Rolling Metal Thread 2007, Part II

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― unperson, Saturday, 6 October 2007 10:01 (seventeen years ago)

So, as I mentioned, I'd like to know what folks think of Metal Edge and Metal Maniacs, because the company I work for just bought 'em.

I think Metal Edge has somewhat of an identity crisis going - the editor told me their audience is 50 percent kids and 50 percent geezers who still want to read about bands they dug in high school, so they wind up covering whoever's on Ozzfest and whatever hair metal band has staggered into the studio that month. Personally, I think they should become what Rolling Stone used to pretend to be - a voice of historical authority. I mean, ME has been publishing for 20-plus years, they should play that up. "We know everything and everybody, not like those upstart kids at Decibel and Revolver." If it was up to me, every time they'd cover an artist they'd covered a decade or more before, they could run a clip from the old piece, like "what we said then/what we say now."

― pdf (Phil Freeman), Sunday, 11 February 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

You can STILL get metal edge in every smiths in the uk, but WHY?! It's shite!!!

During the 90s it was all still hair metal and pantera , ignoring what was going on and pretending grunge never happened (cue everyone going hurrah). Horrid magazine. I think it was Metal Sludge who used to rip the piss out of it for all the mistakes in it too.

Never heard of Metal maniacs.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:07 (eighteen years ago)

I like the idea of Metal Edge being "the magazine that's been there, done that". I haven't opened one in 20-odd years, mind you, being turned off by the covers that looked like "teenbeat for longhairs". Never even seen the other one so no opinion, sorry.

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

Just got my watermarked download of the new Dimmu Borgir. So far, it's almost as pomptastic as Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, which is my favorite of their albums. I are pleased.

― unperson, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 20:47 (eighteen years ago)

I'm going to the fancy-shmancy Dimmu Borgir listening party next week in Hollywood. I'm mostly going because I want to hear the album and because there's an open bar, so my friend is going to need someone to drive him home/keep him propped upright.

Got a review package with Lordi and Novembers Doom. I feel like those two should have canceled each other out or something. I was half expecting the package to be empty when I got it. Good stuff, though!

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

I got the Lordi from Action PR, but haven't gotten the Novembers Doom. And considering the write-up I gave Melechesh in Global Rhythm, I better stay on The End's press list.

― unperson, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

The Lordi record is incredibly derivative, but incredibly fun. So far, I think I've boiled them down to:

Destroyer/Creatures of the Night KISS + Melodic Finn Metal (Sentenced/69 Eyes/Lullacry/Etc.) + Rejected Rob Zombie Lyrics = LORDI.

Haven't been depressed enough to get too far into the Novembers Doom yet, but I like what I've heard so far.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

Always wanted it to be "Puritanical Misanthropic Euphoria". But whatever. While the album's cruddy, I love using the title to describe most anything. Satisfaction after washing dishes. Anger at motorists. Etc.

― Pye Poudre, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 22:13 (eighteen years ago)

should I post this here instead? I'm confused. (Also, I like the new Gregorian metal album by Virgin Black on The End, by the way):

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster: Good rustic thrash playing with plenty of boogiefied groove in it; invariably hard-to-take sore-throat yelling that at its *most* tolerable sounds like Alice in Chains or somebody, which means still pretty shitty (and kind of emo, even). More often the vocals are just ugly, which is a shame, since supposedly the album is a concept album about "the true tales of 1920s gangster Ma Barker and her prohibition era real-life crime family," not that you can tell, and sadly they don't cover "Ma Baker" by Boney M either. They list Willie Nelson among their influences, which is not remotely audible, but the Skynyrd influence might not be total bullshit (or at least less bullshit than in the case of Clutch, Pantera, Corrosion of Conformity, etc.), at least as far as the rhythm is concerned. Best track by far is a reasonably lovely guitar blues tapestry instrumental called "The Day Hell Broke Loose At Sicard Hollow." But Wino Weinrich's new band Hidden Hand does this backwoods kind of legend-of-wooley-swamp metal stuff a lot better on their new album, and Wino has a voice.
Flying Eyes from Maryland call themselves "pyschodelic-blooze-rock" at CDbaby; list Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Cream, Doors, Dead Meadow, Radiohead, among their influences, but none of those let you know that Allison Weiner is actually a real good lady singer (from another room, Lalena was liking it and asked if it was a country record); actually, I hear more Grace Slick or Jenny Haan from Babe Ruth or whoever sang for Curved Air (who, okay, I barely remember) in the vocals, or even the Gathering with the goth and metal taken out. Lots of beautiful psychedelic guitar solos, especially in "Song For Empy Rooms," and "Dreaming Eyes Awake," which I think is the best track on their myspace page. My other favorites are "Devastating Fire," which has an extended wah-wah solo coming out of some punchy, sinewy hard rock with real gravity to it, and "Caravan," which progresses from space rock to hippie jazz fusion with non-gloomy words trying to come to terms with dying (or something like that) ,"Also in "Our Blues" a Humvee eats somebody's family, which is not humorless. And the thing about all the solos is that Allison's singing lets them emerge naturally from songs; they don't just stand there and pointlessly noodle into the empty sky.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/theflyingeyes

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 01:53 (eighteen years ago)

the virgin black is hott. i would have talked to you about it if it weren't for the fact that you hate sandboxes so much.

i gotta get outta here. nu-ilx is freaking me out. later.

― scott seward, Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

I'm still not sick of the Lordi album, and don't think I ever will be. Those guys know their 80s metal hooks incredibly well. Along with the bits Jeff mentioned, I'm hearing a lot of 86-88 era Manowar, you know, "Kings of Metal", "Blow Your Speakers", etc., but far less self-important, obviously.

That Virgin Black is interesting, and I haven't sat through the entire thing, but while giving it a quick spin yesterday, I kept thinking, "It's good, but the new Amber Asylum is a fair bit better."

I keep going back to that Maylene & the Sons of Disaster CD. The first track falls into the metalcore breakdown trap, but the rest of that album cooks. And the singer (ex-Underoath, weirdly enough) actually does a good job. There are times where he reminds me a bit of a growly Patterson Hood.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:25 (eighteen years ago)

I am hearing that Lordi will be on Ozzfest's main stage this year, along with Ozzy, a Layne-less Alice In Chains, Motorhead, and other acts TBD. I wish it was just a Lordi/Motorhead club tour instead. Oh, well.

― unperson, Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

That would be an incredibly weird Ozzfest.

Yeah, there's all sorts of pilfered stuffin that Lordi CD, lots of little things that I can't quite place but seem very familiar. One of the things that stuck out to me in particular was the 80s Krautmetal influence, stuff like Accept and Warlock. Obviously, Udo lends his gargle to the "They Only Come out at Night," but there are other parts.

So, I finally have my own copy of the new Fu Manchu (I was borrowing a friend's burn before), and I've had a little more time to absorb it. I agree, second half is weaker than the first, especially "sensei versus sensei", which just doesn't go anywhere. I like the Cars cover, maybe because I don't really have any sentimental attachment to the Cars other than a general enjoyment of their music. The thing about Fu Manchu is that each of their records has a different, not really theme or concept, but more "vibe." Like, King of the Road was their racing record, California Crossing their late 70s AM radio record, Start the Machine their pissed off record. We Must Obey is their sinister record. The whole thing has this weird, creepy vibe to it, from the cover art to the songs themselves. Still like it, though.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 February 2007 03:50 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Novembers Doom. My God, this thing is massive. It's like getting hit with a freight train of, well, doom. I hear Opeth, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, the usual suspects, but they definitely have their own thing going on, which you'd think would be pretty hard for a death-doom band to do at this point.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 February 2007 04:13 (eighteen years ago)

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f253/Klawful-image/jus-tin.jpg

― scott seward, Thursday, 22 February 2007 04:19 (eighteen years ago)

Hee. ^

A short while ago I popped in the new Helloween live CD/DVD...I'm nowhere near the fan I was 20 years ago, and Kai Hansen's Gamma Ray is far better, but when I put on "Halloween" it reminded my just why I euphorically declared it the GREATEST SONG EVER back when I was 16. Along with "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", it's a 13 minute epic that never ceases to be exhilarating in my books. Ah, 80s metal nostalgia.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 22 February 2007 09:11 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Manowar and Accept both make a lot of sense in re: Lordi. (Why didn't I think of those comparisons?)

Listening to and liking Crash Street Kids (link below) this morning; I especially like "Space Rock Time Bomb," "You'll Be Getting Off Here," and (second tier) "Motor City Nazz" and "Penthouse" -- basically, wherever their mid-Beatles/early-Bowie souped-up rock-pop inches toward '70s metal. The ballads (esp. "Mr. Stalight") are a lot harder to stomach. I never really listened to Enuf Z'Nuf enough (really I don't know them at all beyond "Fly High Michelle," and I can't remember the last time I listened to that song even), but they're the band that keeps coming to mind, for some reason. Also maybe Redd Kross circa Neurotica, and (obivously) Cheap Trick:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/crashstkids2

New live Black Lips CD in the player too. Seems sloppy, but not bad. Even sloppier than their studio albums, I mean. I like the middle Eastern undulating in "Hippie Hippie Hoorah" I think. Haven't gone back and bounced the setlist off their studio albums to see how many song might be new yet.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 12:50 (eighteen years ago)

By "'70s metal" I mean "hard rock" (in case you're confused.) Powerpop with actual power, basically. Glam rock. Mott the Hoople. That sorta thing.

I guess the Black Lips' parlor trick is to see how melody they can retain within the sloppiness. Fine, but you could hear the songs better on the studio albums, so in the long run they're what I'll be going back to, I bet.

In other news, I really like the bonus track "Night Rider" on the new Blue Oyster Cult Spectres reissue -- more than some tracks on the album itself (well, better than "R U Ready To Rock," at least. I'd forgotten how great "Death Valley Nights" and "Fireworks" are.) They also croon a fully straight cover of "Be My Baby" on the reissue -- take that, Eddie Money!

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:00 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of reissues, I already posted this on the country thread, but it makes way more sense here:

Light In The Attic Records is reissuing the two '70s albums by Betty Davis, who was married to Miles and dated Hendrix, at least as the legend goes. The label sent me an advance, promo CD that combines both albums, though they're actually being released separatelty. Most of what I wrote in *Stairway To Hell* about the marginally better of the two, *They Say I'm Different,* (which coincidentally is the only one of the two I *don't* own on vinyl now) still stands: She has way too thin a voice, can't carry a melody to save her life, and the songs mostly lack hooks, but when she just the rides the groove, she can be really good, and in songs like "Come Take Me" and "Don't Call Her No Tramp" the groove can get fairly monstrous, almost in a Jimmy Castor Bunch funk-metal way. On the other hand, white rock bands from Nazareth to Foghat to Black Oak Arkansas rocked funkier at the time, in part because they were way catchier and had way stronger singers, so big, deal, right? Though sometimes her big-afro attitude help, too, of course, though not nearly as much as people who wind up reviewing the reissues will pretend, I bet. Funniest song: Still "He Was a Big Freak," where she whips the guy with a turquoise chain. "Steppin In Her I. Miller Shoes" is both a great title and a good track. "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up" and "Game Is My Middle Name" and "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him" are not as good as their titles. but a few other cuts come close maybe.

And I'm the only one who read that Justin cartoon to be about Timberlake at first? They kinda look alike! And it's funnier that way. And his new album is a lot better than the other Justin's. I'm not sure whether he gets high, though.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

Aaah!!! That previously unrelased bonus BOC track is "Night FLYER," not "Night Rider," duh...

And (before Scott gets to it) I meant "...how much melody (Black Lips) can retain..."

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:12 (eighteen years ago)

i'm on a big my dying bride binge this evening

the only record not on shuffle rotation tonite is 'like gods of the sun'

the tunes off 'light at the end of the world' are sounding extra ripe just now. could this possibly be giving 'the dreadful hours' a nudge as the greatest of the whole bunch.

got the majesty of 'turn loose the swans' playing now in all its miserable poetic glory.

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

'let the rich give you preseeeents'

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:28 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, if anybody wants to lump Crash Street Kids (whose name comes from a Mott the Hoople song title, obviously) in with the Wildhearts and/or Crash Kelly, that'd probably make a whole lot of sense, too.

Also been playing the 1997 cdbaby album by long-lost immortal ex-Shakin' Street French metal chanoozie Fabienne Shine; she can get cabaret-ballady at times, but "No Mad Nomad" and her cover of "The Cross" by Prince sound rather awesome, and "Kill For Love" and her cover of "Salt of the Earth" by the Stones aren't bad either. She also sent me a new three-song debut; don't much care for the sincerely schmaltzy protests against the war and for the homeless it starts out with, but the third song, "Dancing For Eternity," where she's backed by Al Bouchard and Ross the Boss, could maybe quality as my "single of the year" so far if I decide it should indeed count as a "single."

here's her ten-year-old album:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/fabienne

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:41 (eighteen years ago)

thre-song DEMO, I mean. Damn I guess I'm still not awake yet.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:42 (eighteen years ago)

What is it with this fukt place and the constant having to reregister the login?

― Gorge, Thursday, 22 February 2007 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, what's up with that shit? Every time I go visit another site and then come back here, I have to re-register to post again.

― unperson, Thursday, 22 February 2007 22:20 (eighteen years ago)

The bonus tracks on the BOC reissues are great. I finally picked up the Agents of Fortune reissue last week, and the original version of "Fire of Unknown Origin" on there has been running through my head ever since. Wonder why it didn't make the cut -- it's better than some of the stuff that did, especially towards the end.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 February 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

Every time I read that Novembers Doom are from Chicago, I'm surprised. Even when it's multiple times within the same article. They sound like they should be from England or Norway or something.

(Oh, and it looks like the Van Halen reunion has already collapsed. That was slightly faster than I even expected.)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 February 2007 01:54 (eighteen years ago)

>>Yeah, what's up with that shit?

Site crashes or is taken off line for some screwed-up reason that would even defy explanation by a Ph.D. every three months. What will be the next mini-disaster?

Reminds me of being on teen-run bedroom BBSes in the late-80's/early-90's. Every few weeks the software and format would change on the whims of the children or whoever was attacking them.

I just <strike>hate</strike>love the formatting <strike>opacity</strike> help. It's just ginchy.

I was going to say something about what I was listening to but then the thought cropped up that it'll be off-line in a couple weeks and I'll have to relogin under a different alias when it comes back because the free use crippleware has tyrannically decided it doesn't like my old name anymore.

I'd pay a 12 bucks a month on a revolving debit just to be rid of the propped-up feebleware. How is it that every game forum on the net running a similar function manages to stay alive consistantly while ILX is the picture next to the word 'digital pothole' in the tech dictionary?

― Gorge, Friday, 23 February 2007 03:34 (eighteen years ago)

Look, the simplest html tags work only randomly. Surprise, surprise!

― Gorge, Friday, 23 February 2007 03:37 (eighteen years ago)

If you want to bitch about the board, it looks like they're doing that over here:

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56333#unread

This page is for bitching about metal. Let's keep each separate bitching in its proper place, don't want to be unorganized.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 February 2007 04:09 (eighteen years ago)

>>http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56333#unread

>>This page is for bitching about metal. Let's keep each separate bitching in its proper place, don't want to >>be unorganized

Yeah, thumbs down re anarchy and getting too technical or abrupt and tough-mindedl it might abrade, madden and insult the intelligence of readers.

Poptown's She-Wolves Mach One is a fine record.

― Gorge, Friday, 23 February 2007 08:47 (eighteen years ago)

Wow!

http://www.dickdestiny.com/barotmonterey.JPG

― Gorge, Friday, 23 February 2007 08:54 (eighteen years ago)

That sucks. Be careful now. Let's get it back on the rails.

― Gorge, Friday, 23 February 2007 08:58 (eighteen years ago)

So I just realized that "You'll Be Getting Off Here" by Crash Street Kids sounds like Crack The Sky, wow.

Also, what the hell do metal people know -- these guys' Southern rock kicks harder than Maylene and the Sons of Disaster's (from country thread, duh):

Renegade Rail: Another cdbaby band (link below), blistering Missouri hard rock country. Maybe even blistering grunge country -- "Need For Speed" makes a riff similar to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (i.e., feels more like Nirvana than like the Kingsmen or Boston or Sisters of Mercy to me) swing; vocal chorus in "Crazy" seems to possibly owe its grunty technique to Alice in Chains or Temple of the Dog or somebody, though I can't think of any Alice or Temple songs I like this much. So far I'm thinking: great guitar player, great rhythm section, passable singer. Who has yet to get in the way.

Renegade Rail's "Evening News" (sad lovely Southern Rock, closer to Marshall Tucker than to grunge) is intriguing: Seems to be maybe pro Iraq war, sung from the point of view of a soldier who's been overseas two years and is counting his "five days and a wakeup" (that's real Army short-timer talk! I remember!) til rotating back to the States (must've been written before tours of duty were extended?), and how the TV news never notes that they're doing a good job over there. "We fought the fight, we're almost done" seems somewhat deluded, to say the least. "We made the good guys free and the bad guys turn and run" also. But I like the mood of the song, and how it's probably better than Husker Du's "Turn on the News," and how the line "without my soldiers angels we're all done" reminds me of Beyonce'. (Also, it never mentions Iraq, so why should I read that into it? Hard not to.)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/renegaderail3

― xhuxk, Friday, 23 February 2007 13:50 (eighteen years ago)

(Though okay, I'm not gonna die that I might actually like some combination of Renegade Rail's songs and melodies and non-shitty singing with Maylene and the Etc.'s metal groove even more.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 23 February 2007 14:09 (eighteen years ago)

not gonna DENY I mean. (or die for that matter, what the heck.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 23 February 2007 14:10 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, hello all. Regarding any questions re: the board format and code there should be an updated FAQ later today that goes through all the whats and whys.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 23 February 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

got latest ruins of beverast. total hottness. AND the reissue of Virus West by Nagelfar!!! which i had never heard and which is as great as everyone always said it was.

reviewing new Moonsorrow. the word "unrelenting" comes to mind. 2 songs. almost 60 minutes total. good thing i really like vikings.

but this week i am all about DODHEIMSGARD!!!!!!!!!!

new one is soooooooooooooooooooo fucked. so cool. wow. double wow. jeebus. wotta rekkerd.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 February 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

Mendeed - The Dead Live by Love (Nuclear Blast): Mendeed's first one was a blatant Shadows Fall rip, but their latest is more of the Children of Bodom/Dragonforce speed power-death/Nintendo-Thrash/ADD-overdrive variety. So much so, in fact, that the 99-track copy protection on the promo makes it difficult to tell when a new song starts. Pretty well done, though, and they avoid Dragonforce's biggest problem, in that the vocals actually fit with the music by alternating between growling and singing and Mustaine-whining when the tempo calls for it. The band's ambition only occasionally over-extends its reach, so most of the wankery isn't too embarrassing. The songs themselves, however, hew closer to the Dragonforce "wow that was cool and fast and I don't remember a damn bit of it the second it's over" style than the Bodom catchiness-first approach. Mendeed do try for big vocal hooks. The hooks just don't stick. "Gravedigger" probably comes the closest, with its "Reap what you sow!" chant. Not particularly original or memorable, but a very enjoyable listen. Fans of Children of Bodom or Dragonforce should dig this, big surprise.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 February 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

I've had that Mendeed sitting around, but haven't listened to it yet. Considering how much I disliked their last one, I was in no hurry. But your description has me mildly interested.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 23 February 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I had the same trepidation as you, but a friend told me it was good, so I gave it a shot. Makes great workout music!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 February 2007 23:38 (eighteen years ago)

Oh right, new FAQ, sorry:

Hello I am a FAQ please read me

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 23 February 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

Holy freaking crap! Finntroll American tour!

Finland's FINNTROLL has lined up the following North American tour dates during September/October:

Sep. 18 - Allentown, Pa Crocodile Rock
Sep. 19 - West Springfield, VA @ Jaxx
Sep. 20 - New York, NY @ B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
Sep. 21 - Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Chance
Sep. 22 - Bedford, NH @ Mark's Place
Sep. 23 - Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
Sep. 24 - Quebec City, QC @ L'Imperial
Sep. 25 - Toronto, ONT @ The Funhouse
Sep. 26 - Cleveland, OH @ Peabody’s
Sep. 27 - Detroit, MI @ I-Rock
Sep. 28 - Mokena, IL @ The Pearl Room
Sep. 29 - St. Paul, MN @ Station 4
Oct. 02 - Seattle, WA @ Studio 7
Oct. 03 - Portland, OR @ Roseland Grill
Oct. 04 - San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s
Oct. 05 - Los Angeles, CA @ Key Club
Oct. 06 - Santa Ana, CA @ Galaxy Theater
Oct. 07 - Tempe, AZ @ The CLubhouse
Oct. 08 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launch Pad
Oct. 09 - Ft. Worth, TX @ Ridgelea Theater
Oct. 10 - San Antonio, TX @ White Rabbit
Oct. 11 – Houston, TX @ Meridian

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 February 2007 08:32 (eighteen years ago)

Nice. I am so there. And I'll check out that Mendeed album.

I'll be reviewing the Azrael and Orthodox discs for Metal Maniacs, which makes me feel like a teenager again. Back when I first started freelancing I really, really wanted to write for MM but the editors wouldn't give me the time of day (kinda surprising, given the quality of what they were publishing, but I guess I wasn't a Century Media intern (this was during the Ula/Jeff era) so no chance.

― unperson, Saturday, 24 February 2007 13:19 (eighteen years ago)

Last thing I'll say about Crash Street Kids: They have some Cars (riff of "It's a Killer") and some Queen (poofy ending of "Sweet Sexation") in there too.

And it should be added here that my favorite Fabienne Shine solo songs (particularly "No Mad Nomad" and "Dancing For Eternity") sound more like Shakin' Street than anybody since Shakin' Street. Which is quite welcome.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 February 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

my new and improved unholy 13 faves of 2007 so far in february(!!):

Necrodemon - Ice Fields Of Hyperion

Rotting Christ - Theogonia

Solefald - Black For Death

Virgin Black - Requiem - Mezzo Forte

Novembers Doom - The Novella Reservoir

Laethora - March Of The Parasite

Amok - Necrospiritual Deathcore

Nagelfar - Virus West (re-issue)

Blood Of The Black Owl - S/T

Dodheimsgard - Supervillian Outcast

Giant Brain - Plume

Furze - UTD: Beneath the Odd-Edge Sounds to the Twilight Contract of the Black Fascist/The Wealth of the Penetration in the Abstract Paradigmas of Satan

V.E.G.A. - Cocaine

(not really in order though. i'm probably forgetting some stuff too.)

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 February 2007 18:07 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, I'm listening me to that Dodheimsgard album now...

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 24 February 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

I'm officially smitten with the new Within Temptation album. It succeeds in every way that the Echoes of Eternity CD failed. I'm a complete sucker for overproduced Euro-goth sing by girls.

I thought the band would be milking the Evanescence ballads, but no, this thing still has plenty of muscle, not to mention some quality hooks.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 25 February 2007 10:23 (eighteen years ago)

That V.E.G.A. album wound up boring me in the long run, sad to say.

I'm listening to Funeral's album now, on Candlelight USA, and track #7 and track # 1 (don't have the titles handy now) at least, appear to be some fairly scrumptious doom'n'gloom. Will this be the first Candlelight USA release worth hanging on to this year? Only time will tell. (Okay, here's a question for you other lucky promo-getters: Is the selection from Candlelight really as mediocre as it seems, or does it just seem mediocre because their advance promos look so uniformly boring, in those identical earthtone sleeves?)

Because Scott did it, and because that old version of the thread is long gone too I guess, here is an update of my lists of favorites so far this year:

TOP TEN METAL (AS DEFINED BY SILLY *DECIBEL* TYPE FOLX)
Necrodemon – The Field Of Hyperion (Open Grave)
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
The Hidden Hand – The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote (Southern Lord)
Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)
Minsk – The Ritual Fires Of Abandonment (Relapse)
Virgin Black – Requiem Mezzo Forte (The End)
Lordi – The Arockalypse (The End)
Rwake – Voices Of Omens (Relapse)
Therion – Gothic Kabbalah (Nuclear Blast)
Melechesh – Emissaries (Osmose Productions)

TOP TEN "HARD ROCK" OTHERWISE CATEGORIZED
Trigger Renegade – Destroy Your Mind (Black Top Fade)
Black Angel – O’California (Outsiders Record Company)
The Sirens – More Is More (MuSick)
Glenn Stewart – Glenn Stewart (Floodzone Ent. Group)
Les Hatepinks – Tete Malade/Sick In The Head (TKO EP)
Crash Street Kids – Chemical Dogs (Hot City Recording Company)
Renegade Rail -- Ragged (renegaderail.com)
John Waite – Downtown—Journey Of A Heart (No Brakes/Rounder)
Altered State – Get Real (Altered State)
Dirty Sweet – Of Mavericks & Beggars (Seedling)

The second list kicks the first list's butt, for the most part.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 February 2007 14:08 (eighteen years ago)

(Also, I left reissues like Slade and recently discovered late '06 albums like The Flying Eyes and recently discovered late '06 reissues like Sir Lord Baltimore off of those lists, fwiw. Which reminds me, I still need to get ahold of a copy of that new Sir Lord Baltimore album that Phil wrote about.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 February 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)

Necrodemon - Ice Fields Of Hyperion

Oops, this is its real title. (Which is even better!)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 February 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

Another contender for metal-by-wide-definition listdom, by the way (which I just first played yesterday; it's taken me a little while because I was only sent it, wonderfully, on vinyl): Group Doueh, Guitar Music From the Western Saharah (Sublime Frequencies.) Phil, you should check this thing out...

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 February 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I got that the other week -- rough recording (no surprise there) but sounds really great.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 25 February 2007 14:39 (eighteen years ago)

jeez, i wish someone would send me sublime frequencies in the mail. i bought my group doueh vinyl at the rekkerd store. actually, i just traded junk for it, so, it wasn't that painful. but it wasn't cheap. and, yeah, i dig it a ton.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

today though i am all about the two *bitter blood street theatre* albums i bought on-line. early 70's+ohio+psych+early alice cooper theatrical antics=cool by me. way better than lordi too. they actually kinda remind me of my brother.

http://myspace-576.vo.llnwd.net/01516/67/50/1516680576_l.jpg

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

plus, chuck, Bitter Blood played THE greatest "metal" bill of all time:

http://a865.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/16/l_b4741de0fdc8daa7becab33f2a04ae10.jpg

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

they look killer. available on cd or just vinyl?

also, have you heard the left end spoiled rotten? just got that and i'm digging it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

between michigan and ohio, sometimes i wonder why i even bother with music from all those other loser states.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know if the bitter blood stuff is on cd. i kinda don't think so. the vinyl pops up pretty frequently. They put out all the stuff they recorded in the early 70's (in the hopes of getting a record deal) in 1978 on their own label on two albums. i actually ended up with one of their drummer's copies. the dude in the mask up there. all their song-titles are awesomely metal too: the spider, gutter children, battle of the trees, the monkey wolf, snake and cave, i speak the dead. they later turned into the waaaaaaaaaaay prolific druid/psych/folke act Blacklight Braille.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:44 (eighteen years ago)

i have not heard the left end.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:44 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of michigan and the early 70's and alice cooper and metal, i FINALLY got a copy of Dick Wagner's Ursa Major album from 1972. HOLY sheeeeeeet is that fucker LOUD. can't believe i'm only just hearing it. that thing has george smith's name written all over it. total guitar overkill. if there can be such a thing.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:53 (eighteen years ago)

George Smith's guitar ate my face!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 25 February 2007 17:31 (eighteen years ago)

I don't have a turntable, and have no intention of buying one.

― unperson, Sunday, 25 February 2007 17:33 (eighteen years ago)

okay...

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 February 2007 17:35 (eighteen years ago)

Well, that Sublime Frequencies thing y'all were mentioning above is vinyl-only.

― unperson, Sunday, 25 February 2007 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

The upcoming Middian album is great, if you're into that scene.

― novaheat, Sunday, 25 February 2007 21:17 (eighteen years ago)

My (mostly redundant) top 10 for the year so far:

Fear My Thoughts - Vulcanus (Century Media)
Nahemah - The Second Philosophy (Lifeforce)
In This Moment - Beautiful Tragedy (Century Media)
Sirenia - 9 Destinies and a Downfall (Nuclear Blast)
Fu Manchu - We Must Obey (Century Media)
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
The Hidden Hand – The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote (Southern Lord)
Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)
Minsk – The Ritual Fires Of Abandonment (Relapse)
Lordi – The Arockalypse (The End)

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 February 2007 23:51 (eighteen years ago)

lifelover have a new track up on myspace from their album out this week. sure to be on of my top releases this year.

― drone/a/sore, Monday, 26 February 2007 03:58 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, here's the current incarnation of my ever-fluctuating list of ten, sort of in descending order:

The End - Elementary
Wold - Screech Owl
Clutch - From Beale Street to Oblivion
Jesu - Conqueror
Hacride - Amoeba
Minsk - The Ritual Fires of Abandonment
Therion - Gothic Kabbalah
Melechesh - Emissaries
Lordi - The Arockalypse
Within Temptation - The Heart of Everything

― A. Begrand, Monday, 26 February 2007 10:24 (eighteen years ago)

Urps, forgot about Novembers Doom. Should have stuck that one in there.^

― A. Begrand, Monday, 26 February 2007 10:26 (eighteen years ago)

Beautifully warm Kraut-rock-like cdbaby space-psychedelia from Greece, four years old (though I'm just now hearing it) and probably more funk-and-jazz-(and allegedly Greek folk music)-than-metal-infused, but what the heck:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/flowrock

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 11:46 (eighteen years ago)

Influences listed on The Flow's myspace page:

Pink Floyd , Porcupine Tree, Ozric Tentacles, Can, Gong, Tortoise, Ui, Red Snapper, Moonflowers, Brian Eno, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Van Der Graaf Generator, Enio Morricone, Agitation Free, Soft Machine, Afrodite's Child, The Doors, Cosmic Jokers, Country Joe And The Fish, Ghost, Guru Guru, Grateful Dead, Love, King Crimson, White Noise, Camel, Egg, Jethro Tull, Hatfield And The North, New Trolls, Matching Mole, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Wallenstein, Miles Davis (electric period), Pharoah Sanders, After All, Kevin Ayers, Cressida, John Lennon, Donovan, Klaus Schulze, Terry Riley, Keith Jarret, Faust, Califone, David Sylvian, Appalusa, Ashra Temple, Brainticket, Syd Barrett, Cluster, Fit And Limo, Embryo, Fairport Convention, Edgar Froese, John Cage, Moebius And Plank, OS Mutantes, Mooseheart Faith, Mother Gong, Pearls Before Swine, Timothy Leary

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

My favorite tracks have been leaning toward "Touch of Frost (I, II)" and "Watching The Sunset," though the midsection of "Reflecting Love" might be where they get heaviest. Most Montrose-like title: "Spacestation 61".

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:14 (eighteen years ago)

Also, this guy Joakim seems to list some of the same influences on his myspace page (hard to tell, since he only lists pictures, not all of whom I recognize), and "Rocket Pearl" and maybe "Love Me #2" and some other tracks on his album are probably at least as metal as anything by the Flow, but I haven't decided how much I like his album yet. Sounds good when it's on; doesn't really leave an impression when it's not. But then I'm no raver:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44935608

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:50 (eighteen years ago)

oops

[list]http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44935608[/list]

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:51 (eighteen years ago)

fuck! oh well:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44935608

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:51 (eighteen years ago)

That Azrael double-disc is fucking great. It's beautifully recorded (and not just by black metal standards!), and it's almost prog at more than a few points. If it was a single 45-minute disc, instead of two 64-minute discs, it would surely be in my Top Ten for 2007-thus-far.

― unperson, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:10 (eighteen years ago)

azrael act V: editing

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:13 (eighteen years ago)

ha!

― scott seward, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

from my review:

I’m already eagerly anticipating Act V: Mom…Act VI: Chicken.

― scott seward, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

which isn't that funny, but boy did i have fun writing it. that review wrote itself.

― scott seward, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

well, i laughed.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

So this isn't exactly new, but seeing Trivium play stuff from The Crusade live crystallized my thoughts on the band: they're basically like a bunch of kids playing "thrash band." They ran around on stage like excited puppies, wanting the audience to love them. The new songs were a lot of fun, retarded lyrics aside (DRAGON!), but it struck me as sort of like going to see an 80s metal cover band. However, after seeing the songs live, I do like the album more now that I've sorted that out for myself. Unless there's someone obvious I'm not thinking of, it seems like they've basically invented pop thrash.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 February 2007 20:43 (eighteen years ago)

The Melechesh and Minsk are currently kicking my ass, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Fu Manchu.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 26 February 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2PzagXsD0Y

― am0n, Monday, 26 February 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

Oh man, that clip posted above had me laughing.

This new Mendeed is mighty impressive alright. You can hear Trivium's thrash revival, DragonForce's power metal, and even All That Remains' melodic take on metalcore. Not a great album, but a significant step forward, especially when compared to their last CD, which was maddeningly inconsistent.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

So am I the only person liking (not loving, but liking is okay too) this Funeral album on Candlelight (the label nobody has ansewerd my question about above yet)? Just really listenable, sad, dark sloth-metal with plenty of gravity and pretty melodies and a nicely glum moaner of a singer who doesn't sound particularly affected in any way. And tasty psychedelic stretch-outs in at least cuts #3 and 7 (among others?), I think. Infuriating that no song titles are included (well, actually, maybe they're on the promo one-sheet; I haven't gone back and checked.) At any rate, who it basically reminds me of is Katatonia, oddly enough. But I think I prefer this to last year's Katatonia CD.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 12:09 (eighteen years ago)

as per yer question: candlelight stuff is a mixed bag. they put out a LOT of stuff. some good. some not so good. i need to listen to the funeral again. i only listened once. maybe not all the way thru too.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 12:34 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urdw9nmmm0I

― am0n, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urdw9nmmm0I

― am0n, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

hi metal cats. can someone recommend me some recent, potentially awful black metal. you know, the kind that's so stupid and raw and badly recorded that non-metal fans end up writing about how "avant-garde" it is because it really sounds like it was recorded in a norwegian pay toilet? i'm in a "mood."

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

buy the new horna album on moribund. pretty raw. it's not awful though.

http://www.twilight-vertrieb.de/images/item/h/horna-AEaeniae_yoessae-cd.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:20 (eighteen years ago)

i think i got that in the mail! now i have to go through my desk.

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

pay toilet production is about right. a finnish pay toilet no less.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

there is a 22 minute track on the horna album that will test your intestinal fortitude.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of long-ass tracks, that moonsorrow album is way impressive. the intro to the first track is almost ten minutes long(!!)

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:35 (eighteen years ago)

i have been listening to a lot of metal lately, though obviously i'm a dabbler

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

strongooo it sounds like you want striborg or something.

that horna album is pretty good.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

what i have been enjoying lately:

old school darkthrone
ditto abruptum
carpathian forest
leviathan
bone awl (is this even black metal? it just sounds like noise to me.)

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

wold, maybe?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

Been listening stuff similar to what strongo lists, with the exclusion of Abruptum & Darkthrone (Transilvanian Hunger = a favorite record, but I don't spin it often anymore) and Bone Awl (curious, but haven't heard). Picked up a copy Carpathian Forest's Skjend Hans Lik comp on vinyl a while back, mostly for the "Bloodlust and Perversion" demos. Fucking great. The new stuff kinda sucks, but those super-doomy demos rule.

Plus 1349 "Hellfire"; buncha Southern Lord stuff -- Striborg, Xasthur, Velvet Cacoon, Deathspell Omega; Electric Wizard -- old favorite, recently dug from the heap; Accused -- same story, but moreso; Jesu "Silver"; Boris "Flood" and "Dronevil: Final", which I listen to on the ipod all the time.

Leviathan/Lurker/Wrest are/is amazing. For new-skool USBM, I prefer Nachtmystium, but by only the slightest margin -- 'cuz the pop and solos.

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 16:55 (eighteen years ago)

I was just listennig to that Horna album last night. For the first 20 minutes, I was convinced it was great, but that monotonous 22 minute song was a bit too much. I liked how the Decibel review pointed out how the production is so odd and the song is so repetitive, that the hi-hat starts to sound like sleigh bells after a while.

I think I prefer the Azrael CD, despite its bloatedness.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 19:03 (eighteen years ago)

i was listening to twilight today. those guys do kinda rule.

now i'm listening to magane though. who rule in a different way. and who believe in production values. they make great japanese folk/black metal.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 19:08 (eighteen years ago)

2nd the Twilight thing, though that's no surprise considering how much I like everyone involved. Does a good job of showing off what they all do independently, while also containing some stuff that's unique to the collaboration (like that hellish first track).

Dunno from Magane. Their makeup is awful damn cool though...

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 19:22 (eighteen years ago)

nachtmystium does rule. i need to pull that record out. judging by the striborg i am listening to right now, this will also do the trick.

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

Where is that giant freaky picture of Striborg when you need it?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:25 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.displeasedrecords.com/images/bandimages/striborg_band.jpg

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:30 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of black metal, although not the baseman/bedroom/pay toilet variety, is there an "essential" Dimmu Borgir record? I am going to be doing a feature on them, and right now I have Death Cult Armageddon and that Storm Blast rerecording, and my friend is going to loan me the Godless Savage Garden reissue. Is there anything else I need? I understand Puritanical Misanthropic Euphoria is popular with the cool kids, but I figured I should ask here first before I fund Satanists.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

There it is!

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

i think i'm obsessed with black metal myspace pages

― strongohulkington, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:39 (eighteen years ago)

Hate to say it, but I like the earliest stuff the best. For All Tid and the original Stormblast. Still super epic., majestic, and melodic, but raw and simplistic the way I like it. I'm not a purist, and I don't care whether or not bands are "honoring their Nordic ancestry" or whatever, but I do like the buzzy, claustrophobic aesthetics of primitivist, kvlt darkness.

As far as knowing what the band's up to nowadays, you've got the right records. I think people hang on to PME 'cuz it broke the band into this huge new level of popularity. Well, and 'cuz the cover art, frankly. It isn't really any better than what came after. A bit less overwhelmed by orchestration than Death Cult Armageddon, maybe.

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 20:51 (eighteen years ago)

Nightwish are one of my favorite bands, so as you can imagine, orchestration doesn't really bother me. Listening to Death Cult Armageddon right now. Damn, I forgot how great this record is. I love how they mix the symphonic elements with the black metal and still have catchy melodies. They're probably my favorite black metal-type outfit out there right now, probably because they take the form to its most epic extreme. Primitive kvlt darkness doesn't do as much for me, but it certainly has its uses.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 00:54 (eighteen years ago)

So Supervillian Outcast didn't top 666 International. For me it's mostly about Aldrahn being gone.
Most versatile metal vocalist ever? Kvohst can't really reach up to his level. On the other hand you have the greatest guitarist ever(Vicotnik) and with him behind the wheel.. Well. He still manages to make it sound like DHG after all these years.

And it's really sad to know that this is the last thing that Czral recorded before his fall. His drumming never ceases to amaze me. Can't wait for Ved Buens Ende to tour/record again.

― MRZBW, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 02:09 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Death Cult Armageddon right now. Damn, I forgot how great this record is. I love how they mix the symphonic elements with the black metal and still have catchy melodies. They're probably my favorite black metal-type outfit out there right now, probably because they take the form to its most epic extreme.

Yeah, that's what I like most about Dimmu as well. I like a lot of the different black metal styles, especially in USBM (LOVE Nachtmystium and Wolves in the Throne Room), but in Dimmu Borgir's case, overblown suits them perfectly. To the point, actually, where I have a hard time getting into their early material (I greatly prefer the re-recorded Stormblast to the original, for instance).

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 04:26 (eighteen years ago)

"And it's really sad to know that this is the last thing that Czral recorded before his fall. His drumming never ceases to amaze me."

i read that he was playing guitar now. don't count him out! but, yeah, as a drummer he was nuts.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 04:42 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko0LE0l-5T4

― am0n, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 05:31 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f4bkvSwE8A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTu_QXhbvdM

― am0n, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 05:39 (eighteen years ago)

The first (For All Tid) isn't bad (quite slow, thin sound, drenched in synths) but a bit boring and generic, don't bother with that. The original 1996 Stormblåst is by far the best they've done and one of the best BM records of the 90s. Completely unique sound too, very clear, organic, open - not low-fi at all. Lots of songs in 3/4, which gives it a completely different feel from the faster, straight 4/4 rock 'n' roll sound they switched to later. The 2005 re-recording doesn't do it much justice except.

Everything after Stormblåst is pretty much interchangable - symphonic, catchy, rock 'n roll, all with over-saturated production and a thick & full sound. Pick any. Not my thing but what they do they do it well I guess.

― Siegbran, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 09:01 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, this thread has now officially lost me. (I actually thought MRZBW's post above was a joke! Then I saw Scott's answer and realized that all those goofy names might actually be real, wow.) Anyway, as I mentioned on the first rolling metal thread (can I officially state here that I think it's real silly a second thread was started in just February? kinda defeats the purpose of a rolling thread, doesn't it?), the new Horna album seemed okay to me but I already own their previous one which seemed to have better artwork and I can't imagine why anybody would want two otherwise identical Horna albums taking up space on their shelf. And the Azrael album would take up even more space and might well've been a keeper if it was a third as long and the third was the instrumental parts that reminded me of Sonic Youth and Public Image Ltd and pastoral psychedelic folk whatsis, but sadly it is not.

That Funeral album has some lovely folk-metal moments as well, not to mention quasi-middle-Eastern guitar lines worthy of Melechesh or Nile or whoever in track #3, plus at least one audible line that seems explicitly anti-war ("we die for your selfish goals.") Ultimatley: as much Opeth as Katatonia.

Out-house-fidelity black metal mung I liked, off the top of my head: I Shalt Become's Wanderings reissue and Merrimack's for some reason Rudimentary Peni-reminiscent Of Entropy And Life Denial last year, both on Moribund natch, seemed good to me. But I'm not the one to ask.

The live in Tokyo in 1980 quasi-bootleg cdbaby CD by Girl I mentioned above is sadly barely audible at all; the aluminum-foil muffle of the truly bootleggish recording sadly hides nearly all their considerable crunch and hookage. Sanctuary's 2001 2-disc anthology My Number is strongly recommended instead. (The DVD they just sent me won't play in my player.)

Trigger Renegade sent me a vinyl copy of their album! And in an email they call themselves '70s glam meets NWOBHM. Which is what Girl were, too.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 12:29 (eighteen years ago)

hehe Chuck do you work for CD Baby or something?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

I think it's real silly a second thread was started in just February? kinda defeats the purpose of a rolling thread, doesn't it?

It's Seward's fault; he posted so many goddamn huge photos in the last thread that it took 15 minutes to load on my home dial-up connection. So I started this one, and now there's a big-ass photo of the Striborg guy in it.

Anyway, I was freshly overwhelmed by the Rwake album on the train this morning. Fuck, that's a good record.

― unperson, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, who the hell taught him to post pics? hehe

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

re: chuck on the Merrimac record: yes

― Pye Poudre, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 16:16 (eighteen years ago)

he posted so many goddamn huge photos in the last thread that it took 15 minutes to load on my home dial-up connection. So I started this one, and now there's a big-ass photo of the Striborg guy in it.

OTM. Start a thread called Rolling ~~Ludicrous~~ Fashionable Pics of Metal Guys and Gals 2007. Then those who want to take a pass can and the zeal of posting full screen shots won't immediately degenerate into a denial-of-service bandwidth attack.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

OH BOO HOO

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

GET ONE BROADBAND INTERNET

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 17:47 (eighteen years ago)

well on old ilm you could make it so you didn't see images and only show the last 50 posts of a thread. i don't know about nu-ilm.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 17:49 (eighteen years ago)

Plus, the Striborg pic is funny.

― Pye Poudre, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 17:52 (eighteen years ago)

If you go to MORE..., then PREFERENCES, you can uncheck the box next to PICTURES PLZ.

― David R., Wednesday, 28 February 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)

If you go to MORE..., then PREFERENCES, you can uncheck the box next to PICTURES PLZ.

Just make sure to login every 5 minutes.

― xox, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 18:30 (eighteen years ago)

there ya go. see? they still have settings for little girls in pink frilly dresses.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 18:44 (eighteen years ago)

So I finally got the Novembers Doom album in today's mail, and just realized I also have a copy of their 2005 CD The Pale Haunt Departure. Any thoughts on that one before I slap it in the player?

― unperson, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 19:48 (eighteen years ago)

If you go to MORE..., then PREFERENCES, you can uncheck the box next to PICTURES PLZ.

...except on ILX2, your browser still loads all of the images, it just doesn't display them

― todd, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.dickdestiny.com/nearmiss.jpg

― Gorge, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

My thoughts on November's Doom are here.

General gist, if you don't feel like reading the full review, is that it's pretty fantastic death-doom. The death parts make it easier to listen to when you aren't depressed, and the doom parts make it more emotionally interesting than your average death metal record.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 23:30 (eighteen years ago)

Also, went to the listening party for the new Dimmu Borgir last night. From what I could hear over the crowd, and in between talking to the guys from Metalocalypse (funny dudes, surprise surprise), the new one seems like a good mix between the old evil/grim stuff, and the newer overblown symphonic stuff. Less immediately catchy and far more brutal than Death Cult, but it did have pristine production and symphonic elements, for whatever that's worth. Sounded good, overall.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

posted this on the country thread; my favorite tracks are metal for sure:

Picked up from the free table at work this sampler from Cleopatra Records that takes six songs each from an upcoming covers album called An All-Star Tribute To Lynyrd Skynyrd and an upcoming double-disc compilation called Southern Outlaws: The Ultimate Southern Rock Collection (which will apparently also include Steve Earle, Merle Haggard, Drive By Truckers, Kentunky Headhunters, Wet Willie, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, "and more"). Two best tracks far and away on the tribute half of the sampler are the two heaviest -- Pat Travers doing "Gimme Back My Bullets" and Great White doing "Saturday Night Special," both of which I love. Outlaws and Blackfoot's LS covers are completely fogettable; "Free Bird" has boring singing from Charlie Daniels, whose voice appears to be shot, and competent guitars from Molly Hatchet; Atlanta Rhythm Section show off a suprisingly funky rhythm section on "Call Me the Breeze". On the half of the sampler from the compilation, once you get past the givens of Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely" (which I'm happy to say still totally holds up), the real surprise is the Rossington Collins Band's "Don't Misunderstand Me," with their female singer -- I'd forgotten how great they sound; I've got that album by them on vinyl and should dig it out one of these days. Johnny Van Zant Band and Steve Gaines tracks are okay, I guess; Artimus Pyle track pretty much sucks.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

digging the Earthless album on Tee Pee. long-ass stoner jamz. i'm hearing a lot of stoner stuff that i like this year. This is an album that I will be playing for a while. this is the band with the drummer from rocket from the crypt/hot snakes. and mostly instrumental too except for a groundhogs cover.

― scott seward, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:41 (eighteen years ago)

New Earthless? The LP on Gravity from a couple years back just totally fucking smokes. This as retro/aggressive as that?

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

i never heard the gravity one. this one is pretty smoking though. apparently they were going for a japanese 70's blues psych feedback vibe and they succeeded if you ask me.

― scott seward, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

I'd pay a small fee for the Drive-by Truckers not to cover anything by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Makes sense that the Outlaws and Blackfoot renditions are forgettable because Skynyrd is now the Outlaws and the main guy from Blackfoot and is forgettable. Pat Travers is pretty much a natural from something like "Bullets." However, just about anything he picks in cover versions he winds up being awful good at. His old studio albums always had fine covers. He did a stellar version of "Hot Rod Lincoln."

Couldn't get through Leng Tche's Marasmus. I kind of liked their last one but this tossed all the Blood Duster-ism for the usual grindcore stodge.

Maylene & the Sons of Disaster's II professed to be whiskey-soaked suvvern rock. Stoner rock with a slightly better than average stoner singer. Got a play but none of the tunes are as good as the titles. One waits for "The Day Hell Broke Loose at Sicard Hollow" but hell never arrives.

― Gorge, Thursday, 1 March 2007 18:43 (eighteen years ago)

oh GORGEous one, you would dig the Earthless album. bug TeePee for a copy.

― scott seward, Thursday, 1 March 2007 18:58 (eighteen years ago)

Scott -

did the Earthless promo come with any info (release date, etc)? They have squat on the TeePee site beyond a couple of past show dates w/Om.

― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 1 March 2007 21:05 (eighteen years ago)

i will look when i get home. i'm at work now.

― scott seward, Thursday, 1 March 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

The new Neurosis album, entitled Given To The Rising, will be released worldwide on Neurot Recordings in May 2007. Look here for the first mp3 from the album, set to be posted on March 8th.

fyi.....from neurot.

― drone/a/sore, Thursday, 1 March 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

Lacuna Coil, Stolen Babies, and In This Moment are touring together, with the fourth band being Within Temptation for the first half, and the freaking Gathering for the second half. I so hope Los Angeles is on the second half. This is sort of like the Goth chick version of the Haunted/Dark Tranquillity/into Eternity/Scar Symmetry trek, which is equally awesome.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 2 March 2007 00:03 (eighteen years ago)

Earthless will be released on May 8, 2007

― ng-unit, Friday, 2 March 2007 00:59 (eighteen years ago)

I have the 1st earthless ep and also the recently released live 10". Great stuff.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 2 March 2007 01:05 (eighteen years ago)

Lacuna Coil, Stolen Babies, and In This Moment are touring together, with the fourth band being Within Temptation for the first half, and the freaking Gathering for the second half. I so hope Los Angeles is on the second half.
Western Canada is getting The Gathering, and when I found out last night, I was beside myself. If there was one band I thought I had no shot at ever seeing, it was The Gathering. It's an incredible bill, too.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:11 (eighteen years ago)

Hmm, I have to get used to the BB code...

― A. Begrand, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:12 (eighteen years ago)

Damn, that first song (of three) on the Earthless album goes on forever. Works up a pretty good groove for guys whose drummer used to be in two of San Diego's most overrated punk bands ever, but I'm not sure when I'll be in the mood to sit through the damn thing. Its instrumentalness will likely make it more bearable (vocals in the Groundhogs cover, which sounds okay, seem to get lost in the shuffle), but will probably make me care about it less. (I'm not writing it off; just saying this one may well take me a few months.)

The Master's Voice: I don't care about George Hurley or Mike Watt (not since the Minutemen existed anyway) or Raymond Pettibon, but Joe Baiza's guitar still sounds good I guess. The talking on top sounds okay until I notice the words are about John Wayne Gacey; damn, that sort of schtick was stupid even before D. Boon died. The Gacey reference is in the final cut, "Maggot Sludge," which title I take to be a Funkadelic reference. Big whoop. But yeah, the guitar sounds okay. (So does Earthless's, actually.)

Package from Load yesterday. Heteroskeleton didn't last long in the CD changer. White Mice still in it, maybe only because their songs have barely come up. But I'm still pretty sure they're not as shitty as Hetereoskeleton.

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:28 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, the Earthless thing (cut #2 on now) does have a fairly powerhouse drum sound. (Did he ever get that sound in Rocket From the Crypt or Hot Snakes? Not that I noticed. Not like either band ever made me want to find out.) (Not that I hated them or anything. For indie rock, they seemed okay.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

Pat Travers is pretty much a natural from something like "Bullets." However, just about anything he picks in cover versions he winds up being awful good at.

Strangely, the said can seemingly be said about the other stars of that Skynyrd covers half-album, Great White: Ian Hunter, Angel City (twice!), Zep, now Skynyrd--covers are clearly what they would be remembered for if they weren't remembered for, you know, other things. Though I still have never heard their cover of X's "Burning House Of Love" (supposedly they actually did one, and some label overseas released a bootleg compilation by them by that name after the incident.) (Didn't they cover Humble Pie once, too? Though if so, they're not remembered for that one. Not by me anyway.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:40 (eighteen years ago)

Earthless will be released on May 8, 2007

ng-unit

Thanks - I'll mark this down or I'll end up missing it.

― EZ Snappin, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

the SAME can seemingly be etc...

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, the Master's Voice cut with Raymond Pettibon doing vocals is on now; this is one of the lamest things I've ever heard in my life. Fuck 'em. (He gets one vocal; David Thomas gets four; one "Dan McGuire" gets five.)

And now a White Mice cut is on, and it is unbearable. So fuck them, too.

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:47 (eighteen years ago)

i only own circa now by rocket from the crypt. i love that album. mostly for the ditch digger song and the hippie song. that album rocks really hard. i don't think i ever really heard that much hot snakes.

― scott seward, Friday, 2 March 2007 02:53 (eighteen years ago)

I gave an RFTC album a really good review (in which I vastly overrated it) once; nothing I ever heard by them seemed as good as that one (which is so good I don't own it anymore), much less as good as I say it is in the review. But who knows; they have lots of albums, including plenty I never heard:

http://weeklywire.com/ww/07-20-98/boston_music_2.html

The next White Mice cut that came on, to be fair, seemed marginally less unbearable. Also marginally more metal and less noise rock. But I still doubt I'll bear them much longer. One-sheet compares them to Carcass. Nuff said.

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 03:08 (eighteen years ago)

ahhhh....ok . i hear people slinging shit at tool,isis and a mess of other bands on here [and i am ok with that]......but when the shit slinging is aimed at rftc and the hot snakes......well that just makes me so fucking sad. next you will be slagging drive like jehu!

― drone/a/sore, Friday, 2 March 2007 05:52 (eighteen years ago)

on a completely difeerent note.

the lifelover "esoterik" is out and sounding very nice. no sophomore slump.

― drone/a/sore, Friday, 2 March 2007 05:54 (eighteen years ago)

~~"esoterik"~~ = "erotik"

― drone/a/sore, Friday, 2 March 2007 06:07 (eighteen years ago)

Today's review package: Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Virgin Black, and Dir En Grey. Color me excited, although the Virgin Black publicity photo on the press release doesn't really inspire confidence in me.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 2 March 2007 07:20 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, I will concede now that White Mice have somewhat discernible riffs (and maybe even rhythm) for grindcorers, or whatever they are. Plus, being grindcorers or whatever, the songs are short. So I might not hate them.

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:42 (eighteen years ago)

Of course, they do not call themselves grindcore on their myspace page:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=11736242

I've also been listening to (and liking way more) these Aussie AC/DC-fan bogan-rockers this morning. Their name kinda suggests Oz's answer to the Upper Crust, but I'm hoping more that they wind up being Oz's answer to Supagroup. The singer's getting a bit lost between the riffs so far, but I'm liking a bunch of songs. Favorite so far is probably "Fight" ("jab, weave...")

http://cdbaby.com/cd/richandfamous

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

So okay, actually, I'm realizing now that White Mice probably share certain sonic affinities (failed attempt at slowed-down Sabbath grooves, etc) with certain C-level post-Swans pigfuckers of yore: Live Skull? Rat At Rat R or the Dust Devils or whatever those bands were called? Hell if I know. Like if some band tried to make a whole career out of the couple moments ("Dum Dum," "Sweet Loaf") when the Butthole Surfers pretended to be Sabbath, but with none of the Buttholes' imagination or wit or variety etc. And without the Buttholes' chops either. (Did the Buttholes have chops?) Okay I'm done now. (Wild card here, again, may well be the Melvins, who I've never liked.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:37 (eighteen years ago)

Re Great White's covers. "Burning House of Love" -- fair. Trivia note: GW has a 'greatest hit' pack that Cleopatra flogs and I have a copy. Innocuous white cover. At one point it was rebranded as 'Burning House of Love.' Saw a copy, should have bought it just for awful timing, it having coincided with the dive bar fire.

"I Don't Need No Doctor" is the Pie tune, they do, and they do it well. The Zep concert record they did is also good. Plus they cover Status Quo, Angel City and the Stones on the hits comp, so if you see a copy for cheap, get it.

As for the BS's having chops, the guitar player might have.

Here's his old vanity project:

Daddy Longhead "Classic" Another one of the two hundred or more reasons the Man's Ruin record company went out of business. THIS IS STONER ROCK -- MANLY STUFF made by someone whose day job was in the Butthole Surfers. Sometimes he sings like Ozzy Osbourne.

On that album, the Sabbath tribute was "Brown Sabbath."

Original, Mad scramble at Tower

― Gorge, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)

UK Progressive Extreme Metal band Mithras, have a new track on myspace from their upcoming album, title: Behind the Shadows Lie Madness - due for release on May 28th on Candlelight

http://www.myspace.com/domainofmithras

fans of Hacride will be impressed with Mithras they have similar complex and intense atmospherics

― djmartian, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, Daddy Longhead was the Butthole bassist's side project. Guitarist Paul Leary released an album under his own name called History Of Dogs that wasn't that good.

― unperson, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

i hear people slinging shit at tool,isis...

Where's anyone slung shit at Isis? Just saw em Wednesday night! My face, it was rocked off.

On another note, the new Psyopus has dissolved my brain.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:52 (eighteen years ago)

Where's anyone slung shit at Isis?

various isis threads....not a whole lot,just the "this album is not as good as oceanic" kind.

hope you got your face back .....seeing them in april & looking forward to it.

― drone/a/sore, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

wow, i'm finally hearing Last Crack's *Burning Time* album from 1991. So cool! And corny and weird and all kinds of things. I kinda love it.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000KCI7BW.01._SS400_SCLZZZZZZZ_V46916730_.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:30 (eighteen years ago)

Finally cracked open my copy of Godflesh's Hymns. Liked it. Angry, abrasive goodness. I was a bit surprised by the nu-metal bass. Did Godflesh do that first, and nu metal bands ripped them off? Or is that something that Godflesh incorporated into their sound later on? And is Hymns pretty representative of Godflesh's sound? Inquiring minds want to know.

(And this has nothing to do with metal, but there's a street in Hollywood named after you, Scott!)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:36 (eighteen years ago)

really? there should be.

yah, nu-metal took liberally from godflesh. and ministry. and NIN. and industrial metal in general.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

now i'm seriously digging on Star Star. they were awesome too. never heard them before!

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/73/e7/f5c2124128a0d49fb09ba010._AA200_.L.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:41 (eighteen years ago)

so far the stinkers out of the tapes i bought are:

Nevada Beach EP from 1990 on Metal Blade. Just bad ac/dc-ish stuff and that stuff is really kinda hard to fuck up.

Wolfsbane - Live Fast, Die Fast on Def American. sounds kinda like a bad Cult rip-off. And I don't even listen to metal-era Cult records, so i don't need knock-offs.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

Best stuff i listened to last night was definitely:

Godflesh - Pure (i haven't heard it in a long time. have no idea what happened to my cd of it. anyway, still love it.)

Helstar - Nosferatu (awesome awesome awesome! power/thrash from 89. super cool stuff.)

Laaz Rockit - Annihilation Principle (1989 on Enigma. Every song is really strong. Sounds great too.)

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

stuff i haven't listened to yet that i'll play tonight:

helloween - judas

fudge tunnel - creep diets (haven't heard it since it came out!)

warrior soul - drugs, god and the new republic (i don't think i've ever heard warrior soul)

the rods - let them eat metal

y&t - mean streak (heard it and possibly owned a copy, but not since i was the last american virgin)

helloween - i want out- live

bitch - a rose by any other name (never heard it. was just listening to the Betsey album the other day, the band that Bitch became. That one was surprisingly solid, though a tamer Bitch all around.)

scandinavian metal attack - vol 2 (1984 comp with Oz, Biscaya, Bathory, Mentzer, Highscore, and Trash on it!!)

right now i'm listening to Sodom's Agent Orange album. I love Sodom. I even loved their last album. They always sound like Sodom.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 23:07 (eighteen years ago)

By the way Scott you don't happen to be the second guitarist in a band called Intronaut, do you? During headbanging it was uncanny!

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5900/dsc0077sizedxg2.jpg

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

I went through a little Warrior Soul phase a month or so ago. Fun stuff. Early 90s non-funky funk punk/metal, main attraction being Kory Clarke and his gob-spitting. Drugs, God has a couple really catchy songs, and a bunch that aren't. There is even a Joy Division cover! You don't get much more metal than that.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 3 March 2007 23:13 (eighteen years ago)

swans and paul young. pretty much the only joy division covers i can take. oh and grace jones.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 23:14 (eighteen years ago)

it's true that dude has my hair. but i didn't donate it to anyone when i cut it off! i felt bad about that until someone told me that locks of love is a scam that sells all the hair they get to hair extension people.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

jesus, the rods were so cool. how come i don't own all their albums? and their history is practically the history of metal! from elf to manowar to metallica:

http://www.rockdetector.com/officialbio,9189.sm;jsessionid=A45B17731297C83F6E9898A94E17B952

and THIS is awesomeness that i never heard about before:

"Bordonaro joined SIMMONDS in 1985, the band formed around SAVOY BROWN guitarist Kim Simmonds, PENTAGRAM drummer Joe Hasselvander and BLUE CHEER / SHAKIN' STREET guitarist Andrew 'Duck' McDonald."

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

we had Earthless play a year ago at Arthur Ball. total Ash Ra Tempel. the entire 'set' was one song.

― jaybabcock, Sunday, 4 March 2007 00:46 (eighteen years ago)

nice. i would buy a live album of theirs.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 00:59 (eighteen years ago)

Wolfsbane - Live Fast, Die Fast on Def American.

What a weird album that one was. Too hookless to cater to mainstream listeners, too limp-wristed to appeal to the metal crowd. Rubin was on one hell of a hot streak at the time, but he could work no magic with the songs that band brought. I naively bought it in 89 after reading a 5K review in Kerrang, and instantly regretted it.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 4 March 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

I have the Wolfsbane album on cassette, too, and I like it just fine! (Way better than Earthless, which I gave up on staying awake through today.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 01:11 (eighteen years ago)

i always loved "manhunt" by wolfsbane. iron maiden for dummies. maybe even the retarded.

currently listening to hydra vein! HYDRA VEIN! rather death than false of faith, which i think is going to be reissued soon with their second album. i always thought they were greek or something, but they were english. it's really good 2nd-string thrash. hum de dum. how are you doing?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 4 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

"Way better than Earthless"

BOO! no way. although i would have been with you if you had said that that Star Star album i posted about was better than the Earthless. That album rocks!

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 02:13 (eighteen years ago)

although i only made it thru one side of the wolfsbane. maybe it gets better.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 02:13 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, you DEFINITELY need to hear that Rods album and that Last Crack album if you have never heard them.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 02:16 (eighteen years ago)

HAHA Wolfsbane were terrible. NME gave their live album 10/10 I remember.
Awful band.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 4 March 2007 13:05 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, I can't even remember what it was I liked about Wolfsbane; I guess I just thought they were fun and tuneful. (My cassettes are all in storage in Pennsy, so I can't check.) In my memory, though, they sound more early Van Halen (wearing NWOBHM denim) than Cult. I could be wrong, though.

Hard rock in my CD changer this morning, in ascending order of quality (from the album I like the least so far, up to the one I like the most):

1. DIR EN GRAY -- Not sure why I haven't given up on these guys yet; maybe because I read somewhere (maybe erroneously) that they are glam-metal influenced? Or maybe because they're Japanese? Somebody give me a hint. So far I'm hearing fairly rote metalcore, though one shriek seemed okay.

2. INTENSE -- On The End Records. Iced Earth-influenced Power-metal, reportedly. "Long Live the New Flesh" sounded quite tuneful, at any rate.

3. CHELSEA - New album by old proto-oi! street-punk band, Faster Cheaper & Better Looking on TKO. Their double-CD best-of on Castle a couple years was surprisingly good for a band only really remembered for a couple singles. Haven't heard anything approaching "Right To Work" or "Trouble Is The Day" on the new one yet, but I'm trying. One track jumped out at me and seemed funny yesterday, but I didn't note which one.

4. THE BARBARELLATONES -- CDbaby "best of" by very '70s-glammy Cali trannies-or-something. 22 songs, so it's taking me a while to get to the bottom of it. But more and more of them are catching me. They do a good cover of "Yummy Yummy Yummy" by the Ohio Express; '70s novelty hits seem to be an inspiration for "Jaws!" (which might read like Buchannan and Goodman or whoever did the "Mr. Jaws" song but which sounds more like the early B-52s) and "Tranni Troglodyte" (Jimmy Castor + Blue Swede/Rufus ooga-chuckas as faggy glam rock). "Dropping Into Your Love" is a glam rock ballad sung in a Ian Hunter's sleazy snide "Violence" voice. "Tokyo Cowboy" is the best Japanophile rock since the wok'n'roll stuff on the Spunks album late last year; actually, when it came up in the changer I was kinda hoping it was Dir En Gray, but it wasn't. "Baby Wants A Corndog" is ridiculous drunken '80s college radio/KROQ-style lampshade-as-hat dumb-joke music and typical of their frequently dirty minds and it makes me chuckle despite myself. Also, a major Hunky Dory-era Bowie influence througout. And in total, more rocking than I'm lettting on, too:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/barbarellatones7

5. MIRANDA LAMBERT -- Hardest rocking album I've heard this year. May well end up my favorite album of '07. More on the country thread, heh.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, CDbaby says Hawaii for Barbarellatones, not Cali. Which is cooler! (Maybe they moved?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

Also, oh yeah, in case you didn't notice already, somebody started an Angel City thread, on which I have posted informative Leanne Kingwell updates:

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56509#unread

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 14:54 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, boring ugly vomiters Dir En Gray now replaced in my changer with the first (not cdbaby-available, apparently) The Rich and Famous album. "Uptown" and "In Another World" are great, maybe better than anything on the album I linked to above (on which I still basically like everything, except the Tom Waits schtick of the last song), not sure yet.

Which reminds me: Speaking of forgotten turn of the '90s cock rock, were Kings of the Sun (former band of a couple The Rich and Famous guys) any good? Martin Popoff seems to think so; he gives one LP an 8, the other a 9. Which is more than he gives Rhino Bucket, who were not too shabby.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

Rhino Bucket went one further then the transvestite bands you list above, they had an actual transsexual!

Picked up the BOC Spectres reissue last night. Haven't listened yet, but I've been on a big BOC kick recently. Couldn't tell you why, other than that they really are one of the most underrated and great hard rock/metal bands, at least for me.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 4 March 2007 21:03 (eighteen years ago)

really like that Warrior Soul album! even the Joy Division cover. they must have been big janes addiction fans, huh? but they do it good. i'm gonna be listening to that one again.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 21:18 (eighteen years ago)

Picked up the BOC Spectres reissue last night. Haven't listened yet, but I've been on a big BOC kick recently.

Ha, same here! I got the Spectres and Some Enchanted Evening reissues the other day, and have been devouring a lot of BOC since then. Having a hard time finding Cultosaurus Erectus online, though.

Really like Spectres, but that Ronettes cover is so earnest, it's jarring. The way it ends with "I Love the Night" and "Nosferatu" is pretty incredible. It was Guitar Hero that first got me into "Godzilla", I'm embarrassed to say...

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 4 March 2007 22:54 (eighteen years ago)

haha my least fave Warrior Soul(i still like it though)
Listen to Chill Pill for joy divsion influence. A VERY underrated album.
I recommend all their albums though.

I wish i could hear that Earthless album.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

earthless sounded great again last nite after 6 or 7 gin & tonics. wow, so there are even better Warrior Soul albums? cool.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

Turns out Barbarellatones have at least two "Best Of" songs concerning cats, and at least two (the one I mentioned above plus "Rocking In The Land of the Rising Sun") concerning Japan. Also they enjoy Yarbirds-style middle-eastern pyschedelic guitar raveups--even in the Ohio Express cover (which is one of several songs concerning oral sex. They are total pervs.).

― xhuxk, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:22 (eighteen years ago)

the ohio express liked middle-eastern psych guitar raveups too!

http://www.rock.co.za/files/ohio_1.jpg

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:54 (eighteen years ago)

So far I'm actually dig the last Earthless more than this new one. Not sure why yet. More investigations pending.

― jaybabcock, Monday, 5 March 2007 00:00 (eighteen years ago)

Adrien, there's a copy of Cultosaurus Erectus that's been sitting in my local used CD store for five dollars for a couple weeks now. Been wondering if I should pick it up or not. The only song I even remember off of that is Black Blade which is pretty awesome. Michael Moorcock rocks!

Scott, apparently Warrior Soul's first record, whose name escapes me at the moment, is supposed to be their best. I only have Drugs, God, and the New Republic and the embarrassingly named Salutations from the Ghetto Nation. Salutations has a great first half, just catchy as all hell, but the second half is pretty forgettable.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 00:12 (eighteen years ago)

(And "The Marshall Plan" is pretty great, too. Anyway,I'd imagine Mirrors and Cultosaurus are up next for reissue, although if the last set was any indication, we might have to wait six more years for those. I'm waiting for Fire of Unknown Origin, personally.)

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:09 (eighteen years ago)

My copy has "Deadline" (which I always thought was one of their prettiest songs, as beautiful as "In Thee" even) and "Hungry Boys" marked as my favorite tracks, followed by "Black Blade," "Monsters," and "Unknown Tounge" (please read Aesthetics of Rock for that last title's origin.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:23 (eighteen years ago)

Worth picking up for five bucks, Chuck?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:26 (eighteen years ago)

CD? Sure, why not. But you can find it for a buck on vinyl, I bet.

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:29 (eighteen years ago)

Chcuk, you will love the new RTX album. Sleazy heavy rock and a few heavier tracks.

(now I've said that and since I like it you will probably hate it haha)

AND I WANNA HEAR THE EARTHLESS, DAMMIT!!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:18 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, already posted this on the original extinct 2007 rolling metal thread:

royal trux - interesting. i have a prejudice against these people in part because they're one of those bands (like disco inferno -- who may or may not actually exist in real life -- and gary numan) who seemingly have an extremely rabid and obsessed and deluded cult of people i can't otherwise identify on ILM who think they're the greatest artists in the universe, which may or may not be amusing but is definitely way beyond ridiculous. the one album i got all the way through by them before struck me as a shitty version of black crowes, more or less. (it was one of their mid/late '90s "sellout" albums i guess; i think i tried listening to one of their early noisier records once and it seemed completely forgettable even as background sound, at least at the time. i'm willing to concede i may have underrated both of those records though.) anyway, the new one western extermintator has some okay blues guitar jam parts (in "rat will kill") and one song that sounds like hanoi rocks drowning in your bathtub ("balls to pass") and an opening dark gypsy waltz that you might like more than me if you like tom waits or nick cave more than me. so...some of it, at least, is not bad. but mostly the music tends to muffle and distance itself into lifelessness.

xhuxk (xheddy) on Saturday, 13 January 2007 17:29 (1 month ago)

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i've never actually heard a royal trux album. i don't think. i even have one somewhere around here too. my brother was a HUGE fan. i almost bought their singles box set on vinyl once cuz it was really cool looking. actually, it's funny, i have never heard a melvins album or a royal trux album, but i got one album by both at the thrift store years ago and sold the melvins before hearing it. i will try the trux sometime. people LOVE royal trux AND melvins a lot. melvins i finally heard on youtube. i'm not big grunge fan though. new Melvins album is supposed to be great. maybe i should get that. i've been through this before on ilm though. no need for anyone to give me melvins recommendations. there isn't anything on youtube that i thought was that good though. and there is a lot there.

scott seward (scott seward) on Saturday, 13 January 2007 17:41 (1 month ago)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:28 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah i was too busy saying that ned likes disco inferno in the reply to that haha.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:30 (eighteen years ago)

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:38 (eighteen years ago)

In most cases, I would say that DVDs and live albums are almost as useless as box sets, which may well be the most useless physical retail format ever invented. Bizarrely, though, I actually like a BOC "box set" (Workshop of the Telescopes, all two discs of it), so said comparison doesn't really apply here. Never cared about that live album, though. Didn't even listen to the reissue of it that came in the mail. Gorge, though, might argue otherwise.

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:46 (eighteen years ago)

Workshop of the Telescopes was my first exposure to BOC, and I loved it so much that I wore out the second disc. Hence, my starting to collect albums, because I can't quite justify repurchasing it. Plus, there are a lot of tracks that aren't on that compilation that I've heard that I really love, so I figure I need to pick up the first five albums and Fire of Unknown Origin, and that should do me pretty good.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:55 (eighteen years ago)

on yer feet or on yer knees is my fave live thing. but i like them all. i like everything up to and including fire of unknown origin as far as studio stuff goes. i don't own the revolution by night, and i can't even remember much about it. i think my brother had a copy. and i never heard anything after that. not that i wouldn't buy club ninja if i saw it for a dollar, i would, but i never see it at all.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:06 (eighteen years ago)

i wish i could get all the extra stuff on the remasters on one disc! cuz i ain't about to buy all those CDs.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:09 (eighteen years ago)

Club Ninja is super out of print. I think I saw it once, at the Princeton Record Exchange, but never again. Guess I should have grabbed it. The songs from that on Workshop of the Telescopes, "Dancing in the Ruins" and "Perfect Water" are definitely early 80s AOR, but I like them a lot anyway, "Perfect Water" especially.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:15 (eighteen years ago)

While we are within spitting distance of the subject, is the Some Enchanted Evening reissue worth picking up? Or should I stick with the studio albums? That DVD is mighty tempting, but I'm not sure if I would actually watch it more than once, which seems to be the case with most of my music DVDs.

It's cool that they fleshed out the CD to 75 minutes or so, and the concert DVD, while bootleg quality, is still really cool. My main gripe is that "Reaper" and "Godzilla" aren't on the DVD, so the whole thing seems weirdly incomplete in my opinion.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

So tonight I got Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk and The Discouraged Ones and a Hirax two-in-one disc of their first two records and the Finntroll acoustic EP that Season of Mist just put out in the US (which has a great picture on the inside booklet of the band sans troll makeup sitting around a campfire and looking like they just discovered fire or something). Haven't listened to them yet, but my vacation on Tuesday is going to be filled with sun, relaxation on the beach, and face-ripping metal.

I did borrow my friend's copies of Take As Needed for Pain and Dope Sick. Boy, do these records explain a whole lot of bands.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 06:42 (eighteen years ago)

So that Intense album on The End? Not so great. A couple fairly majestic cuts ("You Die Today," "Long Live The New Flesh"), but way more stultifying stentorian basso-profundo Hetfield/Danzing/Eldritch snore ballads.

