of the year:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vhciIJDhDL8/SmXNuzznEjI/AAAAAAAAA2Y/nqHIKBVv4zQ/s400/axxis_utopia.jpg

And, link to a huge version: http://91.103.160.40/admin2/public/hudba/hardandheavy/Axxis-Utopia-610455.jpg

that combines two very personal images for me--the dragon/water-serpent is reminiscent of the creature on the cover of "TRUE GHOST STORIES & LEGENDS" i had as a kid (scared the shit out of me camping in the woods in new hampshire tbh) and the glass-dome enclosed aquatic city obviously resonates with aquaman etc.

but which i mean.. i would buy a record that looks like that.

What about the leather-clad woman with the flame whip?

added bonus, but less enthusiastically. still guilt-ridden over adolescent attraction to women on the covers of "Conan The Barbarian" anthologies.

^^^ maybe tmi

I feel bad criticizing, because I'm sure the artist spent, like, a whole semester's worth of geometry classes sketching that, but there are so many bad angles and perspectival errors...ugh. Oh, well.

What's killing me is that the little girl riding tag-along, like WTF is she doing there?

Also grammar. Apparently grammar is killing me now too.

I feel like you have unrealistic expectations for your German power metal covers, Phil... although, considering their country of origin, their moniker may be a little ill-advised...

i think the narrative is something like--
whip girl is trying to rein in the sea monsters so that it does not destroy the city.
little girl was the prisoner of the sea monster, but has been rescued & is now holding on for dear life.

i think.

We should expect better from Dodge Gores, Riff Raff Rock next time.

It is also possible that the little girl is an Atlantean princess that has been captured by the whip girl, who is now trying to destroy Atlantis via dragon while forcing the girl to watch.

totally possible!!!

that's clearly Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, dudes. what in hell it's doing attacking that domed Atlantean(?) city is beyond me, tho. and where the flying fuck is Thōrr, gott of thonar!!??

the swedish death metal comp is really, really good.

Bodom was fun tonight, but Skeletonwitch was better. Way, way better.

(I have to grab that DM comp)

it's like the pebbles of swedish dm, full of garagey gems.
the notes for each band are pretty much just variations on "they don't make 'em like this anymore"
but ekelof's enthusiasm is infectious.

xpost-If Axxis girl is not the sex-slave of the flaming whip woman, I am not buying.

the notes for each band are pretty much just variations on "they don't make 'em like this anymore" but ekeroth's enthusiasm is infectious.

Same goes for the book actually.

(yeah, ekeroth, i meant)

(not 'ekelof')

Oh, man. Nargaroth, Jahreszeiten. A concept album about the seasons? Right up there with symphonies to the alphabet or the five Platonic solids, in my book, normally, but it's in German and mostly howled, so on the one hand it hardly matters. But on the other, what this album actually amounts to, I think, is an attempt to circuit some approximation of the cycle of human emotion, for which the seasons are just a convenient proxy. This is an obviously idiotic idea, as you can't get a much more emotionally single-minded subgenre than black metal. But my opinion, two listens in, is that it works. Go listen to "Fruhling" (Spring) via your music-sampling strategy of choice. It's nihilistic and joyful at the same time. Seriously. Imagine the chorus of the Skids' "Working for the Yankee Dollar" turned into a 10-minute black metal catharsis catchy enough that my 2-year-old daughter was walking around the living room bobbing her head. In fact, we listened to the whole thing while I was making dinner, and the only thing she didn't like was the spoken stuff at the beginning and end. Can't blame her, it goes on too long.

Overall, though, I think this may be up there with Funeral Mist's Maranatha as not only a year's-best-grade album, but one that validates the subgenre in the face of any amount of forgettable crap.

Or maybe tomorrow I'll decide it's just really good. But regardless, check this out. I will trade anybody, in fact: you try this, I will try whatever last dumbfounded you.

Jeez.

Wow, Dethklok tour is show of the year material. High on Fire came out strong (at 6:30pm no less). Converge were the odd men out, though I love them anyway. They definitely seemed out of place here.

I had written off Mastodon earlier in the year, but this performance was really powerful. The vocals sounded better this time. Encore was a song from each of the first 3 LPs and a fantastic surprise cover tune.

Dethklok Dethklok Dethklok! That shit is brilliant.

Too bad the crowd is so low-brow for this.

That tour's coming to NYC right before Halloween, and I'm definitely going, but I'll be leaving after Mastodon. The whole Dethklok thing leaves me utterly cold.

Have you watched Season 2 dvd?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/pointlineplane/dethchallops.jpg