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 12:34 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, on Napalm, not The End (somebody should've corrected me the first time I made that mistake. I am unbelievably inept at remembering labels.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

BOC had a lot of live albums, about half of the total content being 'feh.' The first one I actually had was On Your Feet etc from around the time I saw them in Wehrmacht stahlhelms and leather. Buck's Boogie and Dharma's solo in Last Days of May are reasons to have it, plus the overall Marshall roar which was a good approximation of their live sound, as opposed to what was going onto the records.

One Enchanted Evening never did anything for me. ETI was done when Al was being kicked out and has a roadie on drums for some of it. It's up and down. Joan Crawford, Godzilla and Black Blade are done up good on it. The best live record was their first promo only EP. I reviewed it for xhuxk as a boot CD mastered from the original vinyl called For the Heavy Metal Kids. Part of it is on the Workshop box and other portions of it make up bonus cuts on some of the reissues, I think.

Its version of Cities on Flame kills.

That's the nut of it. Plus, they had a live CD/DVD out about two or three years ago, performed with the scabs. The scabs are fine as is the sound, as usual, but you can pass it up.

I'd get a reissue of On Your Feet. The old one I have is afflicted with white-stripe-osis on the label, back when art departments didn't know how to, or were too lazy to, fit the original album's aspect onto CD art.

I copied the For the Heavy Metal Kids review over to here last year.

― Gorge, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:31 (eighteen years ago)

were Kings of the Sun (former band of a couple The Rich and Famous guys) any good?

Their first record released in the US ca. 90 or so had a great single, "Serpentine." The rest of it never stayed with me. Saw them at the Airport Music Hall in Allentown. Good live show, the singer had a shtick going on like the guy in Jackyl. Only he used a bullwhip and went into the crowd with it, as opposed to the chainsaw thing. The bullwhip thing probably flows down from Buffalo whose lead singer deployed it in Oz, according to my reissues.

― Gorge, Monday, 5 March 2007 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

Rolling Bullwhip-Rock Thread, 2007

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 04:09 (eighteen years ago)

For whatever it's worth, they do seem to have done a nice job with the BOC "Expanded Edition" reissues they have bothered to put out. Generous bonus tracks, songs sound good enough to me (never heard the original vinyl or CD pressings, so I can't compare to those), and liner notes by Lenny Kaye. The first batch of reissues (the first floor studio records) had lyrics, but my copy of Spectres does not. I guess they decided that people stopped caring about words in the six years since the last batch of reissues?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 04:12 (eighteen years ago)

Four, not floor. Although they could have been recorded on the first floor?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 04:15 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.therichandfamous.net/index.cfm

So I wound up liking both The Rich & Famous albums a lot! They're very different; the 2005 self-titled one works in a lot more synthy dancebeat groove, even some more-INXS-than-Bang-Tango goth-pop-rock DOR in "Beat Vampire" and some dubby space in the orgasm rocker "Comin For You" and a pinch of country twang (Popoff had compared Kings of the Sun to Jason and the Scorchers among all the usual Aussie bogan-rock [or pub-rock as Leanne Kingwell tells me it's actually called down under] suspects) in "Blindman's Cave" and some sax in a couple songs; favorite on that one is leaning toward either the opener "Class Arse" or closer "Uptown," but the whole thing's real good. And the new one Like A Superstar, much more pure and straightforward (less "experimental," as their website sez) in its hard-rockedness, is probably even better. Turns out "Fight," which I still like a lot, isn't even close to the best track; I'd probably pick the opening theme song (and first on their myspace page track therefore = single by the Frank Kogan definition; also their most blatant AC/DC homage) "The Rich and Famous," or else "Gold" or "Rejected Son" or "Supershow," but it's a really close call; even the closing Tom Waitsish thing "Money For You" started to annoy me less after a little while. So: great band. (And especially when they get dancey and bawdy on that first album, I also can't help thinking of Kix.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:29 (eighteen years ago)

(Second album does have their most explicit dance move though; i.e., "Rock Funkin," which they pull off quite expertly.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:33 (eighteen years ago)

(And though I say "new," it actually came out last year, apparently.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:41 (eighteen years ago)

maybe this belongs in the simon reynolds c/d thread but...

i don't often see eye to eye with phil, but the last month or so on blissblog has proved to be as patronizing an investigation of metal as i could imagine happening anywhere.

confidential to phil: did you have any idea that your provocation might beget something so aggravating? maybe i'm being reductionist but the whole "i live outside trends" routine seems a bit tired, yet reynolds manages to repeat the process endlessly. i mean, i don't care about hardcore fandom or hipster metal or any of the memes presently circulating, but geez, i'd like to think that many critics have long praised metal/extreme music as "art" w/o resorting to convoluted high culture metrics. whatever happened to taking something at face value?

[and man, you'd think he'd figure out that he was forcing a square through a circle hole on the whole hauntology/dubstep/black metal thing, but alas no, it just became fodder for the latent rockism/popism debate that rages quietly on in the background.]

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

confidential to phil: did you have any idea that your provocation might beget something so aggravating?

Yeah, I kinda did. I like Reynolds' writing a lot (like as in I admire the way he puts a sentence together), but man is he a pud when it comes to over-theorization of, well, everything. Especially when he feels his omniscience being called into question.

― unperson, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 20:18 (eighteen years ago)

i would only add that once having generated said theory of everything, he sees fit to dispense with the exercise entirely. practically speaking, this is like *the nothing* chomping away at reality in the neverending story.

gotta credit him with knowing his audience tho: it's a rare talent to make old news seem not only fresh and new, but novel as well.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 21:15 (eighteen years ago)

hipster mentalism is sooooo 2006. hopefully acid house will make another big comeback and we won't have to suffer much more. or big band swing! mixed with acid house!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 00:14 (eighteen years ago)

I <3 hipster metal. I might get a shirt made up with that on it, parade around town like a peacock. Should be good.

― Drooone, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 00:17 (eighteen years ago)

similar things were going on in America critland, Chuck Eddy used to be in stuff like Mark Stewart then all of a sudden he's writing about metal

From Simon's blog. He didn't do his research, apparently (seeing how I was reviewing Ratt and Motorhead and Armored Saint and Shrapnel etc. for the Voice long before I ever uttered the words "Mark Stewart" in print (in fact, the first piece I ever did for the Voice, about Bad Religion's only great and most proggy album Into the Unknown, was all about growing up listening to '70s AOR in the suburbs. So I dunno where he got his info.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck, I think Candlelight might have answered your prayers with the new *Cruachan* album. I am almost positive that you will dig their Irish pagan asses. And you will probably dig the new *Swallow The Sun* album too. they are on the 90's early katatonia/my dying bride/paradise lost tip.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 05:24 (eighteen years ago)

I will check those out if/when they show up, Scott; thanks!

New Chelsea album is fun and occasionally funny in small doses in the CD changer (wherein the yellodies of "Living in the Urban UK," "Sod the War," "Bad Advice," "Sliding Down A Stream," "Home" all pogo out), but the effect gets somewhat blunted by the lo-fidelity monochromia of it all when the album's played beginning to end. (Though ringing Alarm-style axes in "45 RPM" etc do vary things a bit.) One thing I finally realized is that, in general, the album's not oi! enough, except for what's probably my fave track, "Mr. Ferry's Son", class war vitriol about a prissy rich boy they hate ("Let's tell the story how it all began! A stupid twat born of a miner's son! Into the commons shouting for his rights! Gets chucked out by a man in tights! -- um, are miner's grandkids rich? must be 'cos later they call him a "upper class twit--maybe he's famous and I just don't know it?); anyway, that's sadly the only song that really does the Cockney gang shouts full-bore.

Also been liking the two-disc The Condensed 21st Century Guide to King Crimson 1969-2003 for the past couple days, though the first disc obviously blows away the second one where they start doing joke songs and turning in Primus. Latter's more palatable than I would've guessed, though.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

Wait, was Bryan Ferry's granddad a miner?? (I have no idea, but he'd seem to be the sort of nancy-boy poof such a song could be directed at, no? Probably not.) (Did Eno wear tights? Never kicked him out though, right?)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:10 (eighteen years ago)

Bryan Ferry's father cared for pit ponies. Pit ponies were used underground in mines for hauling debris.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:17 (eighteen years ago)

Uh...does Bryan Ferry have a son??

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

oh, and also, bryan ferry's dad broke into the house of commons during a vote that would ban hunting with dogs:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3656524.stm

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

bryan ferry's son was arrested for lunging at tony blair:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-05-06-ferry-arrested_x.htm

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:30 (eighteen years ago)

"I've had enough of this government", ferry said as he was taken away by police.

http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2005/05/06/inside1-ferry.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:32 (eighteen years ago)

oh wait, it was his son who invaded the house of commons. not his dad. i haven't had enough coffee yet.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:34 (eighteen years ago)

his son is pro-hunting with dogs. he is a radical dandy.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:34 (eighteen years ago)

Posted before?

http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/41551/Column_Column_Show_No_Mercy

DHG moves even further away from their roots on new album Supervillain Outcast, and former band member and journalist Svein Egil Hatlevik (Zweizz, Fleurety, Umoral) talks about changes in contemporary Norwegian black metal. [Brandon Stosuy]

― MRZBW, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 13:55 (eighteen years ago)

Potentially metal-looking new discs that came in the mail (plus a couple from the free table at work) today; which'll win and which'll lose? Time will tell:

Blood Tsunami
Infidel
Krypteria
Magnum
Mississippi Mudsharks
Mutant Press
Omnium Gatherum
Saxon
69 Eyes
Throne of Katarsis
Torch Rock (both full album and 4-song sampler EP)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 March 2007 02:42 (eighteen years ago)

Torch Rock = way too much torch, way too little rock (despite pictures of burning beds and production by Ursa Major alumnus Dick Wagner)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 March 2007 03:42 (eighteen years ago)

new saxon sounds EXACTLY like saxon. just, you know, nowhere as good as good saxon. new magnum is not very good at all. probably one of the least good albums i've heard in a while!

― scott seward, Thursday, 8 March 2007 04:27 (eighteen years ago)

That Pitchfork column has some cringeworthy quotes:

I reckon it's time for the old people to show them youngsters how we make old sounding black metal!

Hatlevik also misses the point completely when he's defending his own bands and bands-of-friends:

Dimmu Borgir is controversial, and has been for many years, because of their use of synthesizers. 'It's not black metal if they use synthesizers,' some people say, making their face look grim

Dimmu Borgir is controversial because they just aren't very good. The metal underground has generally had no problem with Burzum, Emperor, Summoning, Bathory or Master's Hammer when they used keyboards.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 8 March 2007 11:37 (eighteen years ago)

That Blood Tsunami record isn't bad, though some may not love the idea of a convicted murderer (drummer Bard Faust, formerly of Emperor) appearing in a band called Blood Tsunami and playing on a song called "Killing Spree."

― unperson, Thursday, 8 March 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

Some may also not like the fact that (despite halfway coherent melodies from the non-vocal instruments), Blood Tsunami's singer is shitty.

Throne of Katharsis sound like run-of-the-mill background black metal so far; I can tolerate this stuff, I guess, but who cares (unless I'm wrong).

I liked the one Krypteria song that came on so far. (Celine Dion-style power ballad turning into guitar-extended semi-goth Eurometal power ballad).

The one Mississippi Mudsharks song that came on so far was beefed-up rockabilly, not bad.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 March 2007 11:56 (eighteen years ago)

Updates!

Omnium Gatherum: Ugly and useless. They are outta here.

Krypteria: Lalena points out that "Somebody To Save," the ballad that I intially thought sounded like Celine Dion, sort of gets its melody partly from "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper. What I like about it is that, when it goes into the guitar solo, the guitars sound much more hair metal than thrash metal. Also commendably not thrashy: How the fast rhythms of "Scream" and "I Can't Breathe" roll as much as they rock; in fact, they almost swing. Otherwise these Scandinavians-I-think remind me mostly of Leaves Eyes (whose Eurovisionary ballads also reminded me of Celine Dion once), except Krytperia's opera quotient seems to go way more over-the-top, even approaching Carl Orrf levels eventually in "At The Gates of Retribution," the 10-minute closer. So I'm leaning toward liking this record.

Mississippi Mudsharks: Clutzy stodgy muscleman boogie, aiming for "Train Kept A Rollin" (album is called Train Rolls On!) but never quite getting there, though once in a while the clumsy wrestler voice singer inches toward Jim "Dandy" Mangrum territory, and "30 Weight Shuffle" has a decent blues guitar jam at the end. ("Down the Line," hefty guitar-grime instrumental on now, is not bad either, come to think of it.) Only song I really like a lot so far, though, is the Link Wrayed ghoulabilly of "Devil's Road." But we'll see.

Their myspace page:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=158493480

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 March 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

new neurosis track up on neurot

― drone/a/sore, Friday, 9 March 2007 03:30 (eighteen years ago)

via country thread:

Also been trying to listen to Two-Car Garage, whose previous album I started to like at first and then it wound up disappointing me. Roy Kasten is a fan, I think he told me. Anyway, so far my response to their new Three is "sounds like the Drive By Truckers, but not as good as when I used to like that band" ("Arson") or else "sounds like the Bottle Rockets. who were never all that great in the first place" ("The Great Gravitron Massacre"). But I like the Dixielandy boppery if not the Waitsy grunting so much in "Epitaph," and "Come Back To Shelby," I think it is, seems to partake in a certain '80s Whiskey A Go Go hard rock influence. (Paste magazine apparently even heard some Quiet Riot in their music, though I wouldn't go that far, not that I've ever been a huge Quiet Riot fan anyway.) So we'll see again.
xhuxk on Thursday, March 8, 2007 10:26 PM (26 minutes ago)

Oops, Two COW Garage, and Roy actually mentions them above, likening the album to Springsteen, which I'm not hearing yet, and also commending their loud guitars, which don't strike me as all that loud yet. I also don't think they sound especially "garage," though that may well not be the point.
xhuxk on Thursday, March 8, 2007 10:32 PM (21 minutes ago)

Actually, last 2 tracks on new album = Drive-By TRUDGErs. Which is part of the problem. Though the guitars are okay in a Neil Young kind of way.
xhuxk on Thursday, March 8, 2007 10:49 PM (3 minutes ago)

Mississippi Mudsharks' "Throw It In The Hole" = more ZZ Top (hence better).

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 March 2007 03:56 (eighteen years ago)

Yesterday in a friend's car I heard this EP by French band Alcest. "Le Secret" is a 2005 release (on Drakkar) and it sounds like early Ulver doing shoegaze (a bit of a Jesu vibe).

Browsing around I found their Myspace, where there are two tracks from their first album, to be released later this year. They have gone totally "black metal/dreampop" and I can't think of anyone into this bliss-out metal sound and pulling it off half as good as this guy. Listen to the end of the "Printemps Emeraude" excerpt.

― no-nonsense, Friday, 9 March 2007 08:25 (eighteen years ago)

Infidel: Stoner-metal, I guess. Manage to take "Enter Sandman"/"Sex Type Thing" type riffs and a sometimes moderately John Garner (of Sir Lord Baltimore) type howl and make it consistently poldding and ignorable.

Mutant Press: Album lives up to its name Music For Elevators; does not live up to two good albums they made a few years ago where they were covering Fugs songs and fabricating Detroit/Cleveland proto-punk slime.

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 March 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

"poldding" = plodding.

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 March 2007 13:46 (eighteen years ago)

I AM WEIGHING IN!!!!

throne of katarsis - way boring.

omnium gatherum - yeah, who needs it? maybe soilwork fans need it. i dig soilwork actually. but not these dudes.

blood tsunami - dig it! this is pretty much what i want my nu-thrash to sound like. like, um, old thrash, i guess. old german thrash, to be more specific.

― scott seward, Friday, 9 March 2007 16:09 (eighteen years ago)

The new Vital Remains album, Icons of Evil, has Glen Benton on vocals again. Between this and last year's fantastic Deicide album, it's been a pretty good stretch for him, creatively. Too bad about the whole touring thing. Anyway, IOE is produced by Erik Rutan, and it sounds fucking amazing. The stupid opening cut (loud whipping sounds and a crowd shouting "Crucify him!") is actually unworthy of the musical greatness of the songs. Chuck, don't waste your time. There's nothing for you here.

― unperson, Friday, 9 March 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

monarch! double-disc set on crucial blast is awesomeness.

― scott seward, Friday, 9 March 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

The Monarch! is totally sweet, agreed.

― ng-unit, Friday, 9 March 2007 22:34 (eighteen years ago)

A friend of mine played in Blood Tsunami for a while. Good shit.

― MRZBW, Friday, 9 March 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

I wanna hear that Monarch! I pre-ordered on of their new vinyl releases, its supposed to be out before this new disc.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 10 March 2007 00:37 (eighteen years ago)

The Crucial Blast set encompasses both vinyl releases.

― unperson, Saturday, 10 March 2007 01:00 (eighteen years ago)

Magnum: Yeah, pretty bad. Bland. Boring. I dunno, is this what Marrilion sound like? Actually I didn't hate the Eurosynths in "Be Strong," though. So I disagree with Scott that this is one of the least good albums to come out in a long time. Lots of death-metal albums are worse. But this is still bad.

69 Eyes: I was kind of hoping I'd think this was amusing in a goofy post-H.I.M. Sisters of Mercy meets Hanoi Rocks way, but it is not nearly rock'n'roll enough, and even the goth seems pretty darn compromised. The singer is a note-for-note Andrew Eldritch clone, but despite their sleaze-rock trappings, the band is nothing, zilch, nada. I forget what Zodiac Mindwarp sounded like, but I bet they were better. Funny title, tho: "Frankenhooker."

Saxon: Haven't totally given up on this, but I gotta say it's sounding weak so far, and disappointingly not nearly as biker-rock as the Saxon I remember, which means the Gradmaster Flash tribute-era Saxon of Wheels of Steel, which might be the only other album I've ever owned by said ensemble.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 10 March 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

Mississippi Musharks, on the other hand, have really grown on me--more for the guitars than for the songs, yet the grumbling does have plenty of haw-haw-haw-haw-haw in it. More Billy Gibbons than Jim Dandy or Tom Waits.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 10 March 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

monarch! double-disc set on crucial blast is awesomeness.

waaaah i want it and i didn't preorder it and now i have to wait a week. also my local didn't get the fucking gallhammer cd+dvd. DOOM ELUDES ME.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 10 March 2007 03:41 (eighteen years ago)

now playing:

http://www.limb-music.de/gfx/zandelle/cover_hires_vr.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 10 March 2007 04:05 (eighteen years ago)

those dudes in the corner (the band presumably?) totally propel that album cover into greatness

― latebloomer, Saturday, 10 March 2007 04:29 (eighteen years ago)

So is somebody going to close this thread again now that Scott put a big picture on it? I hope not.

Krypteria...fast rhythms of "Scream" and "I Can't Breathe" roll as much as they rock

Actually I'm pretty sure these sorts of songs are kind of what Martin Popoff means by "O.T.T.," an abbreviation he may or may not have invented but I don't think I've ever seen anybody else use it -- not as a kind of metal, anyway. Anyway, yeah, the Krytperia album is swell. Lots of sky-kissing opera/Orff/quasi-Gregorian parts, but in general they tend to come in as embellishments in between choruses or verses or whatever, and don't wear out their bombast welcome, and serve an emotional end; the songs are really well put-together, and have lots of nifty parts, yet still come off as actual songs. Also the guitars do that not-quite-ubiquitous-but-getting-there faux-Mesopotamian dance thing once in a while during the O.T.T. parts. So in general the band has a real good sense of cheese, and enough energy and hooks to avoid their pomp turning into tedium. Lady singing's lovely, too.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 10 March 2007 12:43 (eighteen years ago)

Old DD guitarist, the Gooze, liked 69 Eyes. From his blog:

[i]I bought the CD cause it had some interesting covers, like Alice Cooper's "Is it My Body", MC5's "Call Me Animal", and Dictators "Science Gone too Far"[i]

Said it sounded like stripper rock, Motley Crue-era. Could be enough to hook me if seen in store this weekend. The two covers, not the MC5 one, are what do it. The Sirens are the only band who can pull off
second album MC5, their power pap record. Actually, the Sirens made their MC5 picks sound better than the originals by beefing them up some.

[Removed Illegal Link]

Three weeks ago a promo CD arrived and it took me half an hour to figure out it was Lesbian's CD, the logo was so crabbed and teenage-bedroom-horrormaster. Lasted about five minutes in the changer.

― Gorge, Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:31 (eighteen years ago)

What?

69 Eyes review

― Gorge, Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:34 (eighteen years ago)

Brad Delp obit

― Gorge, Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

Hmmm. The new album I got in the mail, Angels didn't have any of those covers; no covers at all, in fact. And they don't seem to write particularly catchy songs themselves. And I definitely hear more Sisters of Mercy than Motley Crue (or even Misfits) -- with more hair-metal, and more other people's songs, maybe I would have heard something. As is....nope.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

Did you ever see "Frankenhooker"?

The movie

During postdoc years, some friends had a Friday night bad movie club. "Frankenhooker" was one offering, in there with "Flesh-Eating Mothers."

― Gorge, Saturday, 10 March 2007 17:50 (eighteen years ago)

Have never seen "Frankenhooker"! Not even once.

Drawing Voices is some Isis guy (I think) making sound-effect plinks and leaving the kitchen faucet dripping. (Which reminds me: Is Hydra Head fast becoming the boringest metal label around? If not, give it a little more time.)

New Ian Hunter CD on Yep Roc appears to be about 95 percent hookless ballads. This is no doubt an optical illusion, but I still doubt I like it much.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 March 2007 00:12 (eighteen years ago)

Hydra Head is, indeed, sinking fast. Shame, considering how great they were during their peak years (Botch, early Cave In, Knut).

― unperson, Sunday, 11 March 2007 00:38 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, the jazzy country backing on track #10 of the Hunter CD has some life to it, at least until he starts singing about not being who he was when he was young, as if we couldn't tell. And a couple songs start out ripping off mid '60s Dylan okay. And it's not like he didn't have an aptitude for great ballads once upon a time. And Brain Capers was a zillion years ago; I really don't expect any metal out of the guy. But he just sounds tired on this thing, like just another singer-songwriter. So yeah, I see why it's on Yep Roc.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 March 2007 00:47 (eighteen years ago)

And a couple songs start out ripping off mid '60s Dylan okay.

Well, then he is sort of sounding like he did when he was young. First could Guy Stevens produced records, he used to sound like he was imitating Dylan. Didn't a review in the "red book" of Brain Capers say it sounded like a record Dylan would have made had he died in his motorcycle accident, or whatever.

― Gorge, Sunday, 11 March 2007 01:06 (eighteen years ago)

Wasn't gonna mention the very non-metal Hunter record here again, but since Gorge asked, I'll re-post the answer to his post, which I already posted on the country thread before he posted it (hope this clears any confusion up):

(Said "mid '60s Dylan" stuff, incidentally = harmonicas, pretty much) (or okay, his band pretending like they're going to start playing "Like A Rolling Stone" once or twice. And one time they pretend like they're going to start playing "Walk on the Wild Side," sort of. But then Ian lets everybody down.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 March 2007 01:12 (eighteen years ago)

x post

drawing voices is one Craig Dongoski. Aaron Turner added some " treated guitar textures " to the recording.

― drone/a/sore, Sunday, 11 March 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

These possibly metal LPs cost me $13 total in Greenpoint this afternoon:

The Headboys The Headboys (RSO, 1979)

Mother's Finest Mother Factor (Epic, 1978 -- I never owned an album by them before! But reportedly this is after they'd mainly abandoned metal for sub-par disco-funk)

Rhythm Team Rhythm Team (Missle, 1987 -- definitely looks to have disco-metal possibilites, though I never heard of it before. Kenny Arronson is listed as one of about 20 "additional musicians" in addition to the about 10 people in the core group; Dave Douglas is on the former list playing trumpet too. And there is a rapper, and the guitarist looks extremely hair-metal)

SPK Machine Voodoo (Elektra, 1985 -- homoerotic proto-industrial/elektronic boody muzik on a major label? Or maybe not)

Andy Zwerling [i[Spiders In The Night (Kama Sutra, 1971 -- I know nothing about this guy, but I know I've heard of him a few times over the years, possibly from fans of Lenny Kaye, who plays guitar on this. Any info would be welcome. A quick google seach suggests it may be worth considerably more than the $2 I paid for it.)

Metal Killers (Kastle Killer compilation, 1985, with Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, The Hard featuring Bernie Torme, Quartz, Sledgehammer, plus "Fast As a Shark" by Accept among other things NWOBHM and not)[/i]

Entire (mostly non-metal) haul can be found here:

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56394

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 March 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

Principal mastermind of Rhythm Team (and Missile Records) was turns out to be drummer Steve Missal; this album's gonna really stink, isn't it?:

http://web.mac.com/stevemissal/iWeb/Steve%20Missal/MUSIC%20CAREER.html

― xhuxk, Sunday, 11 March 2007 21:54 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, i love love love that Headboys album! totally. i've talked about it before on ILM, but nobody cared or liked it or remembered it.

― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2007 03:33 (eighteen years ago)

The SPK LP is not metal at all, but I like the bubble-industrial percussion on it, and the high-pitched voice is much easier to take than most of the uber-affected quasi-decadent Wax Trax moanwhines that came later. (I'm pretty sure this was supppsed to be their sellout album, though. Weren't they Germans, and isn't their earlier stuff supposed to be more in the noisier realm of Neubauten/Test Dept/Z'ev? Or am I confusing them with somebody? Either way, listening to it this morning makes me wish I also would've picked up the $3 vinyl copy of Ministry's Adrian Sherwood-produced Twitch -- their best album, easy -- I saw yesterday, but I was too cheap at the time,)

― xhuxk, Monday, 12 March 2007 11:00 (eighteen years ago)

After SPK I played the LP by bald EMI 1979 proto-Electric Six corporate new wave Right Said Fred lookalike metal/disco/yacht-rocker Zwol (best songs: "New York City," "Every Man For Himself," Don't Care.") Now playing 1980 Vanguard Bobby O-produced post-glam (w/ covers of "Rebel Rebel," "Pinball Wizard") metal-disco apparent transvestite Lynn Todd, who looks like a tough Genya Raven type chick but sings like Divine circa "Walk Like A Man". Very rocking album! Guitar by "Bobby Orefice"! (I'd bought both of these LPs in Greenpoint last year, but have been avoiding vinyl in recent months. My current kick won't last, but it will be fun while it does.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 12 March 2007 12:05 (eighteen years ago)

I thought they were Australian. It's been a while since I've consulted my Industrial Culture Handbook.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 12 March 2007 12:59 (eighteen years ago)

New Deadlock video: Code of Honour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8000nRYyco

German progressive-goth-symphonic-death metal, the female ethereal vocals [Similar to The Gathering] contrast with the male death metal growling vocals

― djmartian, Monday, 12 March 2007 13:50 (eighteen years ago)

Weren't they Germans, and isn't their earlier stuff supposed to be more in the noisier realm of Neubauten/Test Dept/Z'ev

Yes. Don't know about the nationality. First thing was a cassette called Slogun. Then an album called Leichenschrei with a burned head on the cover. First side, as I recall, had a rhythmic repetition of someone screaming and the breaking of glass. Those'd be popular with the hipster metal crowd these days, I reckon.

Got through the first part of the Monarch double. Not bad, as far as it goes. As slow as it is, the tone has some crunch. And 'That's a girl?!' Most of these types of records still remind me of Burning Witch.

― Gorge, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:13 (eighteen years ago)

spk were aussies. and that isn't short for austrian. australian.

― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

spk were always popular with hipsters everywhere. they were great!

― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:16 (eighteen years ago)

On Marnie Stern from NY Times; One song, “Grapefruit,” starts off with scrabbling guitars but swiftly evolves into a scrambled variant of 1970s hard rock

Like he'd know.

Standard Timesian hype-rubbish on first-girl-guitar-shredders-ever! I bet the subjects were even embarrassed to read it.

― Gorge, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

The Marnie Stern album is excellent.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

Black/white, sharp/blunt, green/red. You like Monarch, I like Monarch. Kaki King, who dresses in black from her time as a gravedigger, had the most important job in New York. There were thousands of people under her.

― Gorge, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)

So you don't like Marnie Stern then?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

"who dresses in black from her time as a gravedigger"

this has me laughing so hard and i don't even know why!

hahahahaha!

i wanna hear the marnie stern album. i'm not immune to hype. it better not sound like friggin' helium or something though.

― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

i am STILL listening to that Amplified Heat album on Arclight. it's so much fun. And rockin' every which way. was it Phil who didn't like it? well, don't listen to him, it's way cool. Not like any of you are ever gonna buy it or anything, but still...i feel like i gotta give these stoners their due. the jams are so solid. and shaggy.

― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

I had a copy of that Marnie Stern thing for a couple of months, but never quite got around to listening to it and now it's probably way at the bottom of a pile I can't even see from where I'm sitting. Oh, well. It's gotta be better than that Magnum album, at least.

― unperson, Monday, 12 March 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

I should go out and the hallway and see if I still have that Marnie Stern CD, assuming it was ever sent to me. Assuming I was (I think Kill Rock Stars sends me stuff, but who knows?), I was probably like: "Kill Rock Stars? Deerhoof connection? Hella connection, when Hella haven't made a memorable record since the Total Bugs Bunny on Wild Bass EP almost four years ago? No way would I like this thing," and then it would have gone into a box. But I could be wrong! Or maybe I never got it. I dunno, I just checked out Stern's myspace page, and wasn't really inspired to listen to the entire two songs thanks to her singing, but the Rush ripoff squiggles seemed okay. (Then again, I didn't hate her singing, I guess. Maybe she's okay.)

But who cares, because I just played Girlschool's Nightmare at Maple Cross, and it was great! And now I'm playing that Metal Killers compilation LP I bought for $2 yesterday, and how come nobody told me how wacky Tygers of Tan Pang sound before? Way more AOR disco-metal (in a, I dunno, Streetheart/Shooting Star/Prism way perhaps?) than I would have guessed: "Rendezvous" is the song in question. I already forget what the Diamond Head song "Out Of Phase" sounded like, but guess what? I actually thought the Judas Priest song was catchy! "Rocka Rolla" it's called, and then I noticed that it's copyright 1974, which explains a lot. (Seeing how I am actually a very belated fan of their Sin After Sin album from 1977, I am even more convinced they'd completely peaked before the '80s began.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

priest ruled. i never got your priest non-love. they covered joan baez and fleetwood mac! i kinda stopped paying attention after defenders of the faith. although i think i had belated love for ram it down. point of entry really messed with my head when i was a kid. than screaming for vengeance made everything alright again. ALL 70's priest is cool if you ask me.

Diamond Head were awesome! they could totally bust out the early 70's boogie jams.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:24 (eighteen years ago)

p..s:
1. "go out IN the hallway."
2. Tygers of Pan Tang. (or: Detroit Tigers of Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.)
3. Okay, calling any Hella album "memorable" is being charitable, probably. But at least the Total Bugs Bunny etc EP was short, and had some amusing incorporation of hip-hoppity beats. The band of course peaked, though, with Hold Your Horse Is in 2002 (five years ago), which sounded reminiscent of the Meat Puppets' short self-titled 1982 mini-LP.)

Quartz "Stoking Up The Fires Of Hell" just played, and it sounded real good!

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:25 (eighteen years ago)

hahaha, i have no idea how priest covering joan baez and fleetwood mac would make you like them more! i guess i just felt like throwing that out there. chuck, next time you see a copy of unleashed in the east for a dollar, BUY IT.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

so did you listen to that headboys album or what?

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of boys, do you own this choirboys album? another good one:

http://www.choirboys.net/Assets/images/cb1.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:36 (eighteen years ago)

Nope, never saw it before! And I don't own any albums by The Boyzz, either! And I didn't play the Headboys yet! But I will soon, I promise!

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:39 (eighteen years ago)

you would LOVE that choirboys album. it was made for you. and i am seriously interested in your take on that Headboys album. too me, it's a great power pop album that rocks. great songs!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:42 (eighteen years ago)

I will listen to it!

And I also promise I will not say "Marnie Stern proves definitively that girls can be as boring as the Fucking Champs" until I actually listen to her record someday (even though that's what her reviews convince me she'll sound like).

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 02:50 (eighteen years ago)

I think I should get some thanks here as Marnie Stern's unofficial press agent. If you liked Rocka Rolla I don't see why some things from Sad Wings wouldn't float your boat, like Tyrant. You'd stand a good chance of liking the Hell Bent for Leather tune, too. Priest did peak, at least onstage, before their ship came in in the States. They smoked at Ag Hall and at a freebie at Allen high in - er -- Allentown from that time. Ag Hall wasn't well attended. The shows lacked the big production silliness they'd haul into the Stabler arena in the Eighties. Stained Class, of course, had the cover of Spooky Tooth's "Better By You," which ended up being their civil lawsuit song, music to blow your jaw off to.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)

lovin' these dudes:

http://www.punkutopia.com/Merchant2/graphics/expanded/HA55001-2.jpg

http://www.punkcore.com/heavy_artillery/mercilessdeath.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 19:29 (eighteen years ago)

haha... is that ed repka cover art?

i'm really digging the morsüre reissue on hell's headbangers/nunslaughter rex. 1985 crazy french thrash blasts (like early voivod at double speed) with the drummer pounding away on one of those octagonal-pad electronic drumkits. they were the metal urbain of thrash. i think the bassist does soundtrack work for luc besson these days.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

And I also promise I will not say "Marnie Stern proves definitively that girls can be as boring as the Fucking Champs"

Yes, that would be very stupid. Aside from her playing a guitar there is no connection to metal.

― xox, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 23:53 (eighteen years ago)

Which is what Chuck says about The Fucking Champs...

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 23:54 (eighteen years ago)

I will be at the Isis/Jesu show in NYC tonight, so if anybody wants to meet me look for a guy in a Caspar Brötzmann Massaker T-shirt.

― unperson, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 12:31 (eighteen years ago)

So, my vacation that was supposed to be filled with ear-grinding metal was and, because my Discman crapped out on me two days in! Oh well. From what I did listen to, I'm loving the Maylene and the sons of disaster disc, the Dir En Grey is kind of wacky at first but blends together, and Virgin Black is different and pretty but not particularly memorable, at least not yet. Got the new Jesu in the mail today (yeah, I know I'm late to that party), as well as a copy of the new album by Funeral. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the latter is probably doom metal, but I haven't popped it in the player yet.

Haven't heard the new 69 Eyes, so I can't speak for that one, but the re-issues that I got sent from Cleopatra are pretty cool. Blessed Be is probably my favorite.

Also, Emperor is totally awesome! Can't believe I never got into them before.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 20:30 (eighteen years ago)

The first five tracks of that Maylene disc are as good as any Southern metal I've heard in the last year or so. Once they phase out those metalcore breakdowns completely, they'll be even better.

Got the new Earth CD/DVD today...haven't had time to play it, but I've been hearing really good things about the album portion.

And I can't stop playing the new After Forever single. Album's a bit inconsistent, but I'd say that "Energize Me" is the best European girlygoth single since "Nemo".

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

I think there's some really catchy stuff on the second half (particularly tracks six and seven), but the first test is stronger. "Drive the River" is especially mind blowing, that hook sticks like crazy. Reminds me a little bit of "Two Kids" by priestess, but I like the Maylene track better. My big disappointment is that "Tale of the Runaways" never erupts into that "Free Bird" solo that it desperately wants to. I agree that the vocals aren't great, but they're WAY better than on the first record. Mostly they remind me of the two Southern Pussies, Nashville and Alabama Thunder. But I like both those bands, so that would explain why I like these guys.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 23:38 (eighteen years ago)

(Half, not test. And "Dry the River." I use voice recognition software, so sometimes I get weird little mistakes like that)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

[link Stonerrock.coms Readers Top albums of 2006http://www.stonerrock.com/features/index.asp?FeatureID=145[/link]

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:27 (eighteen years ago)

damn I missed a ]

oh well

Here's the list

1. Mastodon - Blood Mountain (4,528 pts)
2. Melvins - A Senile Animal (4,375 pts)
3. Om - Conference Of The Birds (3,675 pts)
4. The Sword - Age of Winters (3,209 pts)
5. Isis - In the Absence of Truth (3,007 pts)
6. Witch - Self Titled (2,711 pts)
7. SunnO)))/Boris - Altar (2,571 pts)
8. Boris - Pink (2,299 pts)
9. Colour Haze - Tempel (2,226 pts)
10. Wolfmother - Self Titled (2,054 pts)
11. Nebula - Apollo (1,967 pts)
12. Tool - 10,000 Days (1,906 pts)
13. Jesu - Silver (1,478 pts)
14. Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Towards the Red Sun (1,433 pts)
15. Eagles Of Death Metal - Death By Sexy (1,375 pts)
16. Los Natas - El Hombre Monta�a (1,273 pts)
17. Black Cobra - Bestial (1,246 pts)
18. Pentagram - First Daze Here Too (1,225 pts)
19. Dixie Witch - Smoke & Mirrors (1,208 pts)
20. Sasquatch - II (1,092 pts)
21. Place of Skulls - The Black Is Never Far (1,069 pts)
22. Slayer - Christ Illusion (1,055 pts)
23. Scott Reeder - TunnelVision Brilliance (1,028 pts)
24. Comets on Fire - Avatar (1,020 pts)
25. Fu Manchu - Hung Out to Dry EP (1,009 pts)
26. Lair of the Minotaur - The Ultimate Destroyer (985 pts)

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:28 (eighteen years ago)

haha i entered the competition and had to think up 26 albums so here's what I chose - for you all to poke fun at :

pfunkboy

1. Om - Conference Of The Birds
2. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
3. Scott Walker - The Drift
4. Boris - Pink
5. Envy - Insomniac Doze
6. Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain
7. Mouth Of The Architect - The Ties That Blind
8. The Goslings - Grandeur Of Hair
9. Isis - In The Absence Of Truth
10. Red Sparowes - Every red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun
11. Sunn o))) - la mort noir dans esch-alzette
12. Major Stars - Syntoptikon
13. Converge - No Heroes
14. The Heads - Under The Stress Of A Headlong Dive
15. Grails - Black tar Prophecies Vol 1,2&3.
16. Growing - Color Wheel
17. Bongripper - The Great Barrier Reefer
18. Pharaoh Overlord - 4
19. Jesu - Silver
20. Tivol - Interstellar Overbike
21. Harvey Milk - Special Wishes
22. Unearthly Trance - Trident
23. Zombi - Surface To Air
24. Boris/Sunn o))) - Altar
25. Place Of Skulls - The Black Is Never Far
26. My Sleeping Karma - My Sleeping Karma

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:33 (eighteen years ago)

the vocals aren't great, but they're WAY better than on the first record. Mostly they remind me of the two Southern Pussies, Nashville and Alabama Thunder.

In other words, they can't sing. (Though then again, I never did get the "fair-to-middling hardcore bands pretending to be Southern Rock" thing. Never had any use for REO Speeddealer, either.)

Interesting thing I noticed while listening to both Girlschool's Nightmare at Maple Cross and the Divinyls' Temperamental (both from circa 1097-88 or thereabouts): They both sort of sound like Def Leppard sometimes!

Now playing, get ready, Scott: The Headboys! Who are good! Sorta proggy, even! I definitely heard "Shape of Thing to Come" before. Was it a small new wave radio hit in the States? It slipped right by me til now. "Kickin The Kans" and "Experiments" also sounded vaguely familiar, somewhere deep in the distant recesses of my memory banks, hmmm....(Theory: I heard them on KCOU in Columbia, Missouri, back in th the mid '80s.)

Cuarachan, Swallow the Sun, the Stalkers in the mail today. I may need to switch back to my CD player sometime soon, before I fall behind.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, 1987, not 1097 (though I bet the latter was a good year for metal.) And KCOU in the EARLY '80s (or even very late '70s, come to think of it.)
And "The Shape of Things To Come" (oddly not a Yardbirds cover!)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

I like Speeddealer on record, although they are probably the worst live band I've ever seen. Just awful. Can't play and no stage presence.

I don't think Maylene are really pretending to be Southern rock, per se. I just think that their guys to started off in a hard-core bands and decided they wanted to do southern rock, and couldn't quite divest themselves of the hard-core trappings. I think the clean singing on the record is pretty good. The gravel stuff isn't great, but it doesn't bother me the way a lot of hard-core vocals to, or even the way the first record's vocals did. Besides, for me, awesome instrumental stuff can make up for shitty vocals a lot of the time, and Sons a Disaster have some truly great riffage. To each their own, though.

How did that Witch record rate so high? The vocals on that one really do render it unlistenable.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 March 2007 02:00 (eighteen years ago)

(Man, I really need to proofread before I submit my posts.)

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

I have the two disc Girlschool collection that came out in 1998 or so, and while the 70s fem-Motorhead stuff is kind of spunky, I really love their 80s super-produced bubblegum metal. Way better hooks, and way more fun.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 March 2007 02:04 (eighteen years ago)

my two cents about Mastodon and some of the samck talked by some who love and hate them can be found on front page of The Freelancementalists (right under a passing reflection, of Haikunym, I think)(People Of The Future, it is Feb. 2007 Archive of which I speak): The Freelance Mentalists

― dow, Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:22 (eighteen years ago)

way too much to type, even without the typo, but I'll try again [link The Freelance Mentalists]http://www.thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/thefreelancementalists.html[link]
don

― dow, Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:26 (eighteen years ago)

Lovely. Also, I wrote about Sepultura's Dante XXI, but that link's way too long even without this leisurework, so please just go to http://charlotte.creativeloafing, and type Symptoms of Live into the Search . don

― dow, Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:36 (eighteen years ago)

Cool, Don! But when are you returning to the country thread? You are missed there!

― xhuxk, Thursday, 15 March 2007 11:34 (eighteen years ago)

Went to the Isis/Jesu show last night, which was terrifically boring. I swear I could fill my whole iPod with nothing but bands that sound exactly like Torche, some a little better, some a little worse. Jesu sounded okay, but they're still not a patch on Godflesh even at their worst. Oh, well. The good news is, Virgin Megastore was having another sale, so instead of buying an ugly Isis T-shirt, I stopped off and picked up Accept's Restless & Wild, Balls To The Wall (2001 remaster with two live bonus tracks from an EP I owned on vinyl back in junior high) and Metal Heart for $8 each. I saw Accept in '85 opening for Dio at Madison Square Garden. I actually went to see them - wasn't a big Dio fan at the time, and I still like more of their songs than of his, I bet, if I actually tallied 'em up.

― unperson, Thursday, 15 March 2007 14:56 (eighteen years ago)

Symptoms Of Life is what you would have to type for that Sepultura, sorry. What ever happened to Accept?? (thanx xhuxk, I'll get back to the country some day, just haven't heard anything postworthy lately)

― dow, Thursday, 15 March 2007 18:22 (eighteen years ago)

Accept still reunites from time to time and does some European shows. They played some festivals a couple years ago. Udo's still going strong with his U.D.O. project.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 15 March 2007 18:38 (eighteen years ago)

C'mon xhuck, you once wrote that Reo's "Keep On Lovin' You," or whatever the title is, "was really something special" and got you past your cruel collegiate disdain, for some of their other work. (Oh I save all all the clips, ready for those Supreme Court nominations.)

― dow, Thursday, 15 March 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

Dir En Grey would be a lot cooler if they were the Mad Capsule Markets.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 March 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

(Of course, that's true of a lot of bands)

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 March 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

duplicated from that new shoegazer thread. [just for metal types that only read this thread !]

Alcest from France

listen on myspace:
http://myspace.com/alcestmusic

Alcest = shoegazer sounds with female vocals meets atmospheric metal [metalgaze music]

A must for My Bloody Valentine, Lovesliescrushing and Jesu fans

[For Extreme Metal fans, Alcest share a common member with Amesoeurs the post-punk meets avant black-metal band] link for Amesoeurs: http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=46747

Alcest
http://www.alcest-music.com/

Debut Alcest album to be released this summer: "Souvenirs d'un autre monde," on Prophecy Productions

http://www.alcest-music.com/alcestcover.jpg

― djmartian, Thursday, 15 March 2007 21:05 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, I like that Alcest a ton. Thanks for the tip.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 15 March 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

Hellveto - self tagged as "true pagan black metal" from Poland. However you can certainly detect The Cure influences in some of the melodic sections of their music.

Hellveto
http://www.myspace.com/hellveto

Hellveto

This band seem to have a prolific output:
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=11286

― djmartian, Thursday, 15 March 2007 22:27 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.myspace.com/hellveto

― djmartian, Thursday, 15 March 2007 22:28 (eighteen years ago)

i've got the hellveto stuff that god is myth/black plague put out. good stuff. similar to a lot of the stuff that total holocaust puts out.

― scott seward, Thursday, 15 March 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

um, i'm at work, otherwise i would be more specific about "stuff".

― scott seward, Thursday, 15 March 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

[b]Not Found[\b]

Jeezus H. Christ. Here:

Freelance Mentalists

― Gorge, Friday, 16 March 2007 08:49 (eighteen years ago)

I could swear I posted here about Alcest, but the post seems to be gone. Weird. Great band in any case.

― no-nonsense, Friday, 16 March 2007 09:21 (eighteen years ago)

From country thread (and that Iggy-compiled compilation is the metal reissue of the year, too by the way, thanks to MC5 and Fabulous Wailers amd Dennis Coffey and his Detroit Guitar Band, among stuff I've named) (and yes, Scott, you predicted right about me loving Cruachan of course):

...does Cruachan's Morrigan's Call album count as country if it's the most Irish-jiggy extreme metal album ever made (not to mention the best metal album I've heard this year)? With good songs called "The Brown Bull of Cooley" and "The Old Woman In The Woods," not to mention yet another cover (after Tyr, I think, and the Dropkick Murphys featuring Shane McGowan, right?) of "The Very Wild Rover" (the "very" of which previous coverers have left out) just in time for this snowy St. Patrick's Day, no less?

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=47556196

And does Mojo Stooges Jukebox (compiled by Iggy, whose new album with his band I still haven't heard and am not particularly looking forward to enduring, though I've noticed Anthony's a fan) count as the best country reissue of the year if it's got Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran (whose "Cotton Picker" is pretty irritating, though no doubt that's what Iggy likes about it), Link Wray, Howlin' Wolf, Junior Kimbrough, John Lee Hooker, and Bo Diddley squeezed betweens its Trahsmen and Last Poets and Cannibals and Headhunters and Mothers of Invention? I would think so.

Another good Southern rock band are these guys; the fact that "A Little Time" takes its music and "Let Your Love Light Shine" take its words from "Shine" by Collective Soul (which, let's face it, was really not that bad anyway in retrospect) are at least made up by the fact that "Nascar Superstar" takes its groove from "Walking The Dog" by Rufus Thomas. Otherwise, I can surely see why ZZ Top picked them as an opening band, though they're more Skynyrd if anything. They are Laidlaw from Houston:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=5893080

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 13:38 (eighteen years ago)

(And uh, more Black Crowes than Skynyrd, I guess, but what the hey.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 14:13 (eighteen years ago)

C'mon xhuck, you once wrote that Reo's "Keep On Lovin' You," or whatever the title is, "was really something special" and got you past your cruel collegiate disdain, for some of their other work.

Don, I have no idea what you were answering here! Something to do with me having heard the Headboys on KCOU, maybe? I'm stumped. And REO Speedwagon were great; never said otherwise. (Even their new CD has two good songs on it. But it is true, I wrote a live review on them for Mizzou's paper headlined "Midwestern, Metallic, and Cruddy" way back when.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

Never said otherwise HERE, I mean. (I clearly said otherwise back then.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

best metal album I've heard this year

Not counting metal albums that magazines like Decibel might not consider metal that is (i.e, I like Trigger Renegade and some others more)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 16:09 (eighteen years ago)

George Brigman's Rags in Skull is the man's first new record in years, following the remasters of his old records by BonaFide. He's still George Brigman, which is to the late-60's/early 70's hard guitar rock in completely intact. Blooz-based, progressive and psyche touches are all there.

The album starts mellow, gets in gear on song three, "Borderline," and closes with four slabs of vintage guitar including Swell, an arena instrumental show-off at sunset which lets you know how good Echoplexes sound.

With the Sirens new one, one of my favorites of the year and it did it in one listen. Came with DVD TV clip from Pennsy/Maryland borderline local access TV show from ca. 83-85, an interview with Brigman and Split who then lipsynch to a song from one of his albums. Won't be included on the store release but is nontheless neat. Seques from end of Hershey Bears semi-pro hockey match to woman explaining "The Lion Roars," the name of the show, has an exciting new local act, one "that plays all original music," to introduce viewers to. George then explains his records are most popular in Europe, particularly Germany and Austria and that the band does not play Baltimore, his hometown much, because -- although he loves the place -- its people aren't down with the spontaneous nature of his music, prefering the homogeneity of major label product.

― Gorge, Saturday, 17 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of the new REO, this is from the country thread, too:

So seeing how Lantana covers them on their new album I can talk about REO Speedwagon (who always had some country in their flying turkey trottage and Kevin Cronin's southern Illinois drawls, truth be told) here right? New album (REO's not Lantana's) Everyone Loves a Happy Ending has two songs I like: "Dangerous Combination," tuff Babys-style hard pop about drinking too much and thinking too much, and, more notably, the opener "Smilin' In The End," which from the hysterial hyper singing to dance-rock beat to goofy lines about "Leave me alone, I'll recover/say nasty things about my mother" and "You can beat me/mistreat me/but I'll be smiling in the end" sounds so much like the Electric Six I'm halfway convinced it's intentional. The rest isn't awful -- a vaguely pompy ballad, a closer with lyrics about the spirit guiding you that could be either born-again or new-age, and a couple cuts ("Lost On The Road Of Love," "Born To Love You") that half-palatably do a whitewashed '80s sort of Robert Palmer/Peter Gabriel/Stevie Winwood/Phil Collins/Joe Cocker fake funk thang, sometimes with soul sisters backupping. No country though, sigh.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

xhuxx, you said above, onThursday, 15 March I think,"Never had any use for REO Speedealer either."Not that I care, just thought it funny produce the "really something special" but, which was in Creem, partially retracting the even earlier piece you cite. Seem to recall Creem itself favoring their earliest albums, and somebody there also liked Ridin The Storm Out, and Michael Davis, I think, liked the one with the tuna swallowing a tuning fork on the cover. Maybe some of that was good? I didn't start hating them til they did too many ballads (that guy sounded like afly)

― dow, Saturday, 17 March 2007 21:03 (eighteen years ago)

R.E.O. T.W.O. (sludge of early '70s, with "Golden Country," one of my favorite protest songs ever); You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish (late '70s arena rock, with "Roll With The Changes" and "Time For Me To Fly"); and Hi Infidelity (hugely selling and surprisingly witty and varied early '80s AOR gone pop) are my favorites; after that probably their equally sludgy debut album with Terry Luttrel singing. Two best-ofs I swear by are A Decade Of Rock and Roll: 1970 to 1980 on vinyl and The Essential REO Speedwagon on CD. They were a great band, honest.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

don, i think he was talking about reo speed dealer. not reo speedwagon.

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:28 (eighteen years ago)

I thought that was Don's point? That I'd end up liking Speeddealer someday too, like I wound up liking Speedwagon before? But the last post was tough to parse, too...

Turns out whose "Walking the Dog" "Nascar Superstar" by Laidlaw sounds like is Aerosmith's, whose sound is also fairly hearable in their "Austin City Wendy." "Swan Song (Tribute to Led Zeppelin)," on the other hand, sounds like guess who. In fact I was thinking of them before I even checked its title.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

i thought maybe he thought you were just calling reo speedwagon reo speeddealer and didn't know there was a band by that name. though they had to change their name to speed dealer, didn't they?

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:41 (eighteen years ago)

i've never actually heard them. reo speedwagon i am familiar with. i remember in grade school borrowing someone's copy of hi infidelity just to see what all the fuss was about. cuz my classmates were making a big fuss! didn't love it. they didn't wanna know about my love for nazareth and argent.

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:43 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, they got sued and had to strip off the "REO." Their first album was generic but okay, and I never heard anything once they changed their name. Saw 'em open for Motorhead and Morbid Angel in NYC in '02; they were generic and bad.

― unperson, Saturday, 17 March 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

REO TWO was an early high point, agreed. First album is still great. They never put "Prison Women" on their greatest hits packs, just "Sophisticated Lady," which isn't quite as good. Describes the alpha to omega on the course of one LP. And where was Luttrell datin' the "prison women." Did someone work as a guard for some women's pen near Champagne?

Cronin left to be an unsuccessful singer/songwriter. Was replaced by a hack with which they did three albums that went nowhere. It almost ended their career. Ridin the Storm Out was recorded with Cronin, but when he left they redid the vocals with Murphy. Should've released it with the original, it might have made the path to success quicker. I saw then a couple times, once opening for Kiss. The fans really gave them a hard time. "You're just gonna have to wait for us to finish," said the singer in the swishiest voice he could muster. That set off the crowd. Cups and bags of popcorn rained down upon the stage. I thought they were quite funny in a laconic way and the show was really good between the two bands.

Cronin returned for "REO" which is very country. Actually, it might be their most country record. Then a double live album and Can't Tuna Piano but You Can Tuna Fish was next and was the beginning of their commercial success. Around that time I checked out because they were all over the radio and you didn't have to buy their LPs anymore. The double CD box of their stuff up until Hi Infidelity or so is a pretty good selection.

Richrath, the guitarist, was eventually fired over drug and alcohol problems. They replaced him with a Ted Nugent hack. Last live album I heard had that line-up and it wasn't bad.

― Gorge, Saturday, 17 March 2007 23:29 (eighteen years ago)

i'm more of a journey man when it comes to rags to riches to rags aor rock. and journey could rock as hard as anyone pound for pound. plus, cronin ain't no perry. i used to look at that double live reo album in the dollar bin ALL THE TIME when i was a kid thinking "hmm, maybe this is the good stuff". but never succumbed to temptation.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 00:34 (eighteen years ago)

Journey never rocked as hard as "Golden Country," Scott -- not even close. And Perry may have had more chops to his pipes than Cronin, but Cronin was a much warmer singer (though Perry obviously had his moments, usually when trying to channel Sam Cooke.) I have nothing against Journey; I wrote some rave reviews in Rolling Stone about reissues they put out last year, in fact. But REO were just way more a rock band, to my ears.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 00:58 (eighteen years ago)

even early journey?

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:06 (eighteen years ago)

though i am no reo expert. someday i will investigate the early stuff.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:06 (eighteen years ago)

plus, journey could do ripping prog when they wanted to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIXax2YJvyA&mode=related&search=

neal could be nasty when he wanted to be! check out the solo!

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:17 (eighteen years ago)

ha, i guess what i'm saying is pre-steve they could rock!

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:18 (eighteen years ago)

I have an REO speed wagon best of, although I think it covers their commercial stuff, and I never really listen to it. I also have Journey's Greatest Hits that I love quite a bit. I should probably investigate some of their albums, but they aren't very high on my list of bands that I need to fill out.

Was at the record store today, and saw the Amplified Heat self-titled record from 2003. Picked it up on Scott's recommendation. I don't know how similar it is to the one he's been raving about, but it's pretty good Motor City' 69 high amplification low production rock. Should probably listen to it on a day when I don't have a headache, though.

I also gave in and picked up Cultosaurus Erectus. I like it a lot! Good solid hard rock album with a lot of good and sometimes astonishing songs. I guess it's overlooked by most people because it doesn't have a Don't Fear the Reaper Godzilla Burning for You on it, but I really dig it.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

boogie rock journey!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BguqAUq6JU

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

okay, raise your hand if you knew that journey had another singer in between gregg rolie and steve perry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eQxYpDhWJk

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:24 (eighteen years ago)

PLUS, one of my favorite things on earth is the whole feeling that way/anytime epic. those harmonies, the guitars, the tandem perry/rolie vocals. so awesome. good live t.v. version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdVGKeF1Dl4&mode=related&search=

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:35 (eighteen years ago)

wheel in the sky -vs- riding the storm out ???

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

reo's "roll with the changes" always reminded me of supertramp. that was a pre hi infidelity hit, right?

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:39 (eighteen years ago)

hahaha, okay, this is more my "speed". REO live in 1971 when they were young bloozerockers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFD4jHE6qSY&mode=related&search=

still no journey though.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:43 (eighteen years ago)

Loverboy were clearly the superior AOR band.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

they weren't superior to journey! or even reo for that matter. cronin does get on my nerves in a richard marx kinda way sometimes.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:54 (eighteen years ago)

Being facetious. Obviously Loverboy aren't up to the standards of Journey. But "Notorious" is a thoroughly awesome song no matter which way you look at it.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:56 (eighteen years ago)

oh yeah, i'm not dissing loverboy. they will live 4ever.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:05 (eighteen years ago)

Loverboy's first album (and probably their second too) were better than any album Journey ever made, as far as I'm concerned. (And "Notorious" isn't even close to one of their best songs.) First LP is one of the best rock albums of the '80s. (And I've written about it plenty already, so I'll stop.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:06 (eighteen years ago)

i don't agree! but the first album is cool enough by me.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:14 (eighteen years ago)

xxhuxx gives me too much credit, Scott busts me right: I didn't know there was an REO Speed Dealer, thought xxuxx was making fun of the 'wagon's name, like in references to them in Creem when he was making fun of Rick Johnson for being old enough to be saved from a bad acid trip backstage by a solicitous Cronin and/ Richrath, around the time that xxhuxx was getting interested in T.Rex because he was "still into dinosaurs" (being in the 5th or 6th Grade). Thanks for all the REO etc. knowledge, guys.

― dow, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I think I'd go with Loverboy's first two, uneven though they were, over Journey's stuff. Both bands brought the hooks, but Loverboy's were joyous, while Journey's were maudlin.

This Cruachan album's not to shabby. The first track is extremely goofy, but the rest of the CD settles down nicely.

Saw Heaven & Hell and Megadeth last night. MegaDave played for an hour, which was cool (Down had to sadly pull out of yet another show), but Sabbath was amazing. The performance of "Heaven and Hell" was worth the ticket price alone.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

i've never actually owned a journey album. though i did by the 45 of anyway you want it after seeing them on american bandstand. and i am totally blinded by my love for feeling that way/anytime.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:23 (eighteen years ago)

is it true Megadeth have gone all xtian metal for the new album?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:26 (eighteen years ago)

Last one had Dave reading a psalm over music, so it's safe to say that they're already there.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:30 (eighteen years ago)

"Sleepwalker" is Dave's best song in years. I expect the new disc to be a good one.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:37 (eighteen years ago)

Maybe we'll get good Megadeth and Metallica discs this year! I'm skeptical, but stranger things have happened.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:46 (eighteen years ago)

yeah like that's gonna happen....

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:55 (eighteen years ago)

Adrien, did Heaven and Hell play any of the new songs?

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 03:05 (eighteen years ago)

They played "The Devil Cried" and "Shadow of the Wind", two ace doomy tracks. "The Devil Cried" leaked a while ago, but I hadn't heard the other one. They left out "Ear to the Wall" due to time constraints, that one's supposed to be considerably more uptempo. You can tell Iommi and Butler were creatively stifled playing with Ozzy, because they were obviously loving performing the Dio stuff, especially the new material.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 18 March 2007 03:25 (eighteen years ago)

Swallow the Sun sound pleasantly gloomy in a My Dying Bride style way, but 100% generic. Nice while it lasted, but I am finished with them now.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

i couldn't make it thru the Tub Ring album that The End sent me. seeing as how they have already made my year by releasing the new Virgin Black and distributing the new Dodheimsgard and Moonsorrow albums, i'm not gonna begrudge them their indie rock. Or whatever Tub Ring are.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

I'm really looking forward to the Heaven and Hell show in NYC in two weeks or so (3/30). The lineup of Megadeth I saw at Roseland last year (or was it in '05?), with the two brothers who have their own tech-death band, was pretty killer.

― unperson, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)

Eidolon, the Drover brothers' band, is more progressive thrash than tech-death, and the album they put out last year was incredibly boring. There was a pretty great cover of "The Oath," but they sounded like they had more fun performing that than any of their originals. They're probably better off playing other people's music.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:59 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of funky hard rock protest songs (and come to think of it, the funk is one thing that REO's "Golden Country" had in ways that Journey could never manage, which is part of why they rocked harder, my nervous system says), Laidlaw have a couple of their own -- "Revolution Is Coming" (top song on their myspace page) and "War Machine," both in the great incoherent-but-that's-part-of-the-fun hippie tradition of "Golden Country" and Grand Funk's "People Let's Stop The War." Along with the comparably boogiefied "Austin City Wendy" and "Nascar Superstar," these are two of my favorite Laidlaw tracks, I think. Which is to say I not surprisingly prefer them in '70s rock (plenty of Bad Company in there too) mode to Collective Soul/Black Crowes mode, though I don't mind the latter. (As for their Zep mode, the lyrics of "Swan Song" turn out to be made up entirely of titles of Zep songs, which is uninentionally very dorky, but sort of endearing too.)

Also listening today to jazz trio Bad Plus's new album Prog, which includes covers of "Tom Sawyer," "Life On Mars," "Everybody Wants To Rule the World," and"This Guy's In Love With You," only one of which was actually a prog song per se, but most of which sound okay (though I actually prefer the two originals at CD's end to most of the cover versions.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

Also listening today to jazz trio Bad Plus's new album Prog

Somehow I read that as "jazz trio Bad Brains's new album Prog" and thought it was a really oblique diss that I would never understand.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 18 March 2007 20:34 (eighteen years ago)

New Bad Brains is going to be produced by Adam Yauch, actually. It's out in um...a few months or something. I learned that at work. Don't really care.

I'm also having art-rock day today, for some reason. Decided after several months (since for some reason I can't particularly fathom The End just sent me yet another copy, and I decided to try it out again) that I actually like the Giant Squid album that came out last year, and they really do have their own sound, somehow, and the sound sounds good. AMG compares them to Jefferson Airplane, which overstates things, but I'd put "psychedelic" in their description somewhere, probably, and I like when the vocals mullah like a cross between John Lydon and Serj Whatshisface from System of A Down. Anyway, my point is that they are (1) non-generic and (2) really listenable. (If I remember right, I waffled back and forth about them on last year's thread.)

Also liking this, um, for lack of a better word, indie rock band called Je Suis France on Antenna Farm Records, whatever that is. Basically just ye olde look-how-eclectic-we-are horseshit (Kraut rock, psychedelic drone, one song that sounds like A Flock of Seagulls crossed with Pink Floyd crossed with the Beatles in 1966, an electro-rock cut, a minstrel dub reggae cut where the dub manages to dig deep enough, some pretty Pavementness, one cut that sounds like a speedy late '80s Sonic Youth tune, etc), but the eclectic horseshit has energy, and some semblance of a groove, and melodies a lot of the time, and the singer isn't completely comatose, and they seem to be having fun. (I keep thinking "Beta Band," which is not a good sign, but I'm pretty sure the Beta Band were more amorphous than this. I hope.)

Wish somebody had sent me that new Times New Viking album (I liked a single by them I heard a couple years ago, and my mindset today seems to be open to such stuff, and people say it's good), but sadly nobody did.

Didn't get George Brigman yet either. That'll go to the top of the pile, natch.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 22:49 (eighteen years ago)

I love that first times new viking album. So good. Reminds me of early 90's philly. And i love the Der TPK album on siltbreeze. I think you might like that one too, chuck. Short for: Der Teenage Panzer Corps. Such a cool record. But seriously, you need to buy a copy of the first Times New Viking album.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

when i can get to the record store i'm definitely gonna get the new times new viking. too much new stuff i want though.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 23:01 (eighteen years ago)

i think the Der TPK album might be vinyl only. definitely worth paying cash money for.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 March 2007 23:07 (eighteen years ago)

The cut I'm calling "electro rock" on the Je Suis France album--"Wizard of Points"--might be more accurately termed "robot prog." Sort of reminds me of Oneida when they do repetitious stuff like "Sheets Of Easter." Or not.

Tops on their myspace page is "Whalebone," The Flock of Pyschgulls one:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=19142528

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 March 2007 23:24 (eighteen years ago)

necros live in detroit on local t.v. 1981:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX03djNH1jU

the interview segment is great too. barry sez they want to be like Loverboy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuLr9-iSLXM&mode=related&search=

― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

I was really disappointed in the new Times New Viking disc, just felt a little, I don't know, forced when compared to the other stuff I've heard from them. I feel like the lo-fi production that shaped their sound before is actually more of a hindrance this time around. There's a couple really, really great tunes buried in the mess there though.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 12:29 (eighteen years ago)

Not sure about Der TPK yet. Like it, but only kinda. And I get the feeling they only half-cared in the first place. Everything on it either sounds like it oughtta go on for nine more minutes, or else they shoulda jammed it out a few more times before hitting record. Plus, the "almost rocking" aspect is frustrating. Either rock or don't.

Wanna hear the new Times New Viking.

BONE AWL - Meaningless Leaning Mess. Sooooo fucking great. Some kinda super primitive, allegedly "black metal" punk/thrash noize recorded directly onto greasy wads of tar-saturated cotton wool. No more composed than Der TPK, but way more committed to the moment. Front-runner for best of '07, so far.

― Pye Poudre, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

Am I the only dude amped for Behold...The Arcotpus' Metal Blade debut later this year? I know I can't be alone in repping proggy tech metal round here.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 16:10 (eighteen years ago)

There's gonna be a Cruachan track on the CD accompanying the June 07 issue of Global Rhythm...

― unperson, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

I'm loving the new Moonsorrow. Best new album I've heard in the last few weeks.

And that Tub Ring...weird.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 18:47 (eighteen years ago)

The new Oxbow album comes out in June, and for me at least salvages Hydra Head's recent streak of ultra-lameness. It's more nuanced than their previous stuff, with some acoustic instruments and piano and stuff, but Eugene's vocals still freak me the fuck out. I really wish they'd come back and play NYC.

― unperson, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 20:14 (eighteen years ago)

So far, I have a crush on Panthers' April release, The Trick. Lots of oomph in their early-to-mid-70s space boogie, esp like Paul Rodgers x Sabs at times, which could still happen, I guess, but when they was young. (They list a lot of heroes on the myspace, but not those 2.)(They like Dio-era Rainbow.) Also on myspace: "The Nile Song," goodun left off albumm or the promo I've got, anyway. Pitched this to PaperThin, so fingers crossed.

― dow, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

so can I talk about Appalachian Terror Unit on this thread? more crusty-punk than metal, perhaps, but they sure played a kickass set at my house last night and there isn't a "rolling punk thread" that I know of. mostly semi-fast destructo dual guitar/dual vocal action, the cover of their single has a businessman with a suitcase of cash being torn apart by ravening wolves after the apocalypse. 7" is on Profane Existance. maybe worth a look-see if they roll through your town.

― sleeve, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

I want to hear the new Orthodox album.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 20 March 2007 22:45 (eighteen years ago)

The Panthers probably chose not to pony up the dough to put the Pink Floyd cover on the album. Their version of "The Nile Song" is pretty solid, though I prefer Gilmour's comedic attempt to be tough.

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 00:49 (eighteen years ago)

Given how lousy the previous Panthers stuff I heard was (we are talking the Brooklyn-identified joke protest-slogan Panthers whose fans insist they're not joking which only makes them even worse or at least used to right?), I doubt their "Nile Song" can match the Necros' (great youtube non-links, by the way, Scott!) or Voivod's. Though who knows, maybe they got better.

Metal-jazz of the year so far: David Torn's Prezens esp tracks # 1 and 7.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 01:05 (eighteen years ago)

also standouts (if slightly less metal) (though not necessarily less noisy): tracks 4, 6, and 11 (my advance copy doesn't list any titles.) (It's on ECM.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 01:14 (eighteen years ago)

It totally doesn't match the Necros, but it is played straight at least. Can't comment on the Panthers - completely unfamiliar with their past/present - I'm just a sucker for "The Nile Song" in any incarnation.

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

Voivod's "Outer Limits" is a vastly underrated and overlooked album in general. Doesn't sound like their classic stuff, but still pretty damn good.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

Early word from those who know the first album (and me, so I asked 'em) favors this album. First apparently was longwinded and "psych." This is only about 32 minutes, but action-packed. Haven't listened much to the lyrics.

― dow, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

Older Panthers album I heard sounded more like a bad Brooklyn post-punk-revival attempt than "psych" (or at least that's how it hit me, for as long as I could tolerate the thing). Maybe we're not even talking about the same band?

Outer Limits is my favorite Voivod album period, I think.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 10:33 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the album I heard; AMG describes it pretty much how I remember it (albeit without saying how bad it was):

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:59851v03zzca

From the AMG bio; sounds pretty darn Brooklyn post-post-punk to me:

Their Are You Down?? album, which was released on Troubleman Unlimited in January 2002, references avant-garde art movements, including Fluxus, and recognizes people such as Jean Genet and Carol Queen, who have been on the forefront of advocating alternative sexual lifestyles. Added to this equation is the Panthers' sweaty live show, complete with tambourine shaking, handclaps, and danceable rhythms. They've shared the stage with other New York acts: Black Dice, the Rapture, Liars, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In spring 2002, they embarked on a West Coast tour with labelmates Erase Errata

Still not sure where alleged psych comes in (maybe they've changed since?) But new album is on Vice Records, and yeah, they seem pretty Vice to me.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 10:46 (eighteen years ago)

Also, hardly longwinded, by any stretch of the definition! 10 songs, all but two under 3 minutes. (So wait, are we talking about the same band??) (Okay, I get it -- on their 2004 album, lengths drastically increase. So maybe.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 10:50 (eighteen years ago)

Not my cup of tea, but the strangest thing i have heard in 2007:

SKITLIV, the band featuring former MAYHEM frontman Maniac, has posted a new song on its official MySpace page. [via blabbermouth]

Skitliv
http://www.myspace.com/skitliv777

Sounds like Davros [from Dr Who] with a sore throat fronting a slowed down industrial noise band [Whitehouse]

― djmartian, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

Hey Scott, The Discouraged Ones is pretty neat! Kind of a downer, though.

(The new Funeral record on Candlelight, From These Wounds, is pretty Katatonic, although not as good. At least, that's what they sounded like on the first half hour/3 tracks of the record that I listened to, so maybe they turn into Slayer later, although I sort of doubt it.)

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 March 2007 05:33 (eighteen years ago)

I finally got the In This Moment album, and I like it quite a bit. Musically not much there, but the singer is pretty great, very charismatic. Good hooks, too. If you're going to play cookie-cutter metalcore, you've got to have personality, and this band has it.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 22 March 2007 05:39 (eighteen years ago)

I'm obviously a big fan of the In This Moment record (and they were very nice people when I met them before their show with Kittie; the guitarist asked my friend that works at Century Media to bring him a bag of power metal records, which gives me a whole new level of respect for them), and while I'll admit that they aren't particularly original, I seriously disagree with Chris Dick's review in decibel, especially the line where he goes:

From "Prayers" to "Circles," the sheer effort placed on writing something hook-oriented transforms Beautiful Tragedy from a potentially honest outlet to a disingenuous, pop-metal candy store.

Besides the fact that I think the hooks and pop-metal are what's so good about that record, that sentence begs the question: when did writing hooks become dishonest?!

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 March 2007 06:14 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I found that review troubling. If anything, Maria Brink's vocal hooks add to the genuine feeling. She's easily one of the more unique female vocalists in the genre. I was snooping around on myspace earlier, and stumbled across the story behind "The Legacy of Odio", and found myself really moved. In fact, it made me rethink the recurring lyrical themes of loss, and reinforced my opinion that this album is a very, very good one.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 22 March 2007 10:53 (eighteen years ago)

Today's mailbag brought a bounty of goodies:

Middian - Age Eternal (Metal Blade)
Earthless - Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky (Tee Pee)
Disrupt - Unrest / The Rest (Relapse) (three hours of crust grind!)
69 Eyes - Angels (Caroline)
Symphorce - Become Death (Metal Blade)
Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow (Drag City)

hey Chuck, is Angels the 69 eyes record you didn't like? Symphorce is the only one I've listened to so far, and while I found them pretty generic power metal in the past, and still find them such, it's actually a pretty good album.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

Jeff: Post reviews of all these things now.

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 22 March 2007 21:28 (eighteen years ago)

Digging the Symphorce. Absolutely nothing original about this band (despite the hyperbole in the press release), but they play very competent prog/power with a heavy edge to it. There's lots of Dream Theater, Symphony X., Iced Earth, Megadeth, and even some Type O Negative. If you like those bands, you'll probably dig this, but quite frankly I wouldn't take this record over any of the bands mentioned above. Still, if you like prog/power, there's no reason you won't get at least a smile out of this.

Disrupt play grindy crust core with lots and lots of D-beats, surprise surprise. Vocalist is completely illegible, screeching and slobbering the whole way. The songs sort of blend together after a while, but then again there are 30 on their one full length, "Unrest," and 78 of them on "The Rest", which contains pretty much everything else they ever put to vinyl or silicone. A year or two ago, this wouldn't even make it past half a track on my CD player. Now, I'm just like "well, at least it isn't An Albatross or the Locust." Scott will love this.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

I think my current tolerance level for "The Rest" is about 10 songs at a time. And it's cool stuff for those 10 songs, but after that I need to take a break and go to listen to the Cardigans or something.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:48 (eighteen years ago)

Scott and Chuck covered Earthless pretty extensively above, but I like it. I mean, I wouldn't listen to it intently like I would to Monster Magnet or something, but it makes good background music, and it doesn't freak you out like "25... Tab" does. If more jam rock sounded like this, I would listen to more jam rock. I figure whatever drugs they're doing, they're the right ones. (I also think they should call their next album "Earthless and Bible Black." There isn't all that much King Crimson in them, but it would make me smile.)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 01:50 (eighteen years ago)

I still haven't heard the Earthless.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 23 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

Only six weeks to go! You can make it.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

(Honestly, though, it isn't earth shattering. It's just a good stoner jam album. I don't know if I would get superduper psyched for it.)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 02:28 (eighteen years ago)

I love their ep and live 10" though!!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 23 March 2007 02:31 (eighteen years ago)

i like it a bunch. is it unforgettably great? no. but it's very entertaining. i would definitely pick up a live album if i saw one.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 03:42 (eighteen years ago)

So here's why I can't get too enthusiastic about the Earthless beyond just a surface enjoyment of the groove while I'm listening to it. There are two reasons, both of them pretty subjective: first, I don't find it particularly memorable, and second, I don't get any real emotional kick out of it. The first one tends to be the case with me with most extended stoner jams, as in 25... Tab, Welcome to the Sky Valley, Dope Smoker (I don't know if I've even been able to get all the way through that one, although not for lack of trying). The second one is, I think, because there's no real emotional content there. The lack of vocals don't help, but the music just doesn't seem to convey any feeling, as does tend to be the case with a lot of jam bands. Of course, maybe the purpose is just to enjoy it in the moment, but that's what keeps it from being a great record. That isn't to say that I don't like it, those are just my reasons for not loving it. Of course, that's after one listen, so it may grow on me.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 05:51 (eighteen years ago)

Got the two Darkspace reissues from Avantgarde (titled "I" and "II", and originally released in 2003 and 2005). Atmospheric black metal mixed with spacey ambience. The first one is faster, with shorter songs and more aggressive riffing.

Great norwegian-style melodies (think Burzum and especially Thorns), sustained screams and the keyboards from early Emperor. No lyrics or songtitles, and appropriately minimalistic presentation. They are Swiss and use a drum machine, so they'll remind you of Samael, too.

I was suspicious of the whole space gimmick and the look of the band, but they are really good.

Metal-archives page

― no-nonsense, Friday, 23 March 2007 08:40 (eighteen years ago)

I'm with Jeff on Earthless, and can't wait for that Disrupt thing to hit my mailbox. I'm pretty disappointed with Middian, given the gloriousness of Yob - I'd compare it to how let down I am by the Hidden Hand post-Spirit Caravan. Same basic idea, but not done nearly as well. And rumor has it the new Marduk album and reissues of their first four are on the way to me, so I'm pretty much pre-emptively drooling over that.

― unperson, Friday, 23 March 2007 12:21 (eighteen years ago)

Woo-hoo! Marduk in the mailbox this very morning! I know what I'll be tormenting my hippie co-workers with today...

― unperson, Friday, 23 March 2007 13:57 (eighteen years ago)

The Middian album is great!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 23 March 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

I wasn't a huge fan of their first two records, but have you heard the latest Hidden Hand album, Phil? Definitely their best thing to date, and while it's not quite up to Born Too Late or Lunar Womb, it's got some great moonshine-fueled doom riffage, and the songs are shorter and to the point and catchy.

And let me know if you can listen through the entire hour on each of the Disrupt discs in one sitting. I'm quite frankly not sure how anyone can. It's quite the endurance test.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

YAY! I JUST GOT THE DAWN OF... GALLHAMMER IN THE MAIL! AND THE REISSUE OF DREAM DEATH'S JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY!!!

also i picked up cheap the latest assemble head in sunburst sound one, which is pretty good in a sort of monster magnet meets the first lift to experience EP (the one they put out before they got way, way too talky). and i got the lesbian album which seems to have some bits here and there that perk my ears up but generally isn't as great as it could be. and oh yeah i got the dodsferd album. that's pretty killer. (i don't get promos so i'm always about three months behind the writerdudes.)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 23 March 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

have you heard the latest Hidden Hand album, Phil?

I have a copy here in the office, but have never made it all the way through. I get bogged down around track four. I think it's that he lets the other guy sing/co-songwrite. I'm a fan of the monolithic Wino worldview, and when it's watered down by collaboration something crucial is lost.

Re Disrupt, I know what you mean. I'm probably the biggest Agoraphobic Nosebleed booster around here, but Bestial Machinery pretty much defeated me. Fun once, but ultimately too much of not enough.

― unperson, Friday, 23 March 2007 18:27 (eighteen years ago)

i am all about the old skool latino thrash invasion today. i've been myspacing out when i should be writing. so many bands though! how awesome are warbringer! merciless death! violator! strikemaster! fueled by fire! malicious assault! execution! they really really hate poseurs.

some of the people merciless death hate on the back of their album:

people who prefer pantera over razor

people with the reeboks high-tops that shouldn't have them

overkill's two guitarists at the whisky - you were dicks! fuck you!

ventura's death metal scene

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

The Middian album is great!

I work with Mike from Middian. He's one of the coolest, most humble guys you'll ever meet.

In the press release for their album, they referred to him as "an underground doom metal icon." We showed that to him, and he kind of shrugged and said "Well, this underground doom metal icon is going to go sweep up the cigarette butts in the parking lot..." Then he grabbed a broom and did just that.

At any rate, I agree that the Middian album really is excellent.

― novaheat, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:23 (eighteen years ago)

i haven't heard middian yet. i liked yob. and i like eugene oregon.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:28 (eighteen years ago)

people who prefer pantera over razor

ventura's death metal scene

1. OTM
2. having lived there i'm still surprised there's enough of a scene to be pissed at. as far as i remember the only metal bands from there were cirith ungol (RULES) and some black metal band called nahash or nashua or nardwuar or something.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

Greg Lindstrom from Cirith Ungol plays in a band called Falcon now. I have their CD, it's pretty great throwback fuzz rock.

Phil, the second half of the Hidden Hand record is the good half. I agree that most of the first half doesn't really go anywhere, but you have to at least listen to "Lightning Hill." Catchy as hell, with scorching harmonica solos.

Meanwhile, having listened to Earthless for the second time, I've come to the conclusion that they're probably best experienced live or on lots of drugs. Then you can just nod your head and get lost in the groove. Listening to it sober on record, I think you lose something.

Finally, listened through that Boris CD. I have to say, I like the psychedelic freak out stuff better than the kinda standard doom stuff. Luckily, there's lots of psychedelic freak out. I've never heard Boris before, so I'm not sure how it compares to their other work, but it was pretty neat.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 21:32 (eighteen years ago)

What Boris cd?
I've never seen earthless live nor do i taked rugs fwiw.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:20 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, i don't take drugs(anymore) and i like the earthless fine.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow. There's a review up on Pitchfork that's pretty comprehensive. So much so, in fact, that they used it as the press release, which means I'm going out to try to dodge around it while I'm writing my review.

I don't do drugs either, and I'm beginning to think that it's inhibiting my enjoyment of a lot of the music I listen to.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

maybe the residual drugs in my system from years ago keep me interested in a lot of the things i like.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

i don't really have a problem with length though if i like something. the more the merrier. i'm an opera fan. i dig the ring cycle. i have a high tolerance for lots of crud. it replaces drugs in a way.

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:26 (eighteen years ago)

Ahhh Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow is really really good. Prob their least noisy most laidback album.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

I don't have a problem with length. I love prog rock. Hell, when I did my last radio show and played all of my favorite songs, most of them were seven minutes or longer. It's just that my brain doesn't tend to retain a lot of the jammy type stuff. Which, as I said above, is a purely subjective thing. I mean, I definitely dig the Earthless while I'm listening to it, until it starts to freak me out. Speaking of which, I do not recommend driving in Los Angeles traffic while listening to Earthless. Makes you all jittery and twitchy and it's just not pleasant.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 23 March 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

20 minutes is the new 7 minutes. 7 minutes is the new 3 minutes. heck, most radio singles are 4 or 5 minutes or longer. you used to be able to get in and get out in a minute and change. i still hate it when i hear a modern "punk" song that is over 3 or 4 or 5 minutes. i blame green day. or somebody. those pop punk songs that are on the radio are endless. i blame dave grohl. who can i blame? i really want to blame someone. (there are exceptions to the rule. i am a big crass fan. and from the cradle to the grave by subhumans is my theme song. and i love all instrumental buzzcocks jammage.)

― scott seward, Friday, 23 March 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

I just hate it when I hear a modern "punk" song, period.

Rolling Stone has a metal sidebar this issue. Lordi got 3 1/2 stars, Alabama Thunder Pussy 3, and Machine Head 2. It always amuses me when they try to review metal. I don't think they're going to give decibel a run for its money anytime soon. Well, at least not in terms of metal reviews.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:14 (eighteen years ago)

chuck used to write metal reviews for rolling stone! and other good eggs have too over the last 80 years or whatever. but, yeah, i know what you mean. especially nowadays. though xian hoard knows what's up.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:19 (eighteen years ago)

(and not that I'm saying that their opinions aren't valid, but it's always interesting to see what real people think of the music I love)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:21 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I saw that Journey review he did, and was like "holy crap!" I'm not really a big fan of Christian Hoard, though. For some reason his reviews rub me the wrong way. But hey, he's writing almost every review for Rolling Stone and I'm not, so clearly the dude has something going on.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:24 (eighteen years ago)

he was one of chuck's interns at the voice! he's a young dude. i always liked his stuff for the voice. i don't mind his RS stuff, but all that stuff has to fit the house style and it's not really that flattering to anyone.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:30 (eighteen years ago)

plus, he was the one who asked me to write stuff for the RS record guide and i'll always selfishly thank him for that. it looks fancy when i add it to a list of stuff i've done.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:34 (eighteen years ago)

Well, that's pretty cool. I agree about the house style, it even kept me from realizing that it was Chuck who wrote that Journey review until I looked at the name. At any rate, Andy Greene and Evan Serpick were the ones who wrote the metal reviews this issue.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:42 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know those dudes. i still subscribe to RS. i actually think it has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years. I still like to rant & rave about it though. I always have. love/hate thing. a lot of hate sometimes. honestly, the non-music stuff is always tops. killer kids, drug war, bush, etc. at least they haven't given that up.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:48 (eighteen years ago)

I still subscribe, mostly because I figure I should have some exposure to what the mainstream is listening to. I really like their interviews with the artists and movie people, generally gives good insight even into bands I hate. But yeah, it's fun to get annoyed at.

More on topic, Century Media just went on a signing binge:

At All Cost
Suicide Silence
Winds of Plague

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

i will listen to those. for some reason, metal blade, century media, and relapse hate me, cuz i never get their stuff. i used to. i was supposed to review manowar this month and metal blade dudes gave me the gasface. i think i did get the new marduk album today like phil. not the reissues though. and a new lord belial album? there is no info with the CDs. and a reissue of arch enemy's black earth. i didn't know that people were screaming for a reissue of that, but i guess it never came out in the states.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:02 (eighteen years ago)

I think Manowar are on their own label, Magic Circle Music, now, with distribution through SPV. At least, that's what it was with the Sons of Odin single I have. So that might explain why metal blade blew you off -- it isn't their record.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:14 (eighteen years ago)

(And now that I know his background, I can definitely see the Chuck influence on Christian Hoard's reviews. Writing isn't bad, I just don't agree with him very often on the stuff that I've heard that he's reviewed.)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:24 (eighteen years ago)

no, metal blade is putting something out. they said it was gonna be a digital download, but that they could possibly burn me a copy AND THEN I NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:41 (eighteen years ago)

MINOR THREAT LIVE IN DETROIT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLE7aA9HGc&mode=related&search=

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:41 (eighteen years ago)

Oh. Maybe they do hate you.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 01:45 (eighteen years ago)

i just don't try that hard. i rarely have to bug people. and i hate doing it. i usually dig the smaller stuff more anyway. and it usually isn't a problem. i get some relapse stuff, but that's mostly from publicists.

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

The only person I know I've actively had angry at me is the head of Liquor and Poker, for my Crash Kelly review in Outburn. I think my review may have been a little too dead-on, although it wasn't ridiculously negative. Anyway, Liquor and Poker has been folded into Century Media now, so I guess it doesn't really matter anymore. (Speaking of which, the more I listen to the new Fu Manchu, the more it weirds me out. It's vaguely disturbing. I don't think I'm going to be throwing it on much when I want to listen to Fu Manchu.)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 02:06 (eighteen years ago)

I've never had a problem with the folks at Metal Blade. Though they do need some prodding from time to time. Their download setup is actually pretty cool for the really advance reviews. I have the worst time getting ahold of the Crucial Blast folks.

Scott, Fusion 3 Distribution in Montreal might have been able to help you in a pinch. They're pretty tight with Manowar. Anyway, that album is spectacularly awful (I wanted to review it, too!)...three quarters of the album is either narrations, orchestral overtures, or power ballads.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 24 March 2007 03:20 (eighteen years ago)

dude, e-mail andrew and tell him you'll review it! it's not too late. I don't give a shit about Manowar.

i get crucial blast stuff and i don't even know why or how. but i'm glad i do!

― scott seward, Saturday, 24 March 2007 03:30 (eighteen years ago)

I went and wrote about Manowar for my PopMatters column, so I'm pretty much Manowared out myself.

Crappy band that they are, their latest DVD is really well done.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 24 March 2007 05:47 (eighteen years ago)

I have been falling behind on this thread, oh well.

Didn't get Tub Ring at all, for whatever it's worth.

And here is what I wrote about the Stooges new album on the country thread:

need to listen more, but so far, I'd say the band sounds almost as thin and drowning underwater as Iggy does. Though maybe I just need to get past Albini's typically self-defeating production muffle, who knows. Either way, though, Iggy pretty much sounds awful. A couple of the songs ("ATM," which may or may not be better than Girls Against Boys' "Cold Cash Machine"; "I'm Fried") do kind of sound like songs though, at least. And I have been loving Steve Mackay's sax blurts in I think "I'm Fried" and the otherwise very shitty and hookless "She Took My Money," which I didn't expect. So far, the track I hate most is "You Can't Have Friends," though competition may emerge as I listen to it more. (On the other hand, I don't get either the people who complain or the people who rave about the allegedly "stupid lyrics." They're just sound like...lyrics.)

The more-or-less random cdbaby Southern-rock CD Last Train Outta Nasvhille by Pete Berwick, rocks harder than Weirdness, as far as I can tell so far. ...Also wish I heard a fifth as much rock'n'roll on that new Stooges album as I hear in Neil Sedaka's new The Definitive Collection...

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 17:23 (eighteen years ago)

So far, the track I hate most is "You Can't Have Friends,"

Okay, the band rocks passably on this I guess. But Iggy makes it sound like a Jane's Addiction song, I just realized! I don't know if that's good or bad.

So far, though, nothing on the album except MacKay's sax has come close to kicking my ass. I don't know how much more time I should waste on it.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 17:30 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, question for those more knowledgeable in early 90s crust-grind than I am: were Disrupt one of those obscure-but-influential outfits like Only Living Witness, or just cult favorites?

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 17:47 (eighteen years ago)

Did Jane's Addiction ever have A SINGLE MOMENT of silliness equal to

You can't have friends
The money's gonna see to that
You can't have friends
The honey flows into the fat

And then following it up with those whiney, Mark E. Smith-like flat notes???

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 17:48 (eighteen years ago)

The dogs barking at the beginning of "Been Caught Stealing" was pretty silly.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:20 (eighteen years ago)

Uh...probably? (And why is that so profoundly silly again? I don't get it.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:22 (eighteen years ago)

"Been Caught Stealing" is definitely more fun. (And more true to "I Wanna Be Your Dog," probably.) (And I say that as a devout Jane's Addiction non-fan. Which was part of my point. They were half-assed, and so is this song.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

hey chuck,

have you ever seen steve mckay and the radon ensemble? (his current band)

i saw them at a noise fest in st. paul....it was cool to see him.

my friend very accurately described them as "biker free jazz"

if you dig his stuff on the new stooges but wish there were no singing, it might do the trick.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:31 (eighteen years ago)

I just feel that the level of cleverness on that line and throughout Iggy's lyrics on this album are far beyond anything I ever noticed in Jane's Addiction. Would you dispute that? And also that, yes, they are geared toward humor whereas Jane's Addiciton were utterly humorless. Would you dispute that?

"She Took My Money" is a big-time NON-HOOK HOOK like one would get with a Godz song or fucking "How I Wrote 'Elastic Man'."

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, the verses on that have regular hooks. You were, I'm sure, talking about the chorus where the lack of rhyming was surely intended as humor.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 18:37 (eighteen years ago)

Listened to the first half of The 69 Eyes - Angels. It's a bit... flaccid. So far, I really like the song "Wings and Hearts," although that's probably because it reminds me of another one of their songs whose name escapes me. Still, don't judge them on this album, Chuck. It would be like listening to Fly on the Wall and deciding that AC/DC aren't very good. Their earlier stuff is way more catchy and fun! Especially Blessed Be and Paris Kills, where they got the Goth/80s rock hybrid right. I feel sort of bad I gave their greatest hits record a mediocre review, because in hindsight, I really enjoy it, and I'm going to have to give this one a bad review, which will make people think I don't like The 69 Eyes when I actually really do.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:06 (eighteen years ago)

(BTW, in case any ideologues out there are scoffing, "You can never talk about intention!" - please. Is anyone really going to suggest that the opposite might be true - that Iggy is actually really stupid and thinks the chorus of "She Took My Money" is "good" in a traditional way?)

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:09 (eighteen years ago)

I don't find the lyrics super clever or super funny, but inasmuch as I notice them at all, they're fine -- "My idea of fun/is killing everyone" or however it goes and the one Tim quoted on the other thread about the guy's sister tying guys up on the leash in the war while the guy's at the beach have potential for sure. (As did some Jane's Addiction lyrics, probably; I dunno, I wouldn't call Perry Farrel humorless, just a dork. "Been Caught Stealing" wasn't humorless at all. And I say that as somebody with a pretty low tolerance for humorlessness, in many cases.) But anyway, as far as I can see so far, it doesn't matter at all how good or bad the lyrics on The Weirdness are since Iggy, who on the Stooges' three previous albums (maybe even to some extent on Kill City and Rubber Legs and Metallic K.O. and T.V. Eye or whatever those long-lost albums I don't own anymore were called) vocalized with as much power and rhythm as any rock singer ever, is now singing in this completely flaccid sing-song with no punch to it at all. So my reaction tends to be not "I hate this shit" but more "meh, who cares?"

Then again, "Free and Freaky (in the U.S.A.)" is on, and sort of reminding of John Cougar. Which I don't mind! So I am not completely decided yet.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

(Or, for that matter, listening to The Weirdness and deciding that The Stooges aren't very good!)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

And I still don't get the "stupid, intentionally or not" debate. The lyrics, like I said, are just lyrics. Sometimes they're smarter than other times. Big deal.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:15 (eighteen years ago)

And sometimes they're intentionally stupid. Which is sometimes funny.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

I mean, you like that line about the beach. There is so much said there - total rejection of the insanity, irony of finding yourself sitting on the beach while all this shit is going on - and it's couched in rock and roll stupidity - "hey man, I'm sittin' on the beach" or riding in the Cadillac, Stooges t-shirt ridin' my back, you can't tell me this is not a suave thing to do.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:23 (eighteen years ago)

Tim, the only reason I even noticed it's there is because you quoted it. Which is a problem.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:27 (eighteen years ago)

Hmm. The vocals are very up front on the album and the songs are short. What's missing for you? Maybe it's just that you don't like Iggy's projection, like you were saying?

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

And everything else I was saying, too.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:41 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, just so other people don't think I'm ignoring them:

hey Chuck, is Angels the 69 eyes record you didn't like?

Yep. But maybe I should check out their earlier stuff!

hey chuck, have you ever seen steve mckay and the radon ensemble?

Nope, but maybe I should!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:48 (eighteen years ago)

I think the production "thinness" is really just Ron Asheton's guitar tone, isn't it? I could complain about the type of amp he uses, but it seems to me like a minor gripe.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

It's not minor at all; the album is severely lacking in kick and momentum. Albini's production really sucks. And though maybe I just need to listen more, I'm not hearing much dance in the rhythm section or the singing.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 19:57 (eighteen years ago)

I think the drums are kicking and don't mind the sparseness. How in the world would you want to dress up the Stooges?

As for a lack of "dance," was there more dance on the original three Stooges albums? I don't think so.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 20:02 (eighteen years ago)

Wrote on Rhino Bucket on the blog last year:

One of my favorite things about hard rock records is how the performance of an unflash band can creep up on you. And that's the case with Rhino Bucket's & Then It Got Ugly on Acetate. Over fifteen years ago, Rhino Bucket were a major label acquisition sold off the back of AC/DC imitation. Their records came into the Morning Call newspaper. They played one of the more notorious dives in the area, DJ Bananas, in the slum of Whitehall just north of the interstate, as opposed to the usual place for rock and roll of this type, the slum on the southside of Bethlehem. I gave them the Nightclubbing treatment for their trouble. The word "cheapjack" was flung out (if I can find the notice in my pile, I'll republish it) and now I regret using it.

The show wasn't a good one but the review was gratuitously callous. And as the record contract ticked toward expiry for Rhino Bucket, they picked up Simon Wright who drummed for Fly On the Wall. Last year, you could see him in all his momentary AC/DC glory on the extended video "opera" for the LP that came with the AC/DC DVD video collection, Family Jewels. If the music was good enough for Wright, I had to have been missing something.

& Then It Got Ugly is a good AC/DC LP. The delivery is Bon Scott without the sense of humor or fixation on shaggy dog sex stories and while you might be inclined to think that's a liability, in this application it's not. The lyrics are dour, cynical and personal, but slapped on top of the craftsmanship of the tooling in the rock and roll engine driving them, their acid is gripping. Toward the middle of the record, Rhino Bucket's singer tells someone they should be slapped for asking what book he reads. You won't hear that on any AC/DC platter.

The guitars are heavy and twangy, the rhythm section fireballing but precise in its rock and roll timekeeping. "Blood, Sweat & Beers" is entitled with an obvious Rhino Bucket philosophy but pain is their more constant companion. The album closer, "I Was Told" -- among others -- makes it abundantly clear.
===
No longer had the Rhino Bucket originals, remember listening to the first and third, the latter in which the band picked up Wright when the original drummer went off to get transition into transexuality in order.

With some delight I see today in BestBuy, two Rhino Bucket reissues. No Song Left Behind -- unreleased and live versions of first two album fare plus Pain & Suffering, done with Wright. Easy purchases, am listening now and No Song is very good. If all you can do is sound like AC/DC, then might as well sound like AC/DC, honor being gained from a job very well done. Nothing to Lose could be from the Kix songbook, for reasons so obvious even a Kix axeman joined the band..

― Gorge, Saturday, 24 March 2007 20:24 (eighteen years ago)

Oh my god oh my god oh my god, Rhino Bucket live stuff IS AC/DC, see/hear Hey There. The lead break is straight outta Anguston. Shoulda been at the Bon Scott memorial concert is Australia with Leanne Kingwell and the Angels, two weeks ago.

What's this about Ron Asheton again?

Funny how xhuxk mentions all the Stooges/Iggy records with James Williamson on guitar (excepting TV Eye). Funny how the tune that catalyzed Iggy's resurgence, Search & Destroy for the primetime sporting goods commercial, was cowritten by Williamson. (Although for trivia fans, a TV Eye tune was featured on Supernatural on Wednesday on the CW. UFO and BOC and the Nuge beat Iggy to that show, though.)

― Gorge, Saturday, 24 March 2007 20:43 (eighteen years ago)

was there more dance on the original three Stooges albums?

You mean more than any other rock albums ever recorded, just about? Yes.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:16 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, from this week's email (though I still need to answer him; nice guy!):

Subject: Re: 200 favorite albums of 2006...
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:25:05 -0700

Chuck,
I want to thank you for putting Rhino Bucket on your list! I don't
know if you're aware of the fact that I'm playing guitar for them now
and that record (And Then it Got Ugly) is my debut recording with the
band. I have your book "Stairway To Hell" with all the Kix record
reviews in it (hey I never thanked you for that, thank you) so I've
always enjoyed your writing. You also did a great feature in The
Village Voice on Kix years ago, is there any way to get a copy of
that somehow?
Keep up the great work!
-Brian "Damage" Forsythe
(Rhino Bucket / formally Kix)

P.S. My girlfriend Janiss Garza wanted me to also thank you for
including Voivod "Katorz" on your list.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:18 (eighteen years ago)

George Brigman and live Scientists albums in today's mail! Lame new Stooges CD heads back to the dugout. I'll return to it eventually, I imagine.

What I wrote on my MTV Urge metal blog last year (warning: HTML overload which I am not going to take the time to fix here! Deal with it):

Recently I was approached about possibly writing one of those big-deal “the making of” books about AC/DC’s Back in Black. My reaction, naturally, was “why the heck would I wanna do a book about AC/DC’s eighth-best album”? If that—I mean, obviously anything with Brian Johnson singing by definition can’t be as cool as anything with Bon Scott singing. And <a href=" http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/archives/2006/05/16/rocking_and_rea.html#more
" >I’m no expert</a>, but
Rose Tattoo and Angel City and Kix have made better AC/DC LPs than Back in Black too, right?
Who cares about that, though, except as a way to unveil 2006’s two best AC/DC albums so far. First one is the first in a dozen years from L.A.’s Rhino Bucket, whose original drummer Liam Jason was once replaced by AC/DC’s Simon Wright, before a sex-changed Liam returned as a woman named Jackie Enx. (<a href=" http://www.acetate.com/bands/rhinobucket/bio.html
" >Honest!</a>) On And Then It Got Ugly, ex-Kixer Bryan Forsythe ably fills the Angus role; Bonnabee Greg Dolivo opts for blood, sweat, beers, and hard-luck women (who are chronicled with notable empathy) over “pretentious crap”; “Hammer and Nail” and “She Rides” swing tougher than AC/DC have in decades; and the closing working-man’s ballad “I Was Told” (sounds more like “I was stoned”) is as much Blood on the Tracks as If You Want Blood. (Still: What’s a rhino bucket?)
Equally high-voltage is the debut CD by <a href="http://cdbaby.com/cd/bigdictator" >Big Dictator</a>, goofily named New Yawkers led by an apparent Brown alumnus whose gelt-and-gefilte obsessed <a href="http://donsky.blogspot.com/" >blog</a> suggests he’d comprehend the Dictatators’ jokes about being Jews knocking ‘em dead in Dallas. The disc drops ten dirty deeds one after the other, bam bam bam, no bullshit. Last two: a brag about being a lazy lout, then a cunnilungus ode ("Snack bar! I like it hot! Snack bar! 'Cause I eat a lot!") that oughta be covered by the Fat Boys.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:26 (eighteen years ago)

At a loss for where the early Stooges dance grooves are that are also not present on this album.

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 24 March 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

The second half of Angels fares better than the first, but it still isn't great. I like the spaghetti Western ballad and the one that sounds like an outtake from Vision Thing, and while the rest of the tunes were pleasant enough, I don't remember any of them. The unnecessary remake ("Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams") is, well, unnecessary, but it isn't offensive. Disappointing, overall.

Seven minutes into the first track, and Middian aren't nearly as good as Yob. Maybe they get better.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 00:50 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, both the Brigman and Scientists albums beat the Stooges ones on guitar sound and melodies alone. (Brigman's just plain beautiful. Scientists is very useful since I own none of their albums anymore, yet remember the hooks.)

Also on tonight: Hard-poppin' Austin mean-looking-chick power-trio rock by Adrian and the Sickness (favorite song so far on '06 EP is "Birthday"):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=3986012

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:40 (eighteen years ago)

beat the Stooges [new] ONE (not "ones") I mean (duh.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

Adrian's the Angus-subsidy in one of the chick rock tribs to AC/DC. She's been in the guitar mags a number of times, most lately a month or two ago for going to Iraq and playin' AC/DC tunes with her bandmates for the men stuck over there.

Wanted to hear the Sickness EP a year ago. Now it's too late to do anything with.

Reissue of Rhino Bucket's LP with Wright also pretty much kills for all the usual reasons. Dour life of pain spit-in-the-face Bon Scott recreations.

― Gorge, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:10 (eighteen years ago)

Heh. I chased Tim/Chuck over to here to continue the Stooge's fight, but I decided I'd much rather talk about Manowar when I got here. I reviewed it (kinda) here, but honestly, that review was the only way I could respond to the album. It was either that, or recruiting some people for a Dungeons and Dragons game. Listening to the album was an absurd experience, punctuated by my wife complaining of a headache throughout the play time. Eventually, around "Army of the Dead Pt. 2," I had to put it on headphones. Which made it better for her, but worse for me. Ack. Anyway.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

TheManowar single I have from the new album was stupid enough, I don't think I could listen through the whole thing. I love about half of Warriors of the World, and I suspect that's all the Manowar I'll ever need. They are so much better when they lay off the epic and just stick to the rocking.

Speaking of which, not to beat a dead Goth, but I think my biggest problem with the new 69 Eyes is that the rocking just seems so... forced. Rocking should never seem forced!

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:28 (eighteen years ago)

Wait, there are TWO parts of a song called "Army of the Dead?! Oh man.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:30 (eighteen years ago)

i dig the ross the boss era of manowar. all those albums are worth it for him. still can't beat the video for gloves of metal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4qTi7cDtI4

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:41 (eighteen years ago)

I know. I have that video on one of the Hell on Earth DVDs. For some reason I kept getting the damn things free when I worked at my college radio station. My friend and I had a good laugh watching that video. Although not as good a laugh as we did at the documentary about the Manowar fan convention on the Sons of Odin Immortal Edition DVD. I probably do need some of the Ross the Boss stuff, though. Maybe I should amend that to "all the MODERN Manowar I need."

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:46 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, the later stuff is just kinda tired. i'm glad their fans love them and everything. do they all live in germany? they are gods there.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 04:53 (eighteen years ago)

You have to get the DVD with the convention documentary, or a least find it on YouTube. It's genius. They have fans travel to the convention from Brazil, Japan, all over Europe. Total craziness. And there's even a Miss Manowar contest. Those are some seriously terrifying women. That's followed by a beer guzzling contest, in which some of the Miss Manowar contestants place very highly. Then there is a Viking battle on stage, followed by a tribute to fallen warriors. And I am not making any of this up. I actually have a friend who's a huge Manowar fan. Legitimately thinks that they're musical geniuses, best band ever, et cetera. Nice guy, but he scares me a little.

(I suppose I shouldn't make fun of Manowar for being stupid, though; I am listening to Dio's Killing the Dragon right now)

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:04 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, and the convention took place in Germany. Shocking, I know.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:05 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that Manowar fan convention looked unbelievable. The lengths they go to for their fans is quite admirable. Hell, for the Earthshaker DVD they even brought in an NFL skycam for the concert shoot! And I loved the performances by all the old members, as well as the big finale with the three drummers on the big hydraulic risers. Probably rhe most quintessentially Manowar moment I've ever seen.

Musically, I can't think of a lazier band. Hail to England is the only one of theirs that I can listen to all the way through and enjoy. But for all their stupidity, I find the song "Kings of Metal" irresistible. "Other bands play...Manowar kill!"

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 25 March 2007 05:09 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, question for those more knowledgeable in early 90s crust-grind than I am: were Disrupt one of those obscure-but-influential outfits like Only Living Witness, or just cult favorites?

uhh... OLW were neither crust nor grind when i heard them (first album and some single or other), more like melodic and slightly thrashy metal with smart-guy lyrics. disrupt on the other hand were pretty raging crusty-grindy-core-y stuff.

OLW definitely never got the props they deserved.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 25 March 2007 08:18 (eighteen years ago)

Only Living Witness made decibel magazine's hall of fame! and i had never even heard them before! i still need to pick up the nice reissue that came out.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 12:44 (eighteen years ago)

More gurls with tough riffs on an EP: Hot Rollers from Seattle; their 2005 album was lotsa fun (my Harp review linked below), but their well-harmonized new "Outta Control"/"You Don't Satisfy"/"Heard About Him" is heavier, if more in a proto-metalpunk "Stepping Stone"/Troggs/Sonics way than a what-people-here-call-metal way; slimy first cut actually gets carried for quite awhile on an extended heavy rock riff go-go-dance groove until the singing starts; second cut is the most vengefully garage; third (which is tops on their myspace page at the moment) is a cover I believe (i.e., sounds familiar; credited to one "Andrews") and a rocked-up girl group thing a la Gore Gore Girls. Sirens fans would like it too, I'd hope. And also they are less scary looking looking than Adrian and the Sickness (whose "You Suck In Bed," on the earlier of their two EPs which I haven't had time to put on yet, I expect will have a similar lyrical theme to "You Don't Satisfy" anyway):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2663461

My review of their previous album:

http://harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=4835

Also, speaking of garage 7-inches, I noticed this comment on the generally sadly unentertaining "Rolling 'Punk' (or non-indie underground) Rock" thread, and wanted to say, yes, the 45's very cool; Daniel (who, like Christian Hoard, used to be an intern of mine at the Voice) gave me a copy when I was at Princeton Record Exchange (where he works) last month, and I had no idea it was "hyped" in any way. Funnest track is "Feeling Cold."

Anyway, here's a link of Home Blitz, followed by that punk thread post:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=66767189

This was not me:

[Removed Illegal Link]

It does! I guess.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

oops, formatted that wrong; this was the post by some other guy:

Anyone checked out that recorded-right-out-on-the-frickin'-street Home Blitz 7"? I'm waiting on that in the mail, along with some Car Commercials stuff, which is that Daniel DiMaggio dude playing with some other grebo. This stuff is pretty hyped though.... Hope it lives up to it!

and this is me again:

The other track besides "Feeling Cold" on Home Blitz's Live Outside 45 is "Stupid Street"; okay, I was wrong, that's the super tuneful garage tune with the cool spoken intro about rocking out on the sidewalk. Also liked their previous 7-inch "Apocalyptic Grades 2005 A.D."/"AC S.S." (Also, I just realized that, by some unforseen coincidence, Home Blitz and the Hot Rollers will now exactly sit side by side on my alphabetically arranged 7-inch singles shelf, right between Rupert Holmes and House of Pain! Cool, huh?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:11 (eighteen years ago)

i am indirectly responsible for the song title "apocalyptic grades!" or at least my hellhammer cd was.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:14 (eighteen years ago)

see what happens when you stop posting on ilm. you make cool punk rock singles. or at least i haven't seen him post on ilm in a while.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, the Hot Rollers EP (which is on vinyl, if that wasn't clear already) is technically called Unicornucopia. (Since it has three songs, having a title makes sense; the Home Blitz tactic, though, of a giving a title to a two-song single, confuses me as much as when Death of Samantha did the same thing with their Porn In the U.S.A. single a few lifetimes ago.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 13:24 (eighteen years ago)

Fwiw, Google suggests "Heard About Him" was first done by Sandie Shaw.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

And damn, this new George Brigman album makes pretty much the whole idea of "doom metal" a moot point. Just so frigging ominous and threatening sounding, wow...("Magnetized" and "Swell" and "Borderline" are my favorites so far, but the whole thing sounds really awesome.) Somebody should play this for the Stooges (to show them how to make muffled vocals add more than they detract, among other things.)

As for the Scientists (Aussie post-Stooge/Birthday Party psychoswampbilly garagers who date back to the mid '80s, if you're unfamiliar), I'd completely forgotten about their Suicide side. (People listen to that snooze of a new Nick Cave "Grinderman" album instead of this? Why??)

"Garbage" by Adrian and the Sickness gets my vote for her deadliest guitar parts so far -- Sounds like if Angus joined Girlschool at their most Motorhead, almost. "Weenie Roast" is pretty great too (and I like its title.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

And in "Car Salesman" (which starts with Adrian talking not singing), she gets all techy and show-offy on the liar car salesman's ass. He deserves it!

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)

aren't rilly rilly hardcore nick cave fans pretty much the only people who still listen to new nick cave albums? i mean, "kids" don't listen to him, do they?

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)

The new one (where he pretends to be in a Birthday Party type band) seems to have temporarily changed that, for some bizarre reason--despite coming out on Anti-, which is clearly a quintessential alternative-old-people label. (People were raving about the thing on that Stooges thread, for instance.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

I know that Only Living Witness weren't crust or grind! My genre-pegging abilities didn't suddenly go haywire or anything. I was just using them as an example to refer to a band that was obscure but influential regardless of genre. The question still stands: were Disrupt obscure but influential, or just cult favorites? I can't seem to find much about them on the Internet, and I'm not exactly going to go by the word of the press release.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

Simon Reynolds on Battles' Mirrored album, on his blog:

at its least, a grotesque merger of Henry Cow, Michael Nyman and Primus, ie. still pretty fun. at its most, virtually indescribable—Sung Tongs AC goes math-metal?-- close to that giddy edge where sublime and ridiculous become indivisible. just when you’re thinking it’s aall bit jizz-whizz tech-flashy Mahavishnu-verging-Satriani, in come the helium voices, the whistling.

Translation: It's boring. (I just listened, finally. Trust me.)

And boring in a "whimsical" way, seemingly. Which is even worse.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 25 March 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

I like Battles.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 25 March 2007 21:53 (eighteen years ago)

My latest short list of George Brigman Rags In Skull favorites: Tracks 8 through 10, "Somebody Put Milk In My Eggs" into "Some Of My Best Friends Are Snakes" into "Goin' to Pieces." At first I thought the new album was maybe a bit too much great guitar jammery and not enough great songs, but the latter are present too, it turns out. (So: Best metal album of the year?)

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:25 (eighteen years ago)

Sounds good, but seems more like a candidate for Best Metal Album of 1975 than 2007.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:46 (eighteen years ago)

Nah, 1975 was Jungle Rot!

Looks like "So This Is Life" is the "single" from the new one. Judge for yourself (unless your point is that you did that already):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=48984148

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 March 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 26 March 2007 01:01 (eighteen years ago)

Battles' Mirrored

Not a thing to do with metal.

― xox, Monday, 26 March 2007 05:17 (eighteen years ago)

That is the one I listened to. And I liked it, don't get me wrong. Just sounds a bit anachronistic... seems like he didn't miss a beat in the 25 years between Jungle Rot and the new one. I think you would be harder pressed to convince someone that it's metal these days than you would in 1975. (Although, I guess if you go by the rules of Stairway, which you probably do since you wrote it, it most certainly is metal, so I don't really know what I'm saying. Just, you know, that it's maybe "hard rock album of the year" or some such genre nitpick. Metal album of the year is clearly the new Manowar record. You don't get much more indisputably metal than that!)

Thanks for the help, God Punch.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 05:40 (eighteen years ago)

I think there are a few Immolation fans here. So I've been listening to Shadows in the Light and right now it's sounding like a return to form (I felt Harnessing Ruin was a slight misstep), meaning they could've recorded this in '98 for all I know. This could easily feel like another consistent Immolation album, but their enthusiasm and energy hasn't appeared to slip a bit. Ross' vocals don't seem to be any weaker for the 20 years of doing this. Major credit to them.

― xox, Monday, 26 March 2007 06:42 (eighteen years ago)

i like immolation! and i liked the last album just fine.

just in case any new york gathering fans need to know this:

Dutch rock band THE GATHERING have announced a special one-off headlining show on May 15th, 2007 at Club Rebel in NYC.

Following the show in New York City, the band will start a two-week tour with Lacuna Coil/In This Moment/Stolen Babies
across North America. That tour starts May 16th, 2007 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

― scott seward, Monday, 26 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know how small club rebel is. or even what club rebel is. if it's really small it might be cool to seem them there.

― scott seward, Monday, 26 March 2007 16:17 (eighteen years ago)

I want to see the gathering! I don't think they're making it out to Los Angeles.*cries*

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 18:43 (eighteen years ago)

The Gathering and Lacuna Coil are playing a tiny venue where I am, so I can't wait for that. May can't come soon enough.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 26 March 2007 18:48 (eighteen years ago)

Damn you lucky Saskatchewan people!

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:20 (eighteen years ago)

i like immolation! and i liked the last album just fine.

You said that upthread and it still ranks 8th. ;)

― xox, Monday, 26 March 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

I think I may have been a bit harsh on the new Sisters of -- I mean, 69 Eyes record. It's much more enjoyable on second listen. I don't know if maybe I was down on it because I wasn't in the mood, or because it wasn't their previous albums, or what. This time around, I like the first track, which wouldn't be out of place on the first two Danzig LPs, and while "Never Say Die" isn't as good as Sabbath's, it isn't bad. I think the one that I just didn't like was "Rocker," which tries a bit too hard to live up to the name. The thing about 69 Eyes that keeps me from loving them wholeheartedly, even though I've been listening to their records a lot recently, is because they're an unabashed pastiche of other, better bands. It's a bit too derivative. I would start with their earlier stuff, but Angels isn't too bad as far as that sort of thing goes.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

As for Midian, the first track is definitely the weakest. It sounds like they're trying to be Kylesa or something. After that they go back to sounding like Yob, which is fine, because yob are cool. So, my basic verdict is: if you like Yob, you'll like this. If you don't like Yob, you won't like this. For those unfamiliar with the glories of Yob, it's basically sludgy-as-fuck doom metal with a guy howling like Ozzy on "Hole in the Sky." Pretty impenetrable wall of sound, gets across the feeling of total despair just fine. I suspect the Minsk fans on here would enjoy Midian.

And, I think that covers that pile of CDs, Pye. Hope it was useful.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 26 March 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

We've updated the TOTEM myspace page with a brand new song from the upcoming full length on I Hate ,and some new photos.

I can say this because I'm only the lowly bassist, so forgive the hyperbole, but this album is going to KILL YOU. www.myspace.com/totemdoom. Seriously.

― Manalishi, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:18 (eighteen years ago)

I love I Hate. Such a cool label. The last albums by Burning Saviours and Fall of the Idols were so great. Good luck with the record!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 04:45 (eighteen years ago)

Picture of chick with sword, and Andrew WK as a friend! I totally approve.

(oh, and the music is pretty good, too)

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 05:23 (eighteen years ago)

oh, that new totem track is pretty fucking good. world needs more doom with female vocalists.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 06:51 (eighteen years ago)

Totem are great. The SL board is going nuts over them.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 07:59 (eighteen years ago)

Candlelight Records USA have put 2 new 2007 tracks up on myspace for:

Octavia Sperati [would appeal to fans of The Gathering]
and
Manes [Experi-me[n]tal progressive rock similar to fellow Norwegian's Frantic Bleep, Arcturus and Ulver]

http://www.myspace.com/candlelightrecordsusa

― djmartian, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 21:04 (eighteen years ago)

my faves of year so far: nadja's touched and whatever that new moonsorrow is called. can't get enough of the nadja in particular. like the pretty bits from esoteric albums stretched out for infinity. really great.

any opinions on the new neurosis yet? listened a few times myself and nothing is sticking AT ALL. except maybe those vox. really wish kelly would stop belting out bowel-loosening grunts over some mellow jams. or anywhere, really.

― original bgm, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, count me in with the rest of the fans of the new Totem track. Very cool.

And speaking of cool lady singers, that new Octavia Sperati track isn't bad. I've been looking forward to their new one for some time.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

I saw the Gathering in a very small bar in New York's meat packing district maybe six or seven years ago (I think it was called the Cooler, or am I confused? But it's closed now.) They were great.

Here is what I wrote about Octavia Sporati (among other post-Gatherings, and the Gathering themself) on my MTV Urge metal blog last summer:

So I took a short break from listening to <a href="http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh123684599888936884">my own personal Pandora.com radio station</a> the other day to check out this not-awful new Europop album Faith in Myself by “Swedish Diva” (which is also the name of her record label!) Leana. It contains a top-ten dance hit called “Dance With a Stranger,” so she’s no nobody. But my wife, who is smarter about such things than I am, pointed out that if Leana only switched on a distortion pedal or added a double-kick drum and some cymbals, she’d sound exactly like a Scandinavian dark metal band. It’s true! The common denominator, I figure, is that they probably all grew up on Abba’s bluesless minor-key Alpine ski-slope melodies. Crazy, huh?

For Exhibit A, you might consider checking out Winter Exposure (Candlelight) by five-woman Norwegian band <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=33948775">Octavia Sperati</a>, who totally look like mermaids and/or sirens while perched on the oceanside rocks inside their CD sleeve, and whose depressive but uplifting goth-metal sounds commendably mermaid-like as well. The aforementioned spouse insists that singer-and-synther Silje is one of the only post-Gathering goth-gal voices (there are hundreds, you know) that can halfway hold a candle to Anneke Van Giersbergen’s own great one. And, averse as I am to rolling pins upside my head, I am disinclined to disagree.

I do think it’s pretty swell how Desiderata (Peaceville) by Norway’s <a href=" http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=35836936">Madder Mortem</a> sounds like Voivod crossed with the Art Bears, however. And then there’s the Gathering themselves, whose current Home (The End) doesn’t quite blow me away like they used to, but definitely offers some delectable Dutch treats between its new age Laurie Anderson performance-art holding patterns: Alone" getting pretty atop an industrial-rock march; the lyrics about being used by some cad in catchy lead cut "Shortest Day" almost making sense; the title cut’s hints of genuine metal doom. “A Noise Severe” and “Your Troubles are Over” pack some punch, too. And “The Quiet One” is the quiet one. But yeah, the distance between this and Leana is not that far.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 23:33 (eighteen years ago)

So looks like I was, actually, sort of wrong about Funeral. They never hit Slayer velocity, but "Red Moon" has some speedier Apocalyptica-sounding solos. Accordingly, that's my favorite track, because there's actually a bit of variety! Otherwise, they accomplish what they set out to do (i.e., depress you), but it's a bit of a bummer to sit through, and it would be nice if there was a little more diversity. As far as really depressing funeral doom goes, however, it's a perfectly fine album.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

I'd like to hear the new Funeral album. Their old stuff is great. I think the drummer is the only one left from the old band though. The original guitarist and bassist both died. I know the bass player killed himself, but i'm not sure if that's how the guitarist died. anyway, their stuff is indeed a "bummer". and a HUGE influence on like-minded bands. I like it slow and low. They were one of the best at that.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 03:53 (eighteen years ago)

Holy crap! I guess playing music that depressing really does get you down. Or is it the being depressed that leads to the depressing music? Maybe it's a vicious cycle! Okay, this is getting too deep for me. Anyway, I like doom metal, and I like depressing doom metal, but this stuff is just UNRELENTING.. Not a single ray of sunlight at all! Or even a fast riff to mix things up. Not that that's a bad thing, that's just my impression of it. I suspect I'm not going to be in the mood to listen to this very often. But yeah, you would probably dig it, Scott.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 03:58 (eighteen years ago)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/adriansickness

2004 self-titled Adrian and the Sickness album not nearly as good as 2006 Adrian For President: still some nifty guitar parts, but worse (less metal, less melodic, seemingly half-written) songs. I do like the wild-haired country instrumental at the end, but the fake reggae "Sex" is awful (her myspace says she's a Matisyahu fan, yikes; plus she has dreadlocks.) Rest is somewhere in between. (Cdbaby has an even earlier CD too, but I'll leave that one alone.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 11:16 (eighteen years ago)

(Country instro is called "Country Poontang," ha ha, and yep, I bet she likes Nugent. Debut CD is called Dreams and looks somewhat more Lillith.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 11:24 (eighteen years ago)

Third time through, and I think the Earthless has finally clicked for me. My previous thoughts still stand, but the groove is pretty undeniable.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 23:25 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Symphorce makes cleaning your kitchen totally epic!

I think my review of both Symphorce and The 69 Eyes is: these guys are good, but they wear their influences a bit too obviously on their ripped denim sleeves.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 00:54 (eighteen years ago)

I STILL HAVEN'T HEARD THE EARTHLESS!!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 29 March 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

I'm sorry!

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 06:00 (eighteen years ago)

i picked up wold's screech owl and the new antaeus cheap today. i never liked the mp3s i heard of wold, but this cd is great. especially "gather under her shadow," which sounds like a super distorted porter ricks track played at 78 rpm. haven't listened to antaeus yet.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 29 March 2007 07:41 (eighteen years ago)

HEY i had that new funeral album all along! it got lost in my mess. and those candlelight promos DO make it hard to keep track of things. what with no cover or art or anything. anyway, i just dig them. i like it all. new one too.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

so I read this whole thread, yowza! chuck, ya needs to hear judas priest's sad wings of destiny. it's from '76 and they're playing that fast chugga-chugga stuff that everybody else would copy later, except it has a warm 70s production. plus it's the best gay-bondage-drama-queen metal album ever. besides a night at the opera.

the white mice is definitely not a singles band. they do one thing and do it well, they make spazzy stoopid evil-sounding songs. what I like most about the new album is that it's lo-fi music recorded really well. the last song is 7 minutes long and a drag, but aside from that it's a solid listen. if I had to make comparisons it would be on the drunks with guns/skullflower axis. or the first 2 white zombie albums (but better cuz they mostly sucked). for a band without guitars they rock hard, plus they wear bloody lab coats and giant mouse heads and the band members have names like euronymouse and mouseferatu. boo!

http://www.thewhitemice.com/images/p2.jpg

― Edward III, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

howdy metal people.

some metal band in my hometown got signed to Metal Blade. They are called Epicurean, their myspace says they are "Metal/Progressive/Thrash":

i don't know if they are good. i liked the stuff on myspace okay, i don't really have an ear for modern metal. but i guess it's a "big deal" that they are signing to metal blade.

http://www.myspace.com/epicurean

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:35 (eighteen years ago)

reminding myself how much i like that ruins of beverast album. so good. in an unrelenting death and destruction way.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

I wouldn't be surprised if you had entire civilizations of Napalm Lacuna Coil ripoff bands thriving under your pile of promos, Scott.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

Epicurean doesn't sound too shabby. Neat little pagan influence during the cleanly-sung bits, but those metalcore breaks have to go. Very European, though, which is cool to hear from a band from Minny.

My big personal discovery as of late is a Montreal band called Profugus Mortis. Four guys two girls. Like Epicurean, they're big on the black/folk/pagan/power metal combo, but there's no metalcore laziness, the Euro influence is very prominent. The coolest thing about these kids is how the primary melodies are not from guitar, but violin. The band makes it work, it's just remarkable. This is definitely one of my faves of 07 so far. Scott, Jeff, Chuck, et al, if you dig the Napalm bands, you'll love this one, I htink.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 29 March 2007 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

Whoops, forgot to add this:

http://www.myspace.com/profugusmortis

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 29 March 2007 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

I like that they have a dedicated violinist! More metal bands need that. Sounds pretty neat, I shall investigate further. Do they have a label in the US?

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 19:58 (eighteen years ago)

They are called Epicurean, their myspace says they are "Metal/Progressive/Thrash

This would be far more impressive and funny for the right reasons if they, instead, claimed to be the metal band with the biggest collection of wine and food recipes in the world.

As it is, one just ponders an apparent lapse in common sense in the world of indie metal labels.

― Gorge, Thursday, 29 March 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know if Profugus Mortis has US distribution yet, but their Quebec label can likely help you out:

http://www.prodisk.ca/contacts.html

And yeah, Epicurean's choice of band name struck me as a bit odd, too...

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 29 March 2007 20:34 (eighteen years ago)

haha from their myspace:

Epicurean: epicurean adj.
1: of Epicurus or epicureanism; "Epicurean philosophy" (read up on it, it's quite interesting actually)
2: devoted to pleasure; "a hedonic thrill"; "lives of unending hedonistic delight"; (basically, the reason we chose our name)
3 : n. furnishing gratification of the senses, especially good food and drink. (now who doesn't enjoy good food?)
4 : a metal band striving to create a unique niche in the crowded metal scene.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 29 March 2007 20:47 (eighteen years ago)

Then they can name their first LP Bon Appetit or Epicurious. "Oh wait, no one 'll ever be able to look our stuff up without using Boolean. Song of the day: Spinach and Cheese Strata."

What was the name of that band, Scott, that made every song a Willis--like tribute to a sci-fi or horror writer? I remember seeing it for about a dollar in the sacking of Tower and passed.

― Gorge, Thursday, 29 March 2007 21:31 (eighteen years ago)

Still, the idea of writing thrash metal songs about food and drink (Tankard!) would be more welcome than just another bunch of songs like "Parasitic Infestation (Extracted Pus, Mistaken for Yogurt and Gargled)."

― Gorge, Thursday, 29 March 2007 21:35 (eighteen years ago)

"Parasitic Infestation (Extracted Pus, Mistaken for Yogurt and Gargled)."

Awesome.

― xox, Thursday, 29 March 2007 21:49 (eighteen years ago)

Metal Blade: Almost relevant in 2007. Almost.

(Which isn't to say that they don't have some good bands, it's just that those bands aren't nearly as prolific as they should be [Beyond the Embrace, I'm looking at you])

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

jess was just saying the other day on some other thread that more rappers needed to rap about food. and i'm all for metal bands singing about food and sharing recipes too. at least for mead or something.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

I got those new Metal Blade 25th anniversary reissues a week or so ago, Cannibal Corpse's Vile and Lizzy Borden's Master of Disguise. I'd forgotten how strange that Borden disc is...I would have rather seen a deluxe reissue of Love You to Pieces. Hopefully they have some more cool reissues in the works.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 29 March 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

mister begrand, can you e-mail me, i wanna ask you something.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

okay, i sent you an inter-ilx e-mail. lemme know if you got it.

― scott seward, Thursday, 29 March 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

I have a Lizzy Borden best of. I sort of get the feeling that's all the Lizzy Borden I need. Although, Deal with the Devil is a whole lot of fun. Dumb as hell, but as catchy as it is dumb.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 29 March 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

the white mice ...if I had to make comparisons it would be on the drunks with guns/skullflower axis. or the first 2 white zombie albums

yeah, given how i basically called them "quasi-sabbath pigfuck" upthread, white zombie circa psycho head blowout (or maybe their pre-debut-EP singles -- wasn't one of them called "pig heaven" or something? or was that the label?) probably makes sense. and oddly, that first white zombie EP/mini-LP made my top 10 in 1987. then i barely ever played it again. i liked drunks with guns for a minute or two way back then, too; pretty sure i gave them a decent mention in creem metal. but i haven't had a use for that stuff in years, and don't have much desire to go back to it, or hear somebody revive it. (on the other hand, i'm pretty sure that early white zombie stuff had a way better rhythm than i've noticed on the white mice album. not that i'm going to return and check either of them. but yeah, i agree they're in the same family.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:38 (eighteen years ago)

Got it Scott, thanks. I think I'm up for it.

Re: Lizzy Borden, they were a real high school fave of mine. Not so much for the shock rock goofiness, but for the very cool NWOBHM sound of their early stuff. "Rod of Iron", "American Metal", "Give 'em the Axe", that stuff was killer.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:40 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, the best of I have is way cool. I think the track list is pretty solid. Also, the liner notes are in desperate need of proofreading, but that just adds to the charm. Track listing is here: The Best of Lizzy Borden

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

That's a really good-looking compilation! Pretty much all the essentials.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:58 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, no I am not going to listen to this one, but still:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/heavymetaldad

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 01:15 (eighteen years ago)

oops

http://cdbaby.com/cd/heavymetaldad

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 01:16 (eighteen years ago)

HeavyMetalDad®
Father's Rights, Yeah Right
Michael Silvasy (a.k.a.) HeavyMetalDad is an artist with a mission. To continue to provide the fans and the world with great music and raise father's rights awareness. I love recording, writing and performing, but it all means nothing if I can't share it with my daughter Roxy. God Bless you.

awww it's not what i was expecting.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 30 March 2007 01:21 (eighteen years ago)

Lizzy Borden fans might like Trigger Renegade! (See bottom of link, where they mention me, somehow):

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=7433916&blogID=245794607

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 01:22 (eighteen years ago)

Are we to believe the rumors, Chuck?

Sounds decent enough, but oh man -- Santa Cruz is where hippies go to die and impressionable college students pick up their mantles. My friend's former best friend went to UC Santa Cruz, and ended up doing cocaine off a stripper's back in Las Vegas.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 30 March 2007 01:39 (eighteen years ago)

i'm thinking filthy phil might dig the album by child abuse that someone sent me. sorta japanoise spazz jazz by way of brooklyn by way of john zorn by way of relapse records. sorta. that is if he hasn't heard it already. i can't remember if it was brought up on this thread.

http://www.soundsofchildabuse.com/

seriously just a fluke that i would direct you to the sounds of child abuse after the link to heavy metal dad.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 03:39 (eighteen years ago)

I am enjoying these majestic and tunefully guitared Italian "power folk metal"ers. though so far I wish (despite howling about being "lost in the forest") they sounded more folk. (Hopefully I'll notice the folk parts later):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/spellblast

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 12:05 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, i'll be really interested to hear what you think of the new Manes album on Candlelight.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 12:41 (eighteen years ago)

So "Goblin's Song" (a tribute to the band Goblin??) (chorus: "GOBLINS ALL AROUND!") by Spellblast definitely gets its jig on in the middle; cool! Also really digging the bombastosymphonic start of "Knights of Darkness"..

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:01 (eighteen years ago)

i'm really interested to hear what anyone thinks about the new manes, cause i haven't heard it yet.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:05 (eighteen years ago)

new Manes is crazy! like way over the top. goth industrial trip hop metal with lots of fx and, um, some rapping too. maybe even french rapping. just so you know. but i dig it! just cuz it's nuts like me.

are you a 3rd & the Mortal fan, el sabor?

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:09 (eighteen years ago)

does anyone know anything more about this band? Lesbian

Lesbian - Power Hör
http://www.dotshop.se/ds/release.php?code=31772CD

Lesbian = the birth of The New Wave of American Psychedelic Metal! Clock in and drop out ***
Holy Mountain (31772CD)

April 2nd, 2007

"The band blends the best elements of many styles of metal: doom, thrash, black, progressive and, yes, even good old "heavy" metal."

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:12 (eighteen years ago)

the lesbian album is okay. there is talk of it here on this thread. it's kind of all over the place. loooooooong stoner doom stuff. some straight-up thrashing metal stuff. i don't think it's a great album, but it's promising.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:15 (eighteen years ago)

it really is all over the place, stylistically.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:15 (eighteen years ago)

or maybe there was talk of it over on the sandbox metal thread. i can't remember.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

also digging the new Pantheon I and Mithras albums on Candlelight. especially the Pantheon I.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:20 (eighteen years ago)

my new discovery last night:

Eldrig
http://www.myspace.com/eldrig

instrumental ambient black metal from USA - PORTLAND, Oregon

it's got that buzzing guitar sound, complex sound layering, very atmospheric
.
i reckon even math rock / noise rock types would appreciate it

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

DJ Martian do you like Wraiths?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, it's on this thread scott. I still can't believe I read the whole thing.

this is old news but what did you make of the last mammatus? I ask 'cause they're opening on the amt tour next month. seems like they have got the psych sound down pat, but hey there's no tootsie roll in the middle of this lollipop. rrrobyn says they're good live, though.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:29 (eighteen years ago)

as of 2.30pm today: Never heard of them, let alone listened to them

just did a quick search, is them:
The Wraiths
http://www.myspace.com/thewraithsbristoluk
mellow folk-psychedelic rock

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:34 (eighteen years ago)

i just did another search:

i reckon you mean this instead:

For those that might be interested, WRAITHS' "Plaguebearer" CD is now available from Paradigms Recordings.
http://www.southern.com/southern/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=2668

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:37 (eighteen years ago)

ditto never heard of them before

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:38 (eighteen years ago)

the new vintorsorg album doesn't thrill me. not like the new ensiferum album anyway.

and i STILL can't believe that the new Funeral album was languishing sadly at the bottom of a pile, cuz now that's all i want to hear. i'm making up for lost time.

i don't really talk about death metal that much on here, i guess. or, at least, not brutal knuckledragging death metal. people probably wouldn't care to know what i think about the new albums by black the sky, fully consumed, or desecration anyway. just in case: um, brutal. and black the sky have my two favorite song-titles of the month: "it ain't cheatin' if she ain't breathin'" and "i slept with a member of black the sky and all i got was rope burn and a bloody asshole".

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:40 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.myspace.com/wraiths

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:41 (eighteen years ago)

wraiths = harsh aural sonic music - this would give me a headache if i listened to it for a full album.

sounds like field recordings music + dark ambient + industrial + noise rock

― djmartian, Friday, 30 March 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

man, that lesbian album needs more psychedelic, less metal. or maybe just some kind of sonic landscape for my ear to catch on...

new Manes is crazy! like way over the top. goth industrial trip hop metal with lots of fx and, um, some rapping too. maybe even french rapping. just so you know. but i dig it! just cuz it's nuts like me.

i'm interested! i thought vilosophe was a little bit spotty but had a handful of bizarre and cool tracks. and drum and bass beats. i'll still always be partial to the early black metal stuff but i liked it.

haven't really heard 3rd and the mortal! i think my wife might have something by them in her secret stack of weird euro-goth bands, about half of whom seemed to be involved in metal bands at some point.

have the wraiths myspace tunes playing in the background... nice.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 March 2007 14:13 (eighteen years ago)

yeah the one on paradigms.
x-post obviously

Mammatus are great!!!!! I mnetioned them on one of the old threads when I bought their lp.
Would love to hear some new stuff by them actually.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 30 March 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

man, that lesbian album needs more psychedelic, less metal. or maybe just some kind of sonic landscape for my ear to catch on..

Yep, it's like something blowing slowly by in the background. Take it off and you can't remember it five minutes later, a good case of induced musical Alzheimer's.

― Gorge, Friday, 30 March 2007 15:12 (eighteen years ago)

I'm biased, but I hate the fact that there's a band called Lesbian that has no lesbians. It makes me irrationally angry.

― Je4nne Fuhfuh, Friday, 30 March 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

I was also upset when I went to see swans and discovered that none of them is in fact a swan.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

And heavymetaldad can't be a dad because the courts wont give him custody.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

and mountain? dude's fat but he's more of big hill.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

were they originally called Lesbian Witch? cuz that's what their web-site is:

http://www.lesbianwitch.com/

i think i would actually prefer the name lesbian witch over lesbian. but either way...

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:18 (eighteen years ago)

that's why I like the white mice. it's cool when they take those big masks off and you discover they're really just normal-looking mice under there.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

this is really dumb too:

Yep. The band's name is LESBIAN.

Why? Well, equally-cool names like Black Sabbath, Venom and Pentagram were already taken. But also, the name Lesbian evokes pure, sexually-charged freedom -- and, that's what rock music is all about.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

dumbasses. they should've gone with lesbos. or thespian.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:22 (eighteen years ago)

or venomous pentagram. or lesbian sabbath. or leslie west.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:24 (eighteen years ago)

they call themselves "lesbros" on their tour blog.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:24 (eighteen years ago)

now THAT'S funny

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:26 (eighteen years ago)

les bros. see how easy it is to come up with good band names? these kids these days don't even try.

― Edward III, Friday, 30 March 2007 17:27 (eighteen years ago)

at least they didn't call themselves something ocean related. or animal related. or russian.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 31 March 2007 07:26 (eighteen years ago)

no umlat, no credibility.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 31 March 2007 07:35 (eighteen years ago)

curious to see what this is like

http://www.snappermusic.com/Labels/Peaceville/Artists/Darkthrone/item11762?startPos=

― rizzx, Sunday, 1 April 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

the scene where Fenriz pisses into a cowboy boot and offers it to a Ronald McDonald statue was...odd

― latebloomer, Sunday, 1 April 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

april fools

― latebloomer, Sunday, 1 April 2007 14:44 (eighteen years ago)

it was totally normal

― latebloomer, Sunday, 1 April 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

but interesting? or dissapointing?

― rizzx, Sunday, 1 April 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)

nah i didn't see it

― latebloomer, Sunday, 1 April 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

i want to now though

― latebloomer, Sunday, 1 April 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, will you buy it and report back asap then?

― rizzx, Sunday, 1 April 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

So the new Machine Head is an absolutely massive record, heavy as hell and probably going to be on my top 10 list at the end of the year. My question is, did it throw anybody else when the Killswitch Engage harmonized clean vocals kicked in on the second track chorus? I mean, it's not like Machine Head have a history of following trends or anything, but it was still unexpected.

Also, if I was Robb Flynn, I would be really annoyed at roadrunner right now. I mean, they got on a great tour that exposed them to new audiences (Lamb of God/Trivium), put out a great record that would be totally accessible to younger fans, and then their label puts out the CD with minimal advertising, a $15 price point, and no mention in the big chain circulars. That's going to hurt their first week, a lot. Kids are going to walk into Best Buy, see the price tag, and decide to just download the album instead.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 2 April 2007 00:21 (eighteen years ago)

The first song on the Machine Head album is an absolute triumph, just stunning. Haven't warmed up to the more nu-sounding stuff yet, but that one song is reason enough to give the rest of the album a fair chance.

On a much more, erm, ghey note, the new Sonata Arctica is actually pretty decent. Not unlike the last Blind Guardian, less predictable, yet more streamlined sound.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 2 April 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that first draft is brilliant. I also like Wolves a whole lot, and I think the other tracks are going to grow on me. I think I'm so inured to the clean singing at this point that it doesn't bother me all that much.

I really really like the live album Sonata Arctica put out last year. Lots of fun, and the DVD was pretty entertaining. I will definitely give the new one at chance when I get it. You might dig the Threshold record that just came out on Nuclear Blast, Adrien. Solid progressive metal.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 2 April 2007 04:56 (eighteen years ago)

Track, not draft.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 2 April 2007 04:57 (eighteen years ago)

Darkspace

For those not paying attention upthread: best band in the world at this point. II is a monument.

― Siegbran, Monday, 2 April 2007 11:47 (eighteen years ago)

best band in the world at this point.

This cannot be true. Everybody knows that Lordi are the best band in the world at this point. Two bands cannot be the best band in the world at the same time! Your logic is faulty, sir.

(seriously, though, I don't see what makes darkspace the best band in the world. Doesn't do anything at all for me.)

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 2 April 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

Thirds on Machine Head. I've been blaring that one for a month or so. Sure does sound like Roadrunner's going out of their way to fuck them at retail, though.

― unperson, Monday, 2 April 2007 19:44 (eighteen years ago)

To be fair, there is a full-page advertisement in Decibel. I sort of feel like that's preaching to the converted, though.

On first listen, The Blackening doesn't seem to have anything as instantly catchy as the better songs on the last album. It sure did trigger my unconscious headbanging mechanism, though. And I'm guessing the songs will hook into me the more I listen to it.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 2 April 2007 19:52 (eighteen years ago)

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Doom_metal

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Metal
and my favourite
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrat_black_metal

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 2 April 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

A new book about Swedish death metal has been published this year, written and edited by the Insision bass player.

Tracing back to Bathory and the proto-grindcore scene (Asocial, Anti Cimex) its main focus is the 1986-1991 period. Very comprehensive details about how did each band form and how they met each other. Unlike other books it has a lot of stuff about the music, nearly every essential release is reviewed (I'd love to get a copy of the Crematory EP).

A massive reference of bands and fanzines is included as appendix.

Publisher at Myspace

The edition is not exactly pro and certainly not cheap at 50 EUR, but it's printed in glossy paper, has great b/w pictures and weights 1.5 kg. A thick bastard that sits nicely along "Lords of Chaos", "Choosing Death" and "Are you Morbid".

― no-nonsense, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 10:00 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the index:

A. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 8
B. PREFACE ... 9
C. FOREWORD ... 12
D. INTRODUCTION ... 14

1. DAWN OF THE DEAD ... 18
- The Punk Connection

2. SWEDISH METAL GETS BRUTALIZED ... 38
- Sweden Loses its Innocence
- Bathory Enters the Eternal Fire
- Obscurity and Mefisto - The Rise of the Underground
- Swedish Thrash Metal

3. THE BIRTH OF SWEDISH DEATH METAL ... 68
- Merciless
- Morbid, Nihilist and the Early Stockholm Scene
- Grave and Grotesque - Early Death Metal around the Country

4. THE SCENE GETS GOING ... 110
- Bajsligan ("The Shit League")
- The Movement Grows Nationally
- The Stockholm Scene Reigns On
- The Last Hour of Thrash Metal
- Blood, Fire... Death!
- The Pioneers Behind it All

5. THE UNDERGROUND BREAKS THROUGH ... 158
- The Awakening
- Left Hand Path
- Mean
- Dark Recollections
- Sumerian Cry
- Time Shall Tell
- For the Security
- Incantation
- The Demo Boom - Stockholm
- The Demo Boom - Nationally
- Singles of Death

6. THE REIGNING YEARS OF SWEDISH DEATH METAL ... 210
- Entombed and Earache
- Dismember and Nuclear Blast
- Therion and Deaf
- Enter Century Media
- Dolores and the Gothemburg Band
- Under the Sign of the Black Mark
- At the Gates and Peaceville
- Active - From Thrash to Death
- Century Media Reigns On
- Nuclear Blast Takes Command
- House of Kicks
- Entombed and the Rest

7. THE DEATH METAL EXPLOSION ... 250
- The Gothemburg Area
- Goth Town Boras
- Death Centre Finspang
- The Strange Case of Mjölby
- The Enkilstuna Scene
- Avesta and the Scene in Bergslagen
- Uppsala Bloodbath
- The Stockholm Scene gets Flooded
- Up North and Down South

8. THE END OF THE ORIGINAL SCENE - BLACK METAL TAKES OVER ... 272
- The Birth and Development of Black Metal
- A Blaze in the Swedish Sky
- No Fashion
- Dissection
- Marduk
- Abruptum
- Exit Black Metal

9. THE DEAD LIVE ON ... 298
- Grind
- Death & Roll
- The Gothemburg Sound
- Retro Thrash
- Extreme Death Metal
- Retro Death

10. SWEDISH DEATH METAL BANDS A-Z ... 316
(9th Plague - Zonaria)

11. SWEDISH DEATH METAL ZINES A-Z ... 468
(Abnormalcy - Zymphony Zine)

12. CAST OF CENTRAL CHARACTERS ... 492
(Peter Ahlqvist - Johan Österberg)

― no-nonsense, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 10:03 (eighteen years ago)

Got a package from Open Grave Records today. The most interesting record in it is Kekal's sixth album (italicized 'cause I've never heard of 'em until today), The Habit Of Fire. If you like Sigh or any other proggy/throw-everything-into-every-song bands, you'll like this. Psychedelic, electronic, guitars that are sometimes buzzsaw-y and sometimes straight off the first Edie Brickell & New Bohemians album, a vocalist with all of Geddy Lee's nerdiness, just a half an octave lower...this is a total winner in my book.

― unperson, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:24 (eighteen years ago)

did you ever get the Necrodemon album?

― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

this band sounds promising, maybe an east coast answer to Agalloch?

Scott are you aware of this band?

via blabbermouth:

GWYNBLEIDD: New Album To Be Mixed By DAN SWANÖ
http://tinyurl.com/2ed6e3

...a diverse death/black/folk metal project from Brooklyn, NY

GWYNBLEIDD
http://www.myspace.com/gwynbleidd

Gwynbleidd is a dark/aggressive/progressive metal music project based in New York City, US. From the beginning, the project consisted of friends bound by the comparable thirst for beer, love of music and a sense of adventure. Whilst metal music is it's preferred medium of expression, Gwynbleidd’s influences are not just limited to the underground metal and embrace forms of folk, blues and rock.

― djmartian, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:08 (eighteen years ago)

did you ever get the Necrodemon album?

Yeah, but it didn't do as much for me as everybody else. This thing's great, though.

― unperson, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:24 (eighteen years ago)

i fell asleep today listening to blood tsunami.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/811964.jpg

i often dream of thrash.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

saw todd last night. balls-to-the-wall brutal, loud, etc. I think they're playing NYC tonight.

― Edward III, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:26 (eighteen years ago)

i really dig the blood tsunami album though. wasn't trying to say it was boring or anything.

no, i have never heard gwynbleidd!

they should have called their band Gwyneth's Blood! Or Gwyneth Bloody Gwyneth! Or Gwyneth Bleeds!

http://images.google.com/url?q=http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/original/gwyneth-paltrow-african.jpg&usg=__qj7pKDKOnNe1UPYA6Yan5dG8_vE=

― scott seward, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:29 (eighteen years ago)

That band e-mailed me about reviewing them for Transform Online, Phil! It's good stuff. I appreciate any band that goes the extra mile to be weird. Sort of reminds me of that Borknagar acoustic record, only less boring.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

Century Media signs another female fronted metal core band. They seem to be amassing quite a collection of those: http://www.myspace.com/theagonist

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 19:28 (eighteen years ago)

just a quick reminder, today is the last day for nominations for the ILM 2006 poll

make sure metal is represented !

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56738

― djmartian, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 22:17 (eighteen years ago)

some 2006 rock / metal albums that have not been nominated yet on the ilm 2006 nominations thread

Aborym
Anaal Nathrakh
Blut Aus Nord
Cellador
Celtic Frost
Converge
Cult of Luna
Drudkh
Ihsahn
Insomnium
Intronaut
Isis
Keep of Kalessin
Khoma
The Mars Volta
Melechesh
Mercenary
Mouth of the Architect
Novembre
Red Sparowes
Saturnus
Scar Symmetry
Solefald
Tool
Unexpect
Wolves in the Throne Room

― djmartian, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)

And Merrimack. Along with Drudkh, that's what I most regret not mentioning. Not that I really regret it, 'cuz who cares, but you know... Anyway, I listened to Of Entropy and Life Denial last night after forgetting about it for a while. Incredible.

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 5 April 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 5 April 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

My enthusiasm was misplaced. New One-Man Army is really boring metalcore. I don't recommend it. Even the Alice Cooper cover is so-so. Although, I'm down with this trend of death metal bands covering 80s Alice Cooper songs. The Children of Bodom cover of "Bed of Nails" is great!

Apparently, the One-Man Army came in yesterday's mail... today's mailbag brought me to DVDs: the Apocalyptica live album and the full package of Iron Maiden's Death on the Road. Iron Maiden makes anything better!

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 5 April 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

woo hoo, i too got a big stack from Open Grave Records. i dig their stuff. they are putting out a TON of albums this year and i've never heard of ANY of it. i don't think. they've only been a label for a year and they are going full-steam ahead. if i like these i might have to do them for the black label thing i do. this month i'm doing Worldeater records outta Philly.

Open Grave's line-up:

Primitive Graven Image - Traversing the Awesome Night (April 24th 2007)
Goathemy - Frostland (April 24th 2007)
Kekal - The Habit of Fire (May 15th 2007)
Frost Like Ashes - Tophet (May 15th 2007)
Lengsel - The Hope The Kiss (June 5th 2007)
Skitzo - Five Point Containment (June 26th 2007)
Art 238 - Empire of the Atom: A Scienterrific Tale (June 26th 2007)
Doomshade - Doomshade (June 26th 2007)
Ten Seconds To Go - And You Thought We Were Dead (June 26th 2007)
Crucifer - Pictures of Heaven (Reissue) (July 17th 2007)
Exterminance - Vomiting the Trinity (Discography) (July 17th 2007)
Demon Dog Sperm - Hopeless (August 7th 2007)
Feast Eternal - With Fire (August 28th 2007)
A Metal Tribute to The Man in Black: Johnny Cash (August 28th 2007)
Exterminance / Sapremia - Split (August 28th 2007)
Clouds Turned Black - The Red Seal EP (TBA)
The Misanthrope Project - DEBUT (THIS FALL)
Hellwitch - Syzygial Miscreancy (Reissue)(October 30th 2007)
The Everscathed - New Full Length Album (November 20th 2007)
Necrodemon / Primitive Graven Image - Split (November 20th 2007)
Grind Minded - New Full Length Album (December 2007)
Sapremia - New Full Length Album (Dec 07/Jan 08)
Exterminance - New Full Length Album (January 2008)

― scott seward, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

Check out that Kekal record first. I'm reviewing it for Metal Maniacs. It's great.

― unperson, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:43 (eighteen years ago)

I'd love to know the figures on these albums, Scott, how many are initially pressed, how many sold, initial overhead -- the label's and the bands'. That's an astonishing number of recordings.

― Gorge, Friday, 6 April 2007 20:00 (eighteen years ago)

some of them are distro/license deals though. they pay a tiny euro company so that they can put it out in the u.s. though they are pretty busy signing their own bands as well.

i would imagine you could do pretty well - at a low cost - just licensing stuff from small independents around the world. that's what i would do anyway. who wants to deal with actual bands?

― scott seward, Friday, 6 April 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

you might enjoy the first line of my necrodemon review, gorge. might make you all weepy with nostalgia:

"If you took I-84 from where I grew up in Connecticut all the way down to where it ends near the emerald city of Scranton Pennsylvania, you would be in spitting distance of Whitehall PA – And not that far from Schnecksville and the glory that is Hazleton! – and the home of the most excellent Open Grave Records."

― scott seward, Friday, 6 April 2007 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

Hazelton is the home of Open Grave rekkids?! Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Hazelton!

― Gorge, Friday, 6 April 2007 22:13 (eighteen years ago)

no, not hazleton, whitehall. i went to school in wilkes-barre with someone from hazelton. he told hilarious stories that always seemed to involve sniffing gasoline.

― scott seward, Friday, 6 April 2007 22:20 (eighteen years ago)

today's mailbag brought me to DVDs: the Apocalyptica live album and the full package of Iron Maiden's Death on the Road. Iron Maiden makes anything better!

Amazing how it took so long for the US to get this fine DVD (technical glitches, apparently) while Canada got it last January. But yeah, an outstanding package...the bonus piece where they go into great detail about the stage setup was fascinating. Mr. Harris has to learn not to edit so epileptically, but it hardly matters when the performance is so great. Outstanding surround mix, too.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 7 April 2007 02:18 (eighteen years ago)

Back from a week on the road, and here is what I decided (some of which I might expand on eventually, but most of which I probably won't.)

Definitely like: Manes (musique concete non-metal with no personality but I like its French rapping and trip-hoppiness and don't mind the guy who sings like Peter Gabriel or is it Sting); Clorox Girls (okay punk not metal at all but who cares and they do fake French just like Les Hatepinks); Vintersong ("Nordic Folk Metal," Napalm says, sure why not)

Definitely don't like: Mithras, Send More Cops, the new Stooges album (just sounds fucking weak, I decided, though "Mexican Guy" is surprisingly okay, most likely because it may well be the only cut where Iggy's vocal works as rhythm more than a tune -- good Diddley beat under that one, too).

Undecided, still: Pantheon, Kotipelto, Ensiferum (um...not even sure if I even put on that last one.) Actually though if these bands didn't leave an impression yet, they're probably not going to.

Donnas-like myspace band whose demo EP has four okay songs on it that I wish were less generic:

http://www.myspace.com/atomicblonde

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:00 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, Clorox Girls are better than just "okay" (their "okay" should've been followed by a comma.)

Fave songs, I think: "Le Banana Split," "Flowers of Evil," "Boys Girls," maybe "Stuck in a Hole."

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

Also still undecided on: Serenity (Queensychians, as I recall. Unless I've confused 'em with someone.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:05 (eighteen years ago)

the Ensiferum album is better than the Vintersorg album, i'll tell you that much.

DID YOU BUY RECORDS ON THE ROAD?????

― scott seward, Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:05 (eighteen years ago)

Yes! Very much so!! I will list them shortly!!!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:12 (eighteen years ago)

Okay here goes.

Possibly (in most cases, sort of) metal-oriented Maryland and Virginia thrift store and antique barn finds (entire list is on recent purchases thread):

Long John Baldry* - It Ain't Easy LP $0.50
The Flock - Dinosaur Swamps LP $0.50
Free - Heartbreaker LP $0.50
J Geils Band - The Morning After LP $0.50
Horslips - The Man Who Built America LP $0.50
Horslips - Short Stories Tall Tales LP $0.50
Lighthouse - One Fine Morning LP $0.50
Teena Marie - Emerald City** LP $0.50
John Miles* - Stranger in the City LP $1.00
Nantucket - Long Way to the Top LP $0.50
Nantucket - Your Face Or Mine LP $0.50
New York Rock Ensemble - Roll Over** LP $0.50
Point Blank - Airplay LP $0.50
Spirit - Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus** LP $0.50
Uriah Heap - Demons and Wizards** LP $0.50
Zebra - Zebra LP $0.50
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres** LP $0.50

* - I know very little about these artists, but was curious

** - used to own these before; for some reason I stopped doing so somewhere along the line, but now I do again

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 04:07 (eighteen years ago)

i saw that NYR&R ensemble record recently. are they something i should be buying?

Hellwitch - Syzygial Miscreancy (Reissue)(October 30th 2007)

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! though i think that's about the tenth reissue of that album in as many years.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 7 April 2007 04:29 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, Scott is right - Ensiferum sound excellent, and I definitely hadn't played that one in the car. (2007: Best year for folk-metal ever? Could be!)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 05:02 (eighteen years ago)

Anybody know anything about this? Academic study of "extreme metal" :

http://www.bergpublishers.com/uk/book_page.asp?BKTitle=Extreme%20Metal

― Matt #2, Saturday, 7 April 2007 08:27 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know much about it yet, but that guy commented at my blog the other day and I've got a copy of the book on the way from the publisher.

― unperson, Saturday, 7 April 2007 12:32 (eighteen years ago)

actually liked the new album by this band (who do have occasional metal leanings; e.g., the Rushish track with prog parts in the middle) better than any of the newish metal-per-se CDs I was listening to on the road (and also liked several Count Bishops CD reissues I was listening to more ditto as well; perhaps I'll get to those eventually.)...

Edible Red -- More new wave than metal but either way, new album is solid, just really good hooks and songs and band dynamics throughout. (I think I'd heard earlier demos, which didn't impress me as much; I wrote Voice choices about them, maybe, but kinda forgot them afterwards.) "2012" is seemingly an early '80s Rush tribute; that one and "At Hello" and "Better Days" might be my favorites. "Hey Ya" is an Outkast cover, and I'd never have recognized it as a cover of anything if not for the CD booklet:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=22167093

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 12:37 (eighteen years ago)

Almost paid $0.50 for this interesting if not exactly necessary 2-LP compilation at a junk barn in Virginia two days ago; maybe I should have, if only to provide concrete evidence to young moron whippernappers of how the phrase "heavy metal" (the compilation's title) was defined in 1974 (if anything, wider than in Stairway to Hell, which included no Eagles, Yes, or Dr. John):

http://cgi.ebay.com/HEAVY-METAL-2LP-SET-VARIOUS-1974-STEREO-HARD-ROCK_W0QQitemZ4793112643QQihZ002QQcategoryZ306QQcmdZViewItem

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

The definition seven years later, 1981 - This would've cost $0.50, as well:

http://www.fye.com/Heavy-Metal-Front-Page_stcVVproductId381985VVcatId455366VVviewprod.htm

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 17:22 (eighteen years ago)

Now I think I should have bought both of those, actually! They look pretty good....

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 17:30 (eighteen years ago)

The Heavy Metal soundtrack wasn't that great. "Workin' in a Coal Mine" by Devo, echh. The Trust cut was decent. At fifty cents, though, you feel no buyer's remorse.

― Gorge, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:17 (eighteen years ago)

I'm sending some leftover (i.e. I'm done with 'em) promos to my seven-year-old nephew, in Georgia. He likes Rammstein and Helmet and Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance, according to my brother. I'm shipping him:

Alabama Thunderpussy, Open Fire
Amon Amarth, Versus The World
Arch Enemy, Wages Of Sin and Anthems Of Rebellion
Destruction, Thrash Anthems
Place Of Skulls, The Black Is Never Far
Warpig, s/t

I might have a couple of other things in my office I'll throw in the envelope, too - some recent power metal, like Intense, maybe. I decided not to send him anything too Cookie Monster-ish or overly dissonant/technical, and nothing that would offend his mom (well, except maybe ATP's band name, but the package has my brother's name on it, not the kid's, so he can fish that one out before passing it along if he feels it's inappropriate). But every little kid should hear Amon Amarth.

― unperson, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:22 (eighteen years ago)

I like the Heavy Metal soundtrack! Having not heard a lot of the bands on there when I first purchased it, it was pretty invaluable in getting me into a lot of lesser-known 70s bands. Great tracks from Sammy Hagar, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Nazareth, Grand Funk Railroad, Trust, and Dio Sabbath (which confused the hell out of me when I first got it, because I was expecting Ozzy on vocals). Even the Riggs tracks were cool, although I have no idea who that is.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 7 April 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

re: Death on the Road, I definitely noticed the poor editing. He should've hired a professional to do it. I had some training in editing in film school, and I'm not great at it, but it was enough for me to know that he just wasn't cutting when he should have cut. Especially at the beginning of "Dance of Death," there was way too much unnecessary cutting during the intro. I think the best editing I've seen on a metal DVD recently was the Arch Enemy live set. Now THAT was a great live DVD.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 7 April 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

Via email from Dave Tice (who was also in the Count Bishops after his era in Buffalo, and who's been gigging with Leanne Kingwell of late):

An interesting development has just occurred, I've been contacted by
an
independent record label in Portugal who are involved with the
"Stoner-rock"
scene in Europe, they contacted me through my 'Myspace" page to tell me
they
are currently in the process of recording a "Buffalo" tribute album
with a
bunch of "Stoner-rock" bands. It would seem that a lot of this type of
band
in Europe credit "Buffalo" with being a major influence. Since this all
started I've been contacted by a number of these bands and have
assisted
them with deciphering the lyrics of the tunes they are doing; English
is not
their first language obviously. I must admit I'm a bit non-plussed by
all
this, where was all this support 30 years ago when the band was on the
road?? Why this sudden interest??

Anyway I'll just go with the flow

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 20:47 (eighteen years ago)

The Flock do not even make the appendices in the back of Martin Popoff's '70s metal book -- not even the "not metal" appendix, which seems odd seeing how, even if they are not metal, their album (on Columbia, so not obscure) certainly looks pretty metal, what with those longhairs surrounded by pteradactyls at the end of the world or whatnot. Rolling Stone Record Guide disses them as bad jazz-rock; I'd say more noisy art-rock. I like the album!

Lighthouse are jazz-rock. First song on the first side, in fact, is very funky and compelling jazz-rock once the Blood Sweat and Tears-like belcher shuts up. Second side is warped, but I've got the title track single "One Fine Morning" elsewhere.

Spirit LP I bought is as good as ever, no surprise there; what's a surprise is how proto-early-Roxy-Music "Morning Will Come," especially, sounds. Has anybody ever theorized they might be an influence?

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 00:39 (eighteen years ago)

[quote]I must admit I'm a bit non-plussed by
all
this, where was all this support 30 years ago when the band was on the
road?? Why this sudden interest?? [/quote[
Ungrateful bastard!!

That Spirit lp is fantastic, Chuck. Infact most Spirit albums are fantastic! But I'm sure you know that anyway. VERY underrated band.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 8 April 2007 00:45 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck, did you vote for your favourite Black Sabbath (studio) album? http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 8 April 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

Now I did: Sabotage{/i]. And two seconds after I did it I regretted not picking [i]Paranoid. (but that link you made just takes me to the New Answers board!)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 00:58 (eighteen years ago)

anyone know Titan? Any good?

― rizzx, Sunday, 8 April 2007 12:31 (eighteen years ago)

Titan are GREAT. The album on Paradigms is better than the new one on Teepee.

Chcuk> hmm i dunno what happened. I guess my Copy and paste malfunctioned and pasted an older link i had. Oh well.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 8 April 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

Rolling Stone Record Guide gives three John Miles LPs only one star each and says was an "eclectic English rock star"; did he really have hits there? I'm not sure I ever heard of him before. Anyway, the album I bought, Stranger in the City from 1976, has one good seven-minute long track called "Stand Up (And Give Me a Reason)" that's sort of a metal raveup with a proto-disco break in the middle. I also like the mid '70s Elton mimicry in "Manhattan Skyline" and "Do It Anyway" (the album's two shortest tracks), but much of the rest strikes me as sappy and over-earnest. Is it possible to do a song called "Glamour Boy" that doesn't sound like anti-glam finger waving? Though I guess that's the point. And I've probably waved my finger at glamorous boys (if not glam-rockers, who are fine) a few times in my life, so I'm obviously being a hypocrite. (I hated the Living Colour one, too. Didn't Mick Jagger sing on that? Who was the ultimate glam boy. Did I miss a joke?) (Also, I may not wind up hating Miles's one yet.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 13:41 (eighteen years ago)

(And actually, Miles's "Glamour Boy" says he feels sorry for said boy, who is lonely. Which may be true. And glam boys were everywhere in '76, no?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 13:44 (eighteen years ago)

Long John Baldry on now. Big bad British blooze stompage! (The roots of Count Bishops, maybe.) (With Elton and Rod Stewart helping out, no less.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

Dullest track on that Baldry LP: "Flying," 6:50, witten by Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane, and Ron Wood, with gospel parts. Fortunately, it's at the end.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 8 April 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

This is the same John Miles that did that "music was my first love" monstrosity, right?

― Matt #2, Sunday, 8 April 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, that's the guy. we didn't get him here in the states. or he didn't make a dent anyway.

― scott seward, Sunday, 8 April 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

Why this sudden - Buffalo -- interest??

I would wager it is very strongly linked to the reissue of the Buffalo catalog late last year by their old management. These CDs very likely sold to the people who are now involved in contributing to or putting together the tribute and, for the first time in a long time, they have access to clean copies of the songs. And that's why they're asking about lyrics -- because it's the first time or another time since a long time ago, that they've heard them.

― Gorge, Sunday, 8 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

Which would also seem to indicate, like everyone else back then, Buffalo signed away their publishing, so they don't even know a few of their records are selling.

― Gorge, Sunday, 8 April 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

The new Corrupted 7" ep's are awesome. All that's needed to say on the matter.
http://home.student.uva.nl/maarten.vanherpt/asice/platen/corr.jpg

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 9 April 2007 00:57 (eighteen years ago)

Not my pic btw.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 9 April 2007 00:59 (eighteen years ago)

expensive, too, as i recall.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 9 April 2007 04:20 (eighteen years ago)

holy shit, rolling metal was off the "new answers" page!

i finally got around to picking up meaningless leaning mess recently. damn. i don't know how much bone awl i really need anymore (they seem to have found a groove and are content to stick there) but you pretty much can't fuck with this LP.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 09:24 (eighteen years ago)

Five new metal albums that have sounded tolerable or better in my CD changer in the past couple days:

Benevolence
http://cdbaby.com/cd/benevolence

DHG

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (hated them previously, but they really do sound like the Art Bears this time, at least some of the time!)

Stretcher-Bearer
http://cdbaby.com/cd/stretcherbearer

Suspyre

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 12:04 (eighteen years ago)

(The real problem, though, is that unlistened-to metal CDs I get in the mail have really starting to pile up now....Scott, how do you find the time??)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 12:06 (eighteen years ago)

i make time! though it helps that i MOSTLY get metal in the mail by this point. i don't get 400 country CDs in the mail every week like you. most non-metal stuff i get is obviously bad and i can ignore it pretty fast. yesterday was a weird batch though. i got that Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album (I didn't like that last one either, but i'll give this one a chance), new album by Fridge (dude from Four Tet), new Icarus Line album (i think my pal Don from Ink & Dagger is still in this band), new Locust album, and a very funny/cool album by Tony Naima & The Bitters where they do acoustic covers of Dismember songs in various styles. It's actually better than just a "ha ha" novelty record.

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/msiart/large/0000639/0000639436.jpg

― scott seward, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 13:19 (eighteen years ago)

I love the Art Bears / Henry Cow etc, and I've never seen the attraction of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Sounds like the meeting point between Rock In Opposition and nu-metal (early 00's vintage) to me. Is the new one any better or different?

― Matt #2, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

i finally got around to picking up meaningless leaning mess recently. damn. i don't know how much bone awl i really need anymore (they seem to have found a groove and are content to stick there) but you pretty much can't fuck with this LP

this sound tempting, i'm very curious but also hesitant cos there havent been too many bone awl releases i've deemed worthy picking up. this one is THE one?

― rizzx, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

soundsssss

― rizzx, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

Part Chimp is so very full moon 5ive oclock shadow xxxpress to a Romilar day in London. As noted in my silly review, this is hardly the best track, which is the PaperThinWalls catch sometimes, when the label has already picked the track for inspection, but will give yall a hairy enough taste: http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/response?id=650

― dow, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

forgot, sorry: http://www.paperthinwalls.com/SingleFile/item?id=650

― dow, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that works!

― dow, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 16:01 (eighteen years ago)

this sound tempting, i'm very curious but also hesitant cos there havent been too many bone awl releases i've deemed worthy picking up. this one is THE one?

well, you know, if you haven't dug any of the earlier stuff you probably won't be converted. and if you actually see a copy of it, i might go with the bog bodies/(some other tape) LP, but that's rarer than hen's teeth already.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

i've heard bog bodies and liked it but i love the bone awl/the rita split a LOT more. and that doesnt sound like Bone Awl all that much right?

― rizzx, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

actually haven't heard the one with the rita! suppose i should get on that.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

Got the new One-Man Army and the Undead Quartet CD in the mail today. Liked the last one somewhat, didn't really have much interest in the new one until I saw that there is a cover of "He's Back (the Man behind the Mask)" on it. Now I'm really intrigued.

This album was waiting for me when I got back tonight...I didn't really like the last one by them, but skimming this thread I noticed Jeff's comments, and hastily slammed this CD in the player to hear the Cooper cover. It's not too bad, the song holds up decently. It was such a dumb song (not to mention patently un-metal, being nearly 100% synths), but I have fond memories of it because it was the one tune that kickstarted a major obsession with Coop's 70s albums that same year.

Back to the new Machine Head CD for a sec, I'm officially sold. That sucker is monumental.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 07:47 (eighteen years ago)

hah! i just found me a copy of bog bodies for € 4,- ! i think thats a bargain!

― rizzx, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 08:15 (eighteen years ago)

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (hated them previously, but they really do sound like the Art Bears this time, at least some of the time!)

I loved the last two albums, and what I've heard of the new one sounds pretty exciting, if perhaps not as immediate. interesting to hear that the new record is at least slightly appealing to their former adversaries...

― m the g, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

Five new metal albums that sounded tolerable or better in my CD changer last night and this morning:

Circle of Power

Geist
http://cdbaby.com/cd/geistmusic

Icarus Line

Moonsorrow

Pissed Jeans

Circle of Power are apparently not to be confused with Circus of Power (who they sound nothing like), I finally figured out. I like when the singer goes into those Sir Lord Baltimore style high screeches.

Also, the band I called DHG yesterday is apparently also called Dodheimsgard. I like when their black metal guitar stuff veers off into unexpected twists and turns, which happens often. Also, the songs are short. (With Moonsorrow, on the other hand, I like that the songs are not short. Go figure, huh?)

I haven't had time to really figure out how much I like any of these, or the ones I namedropped yesterday, much less what else I like about them, for the most part. But I think I can definitely say that I don't hate them. At least not yet. (A few are still likely to fall by the wayside, though.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 11:58 (eighteen years ago)

oh yeah, that new pissed jeans is killer.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:11 (eighteen years ago)

On first listenings it doesn't strike me as as much fun as the first PJs one or the single I heard by them from a year or two ago, but I might be wrong. I'm pretty sure there was a long droning track (#9 maybe?) I liked, though. On the other hand, since it was in the CD changer with everything else, it's possible that track was on a different band's CD.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:43 (eighteen years ago)

OCTAVIA SPERATI: 'Moonlit' Video Posted Online
http://tinyurl.com/3ausnm

― djmartian, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:44 (eighteen years ago)

New Icarus Line? Awesome. I thought they split when one of them joined NIN.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

you know you want one:

"From designer Rachel Boaz-Scott, in celebration of RUHR HUNTER'S 10 year anniversary this year, the new "Moss & Memory" full length album will feature a limited edition, hand made & hand numbered box we like to call "The Den". Using the same unique paper stock as the packaged CD, the box will be foil stamped with the RUHR HUNTER Raven Talon logo (inside & out) & will contain elements of Earth (moss & soil), personally gathered from the rain forest here in the Pacific North West. The packaged disc will be buried within the moss & soil, as other contents will be random & may contain the following: A RUHR HUNTER hand burned Buffalo hide patch, Ocean stones, Crow feathers, Mink bones & teeth, insects, branches & White Birch bark collected from the forests of Maine! "The Den" 10 year anniversary box edition will be limited to 175 copies out of 1000 discs pressed!"

http://www.glassthroatrecordings.com/media/ruhr_moss_den_large.gif

― scott seward, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

Not Dødheimsgard. It's DHG(Since 2000)

And how is meaningless leaning mess different from the earlier stuff? I've only heard By Ropes Through Dirt and Not On Our Feet.

I think.

― MRZBW, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

i still call dhg dodheimsgard. sue me!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:43 (eighteen years ago)

new caina album is coming out on profound lore! i iz excited:

http://www.profoundlorerecords.com//images/stories/mournercover.jpg

"Following up his “Some People Fall” debut (which was preceded by two demo tapes released via Drakkar), where Brignell’s bizarre take on raw uneasy avant-garde black metal, which also dabbled within post-rock and shoegaze, took listeners for quite the trip, “Mourner” will present that much more of a challenging venture to undertake. More experimental, surreal, and uneasy, yet more dreamy, going further into the beyond, “Mourner” is an oppressive and challenging listening experience that we are proud to deliver. Still having certain characteristics of its predecessor, “Mourner” sees Brignell continue to tread disjointed black metal ground, but now plays more with his sound palette by incorporating more sounds of 4AD post-rock, shoegaze, neo-folk, acoustic sing-along, and drone into this diverse mix."

― scott seward, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)

Furze + Pitchfork

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/42152-column-show-no-mercy

― MRZBW, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 16:12 (eighteen years ago)

Apocalyptica DVD, so far, pretty much consists of four dudes sitting and playing cellos with a drummer in the background. I suppose that's what I should have expected, but it isn't nearly as riveting a live performance as the Iron Maiden stage spectacular on the other DVD. I should've realized before I requested the DVD that, while I certainly like them, I only listen to Apocalyptica when I need background music.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

The drummer goes pretty nuts, though, standing up and slamming on the cymbals and such, because ironically enough he's the only one with any freedom of movement.

(And the band looks pretty amusing, as well. It's basically four guys who look like they belong in a Finnish metal band, and then one guy in round sunglasses with a ponytail and a very tasteful outfit who looks like an actual professional cellist)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

New Icarus Line? Awesome. I thought they split when one of them joined NIN.

They're still going but I always thought Aaron North (guy who toured with NIN) was the most interesting part of the band, though I have no idea of what kind of input he had on the songwriting, so I'm dubious. Mind you I never got round to getting the second album so I've got that to look forward to even if this new one isn't any good.

― jim, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I just watched the second half. It's pretty nuts. The shirts come off, they actually stand up, it's cool.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

I only listen to Apocalyptica when I need background music

So you're saying it's like most other decent metal nowadays, basically?

Not that I'm defending Apocalyptica (who I have no intention of ever having any opinion about one way or another).

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

And how is meaningless leaning mess different from the earlier stuff? I've only heard By Ropes Through Dirt and Not On Our Feet.

well it's sort of a ramones situation, isn't it? pretty much the same, but quite good. i do find myself wishing they'd indulge in some of the slower moments they did on their earlier recordings for variation's sake, but it's a kick-ass record nonetheless.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:28 (eighteen years ago)

okay, that Icarus Line album isn't my kind of thing. Neither is that Fridge album if anyone cares.

― scott seward, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:39 (eighteen years ago)

I like Fridge but prefer Four Tet. But neither are metal.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

the fridge album is kinda post-rock. it's not very good. this one, anyway. never heard anything else. still haven't listened to the sleepytime museum album. i'm kinda scared of it.

― scott seward, Thursday, 12 April 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah Fridge was always post-rock.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 12 April 2007 16:24 (eighteen years ago)

I've had insomnia three nights this week, so I'm still having trouble absorbing the deluge, and may well hear it differently once I finally get some consistent sleep back into my brain, but here are yet more new CDs that have been sounding okay to me:

ALPHA JERK
First and fourth songs on EP sound the most Wipers -like so far. Second song seems to be a passable Stooges ripoff. Third may be too Alice in Chains grunge for its own good. Or I could just be wrong.
http://cdbaby.com/cd/alphajerk2

KEKAL
(These guys sound like '90s Voivod so far; cool!)

60 SECOND CRUSH
Bang Tango/Cult/Billy Idol-rooted sleaze-rock from Detroit with tough grooves evolving into hooks and lots of surprisingly excellent guitar solos that always seem to come out of nowhere, like they're a whole new song almost. First song, "Numb," really kicks and is my fave so far. Second, "Suckerpunch," is nice "Raw Power" rip. Sixth song, "Body On Me," repeatedly contains the line "talk dirty to me."
http://cdbaby.com/cd/60secondcrush2

The Geist CD I linked to above continues to be at least marginally tolerable despite a marked System of a Down/Tool influence, undoubtedly because it's sung in German. Said influence still bugs me though.

― xhuxk, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

Some relevant myspace pages of aforementioned acts:

SUSPYRE
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2568977

POWND (erroneously called "Circle of Power" above; apparently that's their album title instead, oops):
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=63775829

MOONSORROW
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=90333323

KEKAL
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=57746737

― xhuxk, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:57 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, phil was right about that Kekal album. very cool and very strange.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:08 (eighteen years ago)

the other album i liked from Open Grave besides the Kekal was the Lengsel album.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:09 (eighteen years ago)

and there was one black metal album from Open Grave where one of the singers kinda sounded like Geddy, but i can't remember what cd it is. i'll play them again and find out. also quite strange.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:11 (eighteen years ago)

Eyehategod tribute album on Emetic is fuckin really good and has sent me off on an EHG binge

― Hans Rott, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

Is the Daath album The Hinderers getting much press? I got it awhile ago, let it sort of drift to the bottom of my promo stack, and pulled it out this morning - it's pretty good. Not as good as, say, the Nox album, but pretty good death/thrash stuff.

Also, package from the Ajna Offensive in yesterday's mail! Gonna listen to the new Watain later, after I finish transcribing an interview with Mr. Lordi.

― unperson, Friday, 13 April 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

Daath has sold 3400 copies in three weeks and got positive reviews from decibel (surprisingly) and Outburn (by which I mean me), but otherwise I haven't really seen much about them. It's definitely a first effort, but I like the Into the Pandemonium-style genre bending.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

Well, Watain's on the back burner since I just downloaded the Blade Runner soundtrack.

― unperson, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:42 (eighteen years ago)

I was real stoked about that Daath album, but the more I listened to it, the more I found to dislike about it.

― novaheat, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:49 (eighteen years ago)

I'll give that Kekal album a listen today, sounds interesting.

Has anyone else been getting into the new one by Trap Them? Killer grind/hardcore/deathnroll, 21 face-shredding minutes. I must have played it five times in a row the first time I listened.

Eyehategod tribute album on Emetic is fuckin really good and has sent me off on an EHG binge

Yeah, it's great, isn't it? They did an amazing job with that project.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:56 (eighteen years ago)

Just got the new Antigama (they're on Relapse now) in today's mail. I liked their last one pretty well, will have to check this out over the weekend.

― unperson, Friday, 13 April 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

Received an interesting review package today: Type O Negative, Lord Belial, and... Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colom Movie Film for Theaters Colon the Soundtrack. Which is actually surprisingly awesome. Some pretty funny/rocking original tracks from Mastodon, Early Man, Unearth, Andrew WK, and 9Pound Hammer. I never thought I would say this, but I actually recommend it.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:03 (eighteen years ago)

(Colon. Dammit.)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

There is one really awful rap track on it, as tends to be the case with a lot of soundtracks, but overall it's pretty freaking metal.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:09 (eighteen years ago)

Am I the only one who doesn't get Type O Negative? The new album does absolutely nothing for me. Save for the title track, which is kind of fun in a Misfits sort of way.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:30 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck expressed his distaste for Dead Again on the first rolling metal thread from this year, I believe. They're one of my favorite bands, but I haven't heard the new one. Maybe I won't like it. Seems doubtful, though.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

Whens the new Earthless out? I don't think i'm gonna hear it before it comes out. Can't believe it's not leaked. I'm gonna buy it anyway(i have the other stuff).

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

Magic press release eight ball says: May 8, in the US at least.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

I'll get it from ATH when they get them in. Hopefully on vinyl.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 13 April 2007 22:37 (eighteen years ago)

i wanna hear the new type o negative album for some reason. world coming down is my fave type o album. that's a great record.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 April 2007 23:13 (eighteen years ago)

This Lord Belial record is... surprisingly enjoyable. As far as black-death hybrid goes, the guitar parts are pretty melodic, and there are even solos that you can describe as "soaring" in a power metal sort of way. The vocalist actually sings at points. Somewhere between Satyricon and Dark Tranquillity, I'd say. I like it!

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 14 April 2007 03:08 (eighteen years ago)

That Geist album ultimately just sounds way too fucking dreary and draggy. God I hate Tool, and all they stand for. Even in German, apparently.

Definitely wound up like Kekal, Moonsorrow, that Alpha Jerk EP, and Suspyre, pretty much in that order. In fact I'd say Kekal's album is up there with Necrodemon and Cruachan among my "real metal" favorities of the year. (Lengsel sounded pretty good the first time through, too. Ensiferum sounded less good the second time through, though maybe I just wasn't in the mood.)

Five gorgeous looking Buffalo reissues in the mail today, wow. Didn't even know they made that many albums!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)

i want five gorgeous looking Buffalo reissues. who put them out? i could even write about them maybe.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 15:53 (eighteen years ago)

new type o negative album

Speaking of dreary and draggy. (I think I only own one album by them at this point -- a comp called Least Worst or something. And it's in storage.)

who put them out?

Aztec Music in Victoria, Australia. (Try pr✧✧✧@aztecmu✧✧✧.n✧✧, Scott. Oldest reissues appear to date to Oct 2005; newest ones from Dec 2006.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

What the hell?? Those words with blank spaces in them sould be "promo", "aztecmusic," and "net".

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

Spent some time with these French people Volt's electro-metal-punk on album on In the Red in the past few days too. Not so special, I don't think. Press bio compares them to Cabaret Voltaire's "Nag Nag Nag" and the Normal's "Warm Leatherette," but to me they just sound the same as those proto-new-wave-revival bands like Octant and Mocket that were coming out of the Northwest a few years ago who seemed kinda interesting at the time but less so once electroclash and the rest of the dumb new wave revival really kicked in. Except maybe with more powerchords. If I'm missing something, let me know.

http://datapunk.propagande.org/volt2.htm

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

did you ever hear the other Volt, chuck? the pigfuck-ish one?

http://decibelmagazine.com/reviews/apr2007/volt.aspx?terms=volt&searchtype=2&fragment=True

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

okay, i shot an e-mail to aztec music. those reissues would be fun to write about if decibel lets me. lots of stoner/doom reviews in decibel. you need to respect yer elders every once in a while.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

Nah, never heard the neo-pigfuck Volt, Scott.

Speaking of neo-pigfuckers, though, the Pissed Jeans singer was pissing me off the other day by convincing me that my kid was watching some lame comedian on youtube in the next room when really the voice was coming out of my own stereo. Sounded very weak. My hopes for the album are plummetting, but I won't give up on it yet. Maybe it'll kick in. So far, Hilary Duff is blowing it out of the water.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

i still have never heard pissed jeans.

hey, so i am writing this thing about folk and metal for that Seattle thing next week-end, anything you want me to add, chuck? i'm up for suggestions. i can quote you.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

Um....Mention Led Zeppelin! (And Jethro Tull!)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

i wish you were going to that seattle thing. that would be fun. maria is coming with me. i get to meet ned. which is a FRIGHTENING thought. goths intimidate me.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, zeppelin will be in there somewhere. tull! yeah, i might have forgotten them.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:15 (eighteen years ago)

And Heart!

If I'd known before yesterday that you were going, Scott, maybe I would have written up an application thing. Maybe next year. (Both Christgau and Lalena beg me to every year, but I am so bogged down with work that I never get motivated to do it.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know what possessed me to go and do something. i am so anti going and doing something. yeah, maybe next year.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:18 (eighteen years ago)

sometimes i have to force myself to do stuff cuz i suddenly remember that i will be dead someday.

i think xgau is doing something at the same time that i am doing my thing so nobody will probably hear my thing. and those two hip-hop dudes that everyone loves are doing something then too. could be that maria is the only one listening.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

Buffalo's definitely not cut from the same cloth as Decibel readers. Be nice if you received a dispensation and snuck them in.

From last year's thread (or "Jeezus, the search functions are really crummy and if you don't know approximately where something is you'll never find it"):

The Buffalo reissues, the ones I have, are on Aztec. That's a small Aussie label run by the old manager of -- the Aztecs! The label issued the Buster Brown LP, too. My favorites are Dead Forever, the debut (great version of Blues Image's "Pay My Dues" -- everyone who covers it does a better version than the originators, why is that?) and Only Want You for Your Body. The latter has a really crass photo of a fat transvestite on a rack. Something to admire for sheer dumb moxy because it was surely a kiss of death and the label, Vertigo, let it out anyway. All complicated by the first song on LP, "I'm a Skirt Lifter, Not a Shirt Raiser" which the singer -- who went into the Count Bishops later -- must've felt necessary seeing the cover was what it was. "Volcanic Rock" is good, too.

Plus Buffalo's singer has a bullwhip, no doubt inspiring an Aussie rock tradition. I saw the Kings of the Sun's singer pull a bullwhip on the audience years ago on one of their few trips to the States.

-- Urnst Kouch (Urnst Kouch), Sunday, 1 October 2006 16:40 (6 months ago)

xhuxk, you'd like Masterplan's MkII. The singer sounds like a poor man's Lou Gramm and the better stuff on it, which is really on, sounds like 80's Foreigner, Boston and other bands of the same ilk. On Candelight, which surprises.

Exsiferum, on same label, is Celtic folk metal with a singer who veers between death metal troll and poorly recorded fast-mumbling Irishman. Should've dispensed with the death-metal-troll stylings but didn't, presumably because then the CD would have only been a third as long.

Vorkuta, from Hungary, I haven't gotten to. And there was something else that was a mix of death metal and 70's hard rock licks but I couldn't read the title (it lacked a promo sheet) since it's in that faux Gothic horror calligraphic style. Vorkuta's cover was similar, but the press release was still in English type.

― Gorge, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:24 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of Tull, the good parts from the Exsiferum sounded like 'em, pseudo-Elizabethan, with flute or a pipe, someone doing an imitation of a mumbling Anderson.

― Gorge, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:28 (eighteen years ago)

I dig Ensiferum. Candlelight is insane. they must put out 3 CDs a week. i just got new ones from Carnal Forge, Octavia Sperati (who sound like the gathering so much at times that its spooky), and Pro-Pain.

Hey, I just read that ken hensley is on that new Therion album! okay, there will definitely be a sentence or three on Uriah Heep/Therion in what i'm writing.

― scott seward, Saturday, 14 April 2007 17:35 (eighteen years ago)

Iced Earth fans: Matt Barlow is singing metal again! Unfortunately, it isn't for Iced Earth. It's for a band called... Pyramaze. Sigh. Sometimes I fucking hate power metal bands.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 14 April 2007 20:27 (eighteen years ago)

Their my space page is here:

http://www.myspace.com/pyramaze

Not... what I would call "good." Shame.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 14 April 2007 23:23 (eighteen years ago)

i get to meet ned. which is a FRIGHTENING thought. goths intimidate me.

Haha Ned's not intimidating IRL(unless you have sideburns)and doesn't dress like a goth.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 15 April 2007 00:11 (eighteen years ago)

i was kidding! i wuv neddy.

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 April 2007 00:26 (eighteen years ago)

What an amazing live band Negura Bunget are. Folky, atmospheric black metal at its best, and with a solemn, spiritual and psychedelic feel to it.

Extremely eccentric instrumentation: seven string guitars, a double neck bass, 3 meter long horn, a strange wooden board they hit with hammers and lots of other traditional stuff. Don't miss these guys if you have the chance.

― no-nonsense, Sunday, 15 April 2007 09:52 (eighteen years ago)

discovery of the weekend: Dekadent [Progressive Black Metal from Slovenia] http://www.dekadent.si/

Dekadent
http://www.myspace.com/dekadentband

"Incredible talent, incredible immediate catch, incredible "charme" and energy, yet full of sorrow and desperation, very evocative and visual. Dekadent is ethereal though pitiless, a diabolic seductive contrast from a musician who doesn't know limits to his inspiration and perfidiously conquers your mind through the perfection of every chord, of every note." Dalia di Giacomo, Gryphonmetal

listen to the track: dissident dream

progressive black metal

part progressive black metal [Enslaved]
part progressive rock [King Crimson, Anathema]
part post-rock [Explosions in the Sky]

complexity, multi-layering, dynamic atmospherics, attention to sound detail, fast and slow elements in the track, slow piano playing mixed in.

the track comes from an album released last year, but they have a second album coming out later this year.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s848124.jpg

― djmartian, Sunday, 15 April 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

Finally got chance to listen to Rwake. Right up my alley. I've been listening to this whenever I haven't been listening to the new Low album. Kinda wish they'd stick to the folky stuff for longer, but I'm so partial to folk metallisms recently. Like the new Grails record, fer instance.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Sunday, 15 April 2007 13:55 (eighteen years ago)

Got to see Conifer, Ocean, Minsk and Rwake last night. All the sets were too short (20-45 minutes), but overall the bands were very solid.

Conifer opened and played a few things from their upcoming release (it was supposed to be available for the show, but they didn't mention the cause of the delay). I like the direction they're moving in - a little more of a groove than on their earlier work, but still kind of arty. Stoner post-rock, maybe? Good, regardless.

Minsk was second, and though the band sounded great (bigger and ballsier than on the album), the vocalist seemed off. Several times he seemed to lose his place and take too long to sing the verses. The band audibly slowed down at one point to try to re-sync with him. Mixed feelings, but the singer's issues didn't detract too much from how lock-tight the other guys were.

Next was Rwake. I haven't been able to get into the album (I'm still struggling with the growling vocal thing), but they were outstanding live. The vocals were a little further back in the mix, and the overall sound was thick and crunching - just enough menace in the madness. They were the highlight of the show, but only barely, as Ocean lapped at their heels (pardon the tidal pun).

Ocean only played one song, but it was 25 minutes of slow-churned doom. The sound was so freakin' heavy in the lower registers it was making my jeans vibrate against my legs. I don't have a good enough stereo to replicate the effect that music has at high volume. Darkly hypnotic.

I'd recommend seeing Rwake if they play anywhere near. They give everything they've got on that stage.

― EZ Snappin, Sunday, 15 April 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

Wow that is a great bill.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 15 April 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

$7 too! First visit to Maine for Minsk and Rwake. Rwake said they'd be touring again this summer, and plan to swing back through my neck of the woods because they loved the place and the people. Small but dedicated fanbase in the Pine Tree state.

― EZ Snappin, Sunday, 15 April 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, I'll finally give Ensiferum a thumbs-up for the jiggy parts. Need to look around for my copy of Masterplan; I'm sure I got that one, but it may well have inadvertently wound up in a box in the hallway. Today I've been blasting Buffalo's Dead Forever and the new American Dog -- the latter's way better than I would have expected; did I just miss the boat on their five or so previous records or what? Damn they rock hard. "Another Day In Paradise" might be the dance song of the year, if you've ever danced to Motorhead. And the song that says that sometimes you eat the pussy and sometimes the pussy eats you has a hot Nugent riff.
Really loving "Beaten, Broken, Etc" so far as well:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/americandog6

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:39 (eighteen years ago)

Things I ordered from Amazon today: Eyehategod's Preaching The End-Time Message and Confederacy Of Ruined Lives, Tackhead's 2006 Sound Crash 2CD compilation and Keith Leblanc's Major Malfunction cause I forgot how much it rules, until digging out my cassette copy this afternoon.

― unperson, Sunday, 15 April 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

Send over the e-mail contact for American Dog. I gave them a good review for you a number of years ago and want to hear the new one.

Ensiferum would have stood out much more had it daringly dumped the death metal troll stuff. Plus, one gets the impression when hearing the Celtic folk metal style that the band's aren't doing it because they like the music but moreso because it's trendy and easy to play reels. Which kind of separates it from Jethro Tull since Ian Anderson actually wrote songs.

― Gorge, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:04 (eighteen years ago)

Ensiferum have been making Viking folk-metal for about 12 years. kind of a long time to be "trendy", eh?

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:36 (eighteen years ago)

It was more of a general observation. I still don't hear any songs although the execution is great. It seemed to me there's an element of story-telling involved, too. I'm sure there must be one or more on the record. You just can't tell what they are. Seems to me I used to have Skyclad CDs that were similar, only occasionally catchy.

― Gorge, Sunday, 15 April 2007 23:56 (eighteen years ago)

Dark Tranquillity played three new songs last night. They sounded right along the lines of their last two records, which is fine by me. Anyone have an advance of this?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 16 April 2007 00:54 (eighteen years ago)

Recommended to people who are bigger Ramones fans than me and like girl singers. As is, still cute and energetic and catchy, if not at all distinctive:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kowalskis2

― xhuxk, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:19 (eighteen years ago)

Robbie Quine's other trans-gendered glam-goth-surf-metal-pop band besides the Barbarellatones (see higher up in thread). Oddly my favorites so far are "Lonely Beach" and "Dreams," the two most beautifully A Flock of Segulls synth-popped tracks I've noticed; the latter gets noisy in a real cool way at the end and the former actually mentions seagulls (at the lonely beach), so they're clearly in on the joke. Also liking "White Surf Trash," "Preying Mantis," "Sex Android" (sex-doll art-glam a la Roxy's "In Every Dream Home a Heartache"), and maybe "Zombie Drag Queen" (whose fetish kitsch is halfway compensated for by a sound that suggests '70s Sparks). "Space Kitty" was on the Barbarellatones' CD in a different version, I thought, but now I don't see it on there, so maybe it also had a different title (there were defintely a couple songs about cats on that one.) Haven't been able to somach "Alice in Fetishland" so far:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/swl

Also liking the new Cheeseburger album so far this morning, though their first album was just an EP and I'm admittedly skeptical about whether they can actually pull off 16 songs. "Do You Remember?" sure does sound more like Urge Overkill than Thin Lizzy to me. (Not an insult; I kinda like Urge Overkill):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=5483523

― xhuxk, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:47 (eighteen years ago)

Stetcher-Bearer, who sounded comforting enough during my insomnia last week, are a lot harder to get through now. Not horrible Muzak, but it bugs me how the vocals are always lost in the mix. Also not convinced they're as "Surrealist Dada Experimental Psychedelic Garage" as their cdbaby page claims.

― xhuxk, Monday, 16 April 2007 12:06 (eighteen years ago)

hey metallers.

I don't know if you remember Powermad, they were a speed/thrash band from Minnesota in the late 80s...got signed to a major so it was kind of a big deal around here...anyway, their myspace says they have a new album coming in 2007...always kinda dug them..

http://www.myspace.com/powermadband

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 16 April 2007 17:53 (eighteen years ago)

I interviewed Powermad at the Morning Call for a five hundred word thing long ago. They were in town to play one of the dives. Trying to recall what the label did to make them stick out -- hmmm, I think it was a video they got David Lynch to produce.

― Gorge, Monday, 16 April 2007 18:58 (eighteen years ago)

They didn't just get a David Lynch video, one of their songs was featured pretty heavily in his movie Wild at Heart. If I remember correctly (I saw the movie a couple years ago at a midnight screening, so my recollection isn't too clear) they actually appear in the film towards the beginning. Unfortunately for them, nobody actually saw Wild at Heart in its original theatrical run, so it wasn't the springboard to superstardom they were hoping for.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 16 April 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

I saw the movie, but didn't like them much (the featured song had a great opening riff, but went rapidly downhill when the vocals started), and the album was pretty weak stuff, as I recall. But I heard it the same week I heard Cowboys From Hell, so...kinda hard to capture my teenaged attention after that.

― unperson, Monday, 16 April 2007 20:41 (eighteen years ago)

Between that and Lost Highway, I've always wondered if Lynch actually likes metal, or more just appreciates its abrasive and unsettling nature. Probably the latter.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 16 April 2007 21:25 (eighteen years ago)

Has anyone else heard the new Bloody Panda album? Spectacular.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 16 April 2007 21:26 (eighteen years ago)

Bloody Panda is great, but got dwarfed by the more-awesome more-fuzzy more-gooey Nadja album that came the same week!

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, 16 April 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, so, what is supposed to be hard rock about Icarus Line again? I remember Frank Kogan liking their debut (maybe even comparing it to GnR maybe? Didn't other people say Jane's Addiction?) (Oh wait, I know...I think Frank said something about them sounding like '90s alt-rock with an '80s L.A. sleaze-metal voice, or something), and I remember that one sounding pretty decent to me at the time (though it's since wound up in some storage space), but the new one is hitting me as weedly college-rock, almost Brit-pop, maybe with a slimier voice, but not enough so I'm caring about any of it. Are there riffs? What am I missing here? (Or maybe the new album's just a major step down?)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 12:33 (eighteen years ago)

so are any of those who heard the new sleepytime album prepared to offer their thoughts...?

― m the g, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

got a finished-art copy of Bloody Panda yesterday, it's gorgeous - that album just stays in the changer for me

listened to sleepytime last night - enjoyed it, doesn't seem like a huge leap or anything

― Hans Rott, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 14:56 (eighteen years ago)

Bloody Panda was in the mailbox this morning - haven't gotten the Sleepytime disc yet, but will be writing it up for PTW when I do.

― unperson, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

(also, I think Bloody Panda ownz all just in terms of sheer atmosphere - absolutely dialed-in at all times, their track on the EHG tribute is also sweet)

― Hans Rott, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 14:59 (eighteen years ago)

Here is what the guy from Powermad said to me about David Lynch: "I thought he would have a rat on his head."

Unfortunately, I no longer recall his name, just the content.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:07 (eighteen years ago)

2nd track on the Sleepytime album is pretty fucking great actually - I have to admit I sometimes find the bombastic art-metal thing overwhelming, which is kinda weird 'cause I listen to loads of over "overwhelming"-type stuff (earlier this month I listened only to Gorgoroth and Darkthrone for three days) (it was awesome btw) but I end up feeling totally ear-exhausted by the midway point of a big art-metal album

― Hans Rott, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:27 (eighteen years ago)

but Carla Kihlstedt's Bjorkisms are fucking insufferable unless you go in for that shit, which I don't

― Hans Rott, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:41 (eighteen years ago)

Bought the new Nine Inch Nails today, but I also bought Black Oak Arkansas' The Definitive Rock Collection (two CDs, 30 songs), so ol' Trent'll have to wait a few hours, I think.

― unperson, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:45 (eighteen years ago)

bjorkisms in general or just kihlstedt's?

― m the g, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:57 (eighteen years ago)

all bjorkisms are unwelcome in this house

― Hans Rott, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 18:42 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the artwork on the Bloody Panda CD is really nicely done. It's been a fun time for me, just digging all the weird metal I've accumulated lately. BP, Dødheimsgard (which is soooo demented, yet ridiculously groovy), Kekal (almost too bizarre for words)...think I'll tackle Sleepytime next.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

"But also like their predecssors, [Sleepytime Gorilla] reject the elitism of the avante-garde in favor of a reckless populism: They are entertainers."

Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them. -- Marilyn Monroe.

Had to hit skip on the first 10-minute thing. Second track made it almost all the way through for having a Meshuggah-like quality. Third track -- spooky pianer and stuff [skip]. Track 4 -- midnight in the bottlecap manufacturing facility, vocals by breathy woman singer and a sing-songy guy.

Needs a sense of humor more than archness and sounding busy. More later but maybe probably not.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

Never really dug Sleepytime. I saw them open for Secret Chiefs 3 last year, and I just couldn't wait for their set to end. Seemed like theatre for theatre's sake without anything to justify the theatrics.

― novaheat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:16 (eighteen years ago)

theatre for theatre's sake without anything to justify the theatrics

that's the impression i've gotten from their two previous albums i tried to hear; not sure why the new one was seeming more stomachable in my cd changer last week....may well have been the insomnia. i've been hesitating the put the thing back in (much less try staying awake to it from beginning to end) since, and gorge's description makes me want to procrastinate even more. but when it eventually happens, we shall see.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

I'm busy working on a PTW write-up for that second track, but I'm not responding all that favorably. Sure, there's some chugga-chugga, but that chick sounds like an American Idol version of Amy Lee from Evanescence, and the guy sounds like a constipated gorilla, and not in a good way. Plus, pick a riff and go with it, so I can better concentrate on the fake opera shit.

― unperson, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:44 (eighteen years ago)

I really like the female Sleepytime singer. Her voice works a lot better than, say, that operatic girl in Unexpect.

Got the new Dark Tranquillity today, and it sounds very good. Stronger than Character (even though it's pretty much a carbon copy), especially in the melody department.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:09 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Dead Again, it occurred to me that Type O Negative have based a significant portion of their catalog on that moment in "Black Sabbath" where the song shifts from low to high gear.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:22 (eighteen years ago)

Scott, you would like this. It's sort of the "Holy crap, I'm still alive" companion piece to World Coming down's "I want to die." Not exactly what you would call a departure for them, but I'm enjoying it. I like the fun punky songs at the beginning, the requisite pretty song in "September Sun," the thoroughly awesome "Halloween in heaven" (which quotes "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," if I'm not mistaken), and "Some Stupid Tomorrow," which totally sounds like Carnivore. Also, the title makes me laugh. The rest of it didn't strike me as very memorable on the first listen, but overall I think it's a damn good record. Which isn't much of a surprise, considering.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 22:04 (eighteen years ago)

The biggest problem, as you can pretty much expect from a Type O Negative record, is their inability to freaking edit. "These Three Things," especially, keeps going long past its suggested expiration date.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to the new Ozzy Osbourne track. I think, at some point shortly after The Blessed Hellride, Zakk Wylde forgot how to write songs and decided that throwing together some half-baked riffs and a generic guitar solo was good enough, which it is not. Also, Ozzy's voice sounds about as heavily processed as your average Britney Spears vocal track. Pretty underwhelming, even considering the diminished expectations for an Ozzy Osbourne record in 2007.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 19 April 2007 03:50 (eighteen years ago)

That Ozzy song is terrible, even worse than his last album. And how much more of Zakk's shtick do we have to put up with? Seriously, he's the most boring guitarist.

The best reaction to the track was on another board, where someone went, "What, are the Donnas writing his songs now?"

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 19 April 2007 04:19 (eighteen years ago)

His work on No More Tears and the first few Black Label Society records was great, but he's seriously lost the path. And the Donnas rock way harder than that single does. Is it just me, or does "I Don't Wanna Stop" cover pretty much the exact same subject matter that his rock single from Down to Earth did?

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 19 April 2007 04:25 (eighteen years ago)

Ozzy clearly needs Geezer Butler or Bob Daisley writing his lyrics, cos on his own, it's more than a bit embarrassing.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:24 (eighteen years ago)

updates:

SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM -- Back in my CD changer, and tolerable so far, though the second track (the one Gorge almost made it through for sounding sorta like Meshuggah and somebody else said they loved) sure isn't -- that stupid voice is unlistenable. I have been liking the jagged (yeah, "arch" -- I like arch sometimes!) instrumental jazz-prog of track 6 "Ossuary" and track 10 "The Widening Eye" though. The songs where the girl sings like Dagmar Krause haven't come up yet, but heck, I like metal and punk singers who sing like Dagmar Krause (see also: the Proletariat, Madder Mortem), so I may well wind up liking more on this album than I hate. (Someday maybe I'll even go back and listen to their previous records, that what's-his-name from Liquid Tapedeck was so fond of...nah, probably not.)

PISSED JEANS -- I'm liking the parts where they don't sing (like, what tracks 7 and 10 evolve into) more than the parts where they do sing, which parts inevitably seem to convince me that the singer has a champagne cork up his rectum (whilst rhythm section follows suit.) They're entertaining, though, when they just let the guitars go and get wacky. In other words, they make noise that is not merely noisy, but fun at the same time, not as common a trick as one might think. Songs, I'm not so sure -- Their earlier EP (mini-LP, maxi-EP, whatever the heck it was) convinced me they could write songs, oddly enough, but that one had a cool lyric sheet (I've got in only on vinyl), so maybe that was cheating. Either way, they're maybe one-tenth as good as Flipper used to be. Which is still not bad, as punk bands in 2007 go, I suppose.

STONECRASH -- Lo-fi low-class quieter-than-it-thinks-it-is Cdbaby bedroom- (or parent's basement-) metal, same subgenre as Lucifer and Savage, cool! From Jersey. Catchy sometimes, too -- My favorite tracks so far are "In Those Eyes" and "Today's Your Day." Not sure yet if they're Christians or not. (Oh yeah, they sent me both CDs, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, both from 2007, but I've only put on Vol. 2 so far):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/stonecrash2

60 SECOND CRUSH -- Geta thumbs up! (See upthread.)

STAGGERCRAWL -- Fugly clunky grimy beat-your-face-in Southern biceps thrash for weightlifters with a bad attitude. Fewer melodies and worse singing than Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, who didn't have enough (or singing good enough.) I dunno, maybe people who give a shit about Pantera will dig it:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/staggercrawl

― xhuxk, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:43 (eighteen years ago)

Ugggh, Sleepytime track 9 "The Greenless Wreath" on now; is that the girl or the guy?? Whichever it is, I can't take this one anymore....completely torpid. (Picks up slightly when the voice shuts up, though.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

youse guys are all harsh on the SGM vox. personally, I love both their voices, particularly carla's, so I'll reserve judgement till I actually hear it. I should have had a copy by now. grrr.

nevertheless, I actually popped in to mention that 'biceps thrash' is the greatest genre name in history.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:03 (eighteen years ago)

track 5 "angle of repose" has the dagmar lady (is that carla?) and she sounds lovely enough but the music is way too slow for way too long but then it gets interesting for a couple minutes but then her voice gets uglier. eight fucking minutes long, and minutes #5 and 6 (or thereabouts) are actually good.

― xhuxk, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

that's the one I've heard. I like it, but it does sound more like a two-foot yard (her other band) tune than an SGM one.

but then I find SGM sneak up on you. I wasn't entirely convinced at first, but something kept drawing me back to them, and then I was totally hooked. there's just so many mesmerising ideas going on in there - at least on the first two albums.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:27 (eighteen years ago)

They're okay. I just wish their music had half the energy and was half as consistently beautiful and meaningful as, I dunno, Paris Hilton's or somebody's. (Completely gratuitous comparison, inspired by Simon Reynolds thread. But also true.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:32 (eighteen years ago)

oh Chuck must you

― Hans Rott, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:41 (eighteen years ago)

fightin' talk!

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:42 (eighteen years ago)

where's the rolling country thread so I can swing in and say "you know the new Montgomery Gentry doesn't thrill me like old Christian Death does"

― Hans Rott, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:43 (eighteen years ago)

The 69 Eyes' remasters made it to BestBuy so I took Motor City Resurrection to the checkout. Dates from '91, an anthology of singles and items made for tribute records. Many covers but the one of Gimme Some Skin kills in the same way my old Bomb one of the Stooges did. Gimme Some Head improves GG Allin's old performance when he was backed by Wayne Kramer, who must have been desparate.

Their originals are decent. Very of the time -- '91 LA stripper rock that didn't know the trainride was over, from Helsinki. Probably will be suspicious of later albums which are said to move toward Goth and which were not spoken favorably of upstream. However, I can recommend this one.

― Gorge, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

I like their Goth albums more than their punk albums. Savage Garden has its moments, but it feels like any number of Swedenrock albums from that time period (1997, I think). Blessed Be and Paris Kills are where they really sort of found their sound, and the hooks came to the forefront.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 20 April 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)

"Angle of Repose" is the one song that got my attention on the SGM disc. Pretty good album, that one.

On a much more exciting note, new Pig Destroyer track "Loathsome" is streaming on their MySpace page, and it's a good'un:

http://www.myspace.com/therealpigdestroyer

― A. Begrand, Friday, 20 April 2007 22:04 (eighteen years ago)

Ugggh, Sleepytime track 9 "The Greenless Wreath" on now; is that the girl or the guy??

The guy, I'm concluding now -- doing a Tom Waits imitation, or something. (I hate Tom Waits.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 21 April 2007 01:16 (eighteen years ago)

And track #12 would appear to be a skit. This album is sinking fast.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 21 April 2007 01:18 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, I meant #11.

Pissed Jeans are going downhill, too. Seriously wondering whether I overrated their first one. What do people think is so great about them again?

― xhuxk, Saturday, 21 April 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

So there's this CD called Guitar Army coming out that's apparently the "soundtrack" for a book that's coming out about John Sinclair and the White Panther Party and so on and so forth. The CD has a couple songs by the Up! ("Just Like An Aborigone," "Free John Now") and one song by the Rationals ("Guitar Army") that I don't otherwise own and I may or may not have never heard before. They would be nice to own, seeing how they basically sound like the MC5 more or less (worse than lots of MC5 songs, but better than some other ones) (and there are also a couple obvious MC5 classics on the soundtrack too), but to listen to the soundtrack you have to put up with all this spoken word documetary interview and/or poetry tedium by Sinlcair and Allen Ginsberg and Bobby Seale and such folks that I don't have the patience to sit through. I guess this is why downloading was invented, right? Anyway, if this was just a few Up! and Rationals songs, it'd be worthwhile, I think.

In other news, I hereby officially give on Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (despite a couple of their tracks being download-worthy as well I guess.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 21 April 2007 15:10 (eighteen years ago)

The CD has a couple songs by the Up!

didn't they only have 2 or 3 songs? i seem to remember their 'album' having about 6 versions of "aborigine".

i'm totally on that book.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 21 April 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

FINALLY heard the Earthless album. Really good. Enjoyed the cover of The Groundhogs - Cherry Red . Which I had heard before on a bootleg live gig I have on mp3.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 21 April 2007 19:51 (eighteen years ago)

Hooray!

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

Laethora's "Clothing for the Dead" remains the metal track of the year in my opinion, it's just so complete - the beat, the barks, the shoutable chorus, the quasi-EVH-skree

― Hans Rott, Saturday, 21 April 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

this weekend's discovery: Tholus

could this be the defining experimental-technical-death-metal album of the year: Tholus - Constant

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s721946.jpg

Tholus:
listen on myspace
http://www.myspace.com/tholus1

Tholus
http://davemurrayonline.com/tholus/album.html

A Martian Sandstorm of Inspired Technical Death Metal

Inside the album “Constant”, Death Metal melodies ignite a Martian landscape obliterated, barren and riddled by a familiarity just outside our sonic sense. Harmonies are bloodied, frightening and upon sunrise - magnificent. Drums, bravely unsaturated by the default of today’s endless blasts explore rhythmic complexity with developed intensity and jazz finesse. Guest soloists imbibe contrasting atmospheres with orbiting guitar ambience descending into explosive leads, Jaco Pastorious–esque bass solos, and gravity crushing vocals. Verily reaching around the glints of Carcass, Death, Frank Zappa and Cannibal Corpse - something half alien has divulged a sound freshly progressive - but neither obnoxious or unmemorable.

Tholus are signed to the Italian Aural Music new niche death metal label: Goregorecords
http://www.auralmusic.com/goregorecords/

The 2007 release was born 3 years overdue with an enormous labour period. Heading the endevour is producer/drummer/vocalist/throat singer Dave Murray (Estradasphere, Deserts Of Traun, Sculptured) accompanied by the intellectual guitar-manship of Wally Scharold and Rob Pumpelley (Mirthkon, Flying Luttenbachers). Rounding out the core group is Aaron Ortiz featured throughout as lead vocalist.

The surrounding mantle left room for guest appearances by lead guitarist Kevin Kmetz (Estradasphere, God Of Shamisen) lead fretless bassist Dan Robbins (Cedar Walton, Red Holloway, Deepak Ram) and auxillary bass harmonies by John MacMurphy.

Upon conception of Constant, Dave Murray had made contact with a long time Tholus inspiration - Richard Hogland (Monuments of Mars, CNN). Hoagland granted the band permission to use his voice throughout the record and inevitably his words further inspired the direction of the album, making the final product a thematic journey of blistering extraterrestrial approved death metal.

Tholus remains in the Bay Area California, promoting, playing and concieving their next work. All the members stay insanely busy playing in many other music groups.

― djmartian, Sunday, 22 April 2007 13:01 (eighteen years ago)

so, i'm still in seattle and i think my metal talk was a resounding success. or at least that's what everyone told me. it felt good to do. i've never spoken in public before. totally cool to be on the same panel as erik davis too, cuz i could listen to him talk all day.

chuck, maybe next year? and maybe we could get kogan to go? mark sinker would have loved that. same here. if you guys went, i might go just for the hell of it. this was the total xgau/marcus conference though. they were the presiding spirits. xgau was seemingly EVERYWHERE throwing in his two cents. you could tell he was digging it.

― scott seward, Sunday, 22 April 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

oh, and if anyone wants to read my final paper, just e-mail me and i'll send you a copy after i get back home:

skot✧✧✧@earthl✧✧✧.n✧✧

mike m. asked if he could have it for a future issue of his yeti magazine. he was nice enough to give me a copy of the latest Yeti and a limited-edition magazine that he made that is so awesome! how metal is that? only 40 copies made.

― scott seward, Sunday, 22 April 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

New band alert:

The Sun of Weakness
http://www.myspace.com/thesunofweakness

debut album due in September

in the vein of NOVEMBRE, A PERFECT CIRCLE, ANATHEMA, KATATONIA, TOOL.

The vocalist has a similar vocal style to Simon Le Bon !

http://www.mykingdommusic.net/news.htm

We welcome THE SUN OF WEAKNESS. The Sun Of Weakness “It feels great to finally have settled in our new home in the fabulous town of My Kingdom Music. We have all been great admirers of some of the long-time residents of this eerie homestead, such as Room With A View and Klimt 1918. It's an honour for us to include the My Kingdom Music label on our art and we're thrilled to work with this company. This marks a real beginning in The Sun Of Weakness history, and we're 101% determined to make it the most glorious one!”

When a band says these words about you, surely you cannot be anything than thank them for the great respect and consideration and hope to do the same releasing their debut album that we can pre-announce as a decadent, liquid, melancholic and full of pathos "Spleen" in the same vein of bands such as NOVEMBRE, A PERFECT CIRCLE, KATATONIA, ANATHEMA, TOOL...

The new album titled "Trompe L'Oeil" has been recorded at the consolidated THE OUTER SOUND STUDIOS by Giuseppe Orlando (Novembre) and the release of the album is announced for September 21st, 2007.

― djmartian, Sunday, 22 April 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)

Liking the new Fintroll album a lot, especially the more hummpa-heavy tracks like "Gryning" and "En Maktig Har." I'd say they definitely fall toward the more songful end of the folk-metal spectrum. (And I just realized "hummpa" sounds like "oompah"!)

Also LOVING this item, from Germany. No wonder Lemmy likes them so much -- they basically sound like Girlschool, even if only the singer's a girl. Sometimes they remind me of Texas Terri, too. Fave cut so far is probably "All Fired Up," with "We Hate," "White Trash," and "Jesus of Cool" up there. "War and Peace Song" is a power ballad -- Cinderella-like, I was thinking at first, until it occured to me that, since the singer's a lady, she's no doubt trying to do Janis Joplin not Tom Keifer, duh. "Torn Apart," the closer, has definite gnu-metal tendencies, but rocks (and yeah, rolls, as their cdbaby page says) enough that I don't mind.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/skewsiskin

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:05 (eighteen years ago)

I wish the new Finntroll had more humppa. All I could think of while listening was how I like Korpiklaani a little better.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:27 (eighteen years ago)

Those two points might actually be true (I'm pretty sure I prefer Korpiklaani myself, and Cruachan as well), but the hummpahs were definitely jumping out at me today. You can never have too many, however.

Dodheimsgard on now. I love how tracks will start out really ugly, then there will be these little binking noises, then open space and dancey beats will start poking out of the black metal mulch and eventually take over -- it almost reminds me of dub reggae, in a weird way. "Apocalypticim" is my pick hit so far. I have a feeling I wouldn't be able to take the whole album in one sitting, but I'm a wuss.

Lots of fun how those non-album 1972 singles tacked on to the end of Buffalo's Dead Forever CD reissue have them turning into Brownsville Station or somebody with pub-rock'n'roll Chuck Berry stuff -easy to hear those at the roots of Count Bishops. Average Rock 'n' Roller in the changer now.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 April 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

I tried the new Furze disc today; it did nothing for me.

― unperson, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:05 (eighteen years ago)

xp ditto Dave Tice's solo single "Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller" tacked on to Average Rock 'n' Roller very blatantly latches onto the glam-rock '50s revival trend (which AC/DC no doubt had connections to too, at least via Slade or whoever.)

A question for Scott or whoever on folk/forest/ polka/hummpah/oompah/Celtic/jig-metal, related to a remark George made here a few days ago: is it suddenly a "trend"? Scads of it seems to be coming out lately, whereas as recently as a couple years ago it seemed few and far between, but maybe it's always been there and it's only now hitting our shores? I'm really curious. In general, it's probably my favorite direction "extreme" metal is taking lately. But I feel I need a history lesson.

― xhuxk, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:24 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck -- it's pretty easy to find Skew Siskin's self-titled released that came out some time in the 90s in CD bargain bins. I recommend it. Some rocking tunes. Also, Scott could probably speak to this better than I could, but it does seem like the whole folk metal thing was more popular in Europe first and started to make its way over here recently. I noticed a bunch of it when I worked at my college radio station, mostly through smaller labels, but it does seem to have picked up some steam.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:36 (eighteen years ago)

I feel I need a history lesson.

It's just sort of becoming noticeable this year and last because the bands have on-the-ball publicists now, or something. I mean, the new Cruachan album is their third, or fourth, I forget. Same with Finntroll, same with Korpiklaani.

― unperson, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

so, i'm still in seattle and i think my metal talk was a resounding success. or at least that's what everyone told me. it felt good to do. i've never spoken in public before.

Ya did good, sir.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:53 (eighteen years ago)

re: history lessons - the neo-folk and pagan folk scenes have always been pretty strong in europe. bands that built on and strayed from the original industrial/neo-folk sounds of death in june, current 93, boyd rice, etc, and euro-underground metal bands picked up on these sounds as well. in the states, the influence of those original neo-folk groups was felt more in the goth underground of acoustic torment. hard as it is top believe now, there was a time when neurosis were one of the few u.s. heavy groups -with a punk/metal background - to pick up where latter-day swans left off. other than the occasional u.s. doom band like morgion or the occasional oddity like maudlin of the well.
but folk-metal, viking folk metal, doom-folk, black metal-related old norse/celtic folk, and metal related side projects of acoustic and semi-classical music has been going strong since the 90's in europe and beyond. viking death metal and nationalistic bm certainly helped to lead to a rise in acoustic musicianship. ulver's kveldssanger is a HUGE influence on one-man bm/funeral doom/neo-folk projects. finntroll themselves are a big influence! and bands, more and more, are losing any skittishness they may have had in the past about incorporating LOTS of traditional music into their sound. and i think increasingly you are hearing WHOLLY successful hybrids in not only bands like korpiklaani and viking death, but in goth metal, funeral doom, and on and on. i think people are getting better at it. and, yeah, it's a trend too. but it has come a long way since german medieval techno-metal bands who sound like rednex. wait, chuck, would have loved that band. wish i could remember their name.
in the u.s. i dig the one-man forest action. and i love neurosis, of course, and agalloch, but there are still very few u.s. bands who come anywhere near to the greatness of any of the euro/nordic bands. traditional ancient folk styles are very much NOT the tradition here for most americans. or most american metal musicians. but things could change. i would love to see a mesh of native american sounds/metal! or even just more latin american/metal hybrids. or john philip sousa/ragtime/metal hybrids! the sky's the limit.

― Maria :D, Monday, 23 April 2007 02:37 (eighteen years ago)

oops, that was me, not maria. didn't know she was signed in.

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 02:39 (eighteen years ago)

there is also a much bigger interest now in prog-rock/folk-rock in metal now than there was a while back. this is not all opeth's doing, but they had a hand in it. and in the states too you can see that growing intersest result in more of an interest in power metal/symphonic metal, genres that generally haven't played well in the states since the days of iron maiden! in the states, people always GOT the quasi-classical/ethereal/folk-rock/dead can dance elements of the european underground. but the stiff and martial germanic paganism stuff just doesn't translate as well here for some reason. other than once a decade phenoms like kraftwerk, trio, and rammstein. which is a pity, but what are ya gonna do. when it did translate it seemed to translate into more noise and industrial related concerns.

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

i would love to see a mesh of native american sounds/metal!

I'm surprised that that hasn't happened yet. Especially where I live, where a third of my province's population is native. Wold touches on the local folklore, but that's about it. I remember that one song Nightwish did that attempted to bring in aboriginal sounds, "Creek Mary's Blood", I think it was...it was a complete disaster.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 23 April 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

in other words, when people in the states heard laibach their response was often along the lines of : "ha ha, they are doing a beatles song." in some parts of europe, the response to hearing laibach was to form a grim and decidedly serious ultra-nationalistic neo-folk group.

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 02:59 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, the one-man forest rangers of north america - be they blsck metal or doom - are definitely incorporating more and more locsl/native lore/sounds into their work. i'm all for it. i love it!

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 03:01 (eighteen years ago)

i'm on a laptop. can't type on these things.

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 03:05 (eighteen years ago)

german medieval techno-metal bands who sound like rednex. wait, chuck, would have loved that band. wish i could remember their name.

In Extremo is the band you're thinking of, I believe. Although I really like the one record Metal Blade put out of theirs in the states.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 03:29 (eighteen years ago)

is it suddenly a "trend"? Scads of it seems to be coming out lately, whereas as recently as a couple years ago it seemed few and far between, but maybe it's always been there and it's only now hitting our shores? I'm really curious. In general, it's probably my favorite direction "extreme" metal is taking lately. But I feel I need a history lesson.

Yes. I'm calling it out as a trend in the sense that it's written about in the miniscule press much more than its raw numbers merit. The appearance of this could APPEAR to change if someone plants a story in one of two major bicoastal newspapers. (The NYT Sunday section is the most likely candidate.) Like -- if you -- pitched a piece, or anyone who had been previously vetted by you in metal, at the Voice.

For example -- my pal, the Gooze, goes to a ridiculous number of under sale metal band shows at dive clubs in PA/NJ. The folk metal "stuff", much as I like some of it, has no cash money audience. Clubs won't book it.

Jethro Tull, on the other hand, still has a big cash money audience.

This ties in with my contention that some metal genres have unhooked completely from real world sales.

They can have their existence described and delimited in fanzines while still being utterly lacking in cash money sales, their records existing primarily as review copies for the specialty press.

Since no one in the specialty press even remotely tries to attach metrics to the subject material they "report" on, it's possible to have any number of bands which exist purely as virtual phenomena, having little or functionally zero actual sales in the US market.

This is further simplified by the fact that the publishing record companies seem to not pay for the recording costs of most of the acts which appearing in 'zines.

― Gorge, Monday, 23 April 2007 08:18 (eighteen years ago)

Native American sounds + metal = the new Tomahawk album Anonymous, which is all versions of uncredited Native songs the guitarist found while researching something or other. He and the drummer recorded these throbby/grindy versions of powwow rhythms, which Mike Patton then grunted and muttered and emoted over. The result is pretty good - certainly better than anything else from Tomahawk, a band I've never cared for.

― unperson, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:39 (eighteen years ago)

New package today. Bloody Panda and Irepress (pronounced ear-press, what the hell?) look promising; Dead City, School for Heroes, and from Autumn to Ashes do not.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

Bloody Panda is ridiculously awesome, I wrote a slavering rave review that should be appearing at PopMatters on Wednesday.

Irepress is pretty good, but like Pelican, sort of in need of a vocalist to push the sound over the top. Dinner music for headbangers.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

Dead City aren't really impressing me. I like how they take a fairly generic meathead hard-core sound and apply an Eyehategod plodding tempo on the first track, but that just kind of makes the song repetitive and not very memorable. Second track picks up the tempo, but that just makes it sound like generic meathead hard-core. Post-rock influences on the third track, and back to the plodding, and again there isn't anything memorable. It gets all epic about seven (!) minutes in, which is pretty cool, but then it turns into a movie sample, which isn't very cool at all. Lyrics are pretty bleak, which makes a nice counterpoint to the Hatebreed "I will prevail by punching you in the face a lot of times" optimistic hardcore, but it isn't enough for me to give it the thumbs up. One of the band members is named Crazy Dave, so maybe I'll give them an extra point for that.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:47 (eighteen years ago)

Damn, that's a lot of thought put into a three song EP that I didn't even like very much.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

i go away for a week and there is nothing but poop in my mailbox!

visions of atlantis album on napalm is poooooooooop. prize country? black betty? watchers? i hate sally? panthers? all pretty poopy. actually , i hate sally wouldn't play in my computer, but it's probably poopy too.

i still haven't listened to the sleepytime gorilla museum album, and you what, i don't really want to! i haven't listened to new locust album either, and i even like the locust.

people on here might dig black betty. sabbath/soundgarden stuff. whatever.

― scott seward, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:47 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, you came back all bitter, Scott. Did Christgau haze you or something??

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:44 (eighteen years ago)

i hate sally wouldn't play in my computer, but it's probably poopy too.

Didn't play in my computer, either. Did play in my wife's. And we both agreed: poop indeed. (I thought the press bio said they had a gal singer though? Maybe I misread it. Sure sounded like a guy to us.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

i'm not bitter at all, jeff! i had a great time. like, one of the best times i've had in a long time. but i want a mailbox fulla metal, not that poopy gunk!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

i haven't listened to new locust album either, and i even like the locust

The new Locust album is pretty rad, when all is said and done.

― novaheat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:18 (eighteen years ago)

Could be worse -- you could have gotten From Autumn to Ashes!

(I've promised myself that I'm going to give that record a fair review. Unless I'm in a bad mood.)

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

i will listen. i've been busy. there's tons of new stuff i need to listen to.

x-post

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

i did get autumn to ashes! twice!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

i think this is the second copy of the panthers album i've gotten too.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:21 (eighteen years ago)

Oh. Well then. I got nothing.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:43 (eighteen years ago)

newer stuff that i still need to give more time to/only played once:

myopia - enter insectmasterplan

odious mortem - cryptic implosion

vorkuta - into the chasms of lunacy

irepress - samus octology

carnal forge - testify for my victims

serenity - words untold & dreams unlived

pantheon i - the wanderer and his shadow

mithras - behind the shadows lie madness

the glasspack - dirty women

throne of katarsis - an eternal dark horizon

the fall of every season - from below

omnium gatherum - stuck here on snakes way

ars diavoli/rebirth of nefast/slidhr demo CD

moat - the sun is destroying us all

that weird ipecac dvd/cd amimation thing

nightrage - a new disease is born

transmission 0 - memory of a dream

metalium - nothing to undo -chapter six-

diskreet - internal rise

kotipelto - serenity

amber asylum - still point

plus all that open grave stuff. all of which i like, but i need to listen more.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:56 (eighteen years ago)

That Amber Asylum is so good. Profound Lore is putting out the new Angelic Process album right away (should get that soon)...the MySpace samples sound gorgeous. Love that melodic noise/drone.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:03 (eighteen years ago)

That Nightrage record is poop. They went from being kick ass death thrash to boring ass metalcore.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:49 (eighteen years ago)

I picked up the new Dimmu Birgir today. I'm sort of glad Nuclear Blast didn't send out promos, as Dimmu is best enjoyed with all the lavish artwork and whatnot they're so good at coming up with. Musically speaking, I just love this stuff, completely overblown, with phenomenal production by the always-great Nordstrom.

Oh, and I don't mind the mirrored lyrics...it's nowhere near as stupid as Manowar's 24-odd pages of runes on their new album, which is probably the funniest/most annoying thing they have ever done.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)

I got the download key for that today, but I'm not sure if I feel comfortable downloading it if I don't have anyone to review it for. Mirrored lyrics, though? Really?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:09 (eighteen years ago)

Heh, yeah, it's silly. Some kid will probably post the deciphered lyrics on metal-archives soon, though.

This album sounds so killer. I sometimes miss this flamboyant aspect of extreme metal, there's not enough of it around, it seems.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:18 (eighteen years ago)

Irepress are quite good. Can't wait to hear that Amber Asylum album.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

Irepress are quite good

Haven't listened yet. I became flustered at the cover and and promo which offered not a clue to its nature. I guess that was on purpose.

I got a CD by Zwezz. The one sheet included a lot of material about you not having to be black metal to be black metal and that most black metallers need a beating from one of the original black metallers. Or am I misreading this? Didn't have time to put it on last night, probably tonight.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:32 (eighteen years ago)

Or is it Zweiz or Zwiez? Zwezz, Zweiz or Zwiez -- perhaps one of those.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

As predicted, I'm not very impressed with the School for Heroes EP. A review I found online calls them post-hardcore, which sounds about right, but if so that means that post-hardcore isn't very interesting. Vocalist runs the whole metalcore gamut, mostly to make up for the fact that there isn't very much going on musically. They do try, throwing in time and tempo changes and different styles and Deftones atmospherics, but the very schizophrenia of their sound keeps the songs from really sticking in your head.

Of course, I might be biased -- I generally don't enjoy listening to hardcore, post- or otherwise.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

(well, I guess modern meathead hardcore. I very much enjoy the 80s sort, and crossover, now that I'm aware that there's a difference)

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:36 (eighteen years ago)

I wonder if the Irepress CD is named after Samus from Metroid? These song titles are really obnoxious. Going to give my voice-recognition conniptions... nobody from Boston should be naming their song so nonsensically.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone heard the new Candlemass album? It's a new singer. The guy from Solitude Aeturnus, who are a very fine band themselves.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:41 (eighteen years ago)

New Pig Destroyer. Holy crap, is it unreal. Jaw-dropping.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

throne of katarsis - an eternal dark horizon

I like this album. It's pretty standard Darkthrone/Burzum-esque stuff, so they're not doing anything particularly new here... but they do what they do pretty well. Some nice acoustic passages and lots of mid-song tempo changes keep it interesting... which is necessary when none of the songs are less than 9 minutes!

I'd like to see this group find a way of setting themselves apart a little bit, because I think they've got some potential. At this point, they're just sort of hampered by being in the also ran category.

I really do like how that acoustic guitar is right up front during the first song, though.

― novaheat, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 07:28 (eighteen years ago)

did anyone else see that ian christe's blog is back? thrash demos and all. yay!

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 09:13 (eighteen years ago)

digging the new album by *The Fall Of Every Season*. one-man norwegian doom and sadness a la olde tyme Katatonia or newe tyme Agalloch.

http://www.myspace.com/thefallofeveryseason

(you know, nothing "new", but i dig those guitar sounds.)

― scott seward, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

great combo waiting in my mailbox yesterday: the new Patrick Wolf album and the new Acid Mothers Temple album! they should totally tour together.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)

I got to hear the upcoming second album by Mammatus, The Coast Explodes. Even more "space rock" than the debut, complete with nature sounds (I distinctly heard sea lions). The first track, "Dragons Of The Deep, Part Three" serves as a nice bridge from the sound of their first album to the second. They're still stoner-style heavy and jammy, but there is even more Hawkwind, and maybe even a touch of King Crimson, on this one.

One distinct minus; the short song "The Changing Wind" pales compared to the Floyd homage "The Outer Rim" that served as the break on the self-titled album. In fact, "The Changing Wind" has a little "Man Man goes Freak Folk" vibe to it, with a weeble-wobble-wooble-weeble-weeble-wooble chant and a high-pitched vocal over sub-Vetiver acoustic noodling. This is also the track with the aforementioned sea lions.

But overall it is a thumbs up, and I expect I'll like it more after repeated listens.

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

I decided to give the new Akercocke a try last night, but try as I might, I can't get into this band. Those cookie monster vocals are too impenetrable. I can handle death vox most other times, but theirs sound self-parodical, sort of like Six Feet Under.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 18:31 (eighteen years ago)

So according to all music, the new Dimmu Borgir is a concept album about "a man who grows up in fear and ignorance and believes in the Christian church, and somehow, after studying for years as a monk, rejects everything and becomes a heretic who runs afoul of the church. In doing so, he understands his fate is at stake." Then they proceed to give it a bad review because the concept has inaccuracies in it. So here's my question: do black metal lyrics actually matter? I mean, they're usually stupid even when you Actually understand what the vocalist is saying. So is that a good reason to mark a record down, or is that something you just have to sort of accept as being as integral a part of the genre as blast beats and tape hiss? (and yes, I know that not all black metal has blast beats and tape hiss, just using them as an example)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 18:48 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I found that review troubling, too. Dumb lyrics can get distracting when trying to review an album (the last Trivium disc, for example), but Jurek seems far too preoccupied with niggling little lyrical details. It's friggin' Dimmu Burger, for crying out loud, it's all part of the shtick, and either you buy into it, or you don't. Me, I get a huge kick out of it all.

I do like his praise for Gothic Kabballah, though.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 19:01 (eighteen years ago)

Wow. Thanks for the Therion recommendation. Gothic Kabbalah is amazing.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Thursday, 26 April 2007 02:26 (eighteen years ago)

Am I the only person that found Gothic Kabbalah to be overstuffed? Because it is, dammit.

I think my dismissal of From Autumn to Ashes may have been a bit hasty, though. I wouldn't call them great by any means, but as far as totally generic metalcore goes, it's pretty well done. The rocking bits work, and the catchy bits are catchy. The clichés wear old around track 7 or so, and I wouldn't actually pay money for it, but it's far better than I was expecting. Way better than Scars of Tomorrow, at any rate.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 26 April 2007 02:35 (eighteen years ago)

[i/]Am I the only person that found Gothic Kabbalah to be overstuffed? Because it is, dammit.[/i]

It's long, but I can't think of any tracks that are really wastes of time. Consistently good all the way through. That's just me.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 26 April 2007 03:59 (eighteen years ago)

i still haven't heard it. but i would like to hear it. i will hear it sometime. the therion. got the angelic process album today on profound lore, but haven't listened yet. sez it's for fans of swans, jesu, neurosis, and godflesh, which is cool, because that is my favorite band!

― scott seward, Thursday, 26 April 2007 04:06 (eighteen years ago)

oh and i like the irepress album pretty much. need to hear it a couple more times i think before it sinks in cuz i'm a little slow.

― scott seward, Thursday, 26 April 2007 04:07 (eighteen years ago)

The new Angelic Process songs on MySpace sounded very, very impressive. Hope the cd arrives before the wekend!

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 26 April 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

― novaheat, Friday, 27 April 2007 01:33 (eighteen years ago)

Angelic Process are pretty good so I'd like to hear the new one.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 27 April 2007 01:39 (eighteen years ago)

Angelic Process are pretty good so I'd like to hear the new one.

Got it today, and personally, I love it. Really unique sound, which is nice, as this stuff can get repetitive when in less capable hands.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 27 April 2007 01:42 (eighteen years ago)

What's the name of the album?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 27 April 2007 01:46 (eighteen years ago)

Weighing Souls With Sand.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 27 April 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

I just got the new Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tomahawk and 3 Inches of Blood, but I haven't had a chance to listen to anything yet. I'm waiting on the new Pig Destroyer, I'm pretty stoked about that. I'm so behind on new stuff this year - I've been so busy with this 'gainful employment' thing.

― chris.steffen, Friday, 27 April 2007 03:12 (eighteen years ago)

Irepress' Samus Octology was finally put in the changer. Hmmm, two guitarists -- one who does the leads and jazz fills laden with Echoplex -- often sounds like Steve Howe. That gives Irepress some Yes-like quality, particularly when the bass playing approaches Chris Squire density. I kept waiting for a Jon Andersen to kick in but, of course, that's not the idea. The down-tuned rhythm guitarist tends to play in the same register. Kept my interest for about two thirds of it, at which point something else intervened. The TV or a computer game?

A comforable instrumental recording but maybe not sticky enough to return to.

― Gorge, Friday, 27 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

have you heard the Earthless album yet, gorge? that's still probably my fave no vocal (for the most part) release this year. unless i'm forgetting something.

― scott seward, Friday, 27 April 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

No, haven't heard it. No promo copy. Sounds interesting. Another thing I haven't quite had the time to listen to this year is something with the weird name, I'm probably getting it wrong, that I seem to recall being mentioned earlier in the year or late last. Teeth of the Lion something or other. Or maybe not.

Want to get to a new Rose Tattoo CD, also. Maybe this weekend.

― Gorge, Friday, 27 April 2007 19:01 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, Scott, didn't you find some trove of homemade trove of records by a group called V-O-G, or something like that, about a year ago. Seems to me I may have seen that recently.

― Gorge, Friday, 27 April 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

i think you are thinking of my big HEAVY THE WORLD score:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=35897

i have since bought two more HEAVY THE WORLD albums, including a live album they put out that is simply the taped broadcast of a HAWAIIAN RADIO SHOW!!! Those dudes rule. Still need their triple album debut.

― scott seward, Saturday, 28 April 2007 14:47 (eighteen years ago)

So, in other news, got the five BUFFALO reissues yesterday from Aztec in Australia and immediately got the go ahead from Decibel hq to write them all up for the july issue. Rock!

― scott seward, Saturday, 28 April 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)

Nice! I was listening to Dead Forever just the other day. They're not my favorite semi-forgotten early 70s sludge-blooze band (I think I like Josefus better), but they're pretty good.

I got the new Despised Icon and two copies of the new Six Feet Under in today's mail. I guess I'll give DI another chance - they seemed too Dillinger-damaged on the last disc, but maybe they've grown up a little. The SFU album, though, I couldn't possibly care less about.

― unperson, Saturday, 28 April 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

I need to get a go-ahead from Decibel HQ. Guess I should work on that.

― chris.steffen, Saturday, 28 April 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)

So my weekend so far, with the exception of late black country singer Big Al Downing's new XM Radio Live album, has consisted entirely of rock'n'rolling hard pop (= powerpop with actual power) and a few noisy new releases on the Load label out of noisy Providence, whose mailings usually just annoy me, but the one this week seemed to have way more potential than usual. Haven't decided yet about the Silver Daggers (jagged high-register post-post-post-Minutemen/Big Flame/whoever artpunk in a style that the press bio likens to Dog Faced Hermans who I don't think I've ever actually heard; they may or may not have actual songs, though sadly I'm leaning toward being convinced of the latter) or Air Conditioning (noisegazers who seem pleasant enough in the background though not especially memorable yet and I'm also not convinced they're even better than Pissed Jeans as I believe somebody said on the Pissed Jeans threa--and Pissed Jeans as I've previously established aren't half as great as people pretend in the first plac--but this is at least okay), but the one I definitely like for sure is the frequently ubiquitous Carlos Giffoni's (latest?) trio Monotract -- especially the Pop Group jungle drum rumbling into noise-guitar riot grrrl harangue of "Muddy Thunder" and the Public Image Ltd dub into Confusion is Sex Sonic Youth drone of "The Ballad of Lechor"; less convinced by the trip-hoppy introverted little girl voice in "Under My Arm," but the rest sounds okay so far. Even rarer, the songs actually seem like actual songs, and it's likely my noise record of the year so far. (Though track #4 on the Air Conditioning is soundscraping the room nicely right now with rumbly drums of its own, so that's a good thing too, plus naming themselves after such an amorphous household appliance is very appropriate.)

But I've been making a point of putting only one Loudnoise album in the changer at a time, which when Al Downing is subtracted leaves THREE hard pop albums at a time. Right now those would be:

ROBERT JAMES -- 9-song mini-album/maxi-EP by long-haired Vancouverite who mentions Alex Chilton in one (more rocking than Big Star) song wherein his sister brings her home, but whose own overall sound is actually closer to Rick Springfield/Eddie Money/Babys (and maybe pre-solo Billy Squier from Piper and/or Sidewinders days, or am I just saying that 'cause he looks like Billy?) Favorite tracks so far are probably "I Ain't Looking For Love," "The Rover," and "It It Love"; "Serious Strains" is slightly more twee or British or something. He sent me two of his earlier CDs too, which I haven't got to yet, but here's this one:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/robertjames2

POISON -- New all-covers album, Poison'd!, clearly positions them as the powerpop band smart people knew they were all along; bands on tracklist go Sweet Bowie Alice Petty Marshall Tucker Romantics Stones Cars Kiss Who Jim Croce Loggins & Messina Grand Funk, a few of which were previously released. Favorites so far are "Little Willy" (by the Sweet, who were also recently covered by the Sirens who also covered Poison) and Petty's "I Need To Know." "Squeeze Box" is better than the Who's original and also probably better than the polka version by Lynn Marie and the Boxhounds last year.

GORE GORE GIRLS -- On Bloodshot. Includes six of the seven songs from their self-released 7x4 EP from two years ago, but with a new bassplayer (the previous one, Jen Pirch, was working for a crystalware company in Ann Arbor last time I heard -- doing graphic design, I think). Anyway, needless to say, the album totally rocks, like their albums always do. Especially loving "Fox in a Box" and the EP repeat "All Grown Up" at this point in time.

Fellow hard-poppers Black Tie Revue, on Gearhead, aren't in my changer now, but were sounding good when they were in there last night. Bio compared them to the Records, etc, which seems to make sense.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 18:04 (eighteen years ago)

Robert James probably has lots of Vancouver in his sound too, come to think of it (duh): as in Streetheart, early Loverboy, "Cuts Like a Knife" era Bryan Adams, maybe Nick Gilder (and maybe some non-Vancouver Canuckness a la Prism.) Good for him!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 18:08 (eighteen years ago)

oh yeah, judge for yourself othewise:

silver daggers
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=7708990

montract
[Removed Illegal Link]

Can't find a myspace for Air Conditioning (whose track #2 is sounding typically good in the background right now, fuzzed-over early Sonic Youth voices and all. So yeah, maybe better than the Pissed Jeans after all. I'll decide eventually.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 18:17 (eighteen years ago)

Fuckers. Here:

monotract
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=84406031

gore gore girls
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=5769325

(Oh yeah, "Where Evil Grows" -- apparently written by Terry Jacks? Sounds familiar; was it a hit once? -- might be their most metal track ever, or at least their most proto-proto-proto-proto-goth.)

black tie revue
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=4441564

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 18:18 (eighteen years ago)

"Where Evil Grows" is great, but most proto-goth Poppy Family/Terry Jacks song would be the god-like "There's No Blood In Bone".

― scott seward, Saturday, 28 April 2007 18:23 (eighteen years ago)

I'd actually say Black Tie Revue (who are from Pittsburgh apparently, and who I like a lot, especially the first, second and six songs so far on their commendably only ten-song album) are closer to the Rubinoos than the Records. And definitely worth sharing recent-powerpop shelf space w/ FM Knives, Exploding Hearts, Clorox Girls.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 21:59 (eighteen years ago)

(Though maybe less twerpy than the Rubinoos, but still twerpier than, say, the Vibrators? But with Beach Boys harmonies and gang shouts. And riffs. So: Starjets, maybe? First Undertones album? Paul Collins's Beat, from L.A.? Somewhere in there.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 28 April 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

Also, speaking of hard pop (and this band's more metal probably than most of those previous bands), very cool to get a copy of Killola's "Barrel of Donkeys"/"I Don't Know Who" in the mail on 7-inch (UK import) vinyl this week, even if both tracks were on their EP last year. What I wrote about them on MTV Urge then is on one of these pages I think:

http://www.myspace.com/killola

http://cdbaby.com/cd/killola

http://www.killola.com/

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 00:30 (eighteen years ago)

Rose Tattoo's new Blood Brothers is volcanic. Peter Wells, slide player, died but picked his replacement -- specifically not to sound exactly like him -- but who does give the Tatts a bootheel. Upholds the tradition and adds some. It's a much better album than Pain, the last, which was just OK. When Angry Andersen gets all Bruce Springsteen it's, as with Pain, it's not as good when he spends the time simply biting the neck out of his enemies, which is what he's back to now.

"Black Eyed Bruiser" is a great lead off. "Creeper" fits in with "Astra Wally" and "The Butcher & Fast Eddy" shaggy dog stories of crumbums.

Much of the record moves subtly into Led Zep territory more than Tatt's usual tendency toward steroidal AC/DC. It's Andersen's heaviest record. Blood Brothers, vocal wise, is also accidentally the best Bad Company LP since the first. As is required, the rhythm section kills.

Of course, Scott already knows Pete Wells was in Buffalo. So there's an arch for to put into Decibel. Buffalo to Rose Tattoo.

Now I'm listening to The Smithereens doing the first Beatles album, a record that inspired multitudes of hard rockers. Dig the handclaps and rockaboogie.

― Gorge, Sunday, 29 April 2007 07:24 (eighteen years ago)

I need to get that Rose Tattoo album, obviously.

And George, you should check out that Robert James link I posted -- right up your alley, I'd expect; kinda reminds me of that guy Chris Ryan who did that EP with "East Coast Liner" a few years back.

Decided Black Tie Revue are more Rubinoos-twerpy than stated above, and definitely closer to Rubinoos than to Records, Only Ones or Raspberries (who they're all compared to on their press bio.) Maybe some non-hardcore early '80s LA punks I'm forgetting in their toonful-oonful pop-rock, too (Weirdos? somebody like that), at least when they balance out the sweetness with more punchiness in their best tracks "Red Everywhere," "I'm So Sure," "There's Nothing Wrong With Veronica," and "Vegas Sticks." Very slight (and short: 28 minute) record, but worth keeping an eye out for promos in the three-dollar bin six months from now.

Meanwhile, "real" metal is piling up, including some CDs I've given passing ear-glances to before (and maybe it sounded okay and I said so at the time), but not absorbed - Azalea City Penis Club, Benevolence, Dark Tranquility, Fintroll, Kotipelto, Lengsel, Powned, Serenity, Stonecrash, Visions of Atlantis, whew...Maybe I'll get to some of it today.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 12:57 (eighteen years ago)

Also officially hereby giving up on Silver Daggers' stick-up-the-butt funkless songless punk-funk revivalism; I dunno, maybe it would've been halfway intriguing in 1985, but even then Big Flame and the Nightingales et. al. would've blown them out of the water. (Actually, come to think of it, dance-oriented new wave revivals have become so big and boring across the indie board these past few years it's kinda weird to see Load lowering themselves to such crassness. Which isn't to say this still doesn't beat most of what Load seems to put out.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 13:10 (eighteen years ago)

Visions Of Atlantis - BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Lengsel - YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

― scott seward, Sunday, 29 April 2007 14:20 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Visions of Atlantis are sounding extremely sub-Queensryche (in a very bleh way) right now. So they're off the list. Soon I'll try Lengsel again.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)

And Serenity are pretty shitty too, it turns out.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that second Robert James thing ain't bad. When he rocks out, I like "I Ain't Looking For Love," "The Rover," and "Sweat." When he's writing pop tunes, like the one that was supposed to be for a Pepsi commercial until people actually listened to the lyrics, "Serious Strains," not so much. Definitely coming out of the meat-and-potatoes Canadian poppy hard rock ethic. Sounds a lot like Teaze. Sorta Chris Ryan-y...older, I guess.

Actually, Rose Tattoo's songwriting seems to have improved somewhat for Blood Brothers. Usually, they always got by on execution and Andersen's pain-is-my-constant-companion ideology. I still remember the song from the last album about being a union man. Sheesh. It's a lot more convincing when he's singing about being a petty street criminal or a pawer of women.

― Gorge, Sunday, 29 April 2007 18:47 (eighteen years ago)

Kotipelto (whose easy-to-miss Candlelight advance CD has been sitting around here for more than a month) are pretty catchy! Non-hard-to-take only-slightly-operatic-vocaled Finnish power metal (press release compares them to Helloween) with actual riffs, sometimes (especially in track #9, whatever it's called, which is extremely rousing) almost verging on straightforward hard rock, other times (track #4) leaning toward AOR, and with a couple obligatory power ballads tossed in. Nice!

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=75234308

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

Finally gave in and picked up the new Shadows Fall for five bucks. I'm seven tracks in. I think the word I'm looking for is "underwhelming."

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 29 April 2007 21:54 (eighteen years ago)

xp Wow, Kotipelto's track # 8 is catchy too, with Jon Lord/Ken Hensley style organ parts, no less!

Checked the press release; titles of my two faves:
#8: "Mr. Know It All"
#9: "Dreams and Reality"

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 22:00 (eighteen years ago)

(Press release also likens them to Stratovarius, Gamma Ray, Kamelot, Symphony X, Blind Guardian, and Axel Rudy Pell, most of whom I've never heard, and the couple of whom I've heard I have no memory of.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 29 April 2007 22:01 (eighteen years ago)

I believe Kotipelto is the solo project of Stratovarius's singer. I remember hearing one of their previous CDs, and thinking it was pretty listenable, if nothing spectacular.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 29 April 2007 22:25 (eighteen years ago)

The artwork for the Shadows Fall disc is one of the most off-putting covers I've seen in a while. Just plain ugly. That band has been on the verge of knocking one out of the park for quite some time now, but it has yet to happen. They're starting to go from being young phenoms to chronic underachievers.

I should give the Koltipelto a shot...I haven't liked any of Stratovarius's stuff, but the last few posts have got me curious now.

That new Watain album sounds pretty good.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 29 April 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

i always forget which new power metal albums i like and which ones i don't like. i always like some of them. i should make a list.

― scott seward, Sunday, 29 April 2007 23:03 (eighteen years ago)

Re: Koltipelto...I like! Like Firewind, heavily indebted to old school melodic metal. Axel Rudi Pell is a good comparison.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 29 April 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, you have to wonder how they let that painting get through... I don't know a single person that even remotely likes it. I really enjoyed The War Within, but this one really feels like a regression. They aren't really bringing anything new to the table, and the songs are a definite step down. I mean, the new Killswitch Engage wasn't exactly a departure, but it had some great tunes. Maybe it will grow on me, but all of their previous albums have grabbed me right off the bat, so I'm doubtful.

(By the way -- great article on Dio Sabbath, Adrien.)

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 29 April 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks!

Actually, it's weird with Shadows Fall, they do their thing well, and Fair is a strong screamer/singer, but I always have a hard time remembering how their songs go. I play "The Light That Blinds" regularly on Guitar Hero, yet I can't hum it to you if you asked me. Compare that with the last All That Remains album, which had melodic hooks up the wazoo.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 01:23 (eighteen years ago)

I got my seven-year-old nephew a picture of [Removed Illegal Link] with the members of Behemoth tonight.

― unperson, Monday, 30 April 2007 01:35 (eighteen years ago)

a picture of WHAT?!?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 30 April 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

The Art of Balance probably has their catchiest songs. Plus, a Pink Floyd cover!

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 02:42 (eighteen years ago)

SF does great covers, that's for sure. LOVED the Dangerous Toys and the Only Living Witness covers on that odds & sods CD last year.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 02:50 (eighteen years ago)

(And I will compare it with the last All That Remains album! I'm going to be reviewing it for a website that had a bit of a backlog.)

I greatly enjoyed the odds and sods CD. Liked it a lot more than a lot of proper records that came out last year, that's for sure. I don't know, they've always been catchy to me. They're one of those bands where I can understand the criticisms of their work, but when I actually hear the music, it locks me right in. With the exception of the new album, of course (so far, at least).

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 02:53 (eighteen years ago)

the relapse streaming player is doing a number on me. any time i'm trying to turn pig destroyer down to acceptable workplace levels, it slides to mute. when i try to fix it i'm back up at 11. owie. but what i've managed to hear sounds pretty nice.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Monday, 30 April 2007 11:05 (eighteen years ago)

Insomnia again last night, fuck. (One hour of sleep -- which is increasingly common. Happened twice last week, too. If anybody knows a remedy, tell me.) Lengsel CD on this morning. Sounds good.

― xhuxk, Monday, 30 April 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

you could try melatonin. or calms forte. there is lots of herbal stuff. or go to a doctor and get something heavy.

― scott seward, Monday, 30 April 2007 12:29 (eighteen years ago)

Fuck - illegal link. Well, my 7-year-old nephew's class is doing the Flat Stanley project, where each kid mails a relative or friend of the family a little cutout of Flat Stanley that the relative or friend is then supposed to take around their hometown or local area and photograph, sending the whole package (Stanley + pix) back for the class to enjoy. So I took Stanley to Irving Plaza last night and got a picture of him with the members of Behemoth, who were somewhat bemused. I was really hoping Nergal would wear the mask, but he didn't have it with him on this tour, apparently. Also got the kid a Behemoth T-shirt.

― unperson, Monday, 30 April 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

heh! that was worth the wait.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 30 April 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)

I know Flat Stanley! The school that my mom used to teach at did that. I don't think anybody ever brought in anything as cool as Flat Stanley with behemoth. You should post a picture!

Meanwhile, continuing on the Shadows Fall thing, I posted this on another message board before I had heard the new record, and I think it stands even more so now: I think their biggest problem is that they can't commit to being either a metalcore band or a thrash band. Their roots are obviously in metalcore, but they really really really want to be a thrash band, and they can't quite make that final step, and the songs suffer for it. If they went for straight thrash, they would be amazing, and if they want for metalcore they be really good, but they don't commit to either.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 17:53 (eighteen years ago)

Well, this week got off to a blazing start, as I was most surprised to find the new 3 Inches of Blood waiting for me today. Needless to say, this thing is all kinds of awesome. These guys are challenging Wolf for the title of best old-school metal band around...they really turn up the Mercyful Fate influence on this disc.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 21:19 (eighteen years ago)

I have the new 3IOB, but I haven't checked it out yet. I didn't dig the last one too much, so we'll see if this does anything for me.

Finally listened to the new Tomahawk...goodbye, songs. It might as well be a Fantomas record.

― chris.steffen, Monday, 30 April 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

Joey Jordison produced the 3IOB, and it's definitely a fuller, more punchy sound than the last one. It's great fun. It even reminds me of the first Metal Church album in places.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 21:56 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, you guys were right, the new Earthless album is really good. Instrumental metal that actually holds my interest.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 22:08 (eighteen years ago)

I had the first 3 Inches of Blood album, but I honestly couldn't stand the vocalist. He any better this time around?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

Also, if you dig that whole throwback old-school metal thing, you should check out Rich Man's War... Poor Man's Fight by Herod. Great stuff. Pretty much a tribute album to the 80s power metal records in their basement.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 22:12 (eighteen years ago)

I had the first 3 Inches of Blood album, but I honestly couldn't stand the vocalist. He any better this time around?

Do you mean the screamer or the singer? Both of them sound just the same, really. But the way they swap lines works well, in my opinion. Neither guy sounds too overbearing.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 30 April 2007 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

I think it was the King Diamond guy. And normally I'm cool with falsetto, but it was a bit much.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 30 April 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

I have that 3IOB, too. Will listen tomorrow. Today it's been all about salsa. Also up for tomorrow: Eyehategod's Preaching The End-Time Message, which just came in the mail (I ordered it last week).

― unperson, Monday, 30 April 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

Hey could whichever one of you is the huge Ulver fan head to the "Ask Geir" thread and recommend him the most accessible/melodic/least offensive to Geir Ulver disc? Or any other ultra-melodic Black Metal/ambient stuff. We have to get him In League...

― NYCNative, Monday, 30 April 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

i've tried with geir. it's pointless. he isn't gonna listen to anything unless he really wants to. i tried really hard to get him to buy the prog opeth album and he wouldn't go near it cuz all he knew was that they were a metal band. same with katatonia. same with ulver.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:07 (eighteen years ago)

Well, I did get him to post his Top Ten metal albums of all time and he admitted he listened to (and hated) Dimmu and Satyricon... Maybe create a Geir Death Metal Mixtape? :)

― NYCNative, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:09 (eighteen years ago)

screw geir. i've got nothing against him, but trying to get him to listen to stuff you think he would like is pointless. his brain is way too strange.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:14 (eighteen years ago)

His top 10 metal albums consisted of like Def Leppard, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Rush. I didn't even get into black metal until very recently, and I LOVE heavy metal. I don't think you're going to manage it with him, dude.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 00:22 (eighteen years ago)

Some ilxors have been arguing with Geir for 10 years. You can't change his opinions once they are set.
Still it's nice to see someone trying to engage with him rather than giving him stick, but it still won't work.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 01:10 (eighteen years ago)

Insomnia: Ambien worked. At least for one night.

Flat Stanley: My own neice's class had to make their own "flat" people a couple years ago. So Flat Alex had Thanksgiving dinner with us and played Balderdash afterwards, then rode the subway, after visiting Hawaii. Then she flew to Texas, where she got lost in the mail then had to be reconstructed. (I forget what that conisted of, but it worked.)

Kotipelto: I wound up liking even more of this than I expected to. It's just so tuneful -- the guitars, the singing, everything. After track # 8 and 9, my favorites are probably # 1 (fast as a shark with old school operatics at the start at least as much Heep as Maiden), # 2 (a riff that starts out like "Round and Round" by Ratt then at least turns into Scorpions or somebody with comprehensible words that say "sleep well my baby I'll be back someday" or something like that), and # 5 (another real catchy riff, with weedly parts). But even the ballads are often fairly gorgeous and/or anthemic.

THREE INCHES OF BLOOD -- Didn't even make it through half of this thing. I think one song struck me as vaguely okay; the rest just seemed oppressive, and yeah -- probably the singer's fault.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

(Or the singers' fault, plural.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

Ambien got me really freaking high the one time I used it. Only time I've ever been high. Not a particularly pleasant experience. I'd be careful with that stuff, Chuck. It has all sorts of nasty associated with it. As do 3 Inches of Blood!

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:40 (eighteen years ago)

Personally, I can't stop playing the 3IOB. There's an energy to it that we don't get from other frilly-sleeved fantasy metal bands these days. And maybe it's just me, but I really get a huge kick out of those high-pitched screamers...the last Into Eternity is another example of that.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:53 (eighteen years ago)

Ambien is a gift from god.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 13:28 (eighteen years ago)

I can't believe Slayer is touring with Marylin Manson this summer. I think I just saw a pig fly outside my office window.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

For some reason I've always avoided Rainbow in the past, maybe it was the name. But after listening to Dio's anthology at a friend's, I went out and picked up that Live in Munich 1977 disc and fuck... is that thing pretty great.

Also, I picked up the self-title Accept on vinyl for dirt cheap, Udo cracks me up on some of those songs.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

Got the Sabbath-with-Dio live thing yesterday, and it's pretty great but it really highlights what a totally different worldview he brought to the group than they had with Ozzy. Blog post on that subject coming maybe today, but definitely soon.

Listening to Pissed Jeans right now. Don't like it much. Reminds me of Oxbow a little ("Scrapbooking"), of Unsane a lot (first two or three songs), but never sounds original or interesting.

― unperson, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

Popped PJ in favor of Hellyeah. This kinda sucks, too, but I have enough residual Mudvayne love (no, really - their second album was fucking great) that I'll probably listen to the whole thing.

― unperson, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

Unperson-could you provide a link to your blog when you post the Sabbath thing? Much appreciated. I got that disc yesterday too, I'm halfway through, and it's hot.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

just in case people didn't see adrien's Dio/Sabbath piece:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/32363/out-of-shadows-shining-ever-bright/

― scott seward, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

great article! really weird timing - just last week I spent a full morning tracing the rainbow/purple/sabbath ins-and-outs

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

Funny Money's Stick It has been in the changer a lot, same as Rose Tattoo. Apparently out in late December -- see CD Baby -- I'm a little surprised xhuxk hasn't been all over it. (Or maybe he was and I missed it.) FM's about half Kix members, most obviously the singer.

So a lot of the Kix tricks are recognizably through it. The songwriting is good. The singer's always been good for a few decent jokes a record. "I admit/I don't know shit/about women," and variations thereof, on "About Women," the last song on the LP, which is pretty good but not as great as "Weeds and Roses," which has a seemingly bad title but which turns out to be the best hard rock pop song on the thing. It has a wonderful unobvious-for-Kix hook.

Album kicks off with "By the Balls," which could've been on Hot Wire. "Slow to Blow," an amusing sort-of-like AC/DC thing on a woman who's difficult to bring to climax. Don't know how he sings about having crushes and panty-sniffing "girls" [Big Bang Boom] so much at over 50 without cracking up or wincing. Actually, he does laugh a lot --doing it without sounding past-sellthrough-date at all. Still has the only lisp that works in rock and roll.

Fine record.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

Obviously, I'm not getting back to Irepress with the Tatts and Funny Money to listen to. Got some French self-described emo-doom metal in the posts yesterday. From Crucial Blast, haven't had a chance to listen.

Might drag out my copy of Live Evil tonight with all the talk of Dio Sabbath. Always liked it for the overwhelming curtain of Iommi, if not so much RJ.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:22 (eighteen years ago)

The "Children of the Sea" from Live Evil that's on the new "Dio Years" thing is the epitome of the "curtain" you talk about. Absolutely massive.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

Currently listening to something that just arrived in the mail: John McLaughlin/Jaco Pastorius/Tony Williams, Trio of Doom. Five live tracks and three studio takes of the same material, totaling just under 40 minutes. From March of 1979. Out in June on Legacy. Wank-tastic!

― unperson, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:01 (eighteen years ago)

I actually have a "family tree" poster somewhere that traces that whole late 70s metal bandmember trading, John. Came with an import Sabbath box set, I think. I might scan it in if anyone's interested.

Not sharing Adrien's love for the Bloody Panda. It's certainly unique, but it's a little too atonal for my taste. Maybe I just have to be in the right mood.

The new Dimmu Borgir, on the other hand, absolutely slays. I don't get what's up with the hate for those guys -- they're worlds beyond pretty much everyone else in that scene right now.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:21 (eighteen years ago)

I came real close to picking up the new Mayhem last night, but then I decided that Mayhem in '07 is probably not my best entry point.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

I think a big reason I dig Bloody Panda so much is because too many doom bands rely too heavily on the death grunt vocals, and I tend to prefer the bands that take a little bit of a different approach (Middian/Yob, for instance). So when I first heard of a doom band sporting a Japanese woman who chants Buddhist mantras and lyrics like "you are a wet newspaper", I was immediately interested, and true enough, I loved the album when I finally got it.

I agree, Dimmu should get more respect than they do. J Bennet's cover story about the commercialization of BM in the new issue of Decibel is fantastic. That Dani Filth, say what you will about his music, he's one funny dude, a quote machine.

And yeah, that 70s incestuousness between all those important metal bands is fascinating to trace.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 20:29 (eighteen years ago)

Bloody Panda's vocalist is really cool. She's definitely the best part. I don't think the album is bad at all, it just isn't quite my thing. Big points for uniqueness, though. I think a lot of it is that I'm not sure how I weigh in on the whole "indie doom" aesthetic. I like the idea of it, sure, but the sound doesn't fall into my musical comfort zone. My ears prefer more melodic stuff, and I'm not sure you could call Bloody Panda that.

And I will go on record saying that I dig Cradle of Filth. Well, depending on which album. But I think there is a lot to like about them. And I should be getting that issue of decibel at some point, so I'll be sure to read that article.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 23:27 (eighteen years ago)

(also, I wrote the blurb for Mastodon over at the ILM 2006 best album deal. It's first on the page. Representing metal!

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=57588#unread )

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 23:33 (eighteen years ago)

Woulda bin niser had the hostest wit the mostest spellt teh namen write, oot-greet. Medal don ged know respec.

― Gorge, Thursday, 3 May 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

I didn't even notice that! Well, I spelled it correctly in my blurb. My hands are clean.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 3 May 2007 00:33 (eighteen years ago)

(This might be another thread but I want you guys in particular to read it...)

I want to write a book with the premise that the underground metal movement of the '80s forever changed music because it was THAT movement that really forged cross-cultural movements. And you guys around my/that age kinda prove it...

In my experience at the time (and since), it was the metal kids who were getting into new stuff. As much as they seemingly (supposedly) hated so-called glam metal (and many did of course) many more were listening to the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy before Anthrax told us to, plus metalheads supported Grunge before MTV told them to. Even established bands got a shot in the arm from the metal fan base in their leaps from underground to stardom: The Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Soundgarden - all got huge support from metal fans and the metal press. Jane's Addiction too.

The obvious cultural changes that came about from that movement is the success of Metallica, arguably the most successful rock band of our era, as well as Slayer and to a lesser extent Megadeth. But I feel that there was a deeper impact as well, one that paved the way for everything else that was happening then and since.

So am I full of it or what?

― NYCNative, Thursday, 3 May 2007 00:39 (eighteen years ago)

In my experience at the time (and since), it was the metal kids who were getting into new stuff. As much as they seemingly (supposedly) hated so-called glam metal (and many did of course) many more were listening to the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy before Anthrax told us to, plus metalheads supported Grunge before MTV told them to.

Absolutely, that's how it was. You can even include hardcore, the Minneapolis scene (Husker Du especially), and the nascent goth movement among the other genres that drew many of us from the metal crowd, myself included. But yeah, grunge especially got its momentum going through strong word of mouth among metal scenesters.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 00:58 (eighteen years ago)

Man. You guys are old. :-)

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 3 May 2007 01:00 (eighteen years ago)

NYCNative, you are indeed full of it. But I don't want to talk about why right now, okay? (Okay, how about: '80s metal kids of the post-Metallica/ Slayer/Anthrax school closed more doors than they opened. And so did their music. But I'll shut up, because I'm not even sure I believe that anymore.)

I'd rather think about lisping Steve Whiteman's Funny Money and wonder why their recent CD passed right under my cdbaby-sniffing nose. It's not their first one on there, either, I don't think, and if I'm remembering right, the outfit has been around for a while now. And I've yet to sink my teeth into a single CD by them yet. I clearly need to ketchup.

Speaking of cdbaby, I checked out some older discs by Alpha Jerk and Robert James, and they didn't near stack up to their most recent ones. Alpha Jerk's self-titled album starts with a good howling boogie called "Shockin And Rockin" with the chorus "on the road again" that may or may not be meant "ironically" (judging from their other stuff) but sure grooves like it isn't, and track #6 is a '80s-style funnycore goof called "Party in the SUV" that the Fiends or Pop-o-Pies might well be proud of, but the other eight songs weren't grabbing me. Likewise, Robert James's Slouching Towards Bethlehem EP opens with a catchy Steve Miller rip known as "Say Sorry," but his pop-rock gets soggier from there, and his Lizard on the Rock EP has even less going for it, sad to say.

Also finally gave up on Benevolence. You'd think their over-the-top classical bombast opera-singer thrash from some European nation with interesting surnames would amuse for a four-song EP, but nope.

Also, not metal, but I don't know where else to mention it, and who knows, maybe there are some part-time ravers here: I've been hearing about "Get Physical" (a label? a production team? a dance party? fuck if I know, who pays attention to such stuff?) enough in the last few years that I felt obligated to check out this here 5 Years Of Get Physical double-CD when it came in the mail, and after spending too much time with it, I decided it was generally pleasant, but I couldn't remotely make myself care about a single note. Not sure why anybody else would either. But if you know, tell me.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 3 May 2007 01:15 (eighteen years ago)

"plus metalheads supported Grunge before MTV told them to."

indie rock fans were the big sub pop fans and fans of nirvana and all that. and people who read maximum rock & roll. soundgarden probably had the most crossover. but the early nirvana fans, the fans of bleach, were indie dorks.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 03:32 (eighteen years ago)

Alice in Chains and Soundgarden definitely made a big impression on the metal crowd in 1989-90.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 04:32 (eighteen years ago)

but the early nirvana fans, the fans of bleach, were indie dorks

Very true. I was managing a college radio station when that came in.

Didn't have the time of day for it on my changer, but the knee-jerk indie lovers -- the ones who bought every piece of crap Homestead put out or thought Killdozer and Meat Puppets albums were terrific, for example -- flipped over it.

Didn't care if they played it on the air 'til the grooves wore out. Had other fish to fry. To each his own.

― Gorge, Thursday, 3 May 2007 04:34 (eighteen years ago)

Back to Sabbath, I finally got to hear the Live at Hammersmith Odeon live disc that just came out in limited release, and it's quite the scorcher. Not as bloated-sounding as Live Evil, and not without the odd wart or two (the odd muffed lyric, a little feedback), but this is one tight performance, and Dio sounds ferocious, not to mention as hammy as ever. And this might be a bit blasphemous, but Sabbath sounds so much stronger with Vinny Appice on drums, then and now.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:39 (eighteen years ago)

i wasn't trying to say that metalheads didn't like or listen to grunge. of course they did. and, yeah, tons of metal fans and bands bow down before alice in chains. but by 1989 lots of people did. they had a huge video on mtv. the melvins probably had the biggest influence overall on metal. i was just saying that in 1985 or 1986 or whenever, melvins and soundgarden and green river and skin yard and whoever else was playing before the glare of mtv's spotlight was on seattle had complete indie/undie rock support. though i'm sure they all got played on metal radio.

i thought nirvana were such idiots when they showed up on headbangers ball. so embarrassing. i like some of that stuff now, but at the time i thought so many of those bands were sub-par. i liked tad okay. and i did buy that alice in chains acoustic ep!

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:41 (eighteen years ago)

in 1985 or 1986 or whenever, melvins and soundgarden and green river and skin yard and whoever else was playing before the glare of mtv's spotlight was on seattle had complete indie/undie rock support. though i'm sure they all got played on metal radio.

Actually I wrote about those bands (a lot) in Creem Metal around that time (when the rest of the metal press, as I recall, was uniformly ignoring them), so if metal fans caught on maybe it was ALL MY FAULT, wow! And I was a Killdozer and Meat Puppets fan (for each of their first two or three albums before they got boring) fan at the time, too, howbout that? But please don't blame Faith No More and Jane's Addiction on me, okay? (Beastie Boys, I maybe did play a small role. And Run DMC + Aerosmith. So I have lots to answer for.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:52 (eighteen years ago)

i was just gonna come on here and say: if chuck were awake he would tell you that he wrote about those bands in creem metal in the 80's!

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:53 (eighteen years ago)

and that he probably reviewed that deep six comp and the first soundgarden ep and that he called it "sasquatch rock".

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:54 (eighteen years ago)

but he beat me to it.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:59 (eighteen years ago)

got the new SIGH album in the mail yesterday. haven't listened yet. bet it's wacky.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 10:59 (eighteen years ago)

At least Scott remembers (though he left out the part in my 1996 Skin Yard/Deep Six review where I predicted you'd turn on MTV in a few years and they'd say the future of rock was in Seattle. Didn't people understand that was a joke?)

Meanwhile, I am still waffling on that Monotract album on Load featuring Carlos Giffoni. I guess I would say that, for vague songless noise stuff that takes itself way too seriously, it's less vague and more songful and seems to take itself way less seriously than most. Definitely more interesting than Pissed Jeans, but often it's just a shifting wall of enveloping clank and fuzz and random squall and explosive wank, sometimes kinda reminscent of Chrome maybe but not nearly as good, with jokey incomprehensible Residents (or Art Bears? better then Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, either way) chatter on top. Healthy drum rumbling in tracks # 1 and 4, and in the closer "Mar Rojo," at least, the mess coalesces almost into hooks that almost seem funny, almost on purpose. Sounds decent in the background, even despite the dumb detached electroclash-gal parts. (I actually like the guy-wailing-like-John-Lydon parts.) I forget it as soon as its off. Won't predict how long retains a place on my CD shelf; historical precedent for such records is not good.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:12 (eighteen years ago)

89-91, I thought grunge as the greatest thing ever. Man, I should have been listening to Carcass and Godflesh instead. Wasted years!

Heh, I didn't read Creem back then. Metallion, Rip, and Circus, mainly. Canada's Much Music really pushed the boundaries on their metal show, doing stuff like playing Run DMC in 1984, pre Ill Beasties, Husker Du's "Diana", stuff like that that had idiots like me wishing they'd just play Venom's "Blood Lust" instead. That show was the biggest influence on me, by far, we didn't have metal on the radio or anything like that, and it was cool they were actually trying to edify us kids instead of playing the same old stuff. Trivia note: the show's original host was none other than CBS news guy John Roberts. He knew his metal, too.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:17 (eighteen years ago)

I came real close to picking up the new Mayhem last night, but then I decided that Mayhem in '07 is probably not my best entry point.

It's very, very good though. Came as a complete surprise to me, at first I thought they had made a mistake and this was old 1993-ish rehearsal material. And that is a good thing. It doesn't sound anything like The New Mayhem (TM) of the last 10 years. The full-on brutal sound, razor-sharp precision riffs, overprocessed drumming, hysterical Maniac, etc - all completely gone, it's back to the hollow crypt-sound of yore.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:18 (eighteen years ago)

i have a monotract album that is pretty good. VERY noisy. they are pals with my brother. i think i saw them open for the bunnybrains once in philly. the record i have is on public eyesore. PE put out my fave album by wonwons. maybe the only album by wonwons. they put out lots of good stuff.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:20 (eighteen years ago)

Good as it is, I have mixed feelings about this complete regression though. They had the balls to do something completely different post-Euronymous and I think largely that paid off well. The slip back into 1993-mode seems a bit too easy, too obvious even if they do a fantastic job.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:23 (eighteen years ago)

last mayhem that i really loved was wolf's lair abyss. that was, um, a while ago. but hey i kinda like the new marduk album and i haven't really liked anything of theirs in 10 years or more either!

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:23 (eighteen years ago)

i am a sucker for a hellhammer block rockin' beat.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:24 (eighteen years ago)

the part in my 1996 Skin Yard/Deep Six review

Should be 1986, obviously. (I just wish metal fans had latched on to some of the other stuff I was writing about in Creem Metal in those days -- like, say, the Leather Nun and Rancid Vat and Antiseen and the Pagans and the Left and Lul and Seduce and the Janitors and George Brigman & Split and Stevie Stilleto & the Switcblades and Dick Destiny & the Highway Kings. But I guess people pick and choose.) (They did eventually get White Zombie, I'm ashamed to say. So feel free to blame me for them, too.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 3 May 2007 11:35 (eighteen years ago)

i am a sucker for a hellhammer block rockin' beat.

Who isn't. What do you think of Countess, btw?

― Siegbran, Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:21 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks for the report on the Mayhem Siegbran, maybe I'll have to stop back by and pick that one up.

I'm listening to that Lesbian album right now. I keep waiting for it to turn a corner and knock my socks off or something, but it ain't happening. I guess this just feels too drone-by-numbers in a post Jesu/Pelican world.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:52 (eighteen years ago)

"What do you think of Countess, btw?"

i only know some of the later stuff on barbarian wrath. not the earlier stuff. i like what i've heard. some of it really simple hypno-riffs just churning into infinity. can't go wrong there. which reminds me, i should hit up barbarian wrath for stuff. someday i would love to do a war metal round-up for Decibel.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 13:29 (eighteen years ago)

So far, I'm digging the new SIGH album. They seem to be more interested in the metal this time around and there isn't as much goofy carnival-prog keyboard action. so far. They can still be pretty goofy though. And they still love their keyboards. Still don't like it as much as those Magane reissues on Black Flame though. As far as Japanese blackness/weirdness goes.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 13:52 (eighteen years ago)

― original bgm, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

I liked the last Sigh album.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:05 (eighteen years ago)

I wasn't too into it. Are the power metal vox still all over this new one? Those really sunk the last one for me; didn't think they really pulled em off too well.

― original bgm, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

it's more of a black metal affair. a shiny sometimes goofy black metal affair. i've only listened to half of it though. there might be more craziness to come.

― scott seward, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

Well, I loved "imaginary sonicscape" for the hard rock riffin' + proggy keyboard flourishes and found just about everything else they've done to be serriously patchy. But I'll still give this new one a shot.

― original bgm, Thursday, 3 May 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the promised Sabbath blog post:

http://runningthevoodoodown.blogspot.com/2007/05/tale-of-two-sabbaths.html

― unperson, Thursday, 3 May 2007 15:20 (eighteen years ago)

Got five minutes into Zweizz's Yawn of the New Age before hitting permanent eject. Reminded me of the awful waster of time a Carlos Giffoni disc was that xhuxk sent me years ago and which I compared to a steam radiator making noise in a tenement building. A couple points for titles, "Musick is Organized Sound," "Masturbatory Attention Deficit Disorder" ...

Got ten minutes into Synaesthesia: The Requiem Reveries, a split CD featuring Havoc Unit, andOceans, and The Sin:Decay. Havoc Unit take marshall orchestral music from 50's action movies and glue it to crappy metalcore beds recorded in the bedroom. Personally, I think they should have went with national anthems or the songs of the Third Reich, like Wir Bomben Auf England or Auf Adolf Hitler Platz. Permanent eject.

Year of No Light, self-described as "brutal French shoegazer," have done a CD called Nord. Sad but pretty-sounding intrumental passages in dirge metal, OK until the singer arrives, generic weight-lifting death metalcore troll, fairly buried in the mix, still should have took a holiday. Would actually be a rational record with someone who could sing. Maybe a singer arrived later; I quit around three or four songs in, not getting to "Le Bouche de Vitus Bering" which is said to be "bleaker than an eternal nuclear winter." Maybe tonight I'll come back to it, but I doubt it.

Somehow I put Striborg into the changer again by accident. Must have to do with the illegible logo being confusing and making me think it was something new.

― Gorge, Thursday, 3 May 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

xhuxk:

NYCNative, you are indeed full of it. But I don't want to talk about why right now, okay? (Okay, how about: '80s metal kids of the post-Metallica/ Slayer/Anthrax school closed more doors than they opened. And so did their music. But I'll shut up, because I'm not even sure I believe that anymore.)

If you could write a book that convinced me that Teena Marie was metal (or at least convinced me to get her shit) then I think mine would at worst be less of a stretch. :)

― NYCNative, Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)

*the word 'shit' above not meant pejoratively

― NYCNative, Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:11 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks Unperson. I actually kind of like Dio's whelps and whoops at the beginning of War Pigs on the Hammersmith disc. Ditto on the Appice thing too, the guy can really beat the skins.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 3 May 2007 18:22 (eighteen years ago)

I realize I'm about a month late on this one, but -- holy fucking shit, the new Type O Negative is a Christian metal record! I feel dirty now.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 3 May 2007 18:23 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, yeah, Dio's ad libs on those live Sabbath recordings go a little over the top, to say the least. Thankfully he didn't do that too often at the Heaven & Hell show.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 18:50 (eighteen years ago)

Dio lyrics have a lot of great imagery, but yeah, they don't really hold together as cohesive wholes. I'm pretty convinced that "Holy Diver" is the most archetypical metal song of all time, the words being one of the reasons.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 3 May 2007 18:58 (eighteen years ago)

I admit I prefer the Butler lyrics, but I don't really listen to this kind of stuff for the lyrics. I agree they are two totally different bands with Dio and Ozzy, and I probably like them equally.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 3 May 2007 20:00 (eighteen years ago)

Dio has always written gibberish, but he sells that gibberish better than anyone. Part of what makes the little dude so great.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 3 May 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Agreed. Though the lyrics to "The Mob Rules" are pretty relevant in today's political climate. And the guy puts on a phenomenal show.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 3 May 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

I met Dio after his set on the tour he did with Deep Purple and the Scorpions (which was surprisingly awesome), and man, he is the nicest guy ever. He even gave me a hug, which is pretty funny considering that I'm 6'1". And yeah, he puts on a great show every time. All his stage moves would be cliché and cheesy in the hands of anyone else, but somehow he sells it.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 3 May 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

If I love Countess' "Shining Swords of Hate" where should I head next? I've given a few other albums a shot but I couldn't really get into em -- honestly couldn't even say which ones 'cause they left no impression at all. Was there ever another Countess album that sounded anything like this one? That sounded this... pretty?

not out of the ones i've heard. SSoH always sounded like a black metal tribute to trad gras och stenar or parson sound to me. except "totenkopf," which is just nuts and is sort of approximated by the obskure torture.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 4 May 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.throneofkatarsis.com/releaseeternaldark.jpg

You can tell this guy means business. He's standing shirtless in the Norwegian woods, which must be cold, he's holding a scythe, and he's shouting at something off-camera (maybe for a jacket?). Also, the album title is in the same font as Dark Medieval Times'. Pretty kvlt. Anyone heard this thing?

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 4 May 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, and there's an upside down cross in their illegible band logo! Missed that.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 4 May 2007 03:06 (eighteen years ago)

i played it once, but i can't remember a damn thing about it. i'll have to play it again.

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 03:17 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know if it's actually, you know, good. I'm guessing not. The album cover was just wacky enough to amuse me.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 4 May 2007 03:24 (eighteen years ago)

Shining Swords Of Hate is unique - there's nothing inside or outside the Countess discography that sounds like it. The best thing about SSoH is the sheer sloppiness of it all - at some point there's this endless kick-snare-kick-snare pattern at a lazy 110 bpm pace...which he unbelievably manages to fuck up at multiple points.

All other Countess is Hellhammer-stripped-down-even-further: bleak, sparse, unrelenting, very harsh/annoying shrieked vocals. I love it, but I can understand that there isn't a big audience for it.

― Siegbran, Friday, 4 May 2007 09:50 (eighteen years ago)

i love when ilx reminds me about promos i have sitting on my desk but haven't yet ripped to itunes! throne of katarsis step right up!

― fukasaku tollbooth, Friday, 4 May 2007 11:37 (eighteen years ago)

hey, i don't hate this Tomahawk album! i have a fear of mike patton. but i kinda like this and i like the whole native american thing. it's done very well.

the new cephalic carnage album sounds EXACTLY like a cephalic carnage album. if you like them, you will like it. kinda went in one ear and out the other for me.

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 14:16 (eighteen years ago)

I'd forgotten about the KERMANIA album. Did anyone else hear it? I dig it. Epic pagan one-man bm from Germany. loooooooong songs. great vibe. came out on VAN Records. VAN put out that excellent Ruins Of Beverast album and the even more excellent Nagelfar reissue this year. The one album they put out that i want to hear and that i didn't get is the Funeral Procession album.

Speaking of funerals, that Funeral review in the latest issue of Decibel. BOOOOOOOOOOOO! I forget who wrote it. If they lurk here they better keep lurking! just kidding. But the dude didn't like it cuz it was too slow! that's like dissing a turtle for being a turtle! plus, i really dig it. But i dig all their stuff, so maybe i am just a glutton for the infinite sadness.

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 14:30 (eighteen years ago)

i want this:

-March 21st 2007: OUT NOW : HELLAS "The Black Death Anthology" 1989-2006. Gathering rare and exclusive material from the early days of Greek Black Metal on an official double cd with the following bands:
AGATUS, CTHONIUM, DEATH COURIER, DEVISER, DISHARMONY. DREAMER'S SEAL, HORRIFIED, KAWIR, LEGION OF DOOM, LEMEGETHON, MACABRE OMEN, MORTIFY, NECROMANTIA, NERGAL, NIGHTFALL, NOCTERNITY ,NOCTURNAL DEATH, OBSECRATION, ORDER OF THE EBON HAND, REX INFERNUS, ROTTING CHRIST, SADISTIC NOISE, SARCASTIC TERROR, SEPTIC FLESH,THE ONE, THOU ART LORD, TWILIGHT, VARATHRON, ZEMIAL, ZEPHYROUS.

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

this is fascinating! all about The End Records as a business. And these business dudes giving The End dude advice. Gorge will dig this inside baseball stuff:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2007/03/01/8402016/index.htm?postversion=2007032109

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 14:50 (eighteen years ago)

well, I figured the rest of the countess catalog didn't sound anything like shining swords judging by everything else I've heard... but I also figured it was worth asking. too bad. there's really something special about that record.

also, every time I listen, I wonder if the drum machine fuck-ups you mentioned are intentional. they kinda add to the disorienting nature of a song (if you're thinking of the 20min that one I am) that basically sounds like a vacuum cleaner buzzing along, anyway.

and 'when the raven flies' - AMAZING.

― original bgm, Friday, 4 May 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

listening to the Vorkuta album that Paragon Records put out. Hungarian dudes. They mix the lo-fi bm with some doom and ambient stuff. it's actually more mid-fi than lo-fi. Paragon put out that Eyes of Ligeia album that I really liked (heavy epic doom) and the last weird-ass Black Crucifixion album (weird-ass in comparison to their old stuff) as well as stuff by Impiety and Skyforger. Cool label to have in the states.

this is a list of upcoming Vorkuta releases and it makes me glad that I am in no way shape or form a completist:

Philosophy Of Death Wish In II Cold And Dark Pieces 2007 7" EP ltd.500 (Osiris Productions)
Howard Phillips Lovecraft/Heathen War Cult split with Heldentod (Hun) 2007 MC ltd.300 (Ruin Productions)
The Hordes Of Nebulah (Darkthrone cover) - Tribute to old school spirit compilation pt.III. 2007 MC (La Horde Noire)
Split with Woods Of Desolation (Aus) 2007 MC ltd.100 (Folterkammer Records)
Speed Metal Motherfuckerz split with Abigail (Jap) 2007 7" EP ltd.400 (Necromancer Records)
Seeds Of Storm (Original Version) split with Inferno (Cze) 2007 7" EP ltd.500 (Osiris Productions)
Az Ido Csarnokai - The Halls Of Time split with Marblebog (Hun) 2007/2007 MC/12" LP ltd.300/ltd.500 (Stygian Shadows Productions/Osiris Productions)

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

okay, yeah, I dig the Throne Of Katarsis album on Candlelight. It's yer olde-tyme Norge bm. like grandma used to make before they threw her ass in jail. great guitar sounds. and a nifty drummer. what's not to like?

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 15:15 (eighteen years ago)

forgotten how much I like that V.E.G.A. reissue...

so cool.

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

Good one for posting that link, Scott. It confirmed a lot of my impressions.

I'd thought Tower going down would be a disaster for many. Apparently, it has been. Also didn't mention all the product in the Tower warehouses that had to be written off as a total loss. Although Tower sold a lot of it for pennies on the dollar, I'd be utterly surprised if that money was used to pay even fractions of outstanding net 60 (or whatever) arrangements and so on.

― Gorge, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

I thought some of the recommendations by the "experts" were pretty clueless. I bet Katsambas did, too, but was too polite to say so.

If the traditional record-label business model - investing in studio sessions and concert tours and making the money back on CD and record sales - is dead, and practically everyone agrees that it is, then what's next for The End?

This is a real Hobbson's choice. Paying for studio sessions makes recordings sound better. You can't just shove it all off on people who are doing things for the first time on their PC and Mac software and cobbled together home studios. And records that sound crappier don't have as good a chance of putting their best foot forward as good sounding ones. It's rather obvious, I would think. For example, Funny Money got Kix's old producer of Hot Wire on Atlantic to mix Stick It and it sounds REAL GOOD and I bet he made some good songs even better. Now it cost them money and maybe they won't make it back, but in the long run, it certainly won't hurt them.

Now one supposes you can set up a business model in which people become accustomed to buying really shitty-sounding homemade records, but it appears a bit self-defeating, because it's a microniche. And to make a microniche profitable, you have to be an aggregator of all of them so that all the booger collecting buyers come to you.

And I guess that's what they mean when they say their web store portal is propping up the rest of the business.

And they should really work to make Lordi happy because Lordi is the equivalent of Bronze's Uriah Heep in the Seventies and Eighties. Uriah Heep sales propped up all of Bronze's acts. Kiss and Donna Summer, for example, propped up Casablanca which would have gone under if not for Kiss Alive. And that's real old school business model, indicating it really isn't obsolete to have someone who sounds good and who has some sales in stores like BestBuy. And that part of the business still is sort of like catching lightning in a bottle.

He says he was struck by the large number of international bands on the label. "I was thinking it would be really neat on the Web site if you had a world map that showed where all the bands come from," he says. Katsambas nods approvingly and writes down the suggestion.

Yes, would be really neat but it wouldn't lead to cash flow. No one pays for information on the web except for subscribers to the Wall Street Journal. Making it is intellectually "labor intensive" and there's almost no return on it unless you can get someone else to pay YOU for it.

Levy isn't buying it. "The teenagers who like this music now are very similar to teenagers who liked [1970s progressive rockers] Emerson, Lake & Palmer and" - he pauses for a beat - "have since grown up to be journalists and consultants. There's a mentality of music appreciation. It can't be that your audience is so alienated that they don't shop in stores and go places."

Here's where the consultant should have received a lecture on not knowing shit from shinola. I don't know if The End's teenagers are similar to me when I bought ELP. I presume they are in the category of DNA. But ELP was never a marginal-selling artist which had to finance its own production costs like the acts in 2007 do. And ELP, for Chissake, was the biggest selling hard rock act in the entire United States at the time of Brain Salad Surgery, one that had a hit single played on every radio station in the country, "Lucky Man," right out of its first album.

Here's a prime idiocy. No radio play and no TV! The Internet ain't the same thing as radio play, the old model that made people go out and buy albums. One could make the assertion that while some ways of getting to the public have really broadened, the ones that aggregate the most eyes and ears in a communal way -- and music is about social community -- have been horribly narrowed for a good long time.

A second is that, again, ELP was the biggest selling band in the US, not exactly a good example to use when looking at a clientele that buys homemade records by acts which make no attempt to, well, write songs or tour arenas right off the bat, among other things. Sheez, ELP's first appearance was at the Isle of Wight, probably in front of a couple hundred thousand and covered by every media outlet in Britain.

I'd go on, but if it had been me, I'd've been jumping up and down and that "consultant" until the rest pulled me off him.

I hope the guy's label perseveres and thrives. However, it's success won't be on following the advice of a clown like this guy.

― Gorge, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

seems like he's been doing a pretty good job on his own anyway!

― scott seward, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

I would have to agree. His biggest obstacle seems to be distribution of physical goods, which he's assessed well.

― Gorge, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:20 (eighteen years ago)

not sure how many of you have heard about this or seen it but.....mastodon in the aqua teen hunger force movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L14sgd9_zU

― gman, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:29 (eighteen years ago)

I am spending this afternoon listening to Disrupt's Unrest and The Rest. Head-down 200mph bashing in the same vein as Siege or early Napalm Death.

― unperson, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:33 (eighteen years ago)

I saw that movie! Went to a noon show on a Monday at the Mann's Chinese 6 in Hollywood. My friend and I were the only people in the theater. It was great. We just ate lunch and talked. Neil Peart was in the movie. He played a Drum Solo of Life and resurrected a dead character. (I also posted a little review of the soundtrack up thread.)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 4 May 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

(Actually, it looks like my full review of the soundtrack went up. You can find it here: http://www.transformonline.com/music/reviews/006247.php)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 5 May 2007 01:23 (eighteen years ago)

I don't like to think about the business of music on my day off from the trade mag (I lose enough sleep over that stuff during the week), but that The End article was very goofy -- like a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy episode for little labels or something. At any rate, as I recall from the piece on The End we ran at the magazine I work at a few months back, Katsambas's real bread and butter is more the distribution service than label, isn't it?

This morning I'm trying to figure out which is worse, the new album from apparently acclaimed indie act the Dearhunter or the late 2006 from Brit pop-punks McFly. I'm fairly positive Dearhunter win (by being worse), but I'm not sure how much more time I feel like expending on this exercise. So far, I'd say McFly are only mildly annoying (and at least catchy), seeing how they seem closer to bad Kinks than bad Bright Eyes or whatever the fuck.

Meanwhile, somebody building a patio outside is playing "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" (Cutting Crew, I think?) way too loud right now...Oops, just segued into "Cocaine" by Clapton. An improvement.

And though I clearly have a much higher tolerance for listening to clanking radiators (which can actually be quite relaxing late at night) than George does, I'm chagrined and/or proud to report that I've given up on the Load album I mentioned last week (and, if I remember right, Whiney Weingarden said somewhere that he likes a lot) by Air Conditioning. Track three "I Run Low" is a moderately tolerable three-minute Steve Reich minimalist meditative repetition rip, and track four "Accept Your Paraylysis/Cephalexin" is a 15-minute improv squawk marathon that I actually made it through twice without barfing, but I've had my fill of those and I'm done trying to like the rest. So in Load's last package, Monotract clearly "win".

Metal album of the week turned out to Circle of Power by Pownd, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago. There a definitely a few so-what cuts I can't bring myself to care about, but the best tracks ("Still I Bleed," "Slowly Drowning", "Place in the Sun") tend to have a massive high-pitched and chunky-if-not-quite-funky heft that reminds me of Riot a lot and Sir Lord Baltimore now and then too (though I bet they've never heard the latter if not former), and I love how "Never Means Forever" builds to a wide-eyed "Layla"/"Free Bird" guitar jam out of the blue and into the blue. A link again:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=164702332

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

This Baroness/Unpersons split on whatever label this is is pretty cool this morning. unrelated, and not exactly 'metal': psychic paramount slayed once again last night. i love that band.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Saturday, 5 May 2007 14:44 (eighteen years ago)

finally got EA and Intaglio albums from Russia yesterday! i looooooove this stuff. straight from Podolsk to me. the Intaglio album is apparently out of print until next year, but i might have to review it anyway. i can't get enough. Solitude is so rad:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=105163249

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 May 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

Paperthinwalls critics overrate two Load noize bands (incl Air Conditioning, who turn out to be from Allentown.) (I wonder if they ever crossed the fence into that abandoned steel mill in Bethlehem.):

http://paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=662

http://paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=630

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:08 (eighteen years ago)

you so need to comment on ptw, chuck. it's web 2.0!

― fukasaku tollbooth, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:12 (eighteen years ago)

maybe I'll cut and paste comments from here later...

(And Stosuy clearly hears "I Run Low" differently than I did. I'm not gonna stream the track there, but the one I was referring to as Steve Reich like was track #3 on the CD. The way the titles are listed in the book is real confusing, so who knows.)

UFO's The Monkey Puzzle (released on SPV Sep '06 apparently) sounds stodgy and snooze-worthy so far, though notably less so when Mogg shuts his trap. I'm assuming it won't kick in, and I'll pass it on soon, but if I decide othewise I'll say so.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 15:15 (eighteen years ago)

it's funny -- as much time as i've spent working on [and for] ptw, there are features i almost never use. last night i learned from a friend that you can actually piece together streaming playlists! i was completely in the dark on that.

[but yes yes chuck you should totally copy 'n' paste it up from time to time.]

― fukasaku tollbooth, Saturday, 5 May 2007 17:35 (eighteen years ago)

just finished reading 'em. i encourage more copy 'n' pasting. it's the "new" iterative review in practice.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Saturday, 5 May 2007 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

that last track on the baroness/unpersons split has a neat skullflower like thing, but i guess that's a story better told in the rolling drone thread, eh?

― fukasaku tollbooth, Saturday, 5 May 2007 18:10 (eighteen years ago)

Yay! Three Funny Money CDs in the mail today -- Back Again from 1999, Skin To Skin from 2003, Stick It! from this year. You can probably expect I'll report back about them shortly.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 19:22 (eighteen years ago)

...not to mention a reissue of J.D. Blackfoot's The Ultimate Prophecy, wow.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

AND new albums by Iced Earth and Kamelot and The American Black Lung (the latter two of whom I never heard of before) and new EPs by cdbaby glam/sleaze-metal revival bands Culture Killers and Poison Jett Gunz (the latter of whose name already seems funny.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 19:43 (eighteen years ago)

you have a lot of listening ahead of you. get on it!

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 May 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

New EP by *Tia Carrera* on Arclight is cool stonerage power trio action, but I don't think I like it as much as the Amplified Heat release from this year. Also on Arclight, which is why I mention it.

oh, and, no, not that Tia Carrera. great band name though! very wayne & garth of them.

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 May 2007 20:16 (eighteen years ago)

you have a lot of listening ahead of you.

No kidding! I will never catch up. And on top of everything else, our neighbor Maria, who pet-sit for our guinea pig Albert when we went on vacation last month (and noticed at the time that I have hundreds of LPs) just came by with a big bag of albums I "might like," most of which were crap (Andy Williams, Lawrence Welk, Edye Gorme, etc) I have no use for, but about a third of which seemed at least vaguely intriguing/promising, including two '60s Nancy Sinatra LPs I'd never seen before (not that I've ever really looked) and four or five early Beach Boys albums I never got around to buying copies of, plus these four hard rock joints (not all of which might truly be hard rock, per se):

Bedlam Bedlam
Cactus Cactus
Fat Mattress Fat Mattress
Quicksilver Shady Grove

I never heard Fat Mattress or Bedlam before, I don't think. And the Bedlam LP (from 1973, on Chrysalis) looks crazy, with a hand reaching out of a stoney grave of fire on the cover and everything. Cozy Powell is in the band, and Felix Pappalardi produced it. Martin Popoff, in his '70s book, gives it a 5 for heaviness, and an 8 for overall quality.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 20:36 (eighteen years ago)

(Those were all free, by the way. They've been collecting dust and mold in Maria's Queens basement for decades, and she was ready to toss 'em out.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 5 May 2007 20:40 (eighteen years ago)

yah, you can't beat that Bedlam cover!

http://popsike.com/pix/20050206/4073445047.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 May 2007 20:54 (eighteen years ago)

GORGE! since i happen to be blasting it this very moment, do yerself a favor and bug teepee for a copy of the Earthless album. i KNOW you will dig it.

david

@

teepeerecords.com

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 May 2007 20:56 (eighteen years ago)

I was very cruel but funny for a TeePee double CD on xhuxk's watch. It was by that neurotic guy's cult band, the one a movie was made about.

That was the last of their promo copies I saw. Asking now would be a bit odd, I thin'.

― Gorge, Saturday, 5 May 2007 22:46 (eighteen years ago)

Not sure where to put this. Answers question, "What would Jobriath be like if he were still alive?" See here at bottom of page.

Not entirely metal safe.

― Gorge, Saturday, 5 May 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

Fat Mattress was one of the Jimi Hendrix Experience's projects. "The music is heavy (only just) but lacks any real strengths or convictions," write Jasper and Oliver in TIEoHR&HM, tepidly. "They evidently received a huge advance based on [Noel Redding's] reputation, but the band failed dismally."

― Gorge, Saturday, 5 May 2007 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

And they call Bedlam "very hard rocking," cool!

But cross American Black Lung off the list of "CDs I need to get to", on account of their singer sounding like a moron (in a post-Henry-Rollins way.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

Funny Money's latest sounds real good, if maybe not quite on the level of most of Kix albums (including the last few, which it seems to most resemble.) Favorite tracks so far are "All Tied Up" (with Steve Whiteman submissive not dominant), "About Women" (quoted by Gorge above) and maybe especially "Weeds and Roses" (a semi-ballad, and an even better song about weeds than the one on John Anderson's album, weeds as in "when life gives you weeds" rather than the ones on my favorite TV show, Whiteman's point being that, underground, weeds and roses look the same.) Plenty other tracks are sure to kick in from here, maybe more so. The whole thing is effervescent, rocking, swinging, and with a sense of humor most metal is too stupid for. Etc. And oh yeah, in one song Whiteman goes into the sort of mid-song talked rant part he's been doing for a quarter century now, about being "a man on a mission in the missionary position" and such like.

Gore Gore Girls' new album, though, is even better. I know this at least in part because, when "Loaded Heart" (which might not even be my favorite track on it) came up, I was thinking, "damn this is BY FAR the best track on this Funny Money album," but it wasn't Funny Money even though Amy Surdu's voice sure did sound like Steve Whiteman's at the time. It was those "Cool Jerk"/Motown basslines in a loud rock context that did it for me, I think. Probably the best dance-rock I've heard by anybody this year, on an album that's in the running now with Trigger Renegade and Miranda Lambert as topping my 2007 list so far. Other favorites, some of which appeared previously on an EP and some of which didn't, include "Fox in a Box," "All Grown Up" (which reminds me of my daughter Cordelia), the viciously quotable and partially talked you-don't-own-me song (though I won't quote it) "Pleasure Unit," "You Lied To Me Before," the very hard rocking "Mary Ann," "Sweet Potato" (the most country track probably), and the Link Wray style guitar instro George needs to hear "Hammer Stomp." That's most of the album. The rest is swell, too.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

Helps that the melody of Funny Money's "All Tied Up" resembles "Doin' All Right With The Boys," i.e., Gary Glitter at his most Slade-like (though I mostly know the song from its Joan Jett version.) In fact, melodies are still probably Whiteman's biggest skill -- "Weeds and Roses" has a GREAT one.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

apparently i'm already out of date, but does anyone dig totimoshi's ladron album? friend of mine has been into them since day one but it never really clicked for me before this. (and the guy's voice is still a bit on the weird/weedy side.) but i like the shambling guitar that doesn't seem to know where to go - crazy horse or metal. and i like that they are a three piece and sound like one, no massive overdubs of guitar drowning out the rest of the band.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

i don't think i've ever heard totimoshi.

― scott seward, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

I actually thought Totimoshi sounded okay (in a Jane's Addiction but not as creepy as that sounds sense) when I got it, but it's not on my shelf anymore. Maybe I should have kept it there? I dunno.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of Jane's Addiction, there are actually moments on Funny Money's album where Whiteman's adenoidal whine remind me a little of Perry Farrel, and other moments where it reminds me a little of Axl Rose. No idea if that's intentional or not.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

i am STILL playing the Earthless album and the Amplified Heat album! I must really like them. I have listened to both so much this year. And the second acid jam on that Tia Carrera EP is hottttttt.

― scott seward, Sunday, 6 May 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

not really thread-worthy, but i traded in a bunch of crappy CDs and got the Pink Reason album on Siltbreeze (acid bummer downer stuff) and the vinyl reissue of Empty Rubious Red by LSD March. (japanese acid folk/fuzz)

― scott seward, Sunday, 6 May 2007 15:05 (eighteen years ago)

Okay well in that case Scott here's an only-barely-metallic acid/space/Kraut-rock item I've been listening to this week. Gets kinda too whimsical at points (especially in "Noch Ein Zahartzt"), but the saxophones in jams in "Neue Stimmen" and "Das Experiment" kinda justify its existence (and give it warmth) regardless. I guess I'd post it on the rolling drone too if that thread wasn't so boring:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/robintaylor10

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I really like Totimoshi, and Ladron is especially solid.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 6 May 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

If you haven't seen the polls on Kerrangs albums of year 1991 and 1992 here they are

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=57663#unread

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=57658#unread

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 6 May 2007 18:30 (eighteen years ago)

If you haven't seen the polls on Kerrangs albums of year 1991 and 1992

...you are really not missing very much.

New favorite song on Funny Money album: "By The Balls," which has another snot-nosed pep talk to the boys (something about "they can't play without a ball, boys, and we've got the balls!"), baseball references, and just a great riff then vocal line then riff then vocal line that rhymes structure.

"Slow To Blow" on now, also extremely catchy (and this is the one with his missionary position monologue, where he winds up doing the girl voice too, just like in "Yeah Yeah Yeah" 26 years ago.) Yeah, these two tracks could've been Kix in 1988.

Now "Crush," and this is the one where he stretches out vowels at the beginning and in the verses just like Perry Farrell, and I think he might know it.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, and "Nowhere To Run" sounds like White Stripes!

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, "Nowhere At All" it's called. And it's got very cool funk break, then a weird poppy break too (credited in the notes to "Rasta Jimmy's Fantom Reggae Band," which suggests what they're trying to do). But the beginning definitely sounds White Stripes. Not surprised Steve might be a fan of them.

Also, "Crush" credits "The Copy and Paste Philharmonic Sample Orchestra" from "Herr Maestro Mark," plus clavinet from "The Trampled Under Foot Trio" (reference to Zep's most disco song!) "About Women" has "purple organ" from one "Gary Lord".

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 18:53 (eighteen years ago)

And "Big Bang Boom" is a song about blowing up things! How many of those has Steve Whiteman written in his life, I wonder? Hundreds, maybe. (Ha, "Loaded Heart," the Gore Gore Girls song I mistook for "Funny Money," says "it's like dynamite in a mineshaft for me" -- probably the dynamite is part of what confused me.) Still, George is right about this Funny Money album. The more I listen to it, the better and more Kix-worthy it's sounding.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 6 May 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

Then you should suggest Gore Gore Girls send me a copy, as I'll probably not be digging it up. If they slog around the country and send a sked, it's possible I can get 'em into print for it.

"Weeds and Roses" is definitely the ace tune on the Funny Money thing.

Made me drag out Blow My Fuse -- which surely must be one of Whiteman's favorite phrases, as he utters it on seemingly all Kix CDs plus the Funny Money thing. Also dug up my homemade copy of Hot Wire. Man, Kix CDs suffered from Atlantic. My copy of "Blow My Fuse" just has no punch or volume to it. At least I was able to 'fix' Hot Wire for home listening.

― Gorge, Sunday, 6 May 2007 19:11 (eighteen years ago)

Just listened through the Irepress. Not bad, not mind blowing. Interesting enough to listen to while it's on, but like a lot of non-classical/electronica instrumental CDs, I didn't really feel much while I was listening to it, and can't really remember it now that it's over.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 6 May 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

I'll try to get the Gore Gores to send you their CD, George (though Bloodshot Records sent me mine). Email me your snailmail address to remind me, ok?

Robin Taylor is allowed to stay in my collection for at least a brief time thanks to his CD's two longest songs, featuring enjoyable saxophone parts.

Thumbs down for foo-fooey Queensychites Kamelot.

"Gone Hollywood" on the Culture Killers' EP is good; decent enough tune to earn its obligatory whiskey and cocaine mentions. "Something Missing" just seems like bleh '00s "active rock" or whatever they call it now; "Let Me Drive" is slightly better but I don't like the forced hysteria of its chorus screams; something disturbingly gnu-metal about it, almost. "Gasoline" seemed okay the time it came on, but I'm not sure how close I was paying attention:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/culturekillers

― xhuxk, Monday, 7 May 2007 00:53 (eighteen years ago)

Queensrychites, I meant. (Not even sure what I mean by that. Kamelot probably don't really sound like Queensryche, much. Just really prissy and frilly in a way that subtracts more metal hooks than it adds.)

Eh, Culture Killers' "Gasoline" on now. Not too exciting. Well, at least they have one song I like (plus "So You" is a not-shabby QOTSA rip, I guess.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 7 May 2007 00:59 (eighteen years ago)

on a whim, I went to Heaven and Hell/Megadeth last night.

We opted for drinks instead of Machine Head, who I have zero interest in, maybe I missed something? I dunno...

Anyway, Megadeth was real impressive, whipped through a ton of songs with hardly any breaks. Mustaine has not aged a day since like 91.

Heaven and Hell was really epic. Dio is one of the great live performers to me, I don't care if people think he's "over the top", he's an old fashioned entertainer, a diva...heavy metal's Judy Garland. So much commitment to putting on a show, such technique and stagecraft, it's a pity people think he's a Salieri to that sad old addled clown Ozzy, who's done nothing but embarass himself for the past 10 years.

Geezer and Iommi were, as expected, fantastic, real true greatness in the flesh.

New songs were suprisingly good too! also, liked a song they played off Dehumanizer....but yeah tons of great tracks off of Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules....Neon Knights is such a scorcher! whew...Sign of the Southern Cross was awesome as well, so was Falling off the Edge of the World.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, the new Watain has won me over. Love the production on this sucker. Finally some "tr00" Euro black metal that's worth getting excited about.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 7 May 2007 22:54 (eighteen years ago)

i got a bunch of stuff from crucial blast all at once and i think totimoshi got lost amid black elk, skullflower, microwaves, geisha and some other stuff that i really liked. i like monarch! on crucial blast too, actually, so maybe i should go back to see if ladron is awesome [if i can find it in this hovel of a study.]

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 00:09 (eighteen years ago)

Poisin Jett Gunz turn out to sound as much like an '80s garage-trash-revival band as an '80s glam-trash-revival band, despite their name. I even detect half a smidgen of Angry Samoans (and Dead Milkmen?? in the nerdy vocals?) in there; nowhere near that good, just that genre, I mean. AS much of that as Kiss/Crue/Stooges/Dolls, which is what is claimed on their cdbaby page, anyway. Though apparentely they all do dress like girls on stage. Demo-quality recording makes the songs basically impossible to hear, though. EP came out in 2001:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/pjg

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 11:02 (eighteen years ago)

I guess "Edge of the World" is the best one of the songs, for being the most 1966 proto-psych-punkish.

New Iced Earth (only four songs) isn't grabbing me. Just seems like by-the-numers power-metal (and I'm not all that huge a power-metal fan to begin with).

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 12:09 (eighteen years ago)

(At least Iron Maiden style power metal. But that's not news, right? Though I did like Iced Earth's The Blessed And The Damned a couple years ago, which I'm pretty sure was some sort of career retrospective. That may well be all of them I need.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

It was a career retrospective. Haven't heard the new one, but the big problem with the last one was Ripper Owens, who has some of the least personality I've ever heard in a metal singer.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, The Blessed and the Damned is pretty much the only disc of theirs worth having. They change band members at a confusing rate, especially singers.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 18:38 (eighteen years ago)

i can't stop listening to Mob Rules.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)

Matt Barlow has an amazing voice, but he left after September 11 to join the Department of Homeland Security. Or maybe he was just sick of Jon Schaeffer. Something Wicked This Way Comes is probably their most consistent studio album, while Alive in Athens is a great three-disc live set. Their albums do tend to be somewhat spotty other than that, though.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 18:49 (eighteen years ago)

Is this Tiamat compilation (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:dpfrxzy5ldde) worth picking up, or should I just grab Wild honey and A Deeper Kind of Slumber?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 19:52 (eighteen years ago)

Is it just me or does anyone else think this Pissed Jeans album would be a whole lot better if "Scrapbooking" was left off? I keep hoping the track is going to wind up somewhere, but it just ends up with that sub-Waitsian bellowing.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

The band Sonic Syndicate were my source of irritation today. Not only is their album totally generic metalcore (I mean there was not one riff I hadn't heard 1000 times already), but their band photo puts the only female member - the bassist - in a whore costume (leather mini, bustier, spike-heeled boots, stockings) - while the five mooks making up the rest of the band stand and/or squat in baggy shorts and ragged T-shirts. It's like she's not even in the same band they are. What's interesting to me is that in live photos on their site, she dresses like them. But somehow for the official promo pic, it was decided that she should tart up, while they could remain schlubs. I guess it's to distract from the ultra-generic shittiness of the music.

― unperson, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 20:27 (eighteen years ago)

listening to all these various leaked Guns 'n' Roses MP3s today. I wish I hadn't deleted the other one that leaked a few weeks ago, "Better," because that was good too, and I can't find a working download link for it now. (Anybody who's got it - send it to me at pdfreeman at gmail. Thanks.)

― unperson, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 20:29 (eighteen years ago)

Ugh, I thought the girl in Sonic Syndicate was the singer, based on the photos in all the ads. That's disappointing, I thought they'd be like In This Moment or Light This City. Kind of a tasteless marketing ploy.

On a brighter note, the new Cephalic Carnage album is a blast. Their albums are always fun.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 20:44 (eighteen years ago)

check yr email phil.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 20:52 (eighteen years ago)

DLed the Sabbath Dio Years disc last night and listened to it at work today. One of the three newly recorded tracks, "Ear In The Wall", handed me my ass on a platter. Shall be ending workday with replay of it.

― Jon Lewis, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

I can't remember the last time I heard a new song on a best-of compilation that held up alongside the classic tracks, let alone three. "Ear in the Wall" is indeed excellent.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

(Loved your Popmatters article linked from an ILM thread a couple weeks ago, BTW!)

― Jon Lewis, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

The thing that blew me away about that Dio Years comp was the song "I," which I didn't really remember because I didn't own Dehumanizer. That song kicks so much ass.

Thanks for the file, Matt. Sent the other five your way, one per e-mail. So far, Chinese Democracy is a hell of a decent six-song electro-metal EP.

― unperson, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 21:35 (eighteen years ago)

"I" kicks all sorts of ass. The live version of "Children of the Sea" on that compilation is also the best version of that tune I've heard, I think it was originally on Live Evil.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 21:40 (eighteen years ago)

I know, I only lurk on this thread, usually, but:

http://www.crucialblast.net/yearofnolightpreorder.html

oooooh... Year Of No Light's Nord reissued next week! (and they're coming to Belgium in July (Dour Festival) too!

― StanM, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 09:16 (eighteen years ago)

(oh yeah, just in case: think Isis(, but maybe even better). Review in Stylus of the original version: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/year-of-no-light/nord.htm )

― StanM, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 09:17 (eighteen years ago)

That Iear of No Light is a good album, alright.

(thanks for the kind words, Jon)

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 10:19 (eighteen years ago)

Ugh, that's what you get for trying to type after four in the morning.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 10:19 (eighteen years ago)

Wound up liking the new Fintroll album just fine. Yeah, it might've been able to use more jigs and humpas, maybe. But even their thrashier gunk has a subliminal humpa-ness coursing through it, to my ears. Good tunes, fun rhythms. And good natured.

Meanwhile, here is a list of metal albums I've enjoyed and therefore kept this year that I am already starting to forget what they sound like. (A real problem with the genre these days, and the sheer quantity of at least marginally decent stuff probably doesn't help, I don't think. It sort of all mudddles together over time. Which is also the reason that "real" metal albums hardly ever end up making my overall year-end top ten, no matter how many I approve of as the year progresses. This year, Necrodemon probably still have the best shot, though it's still a long shot. Really, they're not too far from making this list, to be honest.) These are in order, I guess, of how much pleasure I remember getting out of the CDs last time I played them. If anybody wants to refresh my memory about what is so great about them, feel free. Another thing standing in their way, probably, might well be a general lack of truly discrete songs to latch on to. But they all sound good, which counts for something, of course. I'm not dismissing them:

Kekal – The Habit Of Fire (Open Grave)
Lengsel – The Kiss The Hope (Whirlwind)
Moonsorrow – V: Havitetty (Unruly Sounds)
Cruachan – The Morrigan’s Call (Candlelight USA)
DHG/Dodheimsgard – Supervillain Oulast (Moonfog/The End)
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
Manes – How The World Came To An End (Candlelight)
Giant Squid – Metridium Field (The End ’06)
Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)
Rwake – Voices Of Omens (Relapse)
Spellblast - Horns Of Silence (Metal Crusade)
Ensiferum –Victory Songs (Candelight)
Krypteria – Bloodangel’s Cry (Caroline/EMI)
Suspyre – A Great Divide (Nightmare)
Kotipelto – Serenity (Candlelight)
Vintersong – Solens Rotter (Napalm)
Virgin Black – Requiem Mezzo Forte (The End)
Therion – Gothic Kabbalah (Nuclear Blast)
Melechesh – Emissaries (Osmose Productions)
Panzerballett – Panzerballett (Bad Land ’06)
Funeral – From These Wounds (Candlelight)
Die Berbannten Kinder Evas – Dusk Und Boid Became Alive (Napalm)

Meanwhile, in the changer now, these apparent NWOBHM dudes. Never head them before; liking them a lot. And I'm pretty sure they have discreet songs:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bitchessin3

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 11:47 (eighteen years ago)

(Cruachan maybe shouldn't be on that list. I mean, what they're doing isn't hard to figure, and their songs did have hooks in them. Plus I really do have a soft spot for Pogues-metal. Probably my problem with that one is I just need to play it more.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 11:54 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I left off Minsk. They should probably be on there too (as probably should be some other bands.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 11:55 (eighteen years ago)

And meanwhile, on my favorite albums of the year that true heavy metal fans would no doubt more consider "hard rock" or "punk rock" or "garage rock" -- Trigger Renegade, Gore Gore Girls, Funny Money, the Rich & Famous, the Sirens, Clorox Girls (hell, throw Miranda Lambert in there if you want -- she rocks as hard as any of these guys) (George Brigman is somewhere in between I guess), I have no problem remembering plenty of songs. Which means they'll probably all have a better shot of making my year-end list than even Necrodemon. So maybe true metal fans just don't care about songs very much? Or maybe we just have different ears.

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 13:12 (eighteen years ago)

Phazm and Novembers Doom are the ones I like the most from that list. Phazm does have catchy songs! Crazy blackened rock 'n roll with a country twinge. Novembers Doom are crushing, depressing death-doom. Definitely worth revisiting.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 11 May 2007 17:42 (eighteen years ago)

There's one Manes record on eMusic, but it's the previous one. Should I get it? 'Cause way up above someone made the new one sound really enticing...

― Jon Lewis, Friday, 11 May 2007 17:44 (eighteen years ago)

I like xhuxk's list a lot. Agree with quite a few of those.

Has anyone else heard the new Sigh? More shocking stuff from them, but this time, it's because they're back to the black metal of old, albeit with cool symphonic touches and oddball melodies. Very enjoyable.

Also, I finally got that Sonic Syndicate, and I actually like portions of it...it's blatantly deriving from In Flames' Reroute to Remain, but seeing as I love that album, I don't have much of a problem with that. And yeah, that promo photo is bizarre, like those "one of these things is not like the other" bits on Sesame Street.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 11 May 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

i talked a little about the new sigh on this very thread. i like a lot of stuff on chuck's list too.

― scott seward, Friday, 11 May 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

Agree with quite a few of those

Wait, you agree that they're good, or that you also can't remember what they sound like?

I noticed a couple people calling that Phazm record "country", and I really couldn't figure out what sort of country music they were talking about...The Birthday Party kind, maybe? Actually, who they slightly reminded me of was the great French band Noir Desir (whose singer murdered his girlfriend, allegedly, a couple years ago), but not as good. Didn't hear any "country" in it, though it would be cool if I did, so I could consider it for my Nashville Scene poll ballot at year's end. Still liked them OK, though. I need to dig that CD back out.

I liked the Novembers Doom album, too; just not sure how they're not interchangeable with plenty of other such sad bands. Maybe there's something there that I'm not really hearing.

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

Sorry, I meant that I like a lot of the titles you mentioned. DHG, Therion, Moonsorrow, Novembers Doom, Rwake being my faves of that bunch. That Kekal album is wacky. Really enjoyed that Cruachan, too.

And completely unrelated to metal, that Miranda Lambert album is indeed awesome.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 11 May 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

What little girls are made of: gunpowder and lead (which is a metal, right? Or maybe not.) (and I think Miranda's drummer used to play in metal bands, too.)

xp Maybe "country" means "gothabilly"? (Except Phazm don't sound all that gothabilly to me, either.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)

By "a couple people" I assume you mean me. I suppose you know more about country than I do, but the better tracks have sort of a rustic hillbilly swagger (despite them being French, of course). I used "country" as a shorthand for that.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:02 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I may well have meant "a couple Jeff Treppels".

And I think you use "country" the way Martin Popoff does, actually (which is perfectly valid, and kind of interesting, actually, even if it has no connection with any country music that human ears have ever heard.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

Could be alien country music! And with Phazm, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

Was listening to Vixen's Live & Learn from Nov for the first time last night. Original guitarist must've ownership of the name now becuase she's the only original member. I think we can assume no one in the old band is on speaking terms.

Anyway, this doesn't make much of a difference, as it turns out. Still very 80's LA big hair rock, only sounding heavier than original Vixen. No Richard Marx or Paul Sabu tunes no more, so it's closer to Rev It Up than the premier. Fairly raging version of Sufragette City and one or two songs that sound like Steve Nicks fronting a pop metal band. Hold's up. Almost as good as the Girlschool reunion disc from a couple years back. In the same league, anyway.

Coloured Balls infamous Ball Power from Aztec Music. Influencer of Buffalo, Buster Brown, Rose Tattoo and most other Aussie fighting rock bands one can think of.

Vehicle for guitarist Lobby Loyde who does a lot of loud blooz gee-tar. Has the independently arrived at thumping, unselfconscious dirt bag sound of Pink Fairies and some Stooges songs, although way more interested in R&B and boogie. Some one and a half minute dance bar stompers which Dave Tice no doubt took over to the Count Bishops. One tune, "Human Being," is of a kind with Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

Way big guitar album in the early-70's boy-oh-boy-do-women-hate-this-stuff-if-it-doesn't-come-with-the-guy-who-looks-and-sounds-like-Percy-Plant style.

Band had a skinhead look which sunk them in the marketplace right after the record charted, according to bio. National Aussie media became convinced they were encouraging fans to beat people up, a very nice story for retelling.

"Droog terror gangs threaten festival blood bath," was one alleged headline, which sounds neat to me, ripe for use as an instrumental title.

Haven't had a chance to listen to double CD set of everything from Slade's live catalog which I know will be great.

― Gorge, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

Coloured Balls "That's What Mama Said" features nifty Theremin alongside power chords, directly after "Hey, What's Your Name" which is hard twang Stones with lyrics the Stones would never use. Anyway, "Mama Said" goes straight from Theremin into mad dog guitar riffing lasting about six minutes before singing starts, the lyrics being just "That's what mama said, mama said" repeated. More clumsy but good use of Theremin. "Liberate Rock" showing some kinship with Status Quo. "Mr. Mean Mouth," fun twangy honky tonk country-billy, which I'm sure the Count Bishops must have played live at one time or another. In fact you were an Aussie bar band and heard this, you would've wanted to learn it. If country sounded more like this more often, with the rekkids xhuxk mentions being some exceptions, you'd actually like country.

Lobby Loyde also never was afraid to like the idea of Elvis and/or Little Richard with real greasy loud axe.

― Gorge, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:37 (eighteen years ago)

I was amazed at how much I enjoyed that Vixen album. Not perfect (I think I gave it a wishy-washy 5/10), but it does have its moments. The new singer's good.

The liner notes on the new Megadeth album are written by Jack Bauer (more specifically by a 24 writer writing as Jack Bauer). What the hell? Good CD, though.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 11 May 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Hey Chuck, this is a bit of a weird question (not sure if this should be on the country thread), but can you recommend some good country records that would appeal to a hard rock/metal fan and educate me on what non-Popoff country sounds like? Besides Johnny Cash and various Southern rock bands, I haven't done much exploring in that area.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 11 May 2007 23:22 (eighteen years ago)

Slade live collection is, naturally, terrific. Knock-out performance at Reading in '80 before a NWOBHM audience. It was thought they would bomb as they were a substitute for Ozzy, who cancelled. The band went on with a chip on its shoulder, determined to slay the audience, and it revived their career. Pre-Mutt Lange Joe Elliot seen in bio saying Def Leppard's following Slade was the worst thing that could've happened to them. Maybe not. Probably had something to do with them later becoming a much better live act worldwide.

The image of Noddy and Co. doing a stomping rock version of the Hokey-Pokey Polka, here called "Okey Cokey," is hysterical and almost worth the entire price of admission. Also includes all of Slade Alive, II, which is basically unknown in the US as Slade had been dropped by Polydor in the US by the time it came out in the UK. Holder carries off Big Boy Crudup's My Baby Left Me. The guy could sing anything.

Includes "Rock & Roll Preacher," covered by The Sirens, most effectively, this year.

― Gorge, Friday, 11 May 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

can you recommend some good country records that would appeal to a hard rock/metal fan

Hank Williams III kind of kicks ass.

Also: Scott H. Biram.

― novaheat, Saturday, 12 May 2007 00:46 (eighteen years ago)

I've yet to hear any Hank III that doesn't suck ass myself. But then again I've never been fan of toe-the-line hardcore punk bands, and who knows, maybe his good stuff has passed me by. Seriously though, Jeff, try the rolling country thread[s], and check out whatever appeals to you from the descriptions there. I'm not sure where else to start you, give or take stuff I've already posted about upthread. (Okay here: If you haven't already got all five Montgomery Gentry albums, you could do worse than checking for them in used CD bins in your locale. Best one is Carrying On, one of the great hard rock albums of this decade, no question.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 02:40 (eighteen years ago)

Hank Williams III kind of kicks ass.

Oh bullshit. Damned by faint praise. Seek: The David Allen Coe reissue of Penitentiary Blues from last year. Avoid: The David Allen Coe with Dimebag Darrel collaboration right before he was shot thing which doesn't have a memorable tune on it.

Fundamentally, if you know good hard rock albums when you find them, you certainly don't need modern country albums, because most good hard rock albums have some country in their sinews. You'd be better off getting the CCR catalog, or old Humble Pie, or just listening to the Stones and old Beatles records.

Sifting through modern country for hard rock is like panning for gold in a stream where the bed of sand is iron pyrite grains. It looks and sounds neat and seems to yield some good stuff but if you're not getting the records for free, it's a waste of time.

Arena country does hard rock in the way Bad Company ca. Holy Water did hard rock. It's hooky and often a couple songs will be really good, but -- ya know, no one who liked hard rock buys the Bad Company records that have Brian Howe and a couple of hacks on them in place of Paul Rodgers.

Speaking of which, the second Bad Company record, which is country-inflected hard rock and metal, pretty good for British guys.

Let's see -- Shania Twain's song, "If You're Not Ready For Love [Then I'm Outta Here.] You could buy the last Bon Jovi record -- poor man's Mellencamp with loud guitars big in countryland. Or the first Sugarland record.

I've no use for any of it other than it sounding good on the radio as singles -- occasionally, before you burn out on the repetition of it.

There really isn't a shortage of people doing good hard rock in the States and overseas. It only seems that way because it doesn't get on TV or mentioned in popular mags and newspapers, so when a vid from one of the country pop music cripples with semi-loud guitars and thumping drum figures goes into heavy rotation, or winds up being on the big stage at the country festival that followed Lollapolooza in California last week, then some pop music critics start writing ad nauseum about how Miranda Lambert is a tough girl who empowers women, a recruiter of a kicking band -- which are dime a dozen -- sharing a tour stage with some other "Git R Done-type" guy who quotes Skynyrd and says were so neat they smoked dope, to appreciative roars.

Jeezus H. Christ on a stick.

― Gorge, Saturday, 12 May 2007 06:47 (eighteen years ago)

...and says [his parents] were so neat [because] they smoked dope, to appreciative roars.

― Gorge, Saturday, 12 May 2007 06:51 (eighteen years ago)

I almost bought the Bedemon record today. It was in the Pentagram slot. Did anyone else here enjoy it?

― Gorge, Saturday, 12 May 2007 07:03 (eighteen years ago)

I've yet to hear any Hank III that doesn't suck ass myself.

I thought "Straight to Hell" was pretty good. I haven't heard any of his other stuff.

If that's what you were referring to, though, I'd be interested in hearing why you think it's so terrible. I mean, it's not groundbreaking or anything, but "sucks ass?" Dunno about that.

― novaheat, Saturday, 12 May 2007 07:23 (eighteen years ago)

xp: i liked it, but it's probably even rougher in sound than the pentagram 70s recordings. bedemon guitarist had some ideas that were fairly ugly, i think he played on disc one of first daze here too.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 12 May 2007 07:25 (eighteen years ago)

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster pull off the whole "southern metal" thing pretty well. You kind of have to have a tolerance for metal-core-ish vocals (the singer used to be in Underoath...), but I'll be damned if their new album hasn't grown on me.

― novaheat, Saturday, 12 May 2007 07:26 (eighteen years ago)

George has a point, of course. Hank III is a dumb novelty act without a singing voice and apparently without songs; if you really need to be spoonfed that kinda hickcore shtick you might as well go with one of its originators, like maybe Antiseen on the Drastic/EP Royalty CD. But right, if you really want to hear country in hard rock, you'd really well be better off buying old Nazareth albums or pulling out Aerosmith's "Chip Away At the Stone" rather than anything coming out of Nashville now (though, I dunno, if you can't hear any rock in "Daddy's Farm" by Shooter Jennings or the Kentucky Headhunters collection Flying Under the Radar or their gospel-country blues-rock side project the Mighty Jeremiahs, you're deaf.) I can't really speak for the later hack Bad Company era George is referring to (blocked that from my memory a long time ago though damn, when they went disco-Foreigner on Desolation Angels that was pretty neat) but the hard rock that Nashville is obsessed with right now is the '80s -- reports from the Stagecoach fest a couple weeks back had hit country acts encoring on stage with "Crazy Train" and "Paradise City"; Big N Rich do a very lousy bluegrass version of "You Shook Me All Night Long" on their sadly crummy new album. And that kinda thing has been threatening to happen for a long while now -- Montgomery Gentry covered (now hit country act) Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" on a professional bull riding compilation, like, seven years ago or so; MG's hardest rocking track ever may well be their cover of ZZ Top's "Just Got Paid" on the excellent Nashville-filled Sharp Dressed Men: A Tribute to ZZ Top comp a few years ago (best tribute comp I've ever heard, by the way.) And yeah, there's a sense that unreconstructed '70s hard rockers might scoff at MG or Miranda or Shooter and opt for cdbaby nobodies like Copperhead and Cargun (who are really good) instead; maybe in real life everybody who listens to Montgomery Gentry on a motorcycle wears a tie to his day job; how would I know? Though I'm sure you'd find a few aging Humble Pie and Creedence fans in the audience of this summer's Hank Jr/Skynyrd/38 Special "Rowdy Frynds" tour (with dates only on Friday and Saturday nights!), and I doubt they'll be sleeping during the Hank Jr (who rocks harder than his kid and always will) set. And sorry, Montgomery Gentry and Miranda Lambert still make better albums than Cargun or Copperhead, and better albums than Bad Company ever did (even the first one), for that matter, whether the MG and ML count as "real" hard rock or not. Though then again, I liked hair-metal power ballads, and the idea of country music rooted in "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and "Gypsy Road" (why haven't any Nashville acts covered those, for crissakes?) (and actually, I still say Miranda's sound sounds more rooted in Screaming Blue Messiahs, somehow) strikes me as pretty damn cool. Would Montgomery Gentry appeal to Pantera or Clutch fans? Honestly, who the hell cares? The problem with recommending current country to fans of current metal, frankly, is that fans of current metal have pretty shitty taste, for the most part. And yeah, again, along those lines, that Maylene and the Sons of the Disaster CD has some not-awful moments (that instrumental jam toward the end or whatever -- got rid of my copy a few months ago, so I'm probably getting it wrong), but until bands like that figure out they need a singer, fuck 'em.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:16 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, damn, now I gotta put Coloured Balls on my shopping list. I've wondered about them forever, ditto Buster Brown (ditto Big Balls and the Great White Idiot* -- but they weren't Aussies and have nothing to do with all this other stuff, right? For some reason I mix all these bands up in my head), but I've never heard a note. Either way, '70s proto-oi! barstool brawl skinhead rock from down under is a difficult concept to argue with, I gotta admit.

* - Holy shit, here's their wicki entry (so yeah, different country, but somewhat likeminded, maybe):

Big Balls and the Great White Idiot was one of the first and best known German punk rock bands. They were founded in Hamburg in 1975 by Wolfgang "Wolle" Lorenz (guitar), "Baron Adolf Kaiser" (vocals), and the Grund brothers Peter (drums, vocals), Alfred (bass, vocals) and Atli (guitar).

"Baron Adolf" provoked the audience by wearing a Nazi uniform and a black moustache as an expression of anarchy. Performances on stage were highly aggressive; the band was known to shout at the audience to go home. Punk News magazine called the sound "mean and ugly."

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:16 (eighteen years ago)

(Re current arena-country: As George also briefly suggested, a high tolerance for '80s Cougar [+ Seger/Petty/etc] does help a lot. For me, not a problem. If it sounds like "Jack and Diane," as Shooter's great "4th of July" did, count me in.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:23 (eighteen years ago)

Also, Gorge, I trust you heard this sad news about Lobby Loyde a couple weeks ago; just making sure:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=57371

I need to hear that live Vixen CD, too. Here's what I wrote about an album they put out back in '98:

Vixen, TANGERINE (CMC) At first I thought that was a navel orange with its navel pierced on the CD cover, but I guess it's a nipple-ringed tangerine instead. Foxy drummer Roxy Petrucci's navel is visible on the back cover, though, and that alone is almost enough to make me cut this hair babe comeback's post-Alanis-AOR competence some slack. As are four cuts here: "Tangerine" (about a pill-poppin' lady grocery-shopping for little green men), "Shut Up" (death threats to a liar on TV), "Air Balloon" (Shania Twain facsimile about riding trains to the coast of Maine and losing teeth in Texas), and the untitled swing-grass-frolic instrumental hidden at track number 12.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 12:37 (eighteen years ago)

has jeff ever heard the drive-by truckers? do people still like them? i don't think i heard the last couple of albums.

― scott seward, Saturday, 12 May 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

in any case, decoration day and southern rock opera are worth getting.

― scott seward, Saturday, 12 May 2007 13:46 (eighteen years ago)

not that they are, you know, "country".

i'm happy whenever i find another third-tier southern rock album to enjoy. recently loving:

http://www.woundedbird.com/paul/9232.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 12 May 2007 13:49 (eighteen years ago)

xp Agreed, esp. Southern Rock Opera. After Decoration Day, though, you gotta like alt-country snooze a lot more than I do to care anymore.

True story: at the junk barn in Virginia where I bought a bunch of LPs last month (see upthread), I passed up a $1 copy of that very Henry Paul Band LP, and I've been kicking myself for it ever since.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 13:51 (eighteen years ago)

apparently wounded bird has reissued it. do you get stuff from them, chuck? they even reissued axe! which isn't a great record or anything, i just think it's cool that someone reissued it:

http://www.woundedbird.com/bachman_randy/4348.jpg

― scott seward, Saturday, 12 May 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

No, I knew Loyde had been pretty sick from a thread last year but didn't know he'd died. In any case, Ball Power is great.

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster pull off ...

This was not by any means great. Made it two thirds of the way through and hit permanent eject.

And yeah, I'll agree Miranda Lambert makes better records than Cargun easy, which I didn't listen all that much to, anyway.

You'll have to find some path to sticking the Slade live extravaganza in your shopping cart, too. That's a must have.

Haven't gotten to Cephalic Carnage yet. Maybe won't because from a couple years ago, there was this cruel assessment ...

Lucid Interval, Cephalic Carnage's latest, has been described as containing many "mathematical time signatures." But this is written from the standpoint of someone who thinks counting above four quickly or stopping and starting without warning are remarkable accomplishments. It's not a compliment you could show to your kid years from now without him laughing at you.

More accurately, the record is excrement, which—as everyone knows—does contain nutrition. But only that which sustains the kind of life most would rather not have anything to do with: e.g., the social juvie-geek equivalent of maggots and flies.

The makers of extreme metal—which is not so out there, the head nodded twice while listening to CC at high volume—think of themselves as clever class cutups, too. One can point to Cephalic Carnage's colleagues Nile as the genre's humorists insofar as they've pulled off the wonderful trick of convincing ninnies they're Egyptologists by combining blast beats and titles like "Chapter for Transforming into a Snake."

But on Lucid Interval's jerry-built-to-order grindcore, even the intended jokes aren't up to snuff. "Cannabism's" mean Cheech-and-Chong parody of Mexican-restaurant musicians fails because CC don't perform it quite wretchedly or repetitively enough to convince one they were smoking primo weed. And though "Black Metal Sabbath" almost scores, it's spoilt by the act's pitiless imitation of James Hetfield imitating a Swedish death-metal singer.

The next album was a little bit better but not enough to write about. They seemed to have followed the career path of Soylent Green. Isn't it about time for another Pungent Stench record, too?

― Gorge, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:03 (eighteen years ago)

Except it's not a live Vixen CD. I thought it was, too, when I first saw it, then noticed it was l-i-v-e in the short i sense of things. Funny, Tangerine was Vixen without Jan Kuehnemund, the guitarist. Now it's Vixen with Jan Kuehnemund, who must have the superior lawyer, and not anyone else. Perhaps it is a revenge record of sorts. Now I know why the MTV special on getting them back together for one show in Hollywood seemed pretty tense.

― Gorge, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

Whoops. Didn't realize I was going to set something like this off. I like Maylene lots (even interviewed their singer, which proves that they have one, although whether or not you think he's any good is a judgment call), and that Rebel Meets Rebel collaboration was kind of fun for a dollar. Thought it had some memorable songs ("Time" being the best). I also interviewed Hank III when he was in Super Joint Ritual (who are not a good band), but I haven't heard his solo stuff. And I'm with Scott on the enjoying third tier Southern rock bands. Really I'm just trying to Expand My Taste, and I thought country that shared DNA with the bands that I like might be a good starting point.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)

Don't waste your time with country. Chuck is lying to you.

― unperson, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

has jeff ever heard the drive-by truckers? do people still like them?

My fandom of this band knows no bounds. Absolutely my favourite American band right now. On a depressing note, they're going to miss Isbell.

How about Joe Ely?

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

Would you steal Drive by Truckers' singer's water bottle out of his limousine after being kicked out of his book signing for trying to lunge across the table and get your picture taken with him? Because my former roommate did that with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and that is the incident by which I will forever judge boundless fandom.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 12 May 2007 18:50 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, I'm glad I'm nowhere near that bad. In my case, by fandom I basically mean having a tendency to write overtly fawning reviews. But hey, they've never put out a bad album.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 12 May 2007 19:03 (eighteen years ago)

Last couple have been really dull, I'd say.

As for Joe Ely, I'm a fan of the Honky Tonk Masquerade/Down on the Drag/Musta Notta Gotta Lotta era at the turn of the '80s, but has the guy done anything worth hearing in say, the past quarter century? Also not really sure what about even his old music would appear to metalheads. I don't think Clash fans liked him much when he opened for them. (Hey, who did they boo off stage? Grandmaster Flash? Damn, that was a long time ago.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

Coming from a different country/metal intersection, I wrote this on the country thread a week ago:

Now I wish somebody would explain to me why I'm liking this new Jan Bell so much when Jan usually can't bother to summon up enough energy to even annunciate most of the words in a comprehensible way, plus most of it is done at a near-funeral dirge tempo. (Though "Leavin' Town" is at least a midtempo gallop, and clearly about, well, leavin' town.) Anyway, you'd think I'd hate such stuff. Guess what I like is the melodies. Which I believe are largely minor key, though don't quote me on that.(And which are also largely beautiful, if I didn't get that point across. As is Jan's low-key singing.) And actually, the whole goth-folk mood of the thing reminds me more of what I like about lady-led European dark metal bands like the Gathering than what I like about anything on this country thread, though the instrumentation and so on are clearly more country than metal. Most goth moment: the spooky witchy background mourning howls and bats in the belfry thumpdy-bumping about in "Miners." Other favorites: "January Morning," "Given," "Ships in the Air." (And Just noticed "Snake Song" is by Townes Van Zandt.) And here's her link again, just in case:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/jbcheapdates

-- xhuxk, Saturday, May 5, 2007 7:35 AM (1 week ago)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 12 May 2007 19:19 (eighteen years ago)

Don Allred country-metal recommendations, from the country thread:

if anybody cares, I'd say Sir Douglas, among Doug Sahm incarnations, did a lot of interesting country-meets-rock stuff, like "Baby, It Just Don't Matter" may be the first good country metal, and still doesn't that much competition. But yea, Coe's Penitentiary Blues, which Gorge mentioned on Rolling Metal not long after it was finally reissued, and I'd say Rebel Meets Rebel, even though xxuxx hates it and yes it involves Panterans with Coe instead of Anselmo. Hank III's Risin' Outlaw is ligher than his old man's stuff, but affecting too, just as Hank Jr's The Almerea Club is lighter or smoother than some of his other, but soulful and funny like the best of his son's stuff. I reviewed both of those in the same Voice piece, but for once I won't bother with inserting a plug-link. Also, still speaking of Hank Jr.,I'd start with Hank Williams Jr And Friends and Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound and others from the mid-70s, but Stormy is another good later one with rock appeal.

-- dow, Sunday, 13 May 2007 03:34 (6 hours ago)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And yeah Shooter (wonder how that live album is? Montgomery Gentry kill live, at least when I've seen/heard steaming chunks on TV/Web) And Jessi Colter's Out Of The Ashes, with that calm voice and rumbling keyboard.

-- dow, Sunday, 13 May 2007 03:56 (5 hours ago)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 13 May 2007 09:45 (eighteen years ago)

Aussie band which went nowhere in US last year was the Casanovas. I decided to catch up since they have a few records out and one that is reasonably new. Started with their first EP last night, Get it Hot, most of which was apparently rerecorded in LA for the domestic release. I'm not a big believer in recording stuff for an allegedly upscale marketing when the originals weren't meant as demos. If it ain't broke, no need to fix it.

Has a number of good tunes on it in the mold of fighting AC/DC rock, only the sound younger and poppier because their singer isn't Bon Scott. "Nasty" is the best tune from the EP, closely followed by "Shake It" -- the kick-off, and the title cut. They furnish a cover of "Riff-Raff" which does not disgrace the original. At thirty minutes, it's a good repeat listen. No flab on it, so there is always room for another band in the style as long as such peeps are willing to pack the right vim and vigor into it. The Casanovas do.

― Gorge, Sunday, 13 May 2007 16:02 (eighteen years ago)

Sunday vinyl list with pics For Scott and xhuxk.

― Gorge, Sunday, 13 May 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

JO JO GUNNE- Bite Down Hard- Asylum M JO JO GUNNE- Bite Down Hard- Asylum M $15 5

I just passed up a copy of this for one tenth that price ($1.50) in a thrift store in Astoria, Queens today, since I already own it on CD. Had no idea it was actually worth anything. Maybe it'll be there next time on that block. (Though I'm not sure what kind of condition it was in. Looked pretty dusty.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 13 May 2007 20:34 (eighteen years ago)

those prices are insane.

― scott seward, Sunday, 13 May 2007 20:56 (eighteen years ago)

Wound up liking pretty much all of that Bitches Sin CD, and loving a bunch of songs on it ("Sign of the Times," "Livin on the Highway," "Fallen Star," "Up For Grabs," "Runaway", the instrumental "XZ2894"), mostly when they get really fast -- Motorhead-fast, which I'm starting to learn was way more common in early '80s NWOBHM than I always used to assume(though these guys apparently have some connection to Holland too -- Did NWOBHM bands technically have to come from Britain?) The vocals (sometimes seemingly Brit accented when they're not possibly Dutch accented) lean lot more toward poppy hard-rock than Motorhead metal roughage, though. Popoff, who grades only one of their albums and gives it a low grade, seems to think they were on the "too early" end of NWOBHM, though I'm not really sure what he means by that -- wasn't all of it in the early '80s, pretty much? (And aren't these fast tempos what the sort of thing he calls "OTT" all though his metal guides?) Jasper and Oliver say Bitches Sin sound very "hard rock," which is hard to argue with; there's times they could almost be Bad Company imitators. But the faster they get, the more heavy metal they get and the catchier they get, which is neat. "Alligator" is almost funk-metal, with a proggy Tull/Heep break in the middle. "Sign Of The Times" is better than the Prince song of that name, maybe as good as the Queensyche and Night Ranger songs of that name. The politics of "Abdhul's Boogie" are not exactly clear.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 13 May 2007 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

likewise, their psych prices. though 65 bucks for a mint copy of red weather isn't bad. damn, i want that so bad. i have no money for such stuff though. most of those prices are, like, anywhere from 10 to 30 dollars too high.

― scott seward, Sunday, 13 May 2007 21:04 (eighteen years ago)

New Paradise Lost album - In Requiem

all tracks now streaming on myspace
http://www.myspace.com/paradiselostuk

This is the strongest Paradise Lost album since draconian times

― djmartian, Sunday, 13 May 2007 21:11 (eighteen years ago)

xpThe one that really shocked me, though maybe just because I'm clueless (have none of their records, have never considered owning any) is the $45 for that Viv Akauldren LP on the top of the prog list. I thought they were just some middling local indie band in Detroit in the early '80s; I probably saw them live once or twice. When did their LPs become collector's items?? I had no idea. (But yeah, there are a bunch of those hard rock LPs that I'm sure I see selling for a couple bucks now and then. Those look like New York City used record store prices -- one reason I never go to used record stores here.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 13 May 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

F-----' A, the two Fancy LPs, take 'em both home for 200 bucks! Reminds of an old used record story in the west end of A-town that had ridiculous prices. Adjusted for time, it could be the same fellow.

Thor's "Keep the Dogs Away" for $75! I'm glad Smog Veil put most of that on-line last year.

And there's a band named SOD and it's not Stormtroopers of Death, it's SOD as in the a piece of lawn or a drunken lout.

DD's "Arrogance" and Haystacks Balboa, both 55!

That list made me happy after reading the usual and now repeated ad nauseum dogshit in the New York Sunday times about bands on myspace with 54,365 "friends in their friends list" making everything else in the world obsolete.

What's the old saying that applies, um, a thief always believes everyone else steals? Yeah, that's it.

― Gorge, Sunday, 13 May 2007 23:15 (eighteen years ago)

viv akauldren LPs for more than $2?!

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 14 May 2007 00:10 (eighteen years ago)

it's like gemm prices. i dunno, i guess people figure, what the hell, throw it up there and maybe some old burnout turned stock tycoon will get drunk one night and buy overpriced bloozerock LPs. just seems like everyone in their right mind would get drunk and troll ebay though. you can still pick up lots of that stuff for peanuts.

that list reminds me that i got a nice e-mail from one of the dudes in Hellfield cuzza something i said about their record on ilm. i could start a cool 70's supergroup just built from the people who have e-mailed me via ilm.

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 00:21 (eighteen years ago)

Back to current metal, I just tracked through the Phazm CD again today, first time in a few months. It was less good than I'd remembered, actually. Also less like Noir Desir. Tried to convince myself it sounded like Treponem Pal for a couple songs, but no dice. And country? Not even close, not even theoretically. Closer to Celtic Frost than country music. And given all that, not that bad. I guess.

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 00:32 (eighteen years ago)

I dig the new SHINING album that The End sent me. Haven't listened to the new Angelcorpse album yet.

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 00:38 (eighteen years ago)

Is Scaruffi driving up prices of Viv Akauldren LPs? He rates them very very highly on his lists iirc. When I saw them on there I think I hadn't thought of them in 20 years. They opened for someone in Seventh Street Entry but I can't remember who...

― Jon Lewis, Monday, 14 May 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

i love scaruffi. i still have never heard his fave band The Vampire Rodents. i think i really need to.

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 02:08 (eighteen years ago)

If the Big Balls and the Great White Idiot recording I have is "Deutsch," I'll eat my left shoe. This has the earmarks of an
elaborate joke because the entries I could find on the net, and there aren't a lot of unique ones, pertaining to a German punk band, certainly don't look anywhere near the style of the record that's available, "The Big Waltz."

That wiki entry made me laugh. All it needed was an inclusion of "henfap" in it.

The Big Balls record is great and it sure doesn't sound anywhere near "1976." What it sounds like is a very good Anglo, maybe an Aussie, fast rock band (or some pros) with shit hot lead guitar and really catchy economical tunes, perpetrating one of those kinds of things were a slumming semi-famous band somewhere pulls off a jokey record made to sound like Ziggy & the Spiders doing harder stuff that occasionally has "punk" in the song titles. (Or doing somethingto get around contractual obligations that prevent them from having fun.) And they
don't let their lead singer do the vocals because everyone would know who it was. Sometimes sounds like Angels/Angel City without Doc Neeson. Could the song "Fallen Angels" be a hint? "Conspiring in the dark, pleasure turns to pain, the sun won't shine anymore," sings the guy. "Fallen angels bleeding on the wall/strangle me with designs." I think there's a good chance it is. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Way too native English to be Germans unless a ringer was hired to do and sing the lyrics. Plus no botching the fricatives of the j's, w's and v's. The album cover makes it look like the record is supposed to be a soundtrack for some German movie title but you can't find any indication the movie existed except for this record.

Now, here's another thing. There's a small entry on the band at Trouserpress which seems to indicate a production/management
credit to an Aussie, George Alexander, one of the famous Young brothers.

Besides, I thought you couldn't do the dress like Nazis thing in '76' Deutschland without getting dragged in front of the constabulary.

Song which really sounds the most Angels/Angel City is "Big Boys" which starts with a subliminal quote from "Walk On the Wild Side" and then goes on into guitar ballad to someone, sex indeterminate but the singer
is invited over to the object of his affection's apartment to see what sounds like something "big" and a Picasso. Has the chorus "I should have listened to what my momma said to me, only big boys are allowed out to play," most of it sung in some manner of accent from the British empire. It's also the best tune on the record that has a lot of 'em. Ends with a beer hall sing along, "wishing you a pleasant flat back home and that it is there where it should be."

― Gorge, Monday, 14 May 2007 04:28 (eighteen years ago)

Just reviewed the Beneath the Sky album this weekend, boringly average metalcore with death metal vocals. Should have known from Victory's ugly cover art.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 14 May 2007 05:08 (eighteen years ago)

So I might not have been wrong to peg Big Balls and the Great White Idiot as Aussies after all? Crazy. And yeah, that Trouser Press review is where I heard of them first, I think. And right, Hitler mustaches likely wouldn't have flown in Hamburg in the mid '70s. Definite topic for further research.

Speaking of Australians, this morning I surprisingly have been enjoying Buffalo's oddly unexciting Mother's Choice reissue less than these German-or-whatever doom-crawl sludge-droners Bergraven (who I naturally keep thinking are called Beirgarten) on Hydra Head. Maybe the great cuts on that Buffalo CD just haven't been coming up on the changer? Are there any? Even the liner note writer seems to have pretty mixed feelings about their later stuff, compared to the first three LPs.

Automatic 7 are Social Distortion-like punks on Mental Records with a vulture-scavenging CD cover whose mood and red tint remind me (intentionally?) of Give Em Enough Rope, but the only track that I wound up caring about on their CD is the cover of Springsteen's "Atlantic City," which worked well as Clashish hard rock. The rest wasn't horrible but I just don't think they have songs.

Deadlock Wolves CD sounded like Evanescence except worse (partially because "more metal," maybe.) And I don't even like Evanescence very much. (Thought Flyleaf did that stuff better last year, actually.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 12:12 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, band is Deadlock; album is Wolves, appparently. On Lifeforce Records. (= Christian??)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 12:21 (eighteen years ago)

Buffalo's oddly unexciting Mother's Choice reissue

if i recall correctly that's about where one or both of the guitarists took off halfway through the album. i downloaded the sucker a year or two ago and remember the first couple of tunes being okay (not up to volcanic rock/only want you standards) and it goes rapidly downhill from there.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 14 May 2007 13:29 (eighteen years ago)

their genius guitarist was kicked out after the third album came out. bad move. but there are still some moments of okayness on the last two albums.

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, but who wants okayness, man? i want heavy riffs and tice singing about raping hitchhikers.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 14 May 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

well, exactly. nothing comes close to their early godliness. just saying that the last two albums aren't HORRIBLE. but they are hardly essential. if you have the first three albums you are good to go. they basically had a three year period of awesomeness. which is more than a lot of bands!

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:13 (eighteen years ago)

I am currently in the middle of my first listen to the Captain Beyond debut album. Holy fucking shit, this is amazing. They appear to have two other albums - need I bother?

― unperson, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

yes, you should bother. though they aren't as good they are worth a spin. i envy someone hearing that album for the first time!

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

feel free to contribute to my bobby caldwell appreciation thread when you are done listening:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=45002

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

then watch the AMAZING 20 minutes of Captain Beyond live footage on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjN5K2aEh3k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6cnnx3VRFU

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

then buy the Armegeddon album that Bobby made with Keith Relf if you don't own that already. you can hear two songs from it on Youtube if you want:

"Buzzard"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIq5lJCDhig&mode=related&search=

"Silver Tightrope"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoL_RBpYNyk

those drums on silver tightrope! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! i love you bobby!!!!!

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

The next two Captain records are really very different from the first. Sufficiently Breathless is a smooth pop record, more like the Moody Blues. It even has Bruce Hornsby, pre-fame, on it. I like it but not for the same reasons as the first.

I never got into the third which was made many years later, seemingly to capitalize on some of the cult feeling over the first one.

― Gorge, Monday, 14 May 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

that armageddon song "buzzard" is a sorta remake of a steamhammer song! i guess steamhammer (or members thereof) were in armageddon, still freaks me out.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:59 (eighteen years ago)

So, I thin' I have Big Balls and the Great White Idiot provenance figured out. There really is precious little on the web about them. You can get more from an ILX thread where someone, in answer to xhuxk, posts one of their EP covers. A certain percentage of the lore on them must be untrue and from the photo on the cover, they certainly weren't allowed by anyone financing them to directly take on the look of Nazis. They look like they're ripping off the Dolls or Bowie.

Apparently they were fairly marginal and were adopted by George Alexander, one of the Youngs. And he was a producer/manager/session man.

The records where they appear to have written the songs have the right kind of clumsiness in the titles to suggest an awkward grasp of English. However, The Big Waltz does not and I'm betting it was mostly done by Alexander.

Here he's credited with "vocals" on a Big Balls record. And I'm going to make the leap and assume it must be he, or compatriots on The Big Waltz, because no native German could have carried out the lyrics and vocals on it.

So, basically, part of the famous Young dynasty were propping them up, all or in part, at various times. Which explains why the stuff I've heard sounds really Aussie.

Here's the old ILM thread with pic -- it's one xhuxk's I've never heard of these bands things. Someone has a Fuhrer 'stache but he's toned it down into the Charly Chaplin look. Another guy looks like Frank Beard from ZZ Top. And two look like they're cross-dressing.

Plus, the guitarist is attributed to having gone into Nena, which may explain why the lead guitar sounds very pro on The Big Waltz, apparently made in '96. If indeed he plays on it.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 01:55 (eighteen years ago)

The new Korpiklaani is really, really good. No real insane sing-alongs like "Beer Beer", "Happy Little Boozer", or "Vakirauta" (though "Let's Drink" comes pretty close), but instead, it's a really well-rounded album, really playing up the Pogues thing very well, especially on the instrumental "Nordic Feast". When it comes to humppa metal, I want lots of humppa, not power metal songs tossed in between humppa songs, and man, does this thing ever deliver the humppa. I like this so much more than the new Finntroll, it's ridiculous. These guys are just plain fun.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 10:12 (eighteen years ago)

So strangely, I wound up liking Buffalo's last-I-guess album Average Rock'n'Roller just fine! Nowhere near as dull and stodgy as Mother's Choice to my ears, but way more a choogle and boogie and bop record than heavy stoner metal a la their first few -- though "You Say" is a catchy opener about rockets landing on Mars with a decent riff, and the title cut paves the way for Count Bishops, and "Hero Suite" is a good long gloomy eight-minute blues-guitar jam with dub-like dropouts before its rocking kicks in, and the slow songs are often quite pretty and the drinking songs frequently quite friendly, and "Hotel Ladies" especially is fairly hilarious ("She brings the booze for the boys in the band.") " I even like the reissue CD's two bonus tracks from the Dave Tice solo single (country "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party," Slade-oompahed "Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller" cover) that he apparently didn't approve of. A nicely eccentric record, almost glam-rock in parts.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

i prefer korpiklaani to fintroll too. finntroll can be a chore. i actually like fintroll best when they are doing really slow folk ballads!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

I'm used to Euro metal bands having bad ideas, but this one tops 'em all, for 2007 anyway: I just got the new Graveworm album, and it contains a cover of Bonnie Tyler's "I Need A Hero."

― unperson, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

The next losers Sons of Wolfmother, is the title of the article in Variety, if you can believe it, a rundown of a selected bunch of new gobblers from Australia. Who picks these bands? Australia has a gross long ton of acts, those left behind, excluded from the ephemeral glee over Wolfmother, left scratching their heads trying to figure out, "Why not us?"

― Gorge, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 17:20 (eighteen years ago)

if you've never heard it, i highly recommend *Annihilation Principle* by Laaz Rockit (sorry, i don't know how to do double umlauts). great late-period thrash (1989). i've never heard their earlier stuff which supposedly was more on the power metal end of things. great guitar sound. even a good cover of "holiday in cambodia".

right now i'm listening to Warrant! Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich. I'd never heard it before. I dig it. "32 Pennies" especially. I already knew "Down Boys" of course. Haven't listened to the second side yet.

Listened to the new Korpiklaani the other day, but I wasn't really paying close attention. Sounded about right! I'll listen again today maybe. Also got the new Ironfire from napalm, and I'll listen to that as well.

I'm all about that Shining album! They are all about being sad. The singer is demented. The black metal rolls. The guitars are properly pummeling. There are sobs of torment.

Okay, i took Warrant off and put on Scandinavian Metal Attack Volume II from 1984. Who were Biscaya? They were cool. Proggy even, but hard rockin' too. Organs, piano. OZ are also great. I need OZ albums. Did OZ make albums? I will investigate. One of their tracks on the comp is called "turn the cross upside down". it's kinda goofy, but also cool. i dig the singer. he makes a great attempt at sounding malevolent, but i keep thinking he's gonna start singing "ballroom blitz". great vocal/drum break in the middle of the tune too.

― scott seward, Friday, 18 May 2007 13:29 (eighteen years ago)

Finally got the Job For A Cowboy album in today's mail. I hope they're good but I fear they won't be; I'm expecting a bunch of autistically hyper-dexterous death metal kids overdosing on Dillinger Escape Plan.

I am interviewing Bret Michaels on Tuesday. The new Poison covers album has some surprising high points (their version of Tom Petty's "I Need To Know" is great, and their version of the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See" is decent).

― unperson, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

I'm going to ask him if he thinks a major label (this thing is on EMI) would release a new album of Poison songs in 2007, though.

― unperson, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:35 (eighteen years ago)

I heard "Rust in Peace" on the radio the other day and I...I think I want to hear the new Megadeth album?

― Jordan, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:37 (eighteen years ago)

You do. It's quite good. I listened to the whole thing front to back on the train home last night and while there are a few weak cuts, the album as a whole is much stronger than The System Has Failed, which was itself a huge leap forward from the three or four albums preceding it.

― unperson, Friday, 18 May 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

Hard to beat Rust in Peace. Give ol'carrot top props for at least trying though, unlike his old band.

That movie "Some Kind of Monster" was on VHI the other night. How pathetic. I almost thought they had to be putting us on. Lars Ulrich, what exactly does he bring to the band? Can't Hetfield just fire his ass and hire a real drummer?

― Bill Magill, Friday, 18 May 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

SKoM is awesome.

― Jordan, Friday, 18 May 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

It is fun to watch. Ulrich is a total putz. Fun to see him make a fool out of himself.

― Bill Magill, Friday, 18 May 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

I'm sorry for intruding, however I know that all of writers actively post here (by the way, itâ€™s nice to see so many nice things said about our releases on these pages). My post is going to be a little off topic from the normal, however I felt this to be a good way to reach the people I want to for this.

Iâ€™m looking for a writer to write the liner notes for our upcoming Johnny Cash Tribute album. Iâ€™m looking for someone that will be able to reflect on the fact that Johnny Cash had a large impact on the metal scene and the over all respect the scene has for the man and his legacy.

If you would be interesting in working with us on this project please drop me a line at: jamesmatt✧✧✧@opengravereco✧✧✧.c✧✧.

Thanks,
James Mattern
Open Grave Records
http://www.opengraverecords.com

― jamesm, Friday, 18 May 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, someone that is a better writer than I am.

And I guess my email address didn't show up...so just email me by clicking on my name below the post.

― jamesm, Friday, 18 May 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

URGENT Scott to thread URGENT

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 18 May 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

i don't have time to do it. plus, i'm a bigger fan of open grave records than i am of johnny cash. plus, i already feel like i'm on open grave's payroll for pimping that necrodemon album so much! but i do really do love it. and the lengsel album too!

― scott seward, Friday, 18 May 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

Should send me a copy of Necrodemon as I am originally from the Lehigh Valley and am happy to see a record company from the area make good.

― Gorge, Friday, 18 May 2007 21:36 (eighteen years ago)

i told everyone a long while back that they should e-mail james and hit him up for the necrodemon album, george. maybe you were absent that day.

― scott seward, Friday, 18 May 2007 21:43 (eighteen years ago)

and the kekal album is streaming on the website for free:

http://www.opengraverecords.com/

that's another good one. phil dug that one a bunch.

― scott seward, Friday, 18 May 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

So I think I'm finally sold on this Bloody Panda record. I don't think it's something that I could listen to if I just wanted to sit down and listen to music, but it sounds pretty good in the background.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 18 May 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

Did OZ make albums?

at least three. because the only one i have is III.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 19 May 2007 05:03 (eighteen years ago)

Metal-(ish) albums that got me through the week:

Azalea City Penis Club The Coffin Years The instrumental stoner droner jams, especially "Old Faithful" and I guess "Still Dead After All These Years," are really thick and expansive, and I like them better than anything on the Earthless album everybody's been raving about on this thread. But they also have these minimalist funeral-folk tracks -- "Thunder and Wonder" is really beautiful -- that are the equal of anything on the last couple Oneida albums. "Pictures" is a little bit too indie rock maybe, but this is still a good record despite the band's embarrassing and unstomachable name. Based in Bristol, apparently (which is apparently in England) and they sent it to me after reading something I'd posted about the also somewhat Oneida-like Je Suis France on the otherwise boring rolling drone-trance thread. (One of the guys may even post on ILM, if I remember right, but I forget what he calls himself.)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=51774440

Bergraven, Dodsvisioner -- like I suggested in a post about a week ago, the best album I've heard on Hydra Head in a while; maybe their only one I've liked in a while. Still, very Hydra Head genre-wise: slow meditative yoga sludge ("talmudic" maybe? does that even make sense?), in other words, just a heavy crawling wall of gunk from the frozen tundras and ice floes of Sweden, but for some reason this time it works: Melodies, maybe? Or something. I think tracks two and three were the standouts. Somewhat useful in treating insomnia, too.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=144109758

Buffalo, Only Want You For Your Body: Perhaps their most badass and threatening album, though the photos in the booklet (cover too, with that fatso trannie in bondage) might contribute to that being my opinion. "I'm a Skirt Lifter, Not A Shirt Raiser" has a great riff and cool sound effects not to mention a title apparently opposed to tits, but I think my favorites are "King Cross Ladies," the live version of "United Nations," and the Alvin Lee cover.

Billy Squier, The Tale of The Tape. Won't qualify for my reissue list this year since $1 copies of it never went away, but it's great to be reminded what a great pop-rock record this is -- in some ways, closer to Piper and the Sidewinders than to Billy's later stuff, though "You Should Be High Love" is obviously him in Zep mode, and "The Big Beat" is still a miracle of proto-hip-hip nature, and "Who's Your Boyfriend" has a pretty big beat of its own that should be sampled at least one-tenth as often as "The Big Beat" is. But the track that really took me by surprise is "Rich Kid," especially its line about sleeping in covenience store parking lots after everybody's gone home, or whatever it is.

Saw local math-blues-sludge-noize duo the Falcon and the Snowman's last set ever last night in W-burg, DJ-ing between sets on the urging of the drummer (who used to drum in my wife's band). Sometimes dull, but some decent heavy slide action in there as I recall, and their Killdozer-reminiscent pigfuck-blooze cover of "Patches" by Clarence Carter took me by surprise.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:02 (eighteen years ago)

Is that the Buffalo who are from Argentina? Because I heard a disc of their's a couple years back of fairly straight ahead blues based metal, and it was enjoyable.

― godsonsafari, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

Australia, early '70s. (We've talked about them plenty upthread, actually...)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

Falcon and the Snowman myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/falconandsnowman

"Patches" not on the page, it turns out, though it seemed lively live than on their album anyway. Not sure how reliable my appraisal of their set (both tasty and tedious parts) is, though; I was starting to crash of tiredness by the time they came on. Got the idea they could find a groove okay, but the songs didn't have enough going on tune-wise to hold my interest for as long as they stretched them out.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:38 (eighteen years ago)

New Korpiklaani in the mail today, and sure, I'll get to it soon and probably like it at least as much if not more than the new Fintroll, which I like fine. Hummpa is as hummpa does, and Korpiklaani are the true hummpapotomi of Finn-metal if anybody is.

But what made me more exited was the trio of Greatest Hits Live CDs that came in the mail from GB Music Ltd., whatever that is -- New England, Starz, and 707! And I can't even remember what New England or 707 sound like, assuming I ever knew in the first place! AOR, I think. Actually I put the New England one on right away, because they were mentioned on some other thread last week and I realized I had no memory of them. They seem to be pompy pop-rock, in the vicinity of Saga or Prism maybe -- "Hello Hello Hello" is very catchy, and I like "Shall I Run Away" too, but their most curious title is "P.U.N.K.", which I just listened to and I still don't know if it's pro- or anti-. But enough of them for now, I think I will put the Starz CD in!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 19 May 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

nobody ever talked about zozobra up in here? i kinda like it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 20 May 2007 10:25 (eighteen years ago)

From country thread, probably more applicable here:

COWBOY TROY -- New album is kind of depressing me so far, so I took it out of my changer a week ago and haven't put it back in. The old old old school DJ Hollywood type rapping in "Blackneck Boogie" seemed kinda fun I guess, but Troy's idea of hard rock seems to be Limp Bizkit stick-up-the-butt gnu-metal (though John Rich I believe has said this album sounds like "Motorhead on a horse," which sounded really promising!) Proggy parts in "Paranoid Like Me (Tis the Season of Discontent)" might be a Metallica attempt. "Hick Chick" has an obvious Gretchen Wilson lyric connection plus some redneck wimmin singing in the background. "Buffalo Stampede" has Avenged Sevenfold on it but has left no impression at all so far. There is also a "Barn Dance Mix" of "I Play Chicken With The Train", I just noticed. We'll see. It can't be as bad as it's seeming so far, can it?

COUNT BISHOPS -- Been playing Speedball + 11, released on 1995 on Ace Records UK and containing EP and outtake tracks recorded by the hardest-rocking band in UK pub-rockdom, mostly in 1975, when they were just starting out. Man, they totally just wanted to be early Stones then, I'm realizing, and they were great at it -- "Route 66," "Teenage Letter," "I Ain't Got You," "Cry To Me," "Sweet Little Sixteen, "Carol," "Mercy Mercy," "Reelin' and Rockin," "Down the Road Apiece" (most country track here, and it's awesome), "I'm a Man" -- how many of those songs (including three Chuck Berry ones, right?) had the Stones done first? A bunch I think. Frank Kogan would probably know off the top of his head. Anyway, this might just be my favorite Bishops CD of the large pile I've been delving into lately.

KORPIKLAANI -- Finnish hummpa/folk/forest-metal, getting ever more beautiful as it gets ever jiggier. Last track "Nordic Feast" is like a great Pogues instrumental circa Red Roses For Me. "Vesilahden Verajilla" on now, just tearing my heart apart.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 20 May 2007 13:42 (eighteen years ago)

The Best of The Count Bishops (Chiswick/Ace, including seven tracks recorded "Live at the Roundhouse 18/02/78") in the changer now, and it might be even better than Speedball + 11, come to think of it. Their best regular issue LP is Choice Cuts from 1978 (which I now own on both CD and LP), edging out The Count Bishops from 1977. Honorable mention: Rollin' With The Count Bishops EP, Ace reissue w/outtakes, 2006.
My favorite song by them overall is their version of "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite" by Fleetwood Mac, which Cowboy Troy should hear. It really does sound like Motorhead on a horse.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 20 May 2007 17:54 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, Cross Cuts, I mean.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 20 May 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

I have one Count Bishops CD. I've seen others but they always seem to be variations of it. It's on Chiswick and has the usual great load of R&B and Brit rock covers plus a couple originals. "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White," "I Need You" (Kinks), etc. They also seemed to be big fans of the olf Fleetwood Mac-style Jeremy Spencer was responsible for.

So which of the records you've mentioned covers this one?

You should also dig up 9 Below Zero's Don't Point Your Finger at the Guitar Man which is totally in the same vein. Or I should send you a copy of my vinyl-to-CD conversion.

― Gorge, Sunday, 20 May 2007 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, a lot of overlap on most of those Bishops CDs, George. The one you're talking about (which is also the one I see most often in stores) sounds like the one just called The Count Bishops, which as far as I can tell was their 1977 debut on Chiswick.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 20 May 2007 21:25 (eighteen years ago)

KORPIKLAANI "Vesilahden Verajilla" on now, just tearing my heart apart.

Guess it doesn't hurt that its melody is largely swiped from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (or whatever pagan tune ancient Goth Christians stole "God Rest Ye..." from), also utilized by Faroe Island Viking metallers Tyr last year and David Banner a few years ago. Then at the end the melody changes to "Fade to Black" by Metallica, and if you want a sad metal melody, that's about the best one you can steal. But most of the rest of the new Korpiklaani album is a great drunken swirl, polkas round and round the campfire in the middle of the snowy Finland woods, with your trusty and loyal wolf by your side. First song (and one of the few English titles) pretty much sums up the mood: "Let's Drink."

― xhuxk, Sunday, 20 May 2007 23:49 (eighteen years ago)

It's their best album yet, that's for sure.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 21 May 2007 01:24 (eighteen years ago)

Saw Heaven and Hell Saturday night at Holmdel NJ. They were good, but not as good as at Radio City. May have been the sound, which is notoriously bad at the PNC Bank Arts Center. Megadeth opened, and hit it out of the park. They were great.

― Bill Magill, Monday, 21 May 2007 13:30 (eighteen years ago)

So it seems like a mini wave of indie blog love is building for Watain. I'm not saying their new album is a bad one, because it's really quite good, but, um, what are they offering the world that late-period Immortal didn't already provide?

― unperson, Monday, 21 May 2007 13:56 (eighteen years ago)

well, immortal don't have a new album out, do they? i still haven't heard the watain.

blackmetal.com was kind enough to send me 13 new-ish releases and i am still digesting. stuff by: lightning swords of death, through the eyes of carrion, dodsferd/ganzmord(split), fomorii/wiatr(split), curse, sykdom, mortuus caelum, gosforth, endless dismal moan(my fave so far. two CDs.), massemord, sin origin, ganzmord (full-length. completely nuts.)

― scott seward, Monday, 21 May 2007 14:11 (eighteen years ago)

I'm really liking the new Dark Tranquillity. It's a nice combination of the more brutal stuff from the last two albums, and the more synth Goth feel of Projector and Haven.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 21 May 2007 19:51 (eighteen years ago)

Like I said a while back, I am loving the new Waitain. Primarily because not only is it top-notch melodic, epic black metal in the vein of Dissection and the like, but also for its superb production. The album just sounds amazing, terrific clarity, which really bucks the usual lo-fi BM trend. I tire of a lot of the lo-fi Euro black metal, it always seems to sound samey after a while. Watain's being bold...not unlike Dimmu Borgir, production-wise, but staying more faithful to the whole BM aesthetic. I haven't noticed the indie blog love for the band, but I do know that the reaction among many metal scenesters is quite ecstatic.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 21 May 2007 20:44 (eighteen years ago)

I heard the new Sigh. Didn't like it as much as the last album. I'm not really into symphonic black metal.

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 21 May 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

So has anyone heard that new Martriden EP? (fellow writers, it's among those look-alike Candlelight advances) They're from the dinky town of Havre, Montana, are barely out of their teens, and do a dead-on combination of Opeth and Behemoth, epic blackened melodic death with acoustic touches (at one point they achieve a very cool Morricone vibe during an acoustic passage, not unlike what Burst did a year and a half ago). Like Arsis, they bring a very European feel to new American metal. Apparently they're recording a debut full-length this summer...I, for one, will be eagerly anticipating it.

http://www.myspace.com/martriden

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 10:34 (eighteen years ago)

Last time I cast slurs upon Pig Destroyer, xhuxk was editor of the VV. Play identify the evangelical making a speech at the end of track 6. PD are still a band that can make 1:30 seem like 4:00. Perfect crystallized thrashgrind sound, same as their last record, showing compliance with ISO 9000 standards. Sleeve art is great, makes one think you're getting something inside instead of the standard preserved booger collection. Best title and tune: Girl in the Slayer Jacket. If you score the album like a game of horseshoes, as in "Fourteen of the fifteen cuts on this almost kept my finger from hitting the 'skip' button," it's good. Pig Destroyer have upped their standards for Phantom Limb. Up yours.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 21:28 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the PxDx is right up there with Jesu for my fave of 2007.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 21:39 (eighteen years ago)

I haven't made it all the way through yet, but so far I don't like PL as much as Terrifyer, which I absolutely loved and continue to listen to all the time. Gotta listen to it front to back two or three times, but with my Beethoven string quartets arriving on Thursday I don't know what kinda time I'm gonna have for grind.

― unperson, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 23:00 (eighteen years ago)

Just back from a death metal night: Suffocation + Devourment + Natron + Viral Load + Despise.

Suffocation were as classy as ever. They invented this brutal death stuff and are probably the band playing it with the most intelligence without compromising their aggressiveness. Played stuff from all their albums, even really early stuff like "Katatonia".

I'm not too fond of the slam 'br00tal' death style but Devourment are worth seeing if just for the unbelievable sewage pipe vocals. The music is not really memorable at all and has a different feel than the other bands, more loose based on primal grooves. But it's the inhuman subsonic gurgle what makes it fun. The hulking growler encouraged every kind of moshpit activity, it got very violent and death jock types naturally loved it. When the band ended their last song the bass player surprised the audience sommersaulting into them.

The greatest surprise were Texans Viral Load. They were just 2 guys (guitar/vox and drummer) and played great, very cool death metal rooted in the classic early 90s, The vocalist made some insane faces (reminding me of Macabre). After the show I bought their mini-CD which I still haven't played but has Obituary and Death covers.

Natron are an experienced band, sounded very tight and namedropped Lucio Fulci (they come from Italy) when introducing a song about "zombies, cannibals and all that". Despise (from the Czech Republic) are younger but their death metal is solid too. They did somewhat melodic leads while staying quite brutal, they were a good opening band.

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 24 May 2007 23:46 (eighteen years ago)

I've decided the Job For A Cowboy album is pretty good. It doesn't sound like Dillinger, like I feared it would; it sounds like Decapitated or early Necrophagist, which is better.

― unperson, Thursday, 24 May 2007 23:54 (eighteen years ago)

Listened through a fair amount of the new Finntroll. As I believe was established above, it's more death metal than polka metal, which makes me sad. Nothing nearly as memorable as on their last couple albums. Still decent, being Finntroll and all, but not what I was hoping.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 24 May 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

anybody goin' to the Baltimore deathfest this weekend?

― J0hn D., Friday, 25 May 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

Korpiklaani's new album is so good, there's no point in going back to the new Finntroll. Obliterates it in every way.

The Gathering last night were incredible. 45 minutes, six songs, including epics "Probably Built in the 50s" and "Travel", from How to Measure a Planet, one of my all-time favourite albums. Brief set, but so worth the years I've waited to see this band.

I've come to the conclusion I like the new Behemoth, but not as much as Demigod. It's Warrell Dane's fault. He sings on one track, and it just doesn't work.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 25 May 2007 00:58 (eighteen years ago)

So apparently I'm seeing Emperor next weekend. Sweet.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 25 May 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

Try to catch Martriden, who's opening for Emperor. Very promising young band that I mentioned somewhere upthread.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 25 May 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

Tip to xhuxk: When opportunity presents, dig up "The Casanovas" from last year. Been working my way through the catalog. Started with "Like It Hot," a debut EP that was discussed favorably upstream, with a roughed-up single called "Nasty" with lyrics to get 'em crossed off lists in the States.

Aussie trio with AC/DC in the blood along with some chops for catchy song-writing. Completely different vibe from Rhino Bucket who do AC/DC from a man-in-pain's POV as opposed to a kid's on-the-sunny-streets-of-Oz.

"Casanovas" was the stab at the US market. Kicks off with 'Livin in the City' which sinks into the brain good. Next up, 'Break Your Heart,' anthem boogie. Getta outta my way, I'm gonna break your heart' they sing, with a swinging rhythm section that aims at the hip shake.

As far as I can tell, made no dent at all. Cover art didn't help which made 'em look like a Disney-pop act. While the hooks are there, they're way too hard for the girlies, little children and rock-n-roll summer camp types.

One cowbell rock track, 'No Time for Love.' Mick & Keef influences cost effective.

― Gorge, Friday, 25 May 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

"Strange Dreams" from Casanovas would be the one song on the LP aimed theoretically aimed at a teen pop audience. I can faintly imagine it on Disney channel next to something where the girls in Everlife are playing their guitars, although that undersells it considerably.

Considering it's immediately followed by two pieces of straight AC/DC riffola, it would immediately turn off the teenpop fanbois.

― Gorge, Friday, 25 May 2007 21:56 (eighteen years ago)

Casanovas' "10 Outta 10" cracks me up. Chorus -- "Ooo-ahhh, gotta thirst for knowledge/Oooo-ahhhh, wanna get to college!" as the c'mon of the student who wants the hot teacher to give him "detention" so he can get in her backdoor. If anyone at IROCK Entertainment thought they had a shot on the Disney channel, permanently out the door on that one.

― Gorge, Friday, 25 May 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone attending Hellfest 2007? I've already got my ticket.

― no-nonsense, Saturday, 26 May 2007 09:30 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, the Casanovas sound like I would absolutely love them and are therefore hereby on my shopping list (whatever that means, since I never get around to actually buying new CDs anymore. Just like most other people I guess. Anyway, maybe I should visit Amazon or something. Other 2007 albums I'll probably have to buy if I'm going to hear them: Rose Tattoo, Sir Lord Baltimore, Tim McGraw, Modest Mouse, smooth jazz guy Andre Ward. Hey, I liked his last one!)

Wound up liking the Starz' Greatest Hits Live from beginning to end, even though nothing in the liner notes seems to indicate when it was actually recorded. (I get the idea it's some kind of vintage live recording for radio rather than from a recent reunion, but I'm not positive. Maybe I'll get around to investigating said question, maybe not.) Anyway, the real surprises were probably "Subway Terror" (hey, in the late '70s and early '80s, the subways apparently were terrifying, but I wasn't in New York then) and "Night Crawler." But I still think "Rock Six Times" might be my favorite Starz song. I still don't know if I understand its plot, but old vinyl records definitely figure into it.

Tried Pig Destroyer. Lasted for a track or two. I dunno, I just feel like I've heard this joke before, and I get it, I guess, and don't need anymore of it.

Dark Tranquility seemed okay, listenable but not especially exiciting. Maybe I'll get back to it one of these days. For now I reshelved it and replaced it with Samael, who I have no opinion of yet.

Cowboy Troy wound proving both less bad and less metal than I'd thought at first; more notes over on the country thread. Best tracks are "Blackneck Boogie" and "Cruise Control," probably not enough to make the album worth owning, though I'd love a 7-inch single with those two songs. One thing that made me decide the album wasn't horrible is that its gnu-metal proved to be closer to Crazy Town (via Coolio and Fun Lovin' Criminals) than Limp Bizkit.

Italian cdbaby band, said to be a "fusion of the '70 english prog rock with radical metal, arabian percussions and flamenco"; turns out to mostly sound like Metallica ballads circa 1991, unfortunately:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/fearoffours

Finished getting though the Count Bishops pile, and finally decided that, although tons of the tracks are great, they were also too samey to make for truly great albums. I'm happy to own everything I've got by them, but over album length, the tough r&b cover after tough r&b cover gets a bit wearing, and kinda stodgy too. Someone wrote on some other thread a few days ago that some Dr. Feelgood album I'd never heard was the best pub-rock album ever give or take Eddie and the Hot Rods, and I realized that, if I'm gonna be honest, I might like the one Feelgood album I own (Malpractice) and the two Eddie and the Hot Rod ones I own more, not to mention the one Ducks Deluxe album I own, more than any of the Count Bishops albums I own. They were just sort of one-dimensional. Though it was a very cool dimension.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 26 May 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

Er, Samael turns out to be one of those advance CDs with 100 tracks on it, impossible for random CD changer play. Which means I probably won't get to it for several months. Is it worth waiting that long? Or should I just pass? (The cover and band look more like zen new age than metal, which I actually find more promising than if it was the other way around.) But for now, it's been replaced with Gretchen Wilson.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 26 May 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

Samael is pretty boring. Band that used to be black metal doing industrial metal with no hooks... or anything interesting, really.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 26 May 2007 19:11 (eighteen years ago)

I liked the last Samael album, so I'm interested in hearing how the new one turned out.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 26 May 2007 20:49 (eighteen years ago)

haven't any of you fools heard the new Red Harvest album yet? YOU WILL TREMBLE IN AWE! alright, maybe not, but it's mighty good.

― scott seward, Saturday, 26 May 2007 21:11 (eighteen years ago)

right now i'm listening to SOLFERNUS though. band on this little label from the Czech Republic that i'm writing about. SHINDY PRODUCTIONS. not the catchiest metal label name in the world. SOLFERNUS are comprised of:

Parambucha - thundering

Corn - furious beat of madness

Khaablus - insane snake throat

Igor - six strings raping

― scott seward, Saturday, 26 May 2007 21:16 (eighteen years ago)

Cradle of Filth still have the best gag "evil" descriptions.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 26 May 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

"six strings raping" reminds me of the twelve days of christmas.

― scott seward, Saturday, 26 May 2007 21:47 (eighteen years ago)

Giant stack of stuff in the mail today, mostly back stuff that needs to be reviewed:

Flotsam and Jetsam - Doomsday for the Deceiver Reissue
Spock's Beard - S/T
Tankard - Kings of Beer
Sentenced - Buried Alive
Unearth - III: in the Eyes of Fire
Eden Bridge - the Grand Design
Hacride - Amoeba
DHG - Super Villain Outcast
All That Remains - the Fall of Ideals
Holy Moses - World Chaos

Can't wait to dive into these...

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 26 May 2007 22:13 (eighteen years ago)

^ Some quality stuff there. Love the Doomsday reissue. And All That Remains still holds up extremely well, far better than Shadows Fall, Killswitch, et al.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 26 May 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

Samael CD on now, and actually it's kind of catchy! In a post-Sisters of Mercy metal (= Sentenced like maybe?) kind of way. Nice swirling orchestrations within what seem like actual songs, and I approve of the slimy sleaziness of the singer's vocal accent. They remind me of some other usual subject I like on the metal/industrial/Eurotrash cusp, too (Treponem Pal maybe? Noir Desir? Bloodstar? Pankow? Rammstein? KMFDM?) At any rate, definitely something I'll invest some more time in, when I actually have some time.

Meanwhile, this is Frank Kogan, via email:

listened to and was tremendously disappointed by the Poison covers alb: where once
they'd been light and jaunty, now they're weak and tired, Bret's voice
in mufflers, really lifeless overall, and to prove this they include three
tracks they'd recorded twenty years ago that are bright and dancing.
One of the newbies works well anyway - "Suffragette City," which is hard to
ruin, and Bret's dulled-out voice isn't a general problem amidst all its
wham-bam. And the Tom Petty cover is OK. But this isn't remotely as inventive as
last year's Def Leppard covers alb, for instance, and in fact *neither* is
as good (well, neither has peaks that are nearly as good) as the Sirens
glitter glam covers alb you sent me in your last package, which is all over the
place in sound quality, pitch quality, noise quality, quality quality;
and the giant amazon in scarves and lamÈ who sings lead is pretty much out
of tune and raving the whole way, but man it's a lot more fun, rocks a lot
harder, and the Slade cover is better than anything on the recent Slade
nonhits compilation, and incredibly she does an absolutely over the top
but attention-riveting version of Bowie's "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide.".

― xhuxk, Sunday, 27 May 2007 14:30 (eighteen years ago)

707 Greatest Hits Live (GB Music) -- Liking this a lot, too. Know nothing about the band. New Rolling Stone Record Guide (blue 1983 edition) dismisses them as "second-rate Toto." Jasper and Oliver's International Enyclopedia of Heavy Metal raves about their "classic heavy-pomp sound with brutal drumming" and says their second album (apparently called 2nd Album!) went top 20 in the U.S., in 1981, and then they got Angel's bassist Felix Robinson. I thought Martin Popoff might be a fan, but realized I was confusing them with 54-40, whoever they are (Canadians, apparently) by mistake.
Anyway, the live album shows they did indeed make truly catchy hard-pop rock with plenty of smart pomp in the arrangements. Closest of maybe just laziest comparison I can think of would be Prism. But the first cut, "Live With the Girl," is a total ringer for "On Top Of the World" Cheap Trick. Some Babys and early Loverboy in there too. Most brutal (and funkiest) drums are in "Millionaire," one of the two heaviest cuts along with the Zep-like (or okay, I dunno, Fastway-like? Paris-like?) "Pressure Drop" (which is not a Toots and the Maytals cover.) Every other cut sinks its hooks in real quick. "Rockin is Easy" might be a protest against protest songs, but I might have heard its words wrong (defintely stuff in there about people wasting time seeking gainful employment and keeping up with the Joneses, and not knowing about the state of the nation and foreign relations, so let's just rock easy instead okay?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 27 May 2007 18:37 (eighteen years ago)

Tankard are cool, totally awesome throwbacks to the time before thrash musicians learned how to play their instruments. Pretty much a (more) incompetent version of early Destruction or Hirax. Plus, the subject matter on Kings of Beer revolves around farting, diabolical barbecues, people who are afraid of tattoos, and, of course, beer. Recommended for thrash metal fans with a sense of humor.

Speaking of funny thrash metal, the performance of "Hammerhead" that's "live in Jason's apartment" on the Flotsam and Jetsam bonus DVD is totally brilliant. Especially when the eighth generation tape starts skipping.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 27 May 2007 18:43 (eighteen years ago)

Tankard have been doing the same thing for a long time. First album decade plus ago revolved around upholding Deutschland's beer purity law, the Reinheitsgebot. "Fight for your right to drink pure beer!" was part of a chorus on one song.

I think you'll admit this is a heckuva verse, perhaps unintentionally so:

German beer's among the finest
The beer is pure and chemical free
A standard set which we are proud of
A standard met by no other land
Purity laws and chemical free
No body pollution - no change!
Preservatives shall soon be common
And the beer will be bastardized
===

And there's no denying the self-recognition in:

She screams and complains drives me crazy all day
If she says one more word I'll blow her away
I'll cut her to pieces I'll beat her with chains
I'll dip her in acid till nothing remains
Now I'm free here in jail getting drunk on my beers
Fuckin' wardens all day for the next 20 years
=======

Today's hilarity in the New York Times, Pareles on tribute albums. He
gets through the entire article without mentioning Deadline/Cleopatra
once which is, of course, appropriate for the Times' primary readership of snobs and dilettantes. Mentions tribute album to "Metal Machine Music" without revealing even a slightly discernible sense of humor or granting of mercy to readers who might not realize they're being set up.

― Gorge, Sunday, 27 May 2007 20:28 (eighteen years ago)

Apparently (judging from both the liner notes and AMG) 707 were a Detroit band. Strange - I don't remember them being especially big on Detroit's AOR stations, though it's possible they went right past me. (Also just noticed that their live album is copyright 2005, which means it was released, though obviously probably not recorded, then. Starz live album is copyright 1999; New England live live album copyright is 2003, and played back to back I'm also realizing that it's not nearly as good as the Starz or 707 ones. It is more proggy, though -- actually, who New England really remind me of is Asia, though apparently they had major connections to Kiss.)

Does anybody know much about the song "Tumble With Me" that the Sirens do such a great cover of on their new album? AMG suggests it was previously done by both the Hollywood Brats and the Boys, neither of which bands I've ever heard an album by. Though apparently I should. (And maybe the Yobs, too.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 27 May 2007 21:14 (eighteen years ago)

It was written by Casino Steele, who was in the Hollywood Brats and later, the Boys. The Yobs -were- the Boys, I do believe. The first two Boys albums are good to great. They started levelling out on "To Hell with the Boys," although the latter contains a great cover of Sabre Dance done ala Love Sculpture. The band was in with the punk rock movement but was much more rock and roll oriented than the usual safety pin crewmen.

New England were a Paul Stanley discovery. One of the songs on the debut album made a slight dent on FM radio in the Eighties.

― Gorge, Sunday, 27 May 2007 21:37 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that'd be "Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya," which on the live CD sounds vaguely familiar, and also catchy enough to have earned its AOR hitdom. Favorite track so far, though, is the somewhat Hooplish "Hello Hello Hello", very much an anomaly amid all the pomp.

New Udo album Mastorcutor on Candlelight sounds like a respectable day's or month's work, but not like anything I'll be returning to. Track #8 is a big ballad; track #5 is Udo in old Accept-style AC/DC-gone-pompous mode; #3 similar to the latter but speedier, and better. None killed me enough to make looking up their titles seem time-effective.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 27 May 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

Didn't like that Udo album much at all, and I wanted to because I've been listening to Accept's three good albums (Restless And Wild through Metal Heart) a lot the last couple of months.

I kinda like the Poison disc, though that may be mitigated by the fact that I interviewed Michaels the other day and he was a terrific subject. Said flat out that Capitol/EMI was not willing to pay for an album of new Poison songs in 2007, so the band took the deal they could get. I really like the Petty cover, and a few others too.

― unperson, Sunday, 27 May 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, a quick glance on all music indicates that that Tankard record is a reissue of an album from 2000. With no access to their previous work (have they ever really even had distribution in the US?), I thought it was quite fun. I get the feeling this is a similar sort of band Motorhead, where if you like one of their albums you'll probably like all of them.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 28 May 2007 00:56 (eighteen years ago)

Band just emerging in the tiny netherworld of my friends' bars: Children. You will know them soon enough.

― Andi Mags, Monday, 28 May 2007 05:22 (eighteen years ago)

have Tankard they ever really even had distribution in the US?)

Yeah, I think at least the first one was on New Renaissance, which no longer exists unless it turned into something else. New Renaissance was funny label. It expanded propitiously, issuing records by all kinds of marginal acts. They even put out a record by a band from Schoentown, a strip-mining town near my old home. Don't remember the name of the band. The kid who was the leader had a huge mixing desk/studio in his basement.
Their best song was about a giant coal shovel. Like Tankard, they wrote about what they knew.

― Gorge, Monday, 28 May 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

So I'm realizing that New England's name might have as much to do with their sound as their geographical roots -- Basically, they are total Anglophiles. As often as not, the singer (or one of them -- they credit vocals to more than one guy) reminds me of Ian Hunter in ballad mode. I wish the music reminded me as much of Badfinger/Raspberries/Kinks/Cheap Trick/Piper as Martin Popoff suggests in his '70s book, but their best songs do have a certain hard-pop edge (on the live album, that'd be "Hello Hello Hello," "Hey You're On The Run," "Don't Ever Wanna Lose Ya," and "P.U.N.K.") And even their more Asia-style foofiness is okay, only turning truly tedious on rare occasions. Actually, I like the swirly little loops that keyboardist Jimmy Waldo goes into --- more minimalist than bombastic, which is nice. (Reminds me of sounds on Loverboy's debut that I once compared to Philip Glass. Maybe that sound was more common in prog/pomp rock than I'd assumed. Were they all listening to Eno at the time? Or maybe it comes from Alan Parsons, Gentle Giant, or somebody.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 28 May 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

I remember the New England album as having a strong Angel vibe, as in the flowery Greg Giuffria keytar-led stuff. Asia-style foofiness is a good way to describe it, too.

You should prob'ly dig up the old and only Storm record, too. They came out of LA about the same time. Woman singer, though, I thin' and nothing as successful as Don't Ever Want to Lose Ya.

― Gorge, Monday, 28 May 2007 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

Looks like New Renaissance is still around, although it doesn't appear that they do anything but reissue albums anymore. They sent some CDs to my old college radio station a few years ago, including a Wehrmacht album that I remember liking quite a bit (and, if my memory serves me correctly, actually sounded something like Tankard). You're right, though -- that is a weird little label.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

that'd probably be "beermacht." i've picked up a couple of new renaissance reissues recently - indestroy's "senseless theories" (thrash with hardcoreish elements, pretty good) and dream death's "journey into mystery." that probably being one of the keystones of the evolution of death/doom metal (or maybe not and it just seems like it should've been). and then they changed into penance.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:07 (eighteen years ago)

Now I remember, the New Renaissance band from Schoentown was called Chyld. And song about the coal shovel was called "Marion," which was the manufacturer name emblazoned on the side, or perhaps the name of the coal company.

― Gorge, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:22 (eighteen years ago)

Decided in the end that I can definitely live without the new Samael, the new Dark Tranquility, and the new Mortiis. The first two strike me as competent but not distinctive in any particularly compelling way. The Mortiis is a remix record, and basically sounds like Marilyn Manson -- i.e., an attempt at dance-metal with all the space and beauty and dance taken out (and I say that as somebody who, in the past, has found some of Mortiis's music somewhat beautiful -- though more when he's in demi-classical new age mode than in demi-industrial mode.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 12:08 (eighteen years ago)

LAZARUS COMPLEX -- One-man stoner doom from Indiana; some subliminal melodies (one of which, in "Soon the Rain Will Come," somehow also reminds me of "Only Women Bleed") and occasional moments of wobbly psych weirdness (e.g., in "Welcome to the Death"), but ultimately just way too thin, both vocals-wise and instruments-wise. Don't really hear the Opeth and Katatonia influences claimed on his cdbaby page:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/lazaruscomplex2

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 12:48 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, he's welcoming you to darkness, not to death (much less to the jungle, or paradise, or the Terrordome, or the Pleasuredome, or the Hotel California.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 12:56 (eighteen years ago)

Shit! Actually, he's welcoming the darkness itself. (You have nothing whatsoever to do with it.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 12:57 (eighteen years ago)

The new Caïna album is drop-dead gorgeous. I don't know what else to say, I'd just wind up gushing hyperbolically. This is the kind of experimental/folk/drone/black metal that gets it right, every step of the way. Devastating is the best word to describe it.

Profound Lore can do no wrong, they're easily my favourite label right now.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 21:37 (eighteen years ago)

i can't wait to listen to the caina album! i got it today, but i'm at work, so i won't be able to listen until later.

did you like the first album on god is myth, adrien? i can't remember. i gushed pretty heavily about it in DB.

and he's just a kid!

― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

I actually haven't heard any of his earlier stuff, so hearing this new CD, my jaw hit the floor. Clearly one of the best albums I've heard all year.

I'm definitely going to search for his earlier material now.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 22:01 (eighteen years ago)

wow, yeah, i dig it. put it on after work and kinda drifted in and out of sleep as it played and i hallucinated pretty vividly due to lack of sleep. sounded amazing. even better than the last album. the hidden track is hitting me now! ha!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 04:13 (eighteen years ago)

Just wanted to put in another plug here for this year's quite awesome American Dog album, Hard -- especially love the five-song span in the middle that goes "Another Day In Paradise"/"Hypnotised/"Long Time Comin'""(surprisingly heart-rending extended Zep-Celt-folk-strum intro to that one)/"Beaten, Broken, Etc."/"Rock-n-Roll Dog." Oral odes "Bloodsucker" and "Sometimes You Eat the Pussy" are as nasty and funny as they want to be too. Basically, this is what the Black Crowes would've sounded like, if they had actually been as good as I always kind of wished they would be. Also what I wish the last couple decades worth of Motorhead albums sounded like. Big Nugent influence, too. And it all swings like crazy.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 11:55 (eighteen years ago)

Also, they sent me an American Dog patch for my jean jacket, so now all I need is a jean jacket to put the patch on. They are definitely a patch on jean jacket kind of band. And they look like one, too. They deserve to have lots of fights at their shows.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

New Devin Townsend project, Ziltoid the Omniscient, is loads of fun. Sounds like Devin Townsend Band proggy stuff, but it's pretty silly. It feels like towns and blowing off steam after knocking out two SYL records, although you can't exactly call it a goof around project since he did everything on this himself. Definitely recommended, though.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 22:17 (eighteen years ago)

The cover art is making that a really hard sell for me. It looks like something Les Claypool would be associated with.

― unperson, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

I sort of dig the goofiness of the cover art. I mean, it fits the tone of the album, which is about a nerd alien from the ninth dimension who wants to be a rock star and so travels to Earth since he can manipulate reality in the third dimension or something and needs coffee to power his time travel machine. Lyrically, it's just total comic book silliness. Musically, it sounds exactly like everything Devin Townsend does, so if you like his other projects, there is no reason you won't like this.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

(I suppose it helps to have a sense of humor, too.)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:25 (eighteen years ago)

I'd guess that, if enough people heard it, it'd be divisive as fuck, but meanwhile Scott and Chuck, you could both do a lot worse than to check out the new one by Aghora on Season of Mist - proggy moody stuff with a woman singing, reminds me a little of Without Face (though not as awesome as WF to me) - really nice atmospheric breakdowns with some fusion-y bass poppin' and stuff

I don't know maybe you'd hate it but I kinda love it

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:32 (eighteen years ago)

also reminds me of Renaissance, which makes me lol

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 30 May 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

not only did i talk in my sleep all night long last night after listening to the new Caina album:

i'm pulling an all-nighter over here, this is what i hear the menfolk say in their sleep

but i also completely stopped breathing. i even had a dream where maria was telling me to get up and i kept telling her that i couldn't because i was having trouble breathing. then, after a while, she actually did wake me up for real because i wasn't breathing. spooky. that caina will kill ya.

― scott seward, Thursday, 31 May 2007 00:24 (eighteen years ago)

i think i got the aghora, john. i'll look for it. i am in NO WAY complaining, but i've been kinda deluged with new stuff and it has been taking me longer to get thru it all. just those 13 blackmetal.com albums i got alone...

and now, even though he is trying to get all freddy krueger on my ass, all i wanna hear is the caina album.

― scott seward, Thursday, 31 May 2007 00:28 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, yeah, I have a ton of really, really good albums to write about, but I'm constantly compelled to play Mourner. Agalloch did the exact same thing to me a year ago.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 31 May 2007 00:49 (eighteen years ago)

I want to know what really good stuff you've heard, Adrien! You're a good indicator for what I should request from promo lists.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:02 (eighteen years ago)

Caina is an absolute must! They're on Profound Lore.

The other stuff I'm hugely impressed with is pretty high profile stuff, like Watain, Cephalic Carnage, Pig Destroyer, 3 Inches of Blood. The new Monarch 2-CD thing is really good, too. Got the new one by The Dead See today, which is like a cross between Neurosis and Crowbar. And I finally got to hear the new Memfis album, which was getting a lot of hype in Europe last year. It's pretty good, like Pain of Salvation meets Mastodon.

And although it has its share of goofy moments, that new Sanctity album isn't too bad.

I want to hear that Aghora now.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:17 (eighteen years ago)

Package I received today had the aforementioned Ziltoid the Omniscient, new Nocturnal Rites, new Candlemass, The American Black Lung, and new Symphony X. I will report on them as I listen.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

Haven't gotten that Candlemass yet. I'm looking forward to it, though it'll be hard to top the last one with Messiah singing.

Did I mention the new Behemoth here? Superb as expected, but that one track with Warrell Dane singing still bugs me. And that new Korpiklaani, man, have they outdone themselves on that one.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 31 May 2007 03:55 (eighteen years ago)

Ziltoid the Omniscient

Dull joke. Annoying if you waste time on it. The standard Townsend tea tax to be shouldered so he'll continue to produce metal bands reasonably and economically. It's always time for a Townsend Tea Party.

― Gorge, Thursday, 31 May 2007 05:15 (eighteen years ago)

Phantom Limb is a fucking grand slam - I already liked Pig Destroyer but didn't expect them to really switch up their game so impressively. They were awesome at the MDF prefest too.

Seriously in awe of this new album anyway

― J0hn D., Thursday, 31 May 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Phantom Limb is incredible...but when I saw those lyrics and finally learned what the hell JR was screaming, that clinched it. "Girl in the Slayer Jacket" is one of the best things they've ever done.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 31 May 2007 18:47 (eighteen years ago)

I don't have the lyric sheet! Or if I do I put it someplace, I don't know if it came with the cardstock promo. But that album...Jesus. It's just so front-to-back good. As I say, I liked them, sometimes a lot, but this record gives me that "everybody's gotta love this, right?" vibe

― J0hn D., Thursday, 31 May 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

ok just found the lyrics, holy shit you're right

― J0hn D., Thursday, 31 May 2007 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

I don't remember enjoying the last thing Pig Destroyer did at all, but I just went to their my space page, and Loathsome sounds pretty cool! It reminds me of circa-93 Roadrunner stuff. Maybe I'll check them out.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 31 May 2007 19:47 (eighteen years ago)

Phantom Limb just pummels you fir the first seven tracks or so (like, 15 minutes), but then things settle down and they bring in a ton of variation. Thrash, death & roll, stuff like that. It's a thrilling album.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 31 May 2007 20:05 (eighteen years ago)

"Loathesome" it's such a great track

― J0hn D., Thursday, 31 May 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

plz forgive spastic posting habits today, I'm on antihistamines

― J0hn D., Thursday, 31 May 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

New Experimental BM band from Norway: Sjodogg. Debut album due via Osmose Productions in the Autumn.

this band are special:

SJODOGG Signs With OSMOSE PRODUCTIONS

http://tinyurl.com/322eb2
Norwegian black metallers SJODOGG, who feature in their ranks members of ENTHRAL, CREST OF DARKNESS and THE FLESH, will release their full-length debut, "Landscapes of Disease and Decadence" this fall through Osmose Productions.

Sjodogg: listen on myspace
http://www.myspace.com/sjodogg

The basic concept behind SJODOGG is to create dark music with an emphasis on atmosphere and groove, rather than focusing on sheer technical brutality. The music of SJODOGG is minimalistic in some aspects, yet innovative and compelling. We believe that SJODOGG has something significant to offer the fans of dark metal music around the world- the "edge" that separates us from many of our contemporaries.

― djmartian, Thursday, 31 May 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

So, the new Candlemass is REALLY good. Don't know if I'm going to jump in and call it "great" yet (I've made more than a few early calls on here that I've gone back on later), but it very well might be. The new singer (I think he's from Solitude Aeturnus) isn't Messiah, of course, but he does have a very good voice and his own character, so quite honestly it isn't even really a downgrade. It also seems a bit... speedier than their previous work. Not Dragonforce velocity, but they're certainly edging towards Cathedral territory. Anyway, I'm going to have to give it a strong recommendation after the first listen.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 1 June 2007 05:28 (eighteen years ago)

Got the Rammstein 2DVD/1CD live thing, Völkerball, yesterday. Great packaging (folds out into a big cross), and since they won't tour the U.S. - maybe the label doesn't think it's profitable, maybe the fire marshals just won't let 'em - I gotta make do with this.

― unperson, Friday, 1 June 2007 11:27 (eighteen years ago)

Is Phantom Limb a Venture Brothers reference?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 1 June 2007 12:15 (eighteen years ago)

Amazon is recommending Big Business based on my taste. I haven't ever heard of them. Any good?

― Bill Magill, Friday, 1 June 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

They're a bass-drums duo. I don't think you'd like 'em that much, but you might. Kinda grungy, very heavy but their grooves are not as tight as indie-rock feeb critics claim they are. Check out the new Melvins album A Senile Animal, on which they make up 2/3 of the rhythm section, first. If you like that, go for their own stuff.

― unperson, Friday, 1 June 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

Much appreciated, unperson, as always.

― Bill Magill, Friday, 1 June 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

New Big Business album is great!

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 1 June 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

have any of you heard the new Ozzy record?

i'm vaguely curious.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 1 June 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not hehe

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 1 June 2007 19:17 (eighteen years ago)

Heh, I've been avoiding it, especially after hearing that disastrous single. I've been told that the rest of the album is better, but after that debacle with the 2002 remasters, I'm done with Ozzy for good.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 1 June 2007 19:40 (eighteen years ago)

The single's horrible. You should have heard him do it on a WWE broadcast a few weeks ago. Holy shit.

There have been a bunch of debacles: the remasters, the stupid tv show, the Iron Maiden controversy, the fact that Dio Sabbath just rampaged through the land kicking copious amounts of ass, etc.

It's sad.

― Bill Magill, Friday, 1 June 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

Just got an e-mail this morning that the NYC Heaven and Hell show will be out as a 2CD/DVD set (or audio and video versions separately) later this summer from Rhino. Yay-hoo!

― unperson, Friday, 1 June 2007 19:51 (eighteen years ago)

Sweet. That will probably be the first time a show I was at gets released commercially.

― Bill Magill, Friday, 1 June 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, they put together that Heaven & Hell DVD really fast. Recorded and filmed in March, out in August. Can't wait to get it.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 1 June 2007 20:11 (eighteen years ago)

New Symphony X pretty much sounds like Symphony X. Nothing as catchy as "Evolution (the Grand Design)," but perfectly enjoyable, well-done power prog. And amazingly, despite the fact that it's an album called Paradise Lost from a prog metal band, it isn't a concept album!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 1 June 2007 20:21 (eighteen years ago)

Along the same lines, I'm really liking the new Sonata Arctica. I think I figured out why I like this band so much -- they have the trappings of a power metal band, but their songs are all very personal and have real emotional content instead of just dragons and Vikings and stuff (and they aren't emo, despite the curiously Fallout Boy-titled "My Dream's but a Drop of Fuel for a Nightmare"). Not to say that I don't enjoy dragons and Vikings and such, considering my well-documented love for Blind Guardian, but it's just nice to find a band that has that sound and doesn't feel the need to go with the generic fantasy subject matter. I also really like the Rage for Order-style frosty production, and their incredible sense of melody and catchiness. They even dip into Savatage showtune metal! All that, while still sounding like nobody else. Recommended.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 2 June 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

Is Phantom Limb a Venture Brothers reference?

-- Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, June 1, 2007 12:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb

― latebloomer, Saturday, 2 June 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

WHY MUST YOU RUIN ALL OUR FUN

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 2 June 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I don't mind the new Sonata Arctica at all. It barely qualifies as metal compared to their older stuff, but I'm impressed that they decided to move beyond what was becoming a really predictable formula for them.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 2 June 2007 20:30 (eighteen years ago)

I only have the live album, "For the Sake of Revenge" (which was so good that they named a track on the new album after it), which I really like. I guess this one is a bit closer to AOR than their previous stuff, but in a really good way.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 2 June 2007 20:38 (eighteen years ago)

They've always had a knack for good pop hooks. "Paid in Full" and "For the Sake of Revenge" might be really mellow, but I think they're terrific rock songs.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 2 June 2007 20:48 (eighteen years ago)

I've always liked their more quiet songs, anyway. And those are good ones. This is a 99 slices of death promo, though, so I can't weigh in on individual songs yet.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 2 June 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

late boomer,
I figured. I was going for a hopeful note.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 3 June 2007 05:09 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know if I've heard any of the albums mentioned in the last 30 or 40 posts (though some of them sound interesting), but I have heard these:

TESLA -- New all-covers-of-classic-rock-songs album, Real To Reel. My overall response is: Better than Poison's covers album, not as good as the Sirens, maybe or maybe not as good as Def Leppard's. My wife's response is: What is the point of covering Stones and Led Zeppelin and Beatles songs if you're going to make them sound exactly like they always sounded? Which is a pretty good point, except: (1) It may eventually be inevitable that classic rock might turn into a repertory music like jazz and the blues and folk have often been, and it may already be happening, and (2) Tesla's version of "Honky Tonk Woman" doesn't sound like the Stones because it basically sucks (the only other track they really fall short on is "Hand Me Down World" by the Guess Who, my ears tell me), and (3) I am such a moron that (unlike Lalena, who owns just about every Beatles album ever made and some that never came out) I wouldn't have been able to identify "I've Got a Feeling" as a Beatles cover if you'd held a gun to my head. I was thinking "This sounds pretty good, like the Black Crowes doing a Humble Pie imitation maybe, except the part that goes "Everybody had a good year/Everybody let their hair down/Everybody pulled their socks up/Everybody put their foot down" or whatever it says sounds exactly like Everclear." Anyway, I like it; maybe I should check out the original someday. The other two songs that Tesla covers that I am embarrassed to say I couldn't positively identify the original artists of (which will prove I should probably have never been qualified to write a book about heavy metal) are (1) "Day of The Eagle," which sounds great, and I just looked it up and it's Robin Trower, shows what I know, and (2) um, "Rock Bottom" -- okay, I'm gonna guess Kiss, and google says...okay, I was right about that one, whew! But damned if I can remember what Kiss's version sounds like. Tesla's version is great, but really, the song itself is just a leadup to the great part, which is this amazing jazz fusion jam it turns into. (Does any Kiss version do that? It's really cool.) The other instrumental jam coda on the Tesla album that I really love is the one at the end of their cover of Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy," which is just beautiful, and if you stick around long enough you get to hear Tesla's guitarist sneaking in quotes from Slash's opening to "Welcome to the Jungle" near the end, ha ha. And oh yeah, the cover of Uriah Heep's "Stealin" builds to a really tasty workout, too, though the actual song part is a little on the weak side despite reminding me that Uriah Heep did a way better song about stealing than Jane's Addiction ever did. Otherwise: "Space Truckin" is lots of fun; "Bad Reputation" is a Thin Lizzy cover not a Joan Jett cover and sounds just fine; "Thank You" really does sound exactly like Led Zeppelin; "Ball of Confusion" is in the great tradition of bands like Rare Earth and Mardo (and maybe nobody else) stiffening hard funky Temptations songs into huge plodding elephant stomps (which always winds up being a pretty good idea); "Bell Bottom Blues" is more or less note for note, near as I can tell, and therefore a beaut. So: good album!

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

Um, that was only one album! And somewhat longwinded, sad to say. I will be more concise now:

APOSTOLUM Anedonna - Ambient Italian black metal on Moribund, a label I have grown to appreciate. I think this is more beautiful than the Bergraven album on Hydra Head, which I also liked. There appear to be two guys in the band, which is more than one. "Brabe" is lovely new age workout; does the "Katatonia" subtitle mean that band did it first, Scott, or is that just a coincidence? (Also, When did black metal get more beautiful than dark metal, which mostly just sounds boring these days?)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=81442927

PSYCHOTIC 4 Lightning -- Cdbaby Glam/sleaze nostalgia from Canada (I think Vancouver with a label in Quebec, but don't quote me on that) they maybe look a little bit too much like Panic From the Disco or one of those bands o' timid twerps, but the roots of their sound are clearly Hanoi Rocks/Faster Pussycat/D Generation (on their first album when they didn't quite suck yet), and they seem to pull it off pretty well though there's something thin about the vocals that is standing in my way - oddly, though, for a thin-vocaled band, the power ballads might come closer to hitting the target than the rockers, hard to tell yet. My favorite cut so far, though, is a rocker, "Breaking Out," thanks to its very catchy gang shout parts; also definitely like "Petal of Metal," which is not really all that metal but so what. Also, they get a little synthy sometimes, which actually sounds kind of cute to me:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/psychotic4

THE FELLOW AMERICANS -- I am totally loving this so far. "Straight ahead, no bullshit rock'nroll" (from Texas), their cdbaby page says, and for once they're not lying. Sounds very late '70s/early '80s to me -- like a new wave band that grew up on really tough hard rock. I'm thinking the Wipers, the Reds, the Flesheaters, the Embarrassment, though probably there's somebody else I've forgetten. Also, only eight songs, which is smart (and they seem to be actual well-written songs, too) -- my favorites of which so far are "Century Park" and "Search for Numb" and maybe "Marilyn M" and "The Way You Try":

http://cdbaby.com/cd/fellowamericans2

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

JOETOWN - Gorge, you gotta hear this guy. Extremely frantic, over the top, mid '70s style radio power trio rock led by a dude from Connecticut who is either a real doofus or has a real sense of humor or both, given that the first five titles on the album are "People Who Rock," "Feeling Rock n Roll," "Ten Ton Brick" (which I think is the one with the extended Gary Glitter style Burundi underbottom, but I may be confusing it), "Rock & Roll Man Pt I," and "Rock n Roll Man Pt II." Those titles had me a little worried that he might suffer from Andrew W.K. disease, but fortunately apparently not. "Rock & Roll Man Pt 1" is one of my favorites so far, along with "The Spinz," "Curbside Sleeper" (which contains a suitably irritating Steve Tyler style chatter screech attack) and "Go!," the latter of which must be one of the most blatant rips of "Free For All"-era Nugent speed-rock I've heard since "Tangled Up" by the Necros 20 years ago. Also compares himself to AC/DC on his page. And he (they?) rock really hard:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/joetown2

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

Whew, er...guess I outwore my welcome. I've also been listening to a new reissue of the Bongos' 1981 Hoboken proto-indie classic-I-never-heard-before Drums Along the Hudson, which isn't metal at all really but does contain a good cover of "Mambo Sun" by T. Rex plus lots of songs with weedy vocals on top but cool bongolated beats underneath. And also this new album by New Zealand's Pumice, who I think are my favorite indie rock (in the sense of being twee) band in the world right now seeing how I loved their previous album too; how come indie rock fans never mention them? They totally keep the drunken off-kilter Flying Nun post-Velvets sheep-farmer kiwi-folk prettiness alive, and "Greenock" sounds like the new Mekons album should (i.e., it sounds like the Mekons did 27 years ago), and "The Only Doosh Worth Giving" and "Onion Union" might be the two most beautiful tracks of improvisatory style noize racket I've heard this year (Dead C influence, I'm guessing, but I haven't listened to enough Dead C to know -- hence I guess they qualify for a metal thread, in some way), and then they close with a placid instrumental called "Pipi" that goes completely in the opposite direction. New album is called Pebbles; the one last year was Yeahnahvienna; I recommend both even to people who usually hate all the other music I recommend.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=77222512

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 14:06 (eighteen years ago)

And oh yeah, just remembered these guys -- hard distorted instrumental prog-metal from Iran, of all places. Not gonna claim I can tell all the songs apart yet (instrumentals are like that), but tracks like "Excuse (Who Endures)" and "Route (Who Dazzles)" and especically "Splendour of Death (Who Resurrects)" do give the prog a definite rhythmic shape -- Jazz-fusion-like, I guess. New agey spy-movie rumbles like "Jocker (Who Wanders)" don't grab me as much, but I bet they contain at least as much Middle Eastern influence as the new Nile album will:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/arashk

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 14:18 (eighteen years ago)

Bongos' 1981 Hoboken proto-indie

"Proto-indie" meaning they sometimes sounded like R.E.M. (or, Lalena just said, Violent Femmes) before the Rems or the Femmes did. "Clay Midgets," on now, sounds like a missing link between the Gang of Four and the Pixies. And some of the guitar churns remind me of Pylon. Which has nothing to do with metal, of course. But coming out in 1981, it's forgiveable.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 15:33 (eighteen years ago)

Goddamn this chatboard's free crippleware. It rejects logins indiscriminately, returns stupid error codes on messages which have no errors in them, and other things unpredictable. Of course, it dumps whatever you've typed in previously.

xhuxk, as per Tesla's cover of "Rock Bottom," from your description it sounds as if it's more likely UFO's "Rock Bottom," from the Phenomenon album.

And I had something on Daymares' Can't Get Us All but the chatboard loserware ate it.

― Gorge, Sunday, 3 June 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

"(Also, When did black metal get more beautiful than dark metal, which mostly just sounds boring these days?)"

when people realized that just about anyone could make black metal and add whatever the hell they want to it and all the dark metal people saw how many records lacuna coil were selling.

anyway, my update for the day: caina caina caina caina caina caina caina caina caina caina caina!!!!!

and no offense to caina, but i don't know how to type an i with an umlaut over it!

― scott seward, Sunday, 3 June 2007 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

Eeeyahhhh, big ups for Joetown, xhuxk! Joetown, doing the Ted Nugent thang almost more Ted than Ted did on Craveman. "I Git Down" and "Go!" being the prime examples. "Curbside Sleeper" definitely has a bit of Aerosmith thrown in, too. Nitpickers may notice Joetown sings about getting loaded which Ted, being teetotal, never actually does.

Joetown rules, proving rock music is still one of the only forms of human endeavor where you can walk on the field straight out of Bumfuck and make something as enjoyable as pros who've taken half a year to do it at Sunset Sound.

― Gorge, Sunday, 3 June 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

oh, and in honor of the HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL teenpop thread, i bought CDs at a yard sale today by:

nelly furtado

nobody's angel

innosense

the donnas

3lw

m2m

legally blonde soundtrack

josie & the pussycats soundtrack (used to have this one.)

aaliyah

vitamin c

hoku

bewitched

bring it on soundtrack

― scott seward, Sunday, 3 June 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

Heh, I bought the Josie soundtrack used just a couple months ago. Had the mp3s when it came out, but it had been a few years since I'd heard the songs. It's as good powerpop as we'll ever hear these days.

I've been alternating between obsessively listening to Pig Destroyer and Caina. After these two, the only way to go is down, so I might as well linger up here with them for a little while longer.

And yeah, how to put an umlaut over an i is a complete mystery to me. So, for future cut & paste reference:

Caïna

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 3 June 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

press shift " and than an i

also Scott, if you have any leads to unknown/unsigned black metal bands/myspaces, hook me up. I'm planning to set up an underground BM cd-r label. A sublabel to my Cut Hands label really...

I've got some great bands but tips are always welcome

― rizzx, Sunday, 3 June 2007 20:05 (eighteen years ago)

as per Tesla's cover of "Rock Bottom," from your description it sounds as if it's more likely UFO's "Rock Bottom,"

Oops, yeah, you're right -- credited to Mogg/ Schenker on the disc itself (which I hadn't noticed.) I really need to bone up more on UFO.

And Psychotic 4 are apparently from Montreal.

And the Fellow Americans might not always be quite as muscular as I suggested; there seems to be some '80s indie in their sound -- like, early Husker Du maybe? Or maybe one of those Australian bands who pretended to sound like the Stooges but didn't. (The Died Pretty?) I still do like the record, though.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 20:20 (eighteen years ago)

You probably have Candlemass and Sonata Arctica in nuclear blast promo packets somewhere, Chuck. I'm not sure if you would like Candlemass, but I think there's a very good chance you would like the new Sonata Arctica. It's a 99 track thing, but it's worth listening to.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 3 June 2007 20:23 (eighteen years ago)

I have liked Candlemass CDs before. But no, I didn't get those yet. I'll check the free table at work.

all the dark metal people saw how many records lacuna coil were selling

I don't hear much Lacuna Coil in the black metal I like, though. (A lot of Opeth, though. So maybe they're the turning point, come to think of it.)

Bongos "Automatic Doors" = onomatopoeia rock (but still not as fun as "Revolving Door" by Crazy Town.)

One of the Fellow Americans guys has a T-shirt that says "Datapanik" on it on the back of their CD, indicating a probable fanhood of early Pere Ubu too.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 20:47 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, "Prologue (Maga Axtab)," first track on the Apostolum CD on now, and it was sounding so delicate and Erik Satie-like I just assumed it must be Pumice until I checked -- thus proving that death metal and New Zealand indie jangle pop sound exactly the same (though sometimes the New Zealand guys are noisier.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

er...black metal, I mean. I never could tell the difference. (Now I know though: Death metal's the stuff I assume I won't like whenever it comes in the mail.) (Also, Apostolum might have four guys, not two. Lalena just noticed two other fellows hiding in the shadows of their CD cover. Also, she said the vocals in their song "Anxiety Attack" sounds like a little kid trying to sound scary, which may be true.)

George, speaking of Nugent, you should check out the piece where he defends automatic "black rifles" for hunters in today's Times business section. (I always want the Nuge to say that if hunters had tesicles they'd only shoot animals with bows and arrows, but he never does.) (Didn't know he had a ranch in Waco, either. Maybe he's been on a wild boar kick lately?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:24 (eighteen years ago)

Goddamn this chatboard's free crippleware. It rejects logins indiscriminately, returns stupid error codes on messages which have no errors in them, and other things unpredictable. Of course, it dumps whatever you've typed in previously.

Make your own board then.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)

I think by "dark metal" he's talking about Goth metal bands like Beseech, Elis, Leaves Eyes, and the various other stuff that usually winds up on Napalm Records.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

?? Jeff, not sure who you were answering (not the troll who preceded you, I assume), and whether "he" means me. By "dark metal," yeah, I mainly meant "goth metal." I've been calling it "dark metal" ever since my favorite metal compilation (maybe my favorite metal album) (as opposed to hard rock compilations and albums natch) of the decade, Blessed By The Night: The Dark Metal Compilation, came out on SPV in 2000. (Some notable names on there include Tiamat, Crematory, Lacuna Coil, Therion, Vintersong, Amorphis, the Gathering, Moonspell, Hypocrisy, Lacrimosa, Danzig bizarrely enough, Umbra Et Imago, Satyricon, etc.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

Oh wait, I get it now -- I'd misread Scott! He's saying that dark metal got boring when it devolved into rote Lacuna Coil wannabe music. Okay, that makes sense, duh.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, and I totally misread what Scott was replying to. So lots of confusion all around!

That compilation does sound pretty awesome, though. I've never seen it before.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:03 (eighteen years ago)

And now that I think about it, I'd love to hear black metal influenced by Lacuna Coil!

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:06 (eighteen years ago)

The new Octavia Sperati has the most tantalizing hint of Lacuna Coil-goes-black metal...one track has them doing a cool Enslaved-style iciness, but then the rest of the album withers, the low point being a pair of Amy Lee-style ballads. So close.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:12 (eighteen years ago)

No troll here. Just responding to George's whinging , yet he didn't give up his free time like stet and keith did to get the board running.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:12 (eighteen years ago)

Make your own board then.

To crush a man utterly one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character, someone once wrote.

Anyway, xhuxk, you might like post-Schenker UFO. Mechanix would be the used album to find. There must be lots of them floating around at garage sales for about a quarter.

I saw Ted in the Times thing on black rifles. Said he bought twenty or so, one of which he apparently painted in pink tiger stripes.

Speaking of wild boar, did you see the name of the "wild pig" was Fred? Fred had grown too big on the farm and was sold for the canned hunt, put down by an eleven year old who pumped a couple clips into him. Oh, the ignominy.

And, oh yeah, Daymares lasted in the player a surprisingly long time. Tune of biggest note was unradically titled "I Shit You Not" in which everyone sounded like they absolutely meant what they were screaming.

And Ted wrote a song called "Fred Bear," I think. But maybe he should now do one called "Fred Boar." Ted was also on the NRA's board of directors, although I don't know if this so now.

― Gorge, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:21 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, speaking of wild boars: Walking through Queens today, we saw this metalhead guy wearing a T-shirt that said, on the front: "Stairway To Hell." Needless to say, I did a double take. Then, on his T-shirt's back: Warthog, with an umlaut over the "o". First I've heard of this, and I live in New York!:

http://officialstairwaytohell.com/

― xhuxk, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:40 (eighteen years ago)

Sue the bastards!

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 3 June 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

new david yow album/qui album kinda dudly. or maybe i just wasn't in the mood for warmed-over jesus lizard/shellac. i will always love the yow-man for ever and ever though.

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

"Brabe" is lovely new age workout; does the "Katatonia" subtitle mean that band did it first, Scott, or is that just a coincidence?"

it's "Brave", actually. it's a katatonia cover. it's not bad. nowhere near as great as the original, but it's okay. it's funny, cuz my computer reads the title as "brabe" too. even computers can't read metal fonts!

i like the rest of the apostolum album better.

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:24 (eighteen years ago)

The band takes the audience on a heavy-metal journey spending time at the devil's buffet of bloody treats, conducting orgasm contests, playing with blow-up dolls, and using and abusing drugs ... they take the extreme to the extreme.

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:28 (eighteen years ago)

who's that, the arctic monkeys?

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

are you on tour yet? if i didn't have kids and, um, a job, i would travel with you. for real. i'd love to travel around on drugs. and go record shopping. maybe another lifetime.

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:31 (eighteen years ago)

warthog apparently

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:32 (eighteen years ago)

Today's mail: Memfis and Birdflesh, which I'm slightly wary of, and the entire Symphony X catalog (I'm interviewing the band soon). I'm going to be totally progged out!

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:32 (eighteen years ago)

i cancelled all th dates for june/july,im going out in th fall and make sum schools to soften th blow of dud gigs..but im still trying to figger out yur date in aug so we can schedule a cakkeesshhoppee show in nyc that evenimng

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)

xpost-xhuccxx-here is my ted nugent ripoff for th new album
http://odeo.com/audio/8884903/view

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

i love royal trux! haha, just kidding, i don't know if i do. they sounded like that though, didn't they?

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:43 (eighteen years ago)

i told someone he looked like kolin farrell in a bar th other nite and he got mad..does roytriuxx sound like ted nugent?

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

er...black metal, I mean. I never could tell the difference.

Good thing this is the Rolling Boogie Rock Promos 2007 thread.

― xox, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:47 (eighteen years ago)

So the new Susperia is interesting/bizarre. As usual, sounds like a total rip-off if circa-'88 Testament, which I always like, but the vocals sound so weirdly compressed, like the dude's singing from under his bed covers.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

i saw a bunch of hardcore bands in albany recently and it was the best nonmetal/metal shgow i have seen in years//most members were under 20

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

albany hardcore rules. probably.

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:05 (eighteen years ago)

skinless are from albany.

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:06 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.austrinken.com/discographien/MonsterX/Image1135.gif

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

lest we forget...

http://www.middleagedyouth.com/images/wolfpackgroup.jpg

― scott seward, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:08 (eighteen years ago)

one was called moonlight to murder or murder in the moonlight ..oh wait here they r..http://www.myspace.com/moodswingstomurder..i was w jessica rylan who knows from knoise..and she was rokkin on it..

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:10 (eighteen years ago)

oops
http://www.myspace.com/moodswingstomurder

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:10 (eighteen years ago)

i think part of th reason was the parents of all th bands were there and u never see parents at noise shows..so much of it was touching and sweet,,and th albany and outskirts areas are so bleak and depoveratlied that its given gravity by graves

― danbunny, Monday, 4 June 2007 22:12 (eighteen years ago)

Emperor were awesome live. I totally felt the Emperial wrath.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 4 June 2007 23:54 (eighteen years ago)

new david yow album/qui album kinda dudly

Qui <<<<<< Jesus Lizard <<<<<< Scratch Acid

Also boogie rock promos >>>>> black metal >>>>>>>>> death metal (as for Albany hardcore I have no idea)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 01:32 (eighteen years ago)

Turns out the Fellow Americans' most coherent songs (riffwise and versewise) are "Mariyn M" (about Monroe not Manson I think) and "Century Park." The latter has a riff reminscent of one of one of the more metal-sounding Joy Division songs. Overall, when I hear Husker Du in their music, I'm hearing Husker Du circa Metal Circus, which is refreshing. People who like the UK band Leatherface (and possibly Therapy?) should also check them out.

Within Temptation, on Roadrunner, are hack post-Lacuna/Evanescence goth-metal, and get even worse when the obligatory guy starts grunting along with the girl. Gallows, on Epitaph, are hack UK hardcore-screech punk, seemingly 100% dime-a-dozen and forgettable even if the hype over there is that no Brits have done punk better since the Pistols and Clash (neither of whom they sound remotely like.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 11:31 (eighteen years ago)

Also, Fellow Americans record is eight hard dark songs in just 20:13, which will always be cool in my book. And their title "CBL" stands for "casual bar lover." I hope Ft. Worth has lots of casual bars.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 11:42 (eighteen years ago)

Went back to the Poison covers album; liking it more and more. The version of the Cars' "Just What I Needed" is what the Stooges reunion album should have sounded like (guitar and drum sound only; I still prefer Iggy to Bret Michaels as a vocalist, even if Iggy missed more notes than he hit this time out).

― unperson, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck we know that you don't like black metal and death metal

― J0hn D., Tuesday, 5 June 2007 13:19 (eighteen years ago)

Wrong, John! My whole point is that I have been liking more black metal this year, much to my surprise. (That's how that whole discussion started, with my speaking highly of the Apostolum album, after speaking highly of the Bergraven album a couple weeks ago.) Still pretty sure I hate death metal, though.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 14:13 (eighteen years ago)

I missed your point Chuck and I apologize I am v. v. cranky today

the only death metal bands I'd sorta lob out for you would be Dissection & Incantation but it's not like you haven't probably heard enuf to know you just don't dig it - as for me a recent favorite moment occurred when a vendor at the Maryland Death Fest was hawking his wares at me (I sorta stand out as Dude Who Is Gonna Buy Some CDs) and was all "that Soulless Profanation one I think is our best release, that one's a must" and I said "well, ok, what style is it" and without hesitation and very earnestly dude says "brutal death"

album is good, too

― J0hn D., Tuesday, 5 June 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

Incredible tech-death tour coming to NYC on 7/8: Necrophagist (rumor has it they're gonna be playing Epitaph front to back, which I actually think is kinda dumb; I like Onset Of Putrefaction better), Decapitated, Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, the Faceless, As Blood Runs Black, Ion Dissonance, Arsis, Beneath The Massacre.

http://www.myspace.com/summerslaughtertour

― unperson, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

Anneke van Giersbergen, singer for world-renowned Dutch rock act THE GATHERING, has decided to pursue new goals in life and music.

In a statement from van Giersbergen, she says:

”Dear people, I wanted to send out this message to all of you to inform you that I have decided to leave The Gathering. After much
consideration and some serious soul searching, I feel that it is time for me to change my direction in life and develop and search out new goals.

In all the wonderful years that I have been a part of The Gathering, we, as a band, have always strongly believed in sincerity: both personally
and within our music. I have always been able to give one hundred percent of myself to the band and its music. Over the last year I developed an
urge to initiate my activities from a different place in my heart, focusing on myself and my family.

In order to stay true to myself, the band, crew and the fans, I see no other option than to leave the band and pursue my new goals in life and music.

I loved my 13 years with The Gathering and I take pride in all the beautiful music we have made together and will always cherish the good times we
shared on the road and in the studio. The decision to leave all of this behind has been incredibly difficult, but since it's made from the heart, I strongly
believe that I have to go with it. Although it saddens me to say goodbye, I have made a lot of exciting plans for the future both personally and professionally.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 18:05 (eighteen years ago)

i see someone else reads Blabbermouth re The Gathering news! Scott do you read it via RSS?

― djmartian, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 18:12 (eighteen years ago)

actually, i just got that in a press release e-mail.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 18:16 (eighteen years ago)

from the label. or from their press people. i can't remember.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 18:17 (eighteen years ago)

i'm not really crying over the news. they were a great band that had a LONG run together. much longer and more fruitful than most people. i suppose the band will hire one of the 40000000000000000000000000 anneke soundalikes that are out there. or maybe not.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 18:19 (eighteen years ago)

I'm pretty gutted. They didn't make a bad album with her. Anneke has inspired a generation of imitators, but she is absolutely irreplaceable, in my opinion. Can't really describe it...she brought a really unique quality. Spectacular range, force, but also tenderness, and a complete lack of pretension. The most magnetic lead singer I have ever seen.

Well, now I'm really glad I saw the band two weeks ago!

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 19:00 (eighteen years ago)

Damn you! Guess I'll never get to see the gathering live.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 19:05 (eighteen years ago)

Does anybody else have the Nocturnal Rites album? If so, can you confirm my suspicion that "Me" is one of the most hilariously misfired ballads in the history of metal?

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 20:28 (eighteen years ago)

Buffalo's Average Rock 'n' Roller in the changer, a title they didn't like but which was fair dinkum. Cover indicates biker rock in the trad sense, not the rape the women and stomp their men, too, sense. "Rollin'" should perhaps be redone immediately by Toby Keith, including the hand claps. Much better song than "Boot In Your Ass" which I only mention because I saw "Shut Up & Sing" and his bit part in it last week.

And since we know I like average rock 'n' roll bands, live for them, will always cross the street for 'em, "Average RnRer," while not the same band as did "Only Want You For Your Body," it is going to be a bigger listen than Daymares' lates metalcore/deathnrollwhateveritwas which I actually liked a bit and consider a solid record.

Lyrics on "Average Rock 'n' Roller" 're not quaint, better than "I Shit You Not," although they're both done from utter conviction. And it's fairly obvious why Dave Tice immediately went into the Count Bishops upon listening to the reissue.

1977 Buffalo was right in there with standard mid-70's hard rock bands lots o labels hoped would get into the arenas with a non-standard mushy single, "Sailor," being the one here. At this point they sounded a lot better than the James Gang with the ace guitarists after Walsh left )Troiano, Bolin, etc) and for "Hotel Ladies," a slow hard rock burn with non-corny use of talkbox, they wrote a song that was better than anything on their previous albums. Exception: "Pay My Dues" -- which
they didn't write. "Bad News" sounds exactly like it's halfway between first album Godz and Nothin Is Sacred

Pete Wells left to do Rose Tattoo who were definitely non-standard and the Tatts have a bigger rep but it's hard to tell who sold bettern in Australia.

Extra cuts include a lugubrious bar band cover of the Beatles' "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" by Tice, followed by "Sweet Little Rock 'n' Roller" which takes too long to make the case and which Chuck Berry would disown.

Anima and Canvas Solaris are also sitting here but I've no opinion on any of them yet.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 21:14 (eighteen years ago)

Former THE GATHERING Singer Launches AGUA DE ANNIQUE - June 5, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/2vvy98

Listen to a track on myspace:

AGUA DE ANNIQUE
http://www.myspace.com/aguadeannique

― djmartian, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

Anneke's new song sounds pretty good. It's not surprising that she's going in a more indie-friendly, confessional direction.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:17 (eighteen years ago)

While you expert guys are all on the subject, where does one head to next in their discography if one really likes How To Measure A Planet a lot?

― Jon Lewis, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

If_Then_Else is probably the most similar record, stylistically. It also has the fantastic "Shot to Pieces," one of my very favorite songs by them.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:25 (eighteen years ago)

Jeff's right, definitely go to if_then_else next.

Souvenirs and Home get progressively mellower, but in their case, that's not a bad thing.

Oh, and that Nocturnal Rites song is unbearable. Wow. And thought that the new Manowar was a colossal misfire.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:36 (eighteen years ago)

i've been going through that Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal that came out a couple years ago and started downloading stuff I was interested in...

Right now, it's Trouble's Manic Frustration...which is pretty good so far, I'm imagining this was a big influence on the "stoner metal" scene?

Next up: Possessed's Seven Churches which I guess is considered the "first" death metal album by some, and features Larry Lalonde from Primus on guitbox.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:40 (eighteen years ago)

That's a great album(Trouble), but it's the early albums that were the real influence. They just got reissued too not so long ago...

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

The rest of that Nocturnal Rites album is pretty harmless, perfectly pleasant, down the middle prog-power metal. Nothing special at all, but not bad. Then "Strong Enough" and "Me" hit and make me wonder what the hell they were thinking. Those two songs alone knocked out at least two points from the album grade.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

And Jon, you really can't go wrong with anything The Gathering did from Mandylion onwards. Their pre-Planet stuff is more "metal," but it's very mellow and melodic. My mom could probably listen to it and enjoy it.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 22:46 (eighteen years ago)

this possessed record is pretty fucking raging for 85!!!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

Right now, it's Trouble's Manic Frustration...which is pretty good so far, I'm imagining this was a big influence on the "stoner metal" scene?

Slight, if any. Maybe some stoner metal bandmembers are fans. Trouble had a good singer. Stoner metal bands, with the exception of anything Wino Weinrich had something to do with, never did or do. Trouble would also occasionally do pop psychedelia, for example, "The Porpoise Song" from The Monkees' Head and the Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows."

Trouble were pretty much their own thing.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 00:46 (eighteen years ago)

Slayer covering "born To be wild" http://youtube.com/watch?v=45HzHJ8MozY

and it is absolutely awful. On a par with metallica these days. Embarrassing.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 00:53 (eighteen years ago)

Hahaha...and I thought Lizzy Borden's 1988 cover was terrible.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 01:04 (eighteen years ago)

Didn't they do that for some NASCAR compilation? That was a pretty awful comp, just really uninspired covers by a lot of bands.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 01:32 (eighteen years ago)

1. NASCAR On Fox Theme - NASCAR On Fox: Crank It Up
2. Crosstown Traffic - (hed)p.e.
3. On The Road Again - Buckcherry
4. Circles - Nonpoint
5. Cross The Line - Tantric
6. Drivin' Rain - Gov't Mule
7. 'Get Out Of My Dreams (Get Into My Car) - Fenix*TX
8. Cars (MPH Mix) - Fear Factory
9. Heaven & Hot Rods - Dry Cell
10. Speedway - Static-X
11. Fast Car - Darwin's Waiting Room
12. (Sic) (Molt-Injected Mix) - Slipknot
13. Born To Be Wild - Slayer
14. Highway Star - Type O Negative
15. Demon Speeding (Dirty Black River Mix) - Rob Zombie
16. Supercharger (Let Freedom Ring Mix) - Machine Head
17. See Through - Staind
18. Hot Rod Lincoln - Les Claypool

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 01:35 (eighteen years ago)

oh man. I forgot how crappy that really was.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 01:35 (eighteen years ago)

where does one head to next in their discography if one really likes How To Measure A Planet a lot?

...If_Then_Else is probably the most similar record

That's probably true, but it's not nearly as good, and also not as good as Mandylion and Nighttime Birds, which are heavier than Planet but still really melodic. If_Then_Else is fine (their fourth-best album, I suppose), but it's also where I start to lose interest. The pre-Mandylion (early '90s/pre-Anneke) stuff sounded charmingly inept when I've listened to it, but I've honestly never spent that much time with it. Souvenirs seemed downright dull; Home had a few moments. There's also an acoustic album and a couple DVDs (and ???), which halfway hold interest for a spin or two, then wind up in storage somewhere.

Interesting, though, how people seem entirely unanimous that How to Measure A Planet? was their peak. How many bands does that ever happen with? But I agree -- it's the only Gathering album that ever made my year-end top ten. I still love it.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 11:21 (eighteen years ago)

Really, who the Gathering's career trajectory reminds me of most (Phil will get this, if nobody else does) is that of Colombian rock en espanol act Aterciopelados, who drifted increasingly into new age yoga tantra folk music until Andrea Echeverri eventually went began her sadly boring Lillithy singer-song-mom solo career. (Only difference is that Aterciopelados's music peaked with their first two, punkiest albums, whereas the Gathering built up steam a bit, especially when Anneke joined up.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 11:29 (eighteen years ago)

Souvenirs and Home get progressively mellower

Actually, the way I hear it, they got somewhat re-energized on Home, though not as much as I would have hoped. Souvenirs is their most mellow album (and again, dullest, though it's okay.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 12:00 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I'm sounding way more negative than I mean to. Anneke is as great a singer as any (male or female) to come out of "extreme" metal, a singer in a genre with little use for singers otherwise. And she and the Gathering were indeed amazing when I saw them live in Manhattan's meat-packing district at The Cooler, I think it was, five or six years ago. Time flies. Awesome band, easily one of my favorite bands of the last decade. And I too am sad to see her go.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 12:26 (eighteen years ago)

(Or maybe even seven or eight years ago? Wow...have I really been here that long?)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 12:28 (eighteen years ago)

Just read that Anneke is leaving The Gathering. Which I think really sucks.

Statement from her MySpace-blog (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=80545931&blogID=272698767&MyToken=0e8556b2-f3a7-40ea-8d18-3806216af3c3):
Leaving the Gathering

Dear people,

I wanted to send out this message to all of you to inform you that I have decided to leave The Gathering. After much consideration and some serious soul searching, I feel that it is time for me to change my direction in life and develop and search out new goals.

In all the wonderful years that I have been a part of The Gathering, we, as a band, have always strongly believed in sincerity: both personally and within our music. I have always been able to give one hundred percent of myself to the band and its music. Over the last year I developed an urge to initiate my activities from a different place in my heart, focusing on myself and my family.

In order to stay true to myself, the band, crew and the fans, I see no other option than to leave the band and pursue my new goals in life and music.

I loved my 13 years with The Gathering and I take pride in all the beautiful music we have made together and will always cherish the good times we shared on the road and in the studio. The decision to leave all of this behind has been incredibly difficult, but since it's made from the heart, I strongly believe that I have to go with it. Although it saddens me to say goodbye, I have made a lot of exciting plans for the future both personally and professionally.

Thank you for all the love and support and I hope we will meet again in life and music.

Anneke

― Marty Innerlogic, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 12:37 (eighteen years ago)

Uh...Marty, read the last day's worth of posts...

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 12:54 (eighteen years ago)

Damn, got up this morning reading that news and just started linking and I didn't even read the other posts. Sorry!

― Marty Innerlogic, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 13:04 (eighteen years ago)

omg Phantom Limb is great!

― rockapads, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:05 (eighteen years ago)

i like the new pig destroyer okay. but i've been playing other new stuff a LOT more, so i must not love it. or maybe i'm just not in the mood. i just keep playing the new red harvest album over and over. and caina. i love the red harvest album. and the shining album.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

dude's digi-production kinda bugs me sometimes. pig destroyer dude, that is. half the abrasiveness/extremity of their sound is that in-the-red production. whereas, the red harvest album is just so vast and deep. sound-wise. and they can make just as big a racket. even bigger. so many great "sounding" metal albums this year, and none from this country that i can think of. the acoustic stuff on that shining album sounds just jaw-droppingly beautiful.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

scott you should a/b the new pig destroyer with the last one - the new one hardly sounds "digi" at all! sounds like a band playing to me.

I just don't see eye-to-eye with you on sounds though - when you hear "vast and deep" in red harvest I hear "static and even." I enjoy it enuf but the pig destroyer album is the one that lights a fire under me.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

Pig Destroyer are in the zone where its making albums that sound like they were made to machine standard. Ensures the same committed like them, like those who have favorite brands of frozen pizza. Its easy to imagine another six CDs in five years built to the same code. In fact, why not release them all now? The hardest part is probably the cover art which is always good and a reason I keep them around for longer than the others in the built-to-code genres.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:48 (eighteen years ago)

Phantom Limb was done completely analog. Terrifyer was/still is a thrilling record, but that abrasion always kept us at an arm's length, but the new one just draws us in more, thanks to that thicker sound. They've really outdone themselves.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 18:56 (eighteen years ago)

I think he just uses a lot of compression and EQ on the guitars, probably partially to make up for the fact that they don't have a bass player. It's a brutal sound, either way.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 19:52 (eighteen years ago)

Maybe it was on another thread, but I swear I read someone on this board wishing for a black metal group that was influenced by gathering/lacuna stuff. I just listened to a Wolves in the Throne Room song, "Face in a Night Time Mirror Part 1" that would definitely qualify.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

That would be me, hi!

As far as The Gathering goes, I would also highly recommend their odds and sods collection, Accessories. A lot of great material on there, including a fantastic Dead Can Dance cover. It also flows really well, which is rare for a rarities comp.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 20:02 (eighteen years ago)

It may be close minded, but the phrase "no bass player" is equivalent to "not in bill magill's music collection".

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 20:12 (eighteen years ago)

That reminds me of something I thought up while watching Emperor live:

Being a bass player in a black metal band is like being a bartender at a straight edge show.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

"vast and deep" in red harvest I hear "static and even"

really? i really like how it sounds. and there are all kinds of sounds too. and stuff hovering in the backround and stuff that appears and disappears and sounds that come out of nowhere and great electronic moments as well. i don't even know who produced it, but i'd like to see neurosis get out of albini's basement and find the dude who did the red harvest album. see, pig destroyer is what sounds one-dimensional to me. yeah, it sounds like a band playing, but then filtered thru a bunch of stuff to make it more trebly and screechy. what i like about pig destroyer is the hardcore band that they want to be and if i heard that on record sounding more live with just some overblown amps in the room i would probably like it more. i don't care if it's analog. dude fucks with his shit endlessly after the fact. doesn't he? it's not ross robinson annoying, but it comes close at times. the actual MUSIC and the playing and all that i have no problem with.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

i don't have to like everything!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:18 (eighteen years ago)

and if it turns people on, that's great. probably nobody likes that shining album as much as me. boy, the non-metal dude at the record store was really excited that i got the pig destroyer! he wanted a copy. is it gonna be the big metal album for non-metal fans in 2007?

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:20 (eighteen years ago)

or the big album for people who only buy 1 or 2 metal albums a year.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:21 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Phantom Limb is going to be that record, the one with crushing metal power and hipster cachet. Moreso than Mastodon, i think...lots of metal kids were bitching about Blood Mountain, but I don't see that happening with PxDx. I don't have a problem with that kind of crossover appeal. The more, the merrier.

I've been liking way too many metal releases this year. It's ridiculous. I was sort of ho-hum about getting around to the new Neurosis, but no, that album's amazing, too. What a year 2007's been. Not even halfway through, too.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:31 (eighteen years ago)

okay i'm on ozzy's myspace. this "i don't want to stop" song is hideous.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

New Neurosis album sounds better and better each listen. Potential album of the year maybe?

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

The whole NeurIsis thing has been done to friggin' death, but like last year's Isis disc, Given to the Rising serves as a reminder that nobody does it nearly as well as the masters. We get so inundated with similar-sounding bands, that sometimes it's easy to forget.

I liked The Eye of Every Storm, but it doesn't hold a candle to the new CD.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

WTF are you talking about? Phantom Limb is so massively different from Terrifyer that it beggars description. The former is pretty organic, sounds like a band, is quite spirited, etc. The latter has that dialed-in post-apocalyptic drum-machine exactitude. The only way you can think the two are in some occupying-the-same-space zone is if you're not listening

not to be all harsh but the two albums don't sound even remotely alike man

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 6 June 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

also we should talk about "the big metal album for non-metal people." What percentage of the time is this "the album that all the metal people more or less agree is one of the best albums of the year" - i.e., how often is this attributable to excellence rather than straw-hipsterism?

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 6 June 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

i don't have to like everything!

I don't like the PD album either, didn't hear one interesting thing about it and can't imagine it being an album for everybody (it's no '06's Blood Mountain). To start, it has no hooks.

― xox, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

I made it through to the end on it and didn't hate it. Maybe i'm getting more extreme as I get older.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 23:31 (eighteen years ago)

Phantom Limb is so massively different from Terrifyer that it beggars description

To you. It's not awful but it's also not memorable. There were other things in the mail the same week that worked better in my changer. Daymares, even Toxic Bonkers made more of a dent.

― Gorge, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:00 (eighteen years ago)

yeah man without wanting to pick a fight, I mean I'm not the Pig Destroyer Cheering Squad but those two albums are massively, massively different - quality's subjective, difference rather less so

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:05 (eighteen years ago)

I thought last year's Isis album was dead boring. Haven't even listened to the Neurosis. I liked them live in 1997 but each disc has offered less and less to my ear. I think I have entirely abandoned Isis and Neurosis for Cult of Luna and Minsk.

― unperson, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:10 (eighteen years ago)

Ok, I know they've come up before to a lack of enthusiasm, but has anyone listened to/been swayed by the new Sleepytime Gorilla Museum?

― John Justen, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:13 (eighteen years ago)

That was upstream. Unfortunately, you have to click to load all of it. It didn't do anything for me. As usual opinions were mixed. My recollection is that they were mostly blah to negative with a couple of wild enthusiasms for spice.

― Gorge, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:18 (eighteen years ago)

yeah it's all right - that quasi-operatic style, I can never figure out how to take it, y'know?

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the metal-by-way-of-art-bears thing is a little odd, but the new album definitely has more of the rock, less of the utter weirdoness (perhaps motivated by being on the end records now, but of course, so is Ulver, so who knows.)

― John Justen, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:26 (eighteen years ago)

I think the Sleepytime album is pretty good. Less precious and full of itself than, say, Unexpect, whose last CD annoyed me to no end.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:38 (eighteen years ago)

further upthread was a mention about alcest and now profound lore has announced they are releasing the new one in august for N.A.

― drone/a/sore, Thursday, 7 June 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

Sweet, Profound Lore is the perfect label for Alcest. And it'll certainly extend that label's insane hot streak this year.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 02:55 (eighteen years ago)

or the big album for people who only buy 1 or 2 metal albums a year.

Not that I even care, or think anyone else who isn't still in high school should care, but wasn't Reign in Blood this exact same type of album? What's so bad about a group releasing an album that achieves its vision so well, one genre can't contain it?

― rockapads, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:17 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, I didn't know a single person who wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead who owned Reign in Blood in 1986. Even Master of Puppets was the same way. Aside from the pop-oriented metal, the more groundbreaking stuff was still below the radar of most mainstream music fans, I think. Most folks were buying Priest's Turbo and Ozzy's The Ultimate Sin. In my neck of the woods, anyway. Maybe it was different in the big cities. Back then, the divide between college rock hipster and metalhead seemed pretty well-defined.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:24 (eighteen years ago)

there is nothing bad about that at all.

x-post

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:25 (eighteen years ago)

And I'm with you, rockapads, I welcome any crossover attention any extreme band gets, no matter how fleeting.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:25 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, i didn't know anyone in high school who liked slayer. except me. but maybe there were kids in ozzy t-shirts that liked them. i didn't ask everyone.

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:30 (eighteen years ago)

i'm all for everyone listening to everything. just seems like there is aways an album or two that gets picked up on by people who aren't huge metal fans (same with other genres). i don't think that's a bad thing. are they always the "best" albums though? i dunno.

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:32 (eighteen years ago)

I'M YOUR TURBO LOVER

Hell, I didn't even like Slayer in high school. But I think Blood Mountain is the only thing in recent history that I can think of that has had any sort of crossover appeal as well as widespread acclaim amongst metalheads. Which is weird, because Mastodon aren't really accessible at all.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:51 (eighteen years ago)

I really like the new Neurosis.

― latebloomer, Thursday, 7 June 2007 03:55 (eighteen years ago)

folks were buying Priest's Turbo

Not in the Priest stronghold of the Lehigh Valley. Fans started running away on that one and it marked their downfall, unfortunately. I liked it, though. Regionally, Priest hit their high water mark in '85. The average who'd tuned in big for Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith still turned out for the live show at the Stabler Arena for the tour but it was downhill from there.

Because of the discussion, I stuck on Pig Destroyer again, as well as Toxic Bonkers, etc.

Hidden cut 15, the stolen ol' country tune with cricket noise dubs about heartbreak, was doin' PxDx no favors except convincing they were cynics a little too smart for their own good but not quite bright enough to turn in a clincher.

With the dropped in pieces from the Catholic mass, the monochromatic feedback patch, and the evangelical going on about being someone being burned alive, Phantom Limb sounded no more organic that the generic muezzin calls and throat singer jammed onto the end of the Toxic Bonkers CD.

Actually, Toxic Bonkers labored harder, their guitar player working overtime.

Tuvan throat singer, in terms of stodge, is right in there with the Vietnamese hooker "me-so-horny-me-love-you-long-time" patch from Full Metal Jacket.

If there were still good producers, one thing they could do to improve things would be to say, when bands comes up with the idea for adding the snippet from the muezzin, or the Tuvan throat singer, or the televangelist, "You can go for Cokes now, guys, I'll clean up." Then it would be quietly erased from the mix.

Now if you're a consumer of this stuff, Phantom Limb is by no means a bad record. And neither was Toxic Bonkers or the new one by Daymares. I'd recommend the latter two before the former.

― Gorge, Thursday, 7 June 2007 04:44 (eighteen years ago)

No, I meant the mainstream listeners were buying Turbo at the time. That record was HUGE with the high school jock set. We headbangers practically disowned Priest in the wake of that album. (I've since warmed up to about two thirds of the album, but that's beside the point)

I'm going to have to give Toxic Bonkers a shot...got it a few weeks ago, but it got lost under the CD pile.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 04:55 (eighteen years ago)

Alcest is coming out on Prophecy Productions.

They have posted an advance stream, gorgeous.

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 7 June 2007 11:10 (eighteen years ago)

I may or may not pull the Pig Destroyer album back out. I dunno, "unlistenable in a whole new way!" somehow is not pushing them to the top of the pile. There's just too much stuff out there now that seems way more interesting, including plenty of metal albums. Maybe the record is not horrible, who knows. I may or may not have the energy to find out. But if it does become the token metal-for-people-outside-of-metal album of the year, it sure won't be because it's the best thing out there, jeez. There have been plenty of metal albums this year that have proved perfectly enjoyable without me having to feel I'm eating my peas and doing my homework to find out.

(Though in a side note, as a person outside of metal who has been loving metal albums for forever, that idea doesn't bug me, either. Any metal album I like has crossed over from the metal audience per se' to me by definition, as far as I'm concerned. Which isn't to say I like every album that crosses over to every other non-metal head. My point is that albums that cross over have never been inherently better or worse than albums that don't cross over.)

New Neurosis in the changer now. It sounds like Neurosis, which means I already like it more than the new Pig Destroyer. Tried the new Candlemass, but yeah, chop-up-into-99-tracks meant re-shelving it. Have yet to try out the new Nile, for some reason.

Speaking of Neurosis, an old piece Scott did for me at the Voice on them and the Gathering proves that the Gathering show at the Cooler that I mentioned seeing above was indeed eight years ago this coming August (I really need to get out of New York soon), but annoying error messages are unfortunately not letting me link to it, despite many repeated tries.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 7 June 2007 11:28 (eighteen years ago)

(Okay, on second thought, new Neurosis too slow and long-winded and depressive for non-hangover-morning play. So I'll wait on that one until sometime I need to relax more than I do now. CD changer now contains Arashk, Bongos, Cheeseburger, Shop Boys, Xchange.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:09 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck there is no reason for you to bother with the Pig Destroyer, you'll hate it - it's a good deal riff-ier than their last two, but it's still a dude screaming-not-singing and aiming for an agitated-heavy-bummer vibe...not yr schtick I think

I have just never dug Neurosis and there's nothin' I can do about that

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:14 (eighteen years ago)

"I have just never dug Neurosis and there's nothin' I can do about that"

http://www.lunisea.com/school/Emulation/images/A%20child%20crying-NJ%201967.jpg

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:47 (eighteen years ago)

why...john...break...heart...

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:48 (eighteen years ago)

somebody should make me a "why neurosis is awesome" mix or something, I'm easy to convert, it's not like I've got my heels dug in or anything! every time I've heard them I just come away goin' "eh"

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:49 (eighteen years ago)

can't you just listen to Through Silver In Blood or A Sun That Never Sets really loud and taste the majik?

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 12:55 (eighteen years ago)

it's probably time for a new thread, this one's gone & got big, but I'm just getting around to ordo ad chao this morning and it's FUCKING EXCELLENT

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 13:58 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, I didn't know a single person who wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead who owned Reign in Blood in 1986. Even Master of Puppets was the same way. Aside from the pop-oriented metal, the more groundbreaking stuff was still below the radar of most mainstream music fans, I think. Most folks were buying Priest's Turbo and Ozzy's The Ultimate Sin.

i actually bought turbo, ultimate sin, and master of puppets around that time through my bmg record (cassette actually) club...i just like all metal. i didn't ever think anything was bad. i always felt that if i didn't like something it was my fault. metal could do no wrong.

but yeah among my friend master of puppets was a HUGE deal, and we all dug iron maiden and priest and ozzy and everything like that. but so was Guns N Roses, we were like 12-13 so we didn't really make distinctions about stuff.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:03 (eighteen years ago)

and turbo is way underrated!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

so is The Ultimate Sin!

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

word jake e lee>>>>zakk wylde!!!!!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:26 (eighteen years ago)

And the new Pig Destroyer isn't really representative. I wish I knew what happened! It's like they looked up, saw Mastodon getting famous and decided to slow things down. :(

― fukasaku tollbooth, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:26 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, I didn't know a single person who wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool metalhead who owned Reign in Blood in 1986. Even Master of Puppets was the same way.
In St. Paul punk rockers were into Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood right away after they came out. Maybe it was just a peculiarity of the people I was hanging out with.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:35 (eighteen years ago)

i guess there is no telling with my ears. i LOVE the latest ganzmord album in all it's over-distorted ear-bleeding usbm glory. if you like furious and bleak, you could do worse.

http://www.negativityrecords.com/images/icons/ganzmord.monolithic.web.jpg

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)

i'm downloading "black metal" by venom now.

i think i might get a mercyful fate album later today.

i want to hear all the albums i was too chicken to buy when i was a kid cuz i thought my mom would think they were too satanic.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

you can't go wrong with the first coupla Mercyful Fate albums

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

And the new Pig Destroyer isn't really representative. I wish I knew what happened! It's like they looked up, saw Mastodon getting famous and decided to slow things down. :(

ha.. Pig Destroyer inspired by Mastodon's success!

Maybe the reason it grabbed me so much is that I thought Gravedancer was the best song on Terrifyer. It's always been the slower songs that seem heaviest to me. I always liked Slayer best when Lombardo would do that slow stomping kick, ride, snare pummel while the guitars were riffing double-time on top of it. The stuff that drove the kids in the pit crazy at shows. Not that PD does anything that slow, but I kinda wish they would now that I think about it.

― rockapads, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:18 (eighteen years ago)

xpost-- is Melissa one of the "first coupla"? I've been discovering a love for Mercyful Fate myself this year and that's my fave so far.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:28 (eighteen years ago)

yah, melissa and don't break the oath. then king went solo.

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

Rockpads OTM. My favorite Slayer-South of Heaven.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:38 (eighteen years ago)

Melissa is their first. It's really the only one I really liked.

xpost - "Welcome to Hell" much better than "Black Metal" in my humble opinion.

― rockapads, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

The self-duetting on

(wailing)
craniums impaled on spikes
(belting)
WITH SATAN'S EPIGRAA-AAPH

is so exhilarating.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:44 (eighteen years ago)

NUNS HAVE NO FUN!!!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/MF_NunsHaveNoFun.jpg

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:50 (eighteen years ago)

did anyone ever hear the post-King *FATE* records?. with Mercyful Fate's guitarist? i don't think i ever have.

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 17:52 (eighteen years ago)

Melissa's great but I think Don't Break the Oath is the one for the ages

xpost I looked into one of those post-fate bands who're still kickin' around - they weren't bad, but c'mon...MF is kinda the perfect storm of awesomeness

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:01 (eighteen years ago)

I just remembered, it was Scaruffi's fulsome praise of MF that made me want to check them out, actually.

(Ambrose Bierce sez "praise" must always be preceded by "fulsome")

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:06 (eighteen years ago)

Fuck, not Bierce. Who did the Dictionary Of Recieved Ideas?

Flaubert?

Never mind.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:07 (eighteen years ago)

listening now to Don't Break the Oath

these are some of the best riffs & solos ever recorded

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

The first album by Force of Evil was pretty good, but the second one was disappointing.

― unperson, Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

J0hn I'm gonna follow suit right after I get done celebrating Prince's bday with some extended 12" mixes.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 18:49 (eighteen years ago)

John's right, Matt, you need to hear Don't Break the Oath ASAP. The arrangements are just insane, but somehow it all holds together. And King's completely non-cheesy, sincere approach to his satanic themes is genuinely creepy. I think "A Dangerous Meeting" is Fate's finest hour.

And back to Phantom Limb, it embodies everything that is visceral and primal and thrilling about extreme metal, and the band makes significant improvements on all fronts. The drums actually sound good on record for the first time. Hull is unreal, the way he carries the entire album, and that guitar tone is just perfect. Hell, even the screaming is a little more dynamic this time, not as layered as the past. I find it amazing they recorded this in three days.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 19:06 (eighteen years ago)

listening to don't break the oath.

this is profoundly weird. king diamond has like 10 different voices.

the songwriting is odd in a way i can't quite figure out. it mostly jibes with maiden/priest style stuff, but it goes zig when you expect it to zag. then there's these oddly melodic, almost gothy vocal lines that come in...

...some of the guitar stuff is real classic almost rising force territory.

it's pretty awesome so far.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 20:56 (eighteen years ago)

The bass solo in "The Oath" is one of the biggest WTF moments I've ever heard on a metal album. They just toss everything into the mix on that record.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

yeah every song is really unpredictable..his way of phrasing vocals and writing melodies is really distinctive and odd.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:08 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I just finished the record too. It's amazing. KD's high wail has a different timbre than any other upper-register rock singer I've heard, and as said above, the sobriety with which the business of devilin' is approached...

Now following up with Helloween's Keeper o' the 7 Keys, gotten on your recommendation on another thread, Adrien.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:09 (eighteen years ago)

Cool, that's a fun album. Lots of fellow old-schoolers prefer Part 2 to Part 1, but not me. "Halloween" is such a blast.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:16 (eighteen years ago)

there's something so mournful in a lot of KD's longer phrases on Don't Break the Oath - it's really jarring, to get this note of real sadness amidst the riff-o-rama

but make no mistake, the main thing is THOSE FUCKING RIFFS

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:37 (eighteen years ago)

Shermann and Denner are flat-out masterful. Funny how they were apparently at each other's throats at that time, cos the chemistry on record would indicate otherwise. I get a kick out of the stories about how the rift was so deep that Shermann wore pink sweatsuits during the subesquent tour.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

xpost-- it's like the use of the word "banshee" to describe a lot of metal singing, often forgetting that a banshee is an unbearably SAD entity.

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 7 June 2007 21:52 (eighteen years ago)

American Dog's Hard is everything xhuxk said upstream. Sent a flyer of a show with Ted Nugent in late June at some amphitheatre. Plus, they want you to know if you get the LP on CD Baby, link upstream, you get a jean jacket patch. I do have a worn jean jacket, so I can put it to good use.

Now Toby Keith may sing "Boot In Your Ass" but American Dog have a sound that fits the title better, cf., Sometime You Eat the Pussy. Like Joetown, only better, American Dog are more Ted than Tedly. Infernally tight heavy metal rock 'n' roll band, gotten that way from being toilers in the vinyards of slum dive bars.

"Hypnotized" rules courtesy of utterly commanding guitarring; Barrelhouse piano backs "Rock 'n' Roll Dog." And "Spell On Me" floats my boat, and I'm assuming Chuck's, because it's a stomping boogie complete with cowbell and great snappy swingin' drum turnarounds.

Maximum rifftone achieved for megalomaniacal woman-hating "Magnificent Bastard," album closer. Singer does an Eric Moore, telling his girlfriend "I'm the master."

Spheric Universe Experience's Anima got a good bit of play, too. Starts slow but then really starts owning the Euro-prog melodic metal thing. Singer sounds like a poor man's Styx dude ca. Equinox/Grand Illusion, plus a keyboardist who sounds like Keith Emerson, squeezed out near the beginning of the LP but getting more and more licks in as the thing gets really going. Funny how they work it in with the double bass stuff without the entire thing falling over. An entirely pleasant surprise. Vets may sometimes be reminded of Virgin Steele on steroids.

― Gorge, Thursday, 7 June 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

Phantom Limb gets a 10 in the new Decibel! what was the last album to get a 10? probably Pelican. or maybe they aren't as uncommon as i think they are. i don't pay too close attention to the number grades. i don't even give a number to my own reviews.

in other DB news, the power violence piece/history is coolness!

― scott seward, Thursday, 7 June 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

I grew up with Eric Wood, that piece totally punched all my buttons

― J0hn D., Thursday, 7 June 2007 23:24 (eighteen years ago)

I think Battle of Mice was the last one to get a 10.

The power violence piece looks interesting...I know absolutely nothing about that scene.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 7 June 2007 23:51 (eighteen years ago)

Battle of Mice? REALLY?

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 7 June 2007 23:55 (eighteen years ago)

How could Pelican's drumming get a 10? Recount recount recount.

― The Macallan 18 Year, Thursday, 7 June 2007 23:59 (eighteen years ago)

So the new Bergraven album is really cool. Proggy black metal, epic songs, with each track sounding different than the next. Spacious like Caina, but avoids the folk thing entirely, remaining resolutely ee-vil and aggressive, if only in a laid-back way.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 8 June 2007 09:47 (eighteen years ago)

see, now, at 8:34 in the morning at full volume the Pig Destroyer album is sounding better to me. told you it might be that i just wasn't in the mood last time i listened.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

Cheeseburger album didn't quite cut it. (Didn't cut the cheese? Ha ha.) They were fun at EP length a couple years ago, and there are at least a couple songs on the new one that sound pretty decent ("Tiger," "Pirate," maybe "Hot Streets," maybe more), but over the span of 16 tracks their fairly limited schtick (basically, nostalgia for Urge Overkill's mid '90s nostalgia for '70s radio rock) wears thin and equals diminishing returns, too removed from the source to hold attention. Stacked up against Joetown or American Dog, they actually sound fairly weak. Too bad; I was rooting for them.

Wound up with mixed feelings about that Abrahadabra album of instrumental prog-metal by that Iranian band Arashk. They're good when their groove and guitars move closer to dancey pyschedelic rock in "Excuse" and "Splendour" (both of which also come with actual tunes attached), and the drums underneath manage a good Killing Joke/jazz-fusion rumble, but too often the seem too noodly and lose the plot. Who knows, maybe fans of '80s King Crimson stuff would like them more than I do; there are probably other old prog and fusion antecendents I'm totally missing, too. Album would be better with vocals to grab on to (as long as they didn't suck).

― xhuxk, Friday, 8 June 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

Arashk sounds really interesting - is this another CDBaby find or did they send you a promo?

I'm listening to Blood Freak this morning - more great anthemic splatter-gore from Razorback. Not the blurry stuff, the riffy stuff. Ahhhhhhh.

― J0hn D., Friday, 8 June 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

got the new Municipal Waste in the mail but it's a voiceover promo :(((

so i'm listening to the new SSS(short sharp shock) album on earache. crossover thrash revisionists.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)

oh and i got those daymares and toxic bonkers albums, but haven't listened yet. why does my stuff from selfmadegod come directly from poland when they have a p.r. firm right here in the states? it's nice to have a friend in poland though.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)

ha, i love the SSS album. but i am a nostalgia buff.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:11 (eighteen years ago)

thrash up your ass:

merciless death:

http://www.myspace.com/mercilessdeath

fueled by fire:

http://www.myspace.com/fueledbyfire

violator:

http://www.myspace.com/viothrash

eternal devastation:

http://www.myspace.com/eternaldevastationthrash

sociofobia:

http://www.myspace.com/sociofobia

wardeath:

http://www.myspace.com/wardeaththrash

slaver:

http://a884.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/01385/38/86/1385836883_l.jpg

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=74397371

crucifier:

http://www.myspace.com/crucifiergreece

comando nuclear:

http://www.myspace.com/comandonuclear

witchaven:

http://www.myspace.com/witchaven

street force:

http://www.myspace.com/streetforcethrash

infantry:

http://www.myspace.com/thrashtokill

warbringer:

http://www.myspace.com/warbringer

hatchet:

http://www.myspace.com/hatchet2006

sakrificer:

http://www.myspace.com/sakrificer

malicious assault:

http://www.myspace.com/maliciousassault

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, you would dig this album by The Diodes that i got today at the thrift store. Canadian pop/punk/new wave from 1977! maybe you have it already.

http://popsike.com/pix/20070222/270092491263.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

also got a promising album on ABC Records from 1979 by The Atlantics. Skinny tie stuff. song titles: "television girl", "modern times girl", "teenage flu", "big city rock", etc.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:49 (eighteen years ago)

The Diodes do a song about Buffy from Family Affair dying of an overdose. great record!

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

Totally non-metal recommendation: the new Rihanna album is great if you like (as I do) Kylie Minogue's last two albums, Grace Jones's stuff with Sly & Robbie, and 80s Latin freestyle. Breihan writes about it today, and it's as good as he says it is, if you like cyborg R&B, which I do.

― unperson, Friday, 8 June 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

love this on the back of the Daymares cd:

"Daymares formed in late winter 2006 when a group of friends decided to jam together..."

!!!!! must be some sort of land speed record from "jamming" to debut album!

i dig it though. i think i'd enjoy an SSS/Daymares double bill. And this has happened according to a flier on SSS's myspace page.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 16:18 (eighteen years ago)

see, now, at 8:34 in the morning at full volume the Pig Destroyer album is sounding better to me.

Haha. I listened to it this morning, too. I started out with Harmonia, and all it did was make me feel warm & fuzzy which made me want to go back to bed. Pig Destroyer made me want to throw a trashcan through the Old Navy window I pass on the way to work. :o

― rockapads, Friday, 8 June 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

this Rose Funeral album on Candlelight (Crucify Kill Rot) is sounding good to me now. nice blasts of death. oh, and i like that Toxic Bonkers album as well. it's all good today apparently. i really dig that daymares album. punk, hardcore, cool riffs, metal, great breakdowns, what more could i ask for. some of it reminded me of that last raging speedhorn album that i liked.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

NILE: 'Ithyphallic' E-Card Available

listen: Nile e-card
http://www.nuclearblast.de/events/nile/index.html

― djmartian, Friday, 8 June 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

Rihanna cosigned.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Friday, 8 June 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

weirdest thing i found at the thrift store today: Penitent's 1996 album The Beauty Of Pain...

i never find weird hard to find neo-classical metal-related norwegian avant garde albums from 1996 released on tiny Austrian labels. like, ever!

the thrift store was good to me today. both of them. got like 20 classical albums on vinyl too including some great boxed sets. lots of pristine euro audiophile pressings. also some cool CDs: yella (one mo nigga to go), expose (what you don't know), tlc (oooooooh...on the tlc tip), wreckx-n-effect (hard or smooth), flesh-n-bone (t.h.u.g.s.), the dove shack (this is the shack), amjad ali khan (moksha).

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 20:49 (eighteen years ago)

This Toxic Bonkers disc is pretty good. I was expecting it to be grind, but it's more crust-oriented. Great production.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 8 June 2007 21:28 (eighteen years ago)

Ooo, tell me what classical you got, Scott! Start another thread for it if you think it would be too long/annoying on this one.

― Jon Lewis, Friday, 8 June 2007 21:32 (eighteen years ago)

you know i was thinking of starting a classical thread. maybe i should.

― scott seward, Friday, 8 June 2007 21:52 (eighteen years ago)

My most anticipated album of the summer:

http://www.cruzdelsurmusic.com/images/SLOUGHFE_Hardworlder.jpg

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 8 June 2007 21:53 (eighteen years ago)

damn. That ended up being a lot bigger than I thought. Sorry!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 8 June 2007 21:54 (eighteen years ago)

Can't wait to hear that album! I loved their last one.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 8 June 2007 22:10 (eighteen years ago)

I saw them last night at a tiny bar in Hollywood. The stage was literally a 6 x 6 wooden square on the floor, there was no sound guy, and there was a loud electrical buzz coming through the speakers. The singer/guitarist and also apparently hurt his foot, because he was limping before the show. But man, they totally ruled. The singer took the opportunity to run around into the crowd (of like 15 people) with his guitar, and look like you is just trying to make the best of it. The new song they played sounded more bluesy than their previous stuff, but in a good way. I'm very excited.

Meanwhile, looks like I'm now on the metal blade mailing list. I just received the new King diamond CD in the mail. Should be interesting.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 8 June 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

Heavy Metal video of the year, easy, is Shop Boyz' "Party Like A Rock Star," which I am not being allowed to link to thanks to error messages, but which is extremely easy to search on youtube. Do it.

Their album is really good, too! I need to write a review of it for work over the weekend, but suffice to say that "Totally Dude" and "Rock Star Mentality" are like the single only more, that the severely wah-wah-ed "Sumthin' To Talk About" sounds like Fishbone imitating Westbound-era Funkadelic in 1985, and that "Rollin" is a hilarious and totally sweet (dude) and entirely unexpected imitation of the early Beach Boys, appropriately about the Shop Boyz' '64 Chevy. (According to their press release, they were "part of a large group of guys who used to hang out at a local car shop" in Atlanta's Bankhead section. It is also said that their hit has inspired a "new punk wave among hip hop heads in the South complete w/ crowd surfing and slam dancing, mosh pits." Holy shit. And you HAVE to watch the video.) (Oh yeah, my favorite lyric from their hit is the one about "As soon as I came out the womb my Mama knew a star was born/Now I'm on the golf course chillin with the Osbournes." Partying like a rock star means PLAYING GOLF! And getting a tan with Marilyn Manson, who could certainly use some sun.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 9 June 2007 16:32 (eighteen years ago)

Scott, I sort of know the Diodes, but I have never heard their album. I'm pretty sure they did a version of "Red Rubber Ball" (original done by the Circle and written by Paul Simon I think?) on this 1979-or-so major label (Epic I think?) new wave compilation called Permanent Waves I used to own....Okay, yep, just googled it; my favorite tracks on that one were by After The Fire, the Only Ones, Masterswitch, the Vibrators, and the Kursaal Flyers (who I think were a pub rock band somehow connected to the Motors and the Records) but I don't own it anymore; why the hell did I get rid of it???:

NJE-36136 Permanent Wave: A Collection Of Tomorrow's Favorites By Today's Bands

On Yesterday's Vinyl (Epic US 1979)

1.One Rule For You/ After The Fire 2.Television Generation/ Kursaal Flyers 3.Heartache/ Cortinas

4.Just Another Teenage Anthem/ New Hearts 5.Red Rubber Ball/ Diodes// 6.Another Girl, Another Planet/ Only Ones

7.Action Replay/ Masterswitch 8.Judy Says (Knock You In The Head)/ Vibrators 9.Lovers Of Today/ Only Ones

10.High Heel, Big Deal/ Spikes

Also, didn't the Diodes somehow evolve out of great weirdo mid '70s Toronto proto-new wave hard rock band the Dishes? In 2001, Bullseye Records put out an awesome Dishes comp CD called Kitshenette.

This morning I am listening to Joetown (whose extended Gary Glitterfied stomp "The Wheel Revisted" is what industrial rock should have always sounded like by the way, but yeah, who mostly is all Nuge all the time), Lez Zeppelin (good all-girl versions of "Whole Lotta Love," "Rock and Roll," etc) Zebra (two-LPs one one CD reissue of No Tellin Lies and 3.V, which I've never heard before though Martin Popoff insists that they're not quite as good as the self-titled debut LP which I bought a copy of for $1 a few months back but still haven't gotten around to putting on yet), John Anderson (CD reissue of his second and possibly best album), and still the Bongos (who I will likely talk more about soon).

― xhuxk, Saturday, 9 June 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

John D, Arashk from Iran are indeed cdbaby-ready. I linked to their page above, but I'll do so again now:

...Er, no I won't. What's with all this "access denied" horseshit all of a sudden? If I can't link to cdbaby anymore, I may not be long for this board.

Lez Zeppelin lesbian version of "The Ocean" on now. They're crafy, and they're just my type.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 9 June 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)

Arashk CD Baby

― Gorge, Saturday, 9 June 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

Heavy Metal video of the year, easy, is Shop Boyz' "Party Like A Rock Star,"

Pardon me while I don't fall over in shock.

― unperson, Saturday, 9 June 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

I wasn't trying to shock anybody! I just think that video is hilarious -- all the way to the car blowing up into hook'em horns hands at the end. The video is even more fun (and also a lot more metal) than the song. (Then again, it's not like I watch tons of heavy metal videos -- it's not like I watch tons of ANY videos, actually -- so what the heck do I know? Maybe there is a more entertaining one somewhere that I haven't seen. But I doubt it.) Some of those comments on youtube creep me out, though. Especially the ones about how black people shouldn't dress up like Kiss (which looks totally goth dude, by the way.) But I do like the comment about how the video doesn't look cheap, because if you've ever met a rockstar they are not glittering and shiny! How true!

― xhuxk, Saturday, 9 June 2007 17:29 (eighteen years ago)

So, this album from The American Black Lung is bothering me. It sounds like a hard-core band that decided that they wanted to play rock, but had no idea how to do so or had never actually heard a rock record. Obviously they've heard rock songs before, so I can only imagine that they're doing this deliberately. It actually sort of reminds me of French New Wave cinema, in that it feels like they took all the elements of hard rock and then threw away all the rules. I don't much like French new wave, either.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 10 June 2007 00:42 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, I was wrong. There are actually some decent nu-Southern rock riffs in there. The big problem is the vocalist, whose vocals don't match the music at all, are really high in the mix, and sound like a drunken Henry Rollins vomiting all over the microphone.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 10 June 2007 01:31 (eighteen years ago)

this just in, the Melechesh album is still fucking excellent

― J0hn D., Sunday, 10 June 2007 01:46 (eighteen years ago)

I hated that American Black Lung thing, just seemed ugly and generic if I'm remembering right. May or may not have mentioned it above.

Just posted this on the country thread:

Speaking of sounding Euro, has anybody listened to this supposed pyschobilly trio Tiger Army on Hellcat, who have a stand-up bass player and are apparently topping the charts on KROQ in L.A. right now? I'm actually liking them okay, but damned if I can tell where the "billy" is in their sound. There's definitely some Misfits in there, but as K.Sanneh (who called them psychobilly himself) pointed out in the Times this week (this is the Euro part), "Spring Forward" sounds a lot more like New Order. (Lalena asked if it was the Smiths; same difference.) And "Forever Fades Away" is the Cure via A Flock of Seagulls or something. So: '80s haircut music. But not even the Stray Cats kind.

-- xhuxk, Sunday, June 10, 2007 2:23 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Okay, there's at least bit of a little wide-open spaces gothic western feel to "Pain" on that Tiger Army album. I like this! Dark but not dragged down. And Nick 13's voice is easier to take that Danzig's ever was. ("Hotprowl" is straight hey-hey-hey-shout Misfits, though, and I'm sure it's not the only track like that here. And though I never cared about the Misfits, I have cared about blatantly Misfits-inspired hey-hey-hey bands like Naked Raygun before.)

-- xhuxk, Sunday, June 10, 2007 2:39 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

A couple things that have so far gone unmentioned about that Joetown album: (1) "Ten Ton Brick," which I love, is heavy-rock Little Richard, "The Girl Can't Help It" with some words changed. Very old-school Detroit, both conceptually and sonically. (2) There are two ballads. "Rock 'N Roll Man Pt. II" is the more psych-pop rooted, almost like Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots in listening-to-the-late-Beatles mode, and probably better than Soundgarden or STP at it (and they weren't bad at it, to be honest); "Down" is more country doo-wop or something. Two of my least favorite cuts on the album, but I still like both of them, which says a lot for the album. (3)"Spinz" makes a meal out of you and comes back for more in ways the lame AC/DC cover on the new Big & Rich album never could. (4) "Curbside Sleeper," the obvious Aerosmith homage, has some great guitar wank. (5) "Go! is my favorite track, one of the most over-the-top Nuge imitations ever, so perfect it leaves me speechless.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 14:53 (eighteen years ago)

I would also like to mention the cool high-mass pipe-organ or whatever they are parts (especially in "Spike/Spear") on that only-very-slightly-metal Pumice album I was talking about last week. The more epic they get, the more awe-inspiring they get. How come no other people this twee are also this good?

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

Finally, the Bongos! Okay, I promise I will shut up about them, possibly forever, after this. But it turns out they do have some metallic moments after all, primarily in the live tracks tacked on during the second half of the CD reissue after the end of Drums Along the Hudson proper, for instance in the much preferable concert versions of "In The Congo" and "The Bulrushes," which is heavy like the first Dream Syndicate album was heavy. (I.e., not as heavy as a lot of things on this thread, but heavy enough to count.) "Certain Harbours" on the actual album, though, might be their heaviest and most extroverted/least twee track of all, and it's got some great Contortions-style sax squawk in it too, but with more tune attached than Contortions ever managed I bet. Those are exceptions, admittedly, but who needs to be rambunctious all the time? And one thing I like about the Bongos' tweeness, obvious in songs like "Speaking Sands" (which deep down at its core is basically a "La Bamba" cover anyway) and "Hunting", is that they are twee in a Haircut 100 beating on the bongos like a chimpanzee (as Dire Straits would say) kind of way, but their album is better (at least partially because more rock) than the Haircut 100 album (the one with "Love Plus One," which I do like) that I got sent a reissue of a couple months ago. Also, "Zebra Club" is about being down at the rock and roll club. (Isn't that a Jonathan Richman song? He's definitely in the Bongos' bloodstream too.) Also I like how they pronounce "automatic daws" so Joisy/New Yawky amid the excellent staccato Pylon guitar clang of "Automatic Doors," and I think "Question Ball" has a somewhat annoying tune but I do think it has another really good atomic bongo beat and I like that it's apparently about a magic eight ball (I had one of those once), and "Video Eyes" reminds me a little of "Radar Eyes" by the Godz (ESP-Disk not Casablanca ones), and "Clay Midgets" sounds like that Gang of Four song about "your heaven gives me migraine" where the Gang of Four didn't know how to pronounce "migraine", silly Limeys. Okay I'm done.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

"Go" was perfect Nugent mimicry. Last song, too. Joetown must sleep with Ted Nugent under his pillow. Amusing how the dudes who do the best Nugent homage -- American Dog, Joetown -- are guys who are fundamentally really not like Ted at all. That is they drink a lot, write about it, and Ted's teetotal. And Ted was always composing about guns, war, hunting and death by misadventure and the people who do him best don't do that. And they impress me as people more fun to be around for more than a few minutes than Ted in the flesh.

Oohlala's Chop the Mutha Down is Australian early 70's heavy Brit rock homage. They obviously want you to think Faces but they're funkier and tighter and the singer sounds like Chris Robinson as opposed to Rod Stewart. Which makes him sort of a ringer for Michael des Barres ca. Detective on Swan Song. Some Led Zep touches in the drumming and guitarist's love of Middle Eastern licks and Pagey tone. 'Tis an EP and is over in fifteen minutes, just right. Bassist works out of Andy Fraser/Tetsu territory, loud but smooth. Thumping when it ought to be, some nice B3 and lots of white soul man vocals in the hard rock vehicle. Definitely got Anglo '73-'74 exactly right.

Never much cared for the original Drums Along the Hudson. I recall the Bongos as big in Trouser Press or New York Rocker, the latter of which I thought they were hardly at all. One of many records I recall buying on the recommendations of the said mags poobahs and feeling very burned by.

― Gorge, Sunday, 10 June 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

xp: Or maybe (in re: Naked Raygun's Misfits influence) I mean woaaagh-woaaagh-wooagh bands, more than hey-hey-hey bands.

Morrisey affectations over rote pop-punk hopscotch in "Afterworld" and emo leanings in "Where The Moss Slowly Grows" are not marks in Tiger Army's favor.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 18:56 (eighteen years ago)

And "Pump Jack" is even more Uh-Huh Cougar than "Hit It" is! Guitar sounds very "Authority Song." It pumps! Half songwriting credit to Bobby Pinson, whose albums always sound like demo tapes to me, but that doesn't mean the he can't write words.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

(Oops, that was for the country thread. Ignore it, unless you care about the new Toby Keith album.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:08 (eighteen years ago)

Alternately, feel free to cut and paste the myspace URL of these Wildhearts (and maybe second-Faster-Pussycat-LP) fans from Pittsburgh, the Cosmosonics, who I am enjoying today, into your browser, since links are apparently now illegal on my computer:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=3535319

In other news, my favorite Zebra songs so far are "I Don't Like It", "Drive Me Crazy," and the curiously jazz-swung "I Don't Care," all on No Tellin' Lies. "About To Make The Time" on 3.V, on the other hand, sounds exactly like Styx. The singer, as others have pointed out, has a helium falsetto maybe almost worthy of the guy in Pavlov's Dog. His high notes in "Isn't That The Way" could nearly pass for Frankie Valli or Lou Christie, which may well be unprecedented in the hard rock realm. Basically, though, they're a Zeppy AOR band in the Fastway or Kingdom Come sense, and I'm liking them a whole lot. (When they were sharing CD-changer space with Swan Song sisters Lez Zeppelin yesterday, I kept getting
confused because songs would come up that sounded like Zeppelin but weren't otherwise familiar, and then I'd remember that Zebra were also in the mix.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:21 (eighteen years ago)

Wait, so you don''t have to do that word "link" within brackets thing anymore? Glad i was informed.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:23 (eighteen years ago)

That Tiger Army disc is like a perfect amalgamation of everything a Southern California mall-punk kid would like - a little punk, a little rockabilly, some overt Cure and solo-Morrissey ripoffs, and even a song in Spanish for the Mexicans in the crowd. It's a good disc.

Saw Dir En Grey on Friday night, opening for the Deftones; they were great. Left three songs into the Deftones' set, though. I like them better on disc. They're very static live, except for Chino, who does that elbows-up cholo dance while he sings, when he's not bent at the waist and howling at the floor.

― unperson, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

Zebra were a huge bar band in the New Jersey->Long Island metro area for years prior to their first record, which as I may recall, had a good version of the Beatles' "Slow Down" on it. Like Twisted Sister, like Rat Race Choir, the latter which never made it. I remember ignoring Zebra a lot at the Allentown Fairgrounds or other big LV venues. They did hit the same audience as Kingdom Come whose second album didn't sound nearly as much like Zep as the first which had the Kashmir cop on it. I actually still like the second KC LP.

There was also a Jersey band called The Want who sounded exactly like Led Zeppelin, except they made the mistake of having their record come out as an early piece of the Southern Lord catalog. The stoner demographic completely ignored them.

Were Lez Zeppelin on the Girls Got Rhythm comp? Someone did an ace version of "The Lemon Song" on that? Nope, turns out it was Zepparella, another all lady Zep tribute band.

― Gorge, Sunday, 10 June 2007 19:58 (eighteen years ago)

I have one of the earlier Tiger Army CDs, and it sounds pretty -Billy to me. That may have changed, though.

And yeah, I think I was giving The American Black Lung too much credit. The singer was just throwing me off so much that I didn't notice that the music was fairly standard. I'm giving it a pretty thorough panning. Just, as you put it so well, ugly.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 10 June 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

I bought the Whitehorse 2xCD from 20 Buck Spin.

Its a compilation of a ltd 12" only ep,their 1st live cdr and a brand new 20 min song. (I have the 12" and the 3 cdrs they have made).
New song is brutal and crushing as one would expect.
If you like Corrupted check them out.

Also new Bongripper is due soon "Hippie Killer" it's 10 tracks this time instead of 1 60 min corrupted type track which the 1st album Great Barrier Reefer was.The demos leaked on the internet months ago and some of the tracks were a bit faster too.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 10 June 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

More info on the Whitehorse

Disc One includes: Fire To Light The Way & Everything Ablaze (the tracks off the Conspiracy released 12" now OOP) along with The Unwelcome Return a 22 minute track recorded at PBS originally slated for release on Sweat Lung a release that was canned when the 20 buck spin offer arose.
both these tracks the line-up was Pete, Grover, Simon, Yeap, Emile.

Disc Two includes: A mastered version of West Of The Sun / Oceans Turn To Black. This was the first Whitehorse release with the original line up of Dase, Brent, Pete, Grover & Emile with guests Ben Andrews (Agents Of Abhorrence / My Disco / Blarke Bayer etc) and Max Kohane (Far Left Limit / Agents Of Abhorrence / Cut Sick / George W. Bush etc) on Oceans Turn To Black ... this was originally pressed in an edition of 500 on Sweat Lung and has been OOP for quite some time...

and a US tour as well

Jun 29 2007 8:00P
Rock-It Room w/ Asunder San Francisco, California
Jun 30 2007 8:00P
Uptown Bar, Oakland w/ Giant Squid & more Oakland, California
Jul 1 2007 8:00P
TBC Bay Area, California
Jul 2 2007 8:00P
TBC Santa Cruz / Davis, California
Jul 3 2007 8:00P
Rotture w/Silentist, DJ Joe Preston & more Portland, Oregon
Jul 4 2007 8:00P
Funhouse w/ Iron Lung, Wormwood & Book of Black Earth Seattle, Washington
Jul 5 2007 8:00P
TBC Boston, Massachusetts
Jul 6 2007 8:00P
TBC Providence, Rhode Island
Jul 7 2007 8:00P
Pussy Cat Lounge NYC w/ Unearthly Trance, Ocean & more NYC, New York
Jul 8 2007 8:00P
TBC Brooklyn, New York
Jul 10 2007 8:00P
TBC Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jul 12 2007 8:00P
TBC San Diego, California
Jul 13 2007 8:00P
Ovrcast Fest Los Angeles, California

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 10 June 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

Their myspace is http://www.myspace.com/getonthehorse

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 10 June 2007 21:51 (eighteen years ago)

I feel like I'M DJ Martian here but I also got this lp in

HORDES OF SATAN DEBUT LP OUT NOW !!!

Finally this raging bastard is out on StreaksRecords.

Sludgy, hypnotising and deep Industrial Doom from Nottingham with
members who have been involved with such bands as Pitchshifter or Taken
by Wolves. 4 songs of grief and dispair in 50 minutes, creating a very
unique gloomy atmosphere with their amazing chord changes.

Think of early hypnotic Peaceville or Earache Industrial back in the
days mixed with doomy Sludge and deep growls.

limited to 342 copies, 126 copies of them handnumbered on white wax.
This comes with fold out inlay and sticker on inner sleeves.
One copy is 10 Euro plus postage.

Ask for wholesale or trading info!

for all info on releases and distro go to
http://www.streaksrecords.de

MP3 snippets:
http://streaksrecords.de/pics/snippet_pacifist.mp3
http://streaksrecords.de/pics/snippet_joseph.mp3

Review:
Faye Coulman, Sandman magazine
Hordes of Satan are an unforgiving, atmospheric assault of unholy doom
metal played with high-volume and hypnotising intensity. The grinding
depth of the bass evokes an intriguing aura of death, equivalent to the
sight of a grisly mass murder scene. The blood-curdling death grunts of
"Joseph" would indeed make the perfect horror soundtrack. Their unique
brand of doom metal is as intoxicatingly potent as a triple shot of
absinthe on a bitter winter's night.

It's sludge/doom really. Not much industrial to my ears.
http://streaksrecords.de/pics/hos_full.jpg

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 10 June 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

Back and forth. This is me on the country thread again (and now I'm wondering whether this band will belong on the teen-pop thread too, in a few weeks):

Tiger Army's Spanish song is "Hechizo De Amor," a laid-back sort of border desert croon. I'm liking "Ghosts Of Memory" alright, too; another moody slice of vibrato gothabilly):

-- xhuxk, Sunday, June 10, 2007 9:42 PM (1 hour ago)

Tiger Army's "Forever Fades Away" actually starts out morose gothabilly, then turns into A Flock of Seagulls, which it's possible nobody has ever done before. And the other gothabilly tracks I mentioned above, "Ghosts of Memory" and "Pain," actually have plenty of hop to their rhythm; their moodiness doesn't detract from their energy. And "As The Cold Rain Falls" may well the cut that Kelefa compared to New Order; it certainly sounds like New Order to me. Anyway, I like these guys' lack of boundaries, and fearlessness about sounding cheesy, by which I mean fearlessness about beauty and the beat. Now I'm wondering to what extent their new album is a leap forward -- I never spent more than minutes with their earlier records, but those struck me as forgettable. Their PR folks insist the new one will be their breakthrough; the summer will tell.

-- xhuxk, Sunday, June 10, 2007 11:21 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

Now listening to Lucifer Was, Norwegian early '70s psych sludge metal reissue on Transubstans (though the CD I'm playing, The Divine Tree, doesn't seem to be on cdbaby yet; supposedly it's their fourth) Sounds killer so far. Here's an earlier one:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/luciferwas2

PS) Riff in Zebra's "No Tellin Lies" sounds like Metallica's "Enter Sandman" a couple decades early.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 10 June 2007 23:56 (eighteen years ago)

was sorting my vinyl, getting ready to alphabetize...listening to random records i hadn't listened to in years, and lo and behold - damn that first LA Guns record holds up great!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 11 June 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

my flashback of the day:

http://www.agentsteelonline.com/skeptics_apocalypse.jpg

1985. combat records. thrash mania. they still put out albums. i haven't heard any though.

has anyone ever bought records from the drum & bass Combat Records label? i kinda want some of their records just for the covers. or picture-discs:

http://images.digital-tunes.net/releases/tearout_ep/full_size.jpg

http://images.digital-tunes.net/releases/your_guilt_ep/full_size.jpg

― scott seward, Monday, 11 June 2007 17:01 (eighteen years ago)

Just looking at those things gave me a headache. Sorta like the new TV logo for the London Olympic games made lots nauseous last week.

Unintentional funny of the day, from BoogerCollector metal 'zine:

Hordes of Satan are an unforgiving, atmospheric assault of unholy doom
metal played with high-volume and hypnotising intensity. The grinding
depth of the bass evokes an intriguing aura of death, equivalent to the
sight of a grisly mass murder scene. The blood-curdling death grunts of
"Joseph" would indeed make the perfect horror soundtrack. Their unique
brand of doom metal is as intoxicatingly potent as a triple shot of
absinthe on a bitter winter's night

Like Faye'd know about grisly mass murder scenes and three shots of absinthe.

Better still >> limited to 10 copies, 5 of them handnumbered buttered toast.

― Gorge, Monday, 11 June 2007 18:20 (eighteen years ago)

Hordes of Satan sound awful to me. Nice production, but talk about covering old ground.

― rockapads, Monday, 11 June 2007 19:09 (eighteen years ago)

recommended!

Walknut - Graveforests and Their Shadows
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=176002878

their myspace sez:
Thickening northern darkness, night over the dead haunted woods, autumn fog above the black water, grim folkish superstitions, ghosts of bloodsoaked battlegrounds and ritual places, voices of these old extinct lands, the thundering pulse of our blood and honour, razors cutting the runes upon the flesh.

yeah, sure. rules though

― rizzx, Monday, 11 June 2007 20:48 (eighteen years ago)

Jeezus H. Christ on a pointed stick.

― Gorge, Monday, 11 June 2007 21:00 (eighteen years ago)

My "flashback:"

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd100/d109/d10935d62bi.jpg

I don't know if it's held up, per se, but I sure enjoyed it last night. Totally worth the three bucks I paid for it.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 11 June 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

Joris , I hope they are the song titles!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 11 June 2007 21:47 (eighteen years ago)

Walknut - Graveforests and Their Shadows
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=176002878

http://www.myspace.com/byzantum
"the death of your non-heathen world set aflame in the fire of ancestors devouring your traitor flesh. the howling snow storming in your ears as you lay dead under my boot. the maggots eating at flesh while i mark my territorie on the ocular cavity in your skul."

― latebloomer, Monday, 11 June 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

Wait, is that band called Walnut but, like, spelled evilly?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 11 June 2007 22:21 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, i think they mean they're so badass and evil they'll walk over your nuts...or something

― latebloomer, Monday, 11 June 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

They are Russian... maybe they think that walnuts are feared by Westerners? Or maybe Stalin put up a decree saying that walnuts were capitalists and evil? I'm just waiting for, like, Sunflower Seid.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 11 June 2007 22:47 (eighteen years ago)

ButterDIE Wings

― latebloomer, Monday, 11 June 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

i think its sort of WALL KNUT like...maybe

― rizzx, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 17:01 (eighteen years ago)

In the mail today: SSS (thanks for the recommendation, Scott, it's pretty great) and the new Strung out.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 03:51 (eighteen years ago)

got the new entombed today! will report back tomorrow. it would have to be pretty bad for me to not like it though. i heart entombed.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 04:04 (eighteen years ago)

I got the Entombed this weekend, it sounds like Entombed. And I got the second album by some new retro-thrash group called Dekapitator yesterday. That's not bad, though the mix is a little too loud for me. It doesn't have that 80s crispness.

― unperson, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 11:17 (eighteen years ago)

okay, i love entombed, but this album ain't that great. i guess the last thing i liked was Morning Star, which was entombed-as-slayer. this album does have one entombed-as-slayer song, "masters of death", but it ain't that great. and the entombed-as-entombed stuff just seems to be lacking something. i like the opener "serpent saints" and was kinda hoping it would all be as good, but nothing else is as memorable.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

Reissue of Aztecs' Live is case of parallel evolution. In '71, they inhabited the same space as Grand Funk for Live. One difference: there's an organ player in the band who plays the Melbourne Opera House main pipe monster on the very first number, making the band sound grandiose in the way of Vincent Crane and Atomic Rooster for one cut.

Hamfisted guitar totally appropriate for the material. Thorpe, like Farner and Brewer, was a good singer, adding quite a bit. By definition would have had to been a big influence on Aussie heavy rock, it being one album before the Aztecs became a very big deal down under and nowhere else.

Most definitely for fans of the Buffalo LPs, Coloured Balls, etc. Would have been something to mention on the thud rock as influential to "stoner rock" in the Australian flavor.

Contains a bunch of singles, including "Most People That I Know Think I'm Crazy" which is some kind of Aussie bar rock anthem. Paradoxically, the Aztecs live records were much better than their studio recordings where they never quite got things right, apparently being constrained from going into volume and noise freakouts. Great live version of "Be-Bop-A-Lula" with what sounds like an amusing vocal gaffe, "He's the girl in the red blue jeans."

― Gorge, Friday, 15 June 2007 22:34 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the new Entombed gets off to a terrific start with the first track, but it just stagnates after a while. And the lyrics get pretty dopey..."Hey, ho...we are satan's people." Or something to that effect.

The new Pulsefear disc is really cool. Scary ambient drone stuff. Not surprisingly, andother knockout for Profound Lore.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 15 June 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Also found the unmastered demos of Sabbath's Born Again on slsk last night. "Zero the Hero" sounds unreal, like hearing it for the first time. I read in Popoff's amazing Sab bio that the pressing for the album was hugely screwed up, the lacquers were left sitting around too long before pressing, and the sound got all distorted as a result. They really should remaster that album, it's gained a lot of fans since the 1980s after being dismissed by many critics as a complete failure.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 15 June 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, it was fashionable to give that record a drubbing but I do recall an old listening buddy really liking it.

Aztecs remaster definitely shows the band killed in '71. And no one quite sounded like them when they went big in Australia. Now a lot of the Aztec reissues make a lot more sense sonically to me. They all have a heavy rock sound that's not slavish to what was going on in the US or Britain at the same time. They also appear to have hated doing singles although they had success with one.

Lobby Loyde's Obsecration from '75 really kicks off strong. He called it heavy psyche but it's more along the line of a rock opera where the instrumental stuff is much more important than the story. It runs through a lot of styles effortlessly, some soaring prog, even an offhand take on Link Wray called "A Rumble With Seven Parts." Has another in a line of great Aussie singers, some guy just named "Mandu."

Loyde became a guitar legend in Australia, not getting much to show for it until late in life. Then, for his obit, one of the big newspaper's called him the father of Australian heavy guitar. That's a bit late, I think. Obsecration really makes a case for the guitar hero status. He does a lot of things off modal themes which would immediately endear him to lots of pure metal guitarists.

― Gorge, Friday, 15 June 2007 23:15 (eighteen years ago)

i always liked born again. but then i'm a fan of latter-latter-latter day deep purple as well. the first time i remember seeing big props for born again was in one of henry rollins' tour diaries where he went on about how black flag would blast it in the van over and over again and how much they all loved it. my brother was the only person i knew who owned a copy back then.

― scott seward, Friday, 15 June 2007 23:55 (eighteen years ago)

And I don't know how credible the tale is, but I love the story about how the artist who was asked to do the Born Again cover intentionally made the artwork tacky so he could be quickly rejected (being already under contract with Ozzy), but Iommi wound up approving.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 16 June 2007 01:04 (eighteen years ago)

Giving the first listen to Will of the Gods is Great Power by Scald from Russia. It's a 2003 re-release of a cassette only 1996 album. Viking doom a la Twilight of the Gods with soaring Candlemass-style vocals. Truly epic stuff, the Metallenglisch and demo-quality sound actually add extra underground charm.

Sadly the band is no more as the singer died (run over by a train!).

― no-nonsense, Saturday, 16 June 2007 10:38 (eighteen years ago)

Forums are buzzing of anticipation for the Alcest album. I scored myself a copy of the EP, which is gorgeous. The full-length is going to be my favorite metal(-related) album this year.

― no-nonsense, Saturday, 16 June 2007 11:12 (eighteen years ago)

Thoughts on various stuff:

EARTHLESS -- Man, that is one beautiful package this CD comes in. So I thought maybe the packaging would help me get into the music like I couldn't with the generic-looking advance a few months ago, but driving to Lehigh University's Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, PA, for my daughter's high school graduation Wednesday night (I assume George has been there before, maybe Scott too, but not me, and we had even worse seats than I had at my first Yankees game of my life at Yankee Stadium last Friday), um where was I?, oh yeah, I got bored to death with that 20-minute/five-part opening track on the Earthless album, "Godspeed," before it was even half over. Man, I have tried so hard with this record, but I just don't get it. The riffs don't even seem all that heavy, and the stoner drone never pulls me in like it's supposed to with this kind of metal; it's just random crapola going on and on nowhere. The Groundhogs cover is okay, I guess, but it mainly just makes me want to listen to the Groundhogs.

HOLLOWPOINT -- CDbaby hard rock from Tampa, FL. Good guitar player (catchiest in "Hate To See You," which for some reason reminds me of early Blue Oyster Cult guitarwise), but ultimately (thanks most to the singer) lummoxy and cumbersome, just way too grunge:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/hollowpointband2

RANDOM ALLUSION- Cdbaby goth/prog metal from Texas, maybe pulling off a halfway intriguing Evansenesce/ Queensryche hybrid (without a gal singer? damn, could've sworn they had one -- who is that lady on the cover? does one of the guys just have a high voice??) in "This Distance" and "Window" and who knows where else, but mostly just way too run-of-the-mill and vocally clunky to make me care. (Actually, male vocal parts often remind me of the guy who grunts gracelessly on certain Evanscence hits.)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/randomallusion

ZEBRA -- Just wanted to say that I wound up liking tons of songs on that 2-LPs-on-1-CD reissue I mentioned a week ago. Favorite on the second LP 3.V is "Better Not Call"'s new wave disco-metal powerpop, about, um, either how the singer better not call some girl or she better not call him, I wasn't paying attention I guess. Sounds excellent either way. Honestly, half the time their sound could almost convince me they came from Vancouver, but they didn't! 3.V, the less rocking (and less Zep) of the two albums, also has an almost Toto prog-pop element in several tracks, and "Lullaby" (not one of my favorites, but more evidence of their omnivorousness) is almost proto-"Silent Lucidity"--and that one's on the far more Fastway-worthy first of the two albums (which was actually their second.) By now, I'd expect you to be thoroughly confused.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 13:32 (eighteen years ago)

DIVINING RODS -- This West-Coast post-Zarkons-or-whoever noir-blues hard rock wound up sounded great in the rentacar whilst slouching toward Bethlehem, way better than at home, where the somewhat flat and blowhardy vocals tend to get lost in the living room but the guitars often kick in magnificently as songs progress (that especially happens in the closer "Death Eye Dog," most blatant Jim Morrison imitation on the record.) Anyway, in the car, the music maintained a very cool churn throughout, and the singing was a big part of it -- another band reviving a shtick the Birthday Party clearly helped invent (there's a couple of those every year) making more interesting music than Nick Cave has for the past quarter century. Oh yeah, they're from Portland, and the frontman apparently was involved in the artwork on Wipers' LP covers a million years ago, or something like that. Judging from the fact that the liveliest (also most rockabilly, and most Blonde on Blonde thanks to momentum and rhythm from pianos and vocals) song is called "Jeffrey Lee," I'm guessing they're also fans of the Gun Club, who I just realized I've never owned a single album by, and I'm really not sure why -- I'd probably like them a lot, right? Also, tracks like "Killing Ourselves" and "Love Letter To The Dead" (note a recurring theme? CD cover's a graveyard, natch) have quite nifty saxophone parts.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/diviningrods

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 14:00 (eighteen years ago)

KILLOLA -- I mentioned this punky gal-lad L.A. band upthread (see April 29), George has written about them on paperthinwalls, I wrote about them on my MTV Urge blog last summer. So you can go back to those places for introductions, but I just wanted to say that the CD disc of their Live in Hollywood DVD has been in my player all week, and I might decide it rocks me even more than their fetching maxi-EP/mini-LP thing from last year. (Haven't put on the DVD yet; DVDs always take me forever to get around to -- especially now that the third season of Rescue Me became available via Netflix June 5, and I'm only up to the seventh episode. Though I gotta say that the fifth-or-so episode of said season, the one called "Zombies," was as much evidence of potential shark-jumping as any episode of any TV show that I've ever become DVD-addicted to: I don't know if the writers just got lazy, or snorted too much cocaine, or were rushed to meet a deadline, but that episode was like a bad sitcom or something, and I hope the series recovers; we'll see.) Anyway, Killola just seem to kick even harder on the live CD than on their studio CD, at least so far, though I haven't played the two back to back. And singer Lisa turns out to be really amusing on stage. (DVD should be fun.) Also, they do a great cover of "Los Angeles" by X, and another song with lyrics like "oh jackie oh" and "masturbate me" which Lalena tells me is a cover of some old Misfits song (not that I would know), and sounds good either way.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2132176

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 14:18 (eighteen years ago)

LUCIFER WAS -- Uh, the album I'm linking to below still isn't the one, I've been listening to, The Divine Tree, which wound up reminding me a lot of Uriah Heep, but I thought I'd link anyway. They were a real good band. And, judging from the album credits, a real big one -- a Hammond organ player, three lead guitarists credited (one of whom doubles on Mellotron and another on Spanish guitar), a flute player, a three-person "choir" (okay, two them play other instruments too), how confusing:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/luciferwas1

RED BEAT -- Heavy early '80s Brit post-punks I never heard of before, now up on cdbaby; man, I bet Alex in NYC would love these blokes -- half the time, they sound just like early Killing Joke (who apparently put out an EP by them on Malicious Damage Records), before Killing Joke started to bore. Which means their sound is also at the root of what folks from Big Black to Ministry to Treponem Pal to Pankow to Rammstein wound up doing years later. Except they do the heavy heavy dub way more than Killing Joke (who only did it a little) did, and their dub sounds more like the Ruts than like Public Image Ltd (which is to say more literally reggae, less Kraut-rock), though there's some John Lydon in the high register rant parts. Also some Mark P (from Alternative TV), and maybe Jon King (from Gang of Four). No-nonsense humorless stuff, but really taut, and surprisingly expert when it comes to Jamaican rhythms. And in "Shadow Boxing" they even try getting kinda jazzy.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/redbeat

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

HAWK - Stonesy and radio-ready (especially in "Get Back Home," both lycially and soncially a great car song about listening to Exile, Revolver, and Back in Black while driving all night back to Oklahoma) Illinois cdbaby hard rock, with riffs blatantly and efficiently swiped from AC/DC (in "How You Feel") and Tom Petty ("Not Get Down," possibly a better use of guitars from "Free Fallin'" than "Free Fallin'" itself), and their cdbaby profile suggests a self-knowledge about all those influences. "Janey" is a good jangling hard pop track; "(Tao) The Way" the eight-minute long ethereal closer to help you decompress at the end:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/hawkrock

THE COSMOSONICS -- Mentioned these Pittsburgh glamsters a few days ago; Junk Rock For Lovers album continues to grow on me. A hairier and more hair-metal take on the Stones (via Aerosmith, Hanoi Rocks, Wildhearts, Kix, Faster Pussycat) than Hawk, but Stones-rooted nonetheless, and real good at it, even if the guys all look way too old to still be partying so hard. Favorite tracks so far, fairly self-explanatory, are "Hangover" (which still sounds kind of drunk) and "S&M." "Bubblegum Blues" takes its bubblepunk riff from "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones. "Hollywood" is the heroin-weary Exile rip to help you decompress at the end.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=3535319

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 15:03 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, I was wrong, Hawk's "Not Get Down" is definitely not as good a song as "Free Fallin'." But it's still cool that it steals the riff. (And it's better than the cover of Petty's "Listen To Her Heart" on the new Pietasters album, if not the cover of Petty's "I Need To Know" on the new Poison album.)

The "jazz" in Red Beat's "Shadow Boxing" (which is not nearly as good as Angel City's "Shadow Boxer" by the way) has a little too much lounge cocktail in it, it turns out, not to mention remnants of their reggae -- a bit too close to some of the shlock (Style Council? how would I know?) that U.K. post-punk post-funk evolved into. But I don't hate it.

Killola's Misfits cover appears to be about the day John Kennedy died, or at least most of it does: "run Jackie run," "Texas is the reason the president's dead," etc. (Not news to Misfits fans, I assume.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 16:12 (eighteen years ago)

Just to get it out of the way, the song is called "Bullet."

― unperson, Saturday, 16 June 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

melodic black metal from Canada:

Gévaudan - A Requiem For The Dead, A Deity For The Living...
http://www.metalcrypt.com/pages/reviewsframe.php?revid=3136

Gévaudan
myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/gevaudanmetal

impressive atmospheric black metal mixed with 80s thrash inspirations

also from Canada finally expect the new album from Woods of Ypres in September

Woods of Ypres
http://www.myspace.com/woodsofypres

WOODS OF YPRES - "Woods: 3 - The Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues"

― djmartian, Saturday, 16 June 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Black Debbath's Naar Vi Døde Rocker and accompanying EP Motorhedda Gabler answers the question no one thought to ask, ever: "What would a stoner rock opera about playright Henrik Ibsen sound like?"

The recordings are in Norsk with English words for the ones which have no counterpart in native Norwegian. This is enough to give you the basic idea. Henrik Ibsen was an important man, he was a rocker, like Black Debbath, who are erecting a monument to him because he was much better than a soccer hooligan. Or something close to that.

Execution is joke band perfection, sounding good but I'd had enough after four songs, the best of which, by far, was a Motorhead cover. Apparently related to quite a few Scandinavian stoner bands, of which there now must be 10,000. Members share duty in Thulsa Doom who I disrecall as forgettable, too.

When oh when, Lord, will someone do a rock opera about Friedrich Durrenmatt?

Sometimes Black Debbath sound like a poor man's more literary Turbonegro. Eesh.

― Gorge, Saturday, 16 June 2007 18:42 (eighteen years ago)

I'm now determining that (1) Killola's live album probably isn't quite as good as their studio EP at least in part because they're more audible on the latter and the studio hides their sound less than da club (i.e., the usual live album caveats apply, though this one is still fun regardless, and I'm still looking forward to their DVD). (2) Red Beat's sound is probably a bit thinner than I let on above --- they could actually use more of Killing Joke's metal -- though there's still plenty of intriguing stuff going on (i.e., "See" is playing now, and it sounds like if Gang of Four were a surf band on Montego Bay...okay, now "Survival," this one's very Killing Joke, like I think it's even about nuclear war and stuff...and now "Tribe," another blatant Killing Joke doomsday dirge, and that one and "Child" have plenty of ritual drum clatter -- basically, they might have wanted to be Killing Joke before anybody else wanted to be Killing Joke, a notable distinction indeed...and wow, "Dream" is a really massive dub-rock howl, okay, never mind, I like these guys after all); (3) Hawk could use a more assertive singer sometimes (there's at least a tinge of alt-country that stands in the way of would-be radio-pop-rock greatness), but not often enough to complain about; (4) The Cosmosonics probably have something about them that makes them not as great as I imply above too (songs too similar? production too minor league?), but I'd rather not be negative.

(I.e., story of my life: Whenever I publicly state how good records are, I start finding things wrong with them. But that doesn't mean they're not good.)

One of these days I'll get back to all those advance CDs the metal labels keep sending me again, maybe...

― xhuxk, Saturday, 16 June 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, though Hawk do have moments of alt-country vagueness ("In You," especially, but even the less-than-assertive vocals of their good hard pop song "Jamey" and their Petty rip "Not Get Down"), more often (especially in "Suzie China" and "Take My Love") they sound more like the Black Crowes. But I don't think the Black Crowes ever made an album as good as Rock'n'Roll. Next to "Get Back Home," best track is probably "Rock Star Thing," built on a more propulsive Bon-era AC/DC rip than "How You Feel" (that one turns out to be as much Stones as AC/DC riffwise, under whiney singing that sounds like Dinosaur Jr in Neil Young mode.) Also "Rock Star Thing" says they're trying to make Angus proud and then they're going to California because there's a girl waiting there with flowers in her hair. Riff in "So Rock N Roll" comes from "Beast of Burden" but then the music gets way too slow and the compliments they're giving some girl get way too pat; sometimes they really could afford to be more pretentious. But just as often they're just unpretentious enough.

Great Cosmosonics song: "I'm A Time Bomb," which sounds like the first Poison album and reads like Kix. Memorable line I just now noticed from their song "Hollywood": "My friend saw Good Charlotte at the Rainbow Bar/Walked right up and punched him in the jaw." Then they run into Lemmy at the 7-11.

"Bondallica" by Bonde Do Role = Brazilian favela booty beats + heavy metal guitars (maybe a first?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 00:03 (eighteen years ago)

"Bondallica" by Bonde Do Role = Brazilian favela booty beats + heavy metal guitars (maybe a first?)

Note to other thread denizens: being first could mean that other folks had the idea and rejected it because, you know, it's a bad idea. (Bonde Do Role is a bad idea, period. Do not believe the hype. They suck, suck, suck. Hipster art students are no smarter for coming out of Brazilian art school.)

― unperson, Sunday, 17 June 2007 00:15 (eighteen years ago)

Phil, where exactly do you hear "hipster art student" in their sound? I'm really curious. (I was kind of skeptical, but I haven't paid enough attention to their bio to know what kind of students they are. And besides, hipster art students have made plenty of fine music over the years.) Anyway, they sound perfectly catchy to me -- I also really like the song where they say "Afrika Bambaataa" over and over again (that'd be "Gasolina," though not the Daddy Yankee one) and the one with the spy movie guitar riff that's called "James Bonde" (though people who have no interest in Brazilian booty-funk pop, appropriated by white Brazilian suburban kids or otherwise, should feel free to steer clear.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 00:27 (eighteen years ago)

Either way, give or take one cut with metal guitars, they belong more on the rolling whirled whirled whirled thread than here (so if Phil and I are gonna have a fight, that's where it should be.) (Fights here should be over Pig Destroyer, or Earthless.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 00:38 (eighteen years ago)

Also found the unmastered demos of Sabbath's Born Again on slsk last night.

uh, hey, do these have a special title or will "black sabbath born again demos" as a search work?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 17 June 2007 06:04 (eighteen years ago)

think i found it... 9:10 version of "zero the hero" that doesn't actually say "zero the hero" in it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 17 June 2007 10:55 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, that's the one. The "Zero the hero" vocal must have been a last-minute addition. It's neat to hear them start up at the beginning to get ready for the fade-in.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 17 June 2007 10:58 (eighteen years ago)

Phil, where exactly do you hear "hipster art student" in their sound?

I don't; I know their background because we ran an article on them because my co-editor is enraptured by them. (Our tastes don't cross hardly at all; he loves all the Pitchfork-friendly indie/hipster/all-genres-in-the-big-blender-in-the-sky world music stuff, especially when it's made by sexxxy college kidz. Me, I like Latin music, and metal with ethnic instruments, and furrowed-brow electronic experiments by people from foreign countries, and crazed reissues.)

Anyway, the reason I responded to your BDR post because you're on another one of your everything-in-the-world-is-secretly-metal-except-for-metal-which-is-ugly-and-boring-and-lame kicks, which as we all know bugs the shit out of me.

By all means carry on, though.

― unperson, Sunday, 17 June 2007 12:46 (eighteen years ago)

Outstanding new band alert: Neo Obliviscaris

Neo Obliviscaris

listen on myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/neobliviscaris

in particular the track: Tapestry Of The Starless Abstract - is over 11 minutes long, an epic track consisting of many elements.

A 6 piece metal band consisting of violin, 2 guitars, bass, drums, clean and extreme vocals; Ne Obliviscaris hail from Melbourne, Australia, and include a vast array of influences within their sound from progressive to black, thrash, death and melodic metal, and even western art music, jazz and flamenco. Creating music of many extremes, and with compositions often exceeding ten minutes in length, Ne Obliviscaris is at times very technical and complex and at others simple and subtle, creating an extremely original brand of metal that defies normal categorisation.

avant progressive black metal with jazz-fusion

possible reference points:
Maudlin of the Well, Enslaved, Ephel Duath, Opeth, Arcturus, Solefald, KBB [legendary Japanese progressive jazz-fusion rock], Jean-Luc Ponty, Mike Patton and Faith No More [the Clean Vocals]

review
Ne Obliviscaris - The Aurora Veil
http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=152048

― djmartian, Sunday, 17 June 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

edit...the correct name of the band is: Ne Obliviscaris

― djmartian, Sunday, 17 June 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

xp to Phil:

Okay, first off, I've of course never said metal (even all the stuff I don't like) isn't metal, that's just silly. And of course I've also written about tons of metal on this thread (even limiting metal to the most stick-up-the-ass definition ever) that I've liked a lot. (For that matter, I had the new Entombed and Pig Destroyer in my changer this morning; neither of them seem very inventive to me, sorry -- wow, Catholic priest samples! -- but "Loathsome" on the former and "Masters of Death" on the latter hit me as tolerable; I mean, I guess Pig Destoyer are exploring outlandish ideas like identifiable riffs and followable song structure now and then, just not enough, and not in a way that makes me want to hear them again, and mostly what I hear there is the same old schtick; Entombed seemed a hell of lot more entertaining to me when they covering "Black Juju" and "Ballad of Hollis Brown" on that Man's Ruin EP eight years ago.) More to the point, give or take one Bonde De Rolle song and a couple Shop Boyz songs, I'm not sure what non-metal stuff you're accusing me of calling metal; it's all loud rock, at least, and unless you limit your metal definition to "whatever metal labels send me," it's not like I've gone out on that much of a limb here lately, I don't think. But this is an old boring story, and even brining it up again seems pointless.

More important, though, there's the fact that lots of metal (from Pig Destroyer to most "metal with ethnic instruments" obviously -- hey, have you checked out that cdbaby band from Iran I linked to above yet?) does basically sound like a hipster art project these days, so I'll be damned if I can tell how that's even an issue. "Furrowed-brow electronic experiments by people from foreign countries" would seem to fit into this category too, generally. Just because the artsters are young and cute doesn't mean they're necessarily worse than if they're old and ugly, for crissakes. (And hell, "all-genres-in-the-big-blender-in-the-sky world music" would include plenty of rock en espanol stuff you like, wouldn't it? And "Tieta" by Bonde De Rolle -- which, a few years ago, would have just been called rock en espanol -- is livelier and less drowned in artsy detachment than anything I've heard by Cafe Tacuba since their debut. But whatever.)

Speaking of doom-ridden covers of "Ballad of Hollis Brown" by guys who are old and ugly, the one on the new Pretty Things album sounds pretty great -- maybe not quite Nazareth-level, but up there. And it's not the heaviest thing on the album, either: "Livin' in my Skin" is truly hefty caveman-pysch stoner boogie doom, and I love how "(Blues For) Robert Johnson" turns into jazz after the six-minute mark. The '60s-style soul-rock of "Pretty Beat" is fine dance music, and I like the weird girl backup and organ parts in "All Light Up," and "Balboa Island" is yet another decompressing etheral album closer. (A new trend?) Weird -- the Pretty Things, who I've never followed that closely though I love some of their '60s stuff, put out an earlier comeback a few years ago which I either ignored or didn't listen close enough to or it just plain didn't impress me, so I put this new one on more out of critical obligation than anything else. A very cool surprise.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, "Loathsome" is Pig Destroyer and "Masters of Death" is The Entombed, not the other way around.

Susperia CD from Candlelight in the changer now, drawing a blank despite intricate prog changes here and there (fourth track, e.g.), probably leaning toward reject. They sound okay when the singer oaf shuts up, but how am I not supposed to get them mixed up with Suspyre? (I swear, lots of these bands just seem interchangeable. Sometimes I wonder if even the bands themselves know the difference.)

"Buried Alive" sounds tough on Pretty Things, too, and "The Beat Goes On" has crazed sax at the end.

Hollowpoint (Floridians whose most recent CD I posted about yesterday) turn out to be notably less dragged down by grunge on their 2004 debut than on their new one. Soundgarden is still an inescapable comparison, but there's just a more convincing '70s-blooze-sludge attack and swing to "Mountain Stomp" and "Forever Insane" and "Whiskeyman" and "Outta My Head" than anything on the new album, and "C-Blues" is a true beaut of a guitar instrumental. I'm also theorizing that, like lots of grunge-associated Southern bands in the post-Collective Soul Creed era, they might be secretly Christian rockers (one title: "In God We Trust"), but I'm not positive.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/hollowpointband

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, Pretty Things album is called Balboa Island, released in the States on Zoho Music. And no doubt I hyperbolized a little about the metal heft of "Livin' In My Skin," but its gloom still feels sufficiently doomy, as does that of "Buried Alive." "Mimi," meanwhile, has a light Diddleyfied Latin-rhythm undertow, and the backup girls in "All Light Up" keep saying "ooh la la" over funky beats while the singer talks about revolution in '69, but wasn't the British invasion already over by then?

The tracks I didn't mention above on the first Hollowpoint album tend to be clunkier, and when the vocals are really given center stage in "In God We Trust" and "Dust & Blood," they veer a bit too close to James Hetfield for my liking. Though I do like the words about the banks of the Rio Grande in "Mexico." Weirdly, on their myspace page, the bands lists as influences Ozzy, AC/DC, and Zeppelin, none of which I really hear at all (though I guess Soundgarden did start out trying a Zep + Sab thing.)

Do Nile use ethnic instruments? People always touted them as sounding "Middle Eastern" thanks to certain corny-assed old Hollywood snakecharmer-music quotes (which were the most interesting things in their music, near as I can tell), but beyond that, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm done trying to get into their new Ithyphallic on Nuclear Blast already. Guitars seem okay maybe but to hell with that voice.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 17 June 2007 18:04 (eighteen years ago)

Nile use suck.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 18 June 2007 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

I'm actually greatly looking forward to Ithyphallic.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 18 June 2007 21:21 (eighteen years ago)

As Chuck said above, the guitars might almost be interesting if the vocals weren't amongst the worst ever. Combine that with the fact that I actually fell asleep during their set the one time I saw them, and you have a recipe for suck. In my book, at least.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 18 June 2007 23:33 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Nile are crap, and in a world that already has Melechesh, there is absolutely no reason for their continued existence.

― unperson, Monday, 18 June 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

i like earlier nile. i didn't like the last nile album at all.

― scott seward, Monday, 18 June 2007 23:45 (eighteen years ago)

I know this has been said before, and probably will be said again, but I don't understand how a band could put so much effort into their lyrics and have such indecipherable vocals. I had In Their Darkened Shrines, and I sat there with the lyric booklet while listening to the music, and I STILL couldn't tell what he was belching.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 00:35 (eighteen years ago)

Phah, I like Nile. I don't mind the vox at all...though they are kind of plain, it comes with the territory. It's all about the guitar arrangements, and Sanders' hilariously wordy Egyptology thesises are just gravy.

I think Akercocke's death growl is far more annoying.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 01:05 (eighteen years ago)

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LIKE NILE!

Okay, kidding. My problem with the vocals isn't that they're plain, it's that I just can't stand that type of deep belching vocals. I guess if I want good guitar arrangements, I'll go listen to Arch Enemy or something.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 01:12 (eighteen years ago)

I know this has been said before, and probably will be said again, but I don't understand how a band could put so much effort into their lyrics and have such indecipherable vocals.

it's called DEATH METAL, dude.

(not a nile fan, really, but what i've heard seemed ok. i like my death metal remedial, though, like COFFINS and GALLHAMMER, WINTER, AUTOPSY...)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 04:40 (eighteen years ago)

My wife actually loved Karl Sanders's solo album a couple years ago, for whatever it's worth (and I thought it made for perty background music myself.)

first Hollowpoint album... on their myspace page, the bands lists as influences Ozzy, AC/DC, and Zeppelin, none of which I really hear at all

Actually, "Decompression" turns out to be a pretty decent "Immigrant Song" rip, so I take that back, at least in part. I wound up liking the album a lot, too. The chorus of "Whiskeyman," where in just one more day the sun will come and wash us away (or something) (hey, aren't those basically "Black Hole Sun" lyrics?) has been stuck in my head for days now.

In comparison, the first Hawk album (I guess first -- the earlier one they sent me, anyway), Princess America from 2005, pales next to their new one --just way more powerpop without as much power, really.

Bigger news: I've been liking an actual metal album on an actual metal label! Namely Ironfire's Blade of Triumph on Napalm, suprememely melodic Viking metal from Copenhagen, with song titles about dragon hearts and gladiators and labyrinths and magic swords, and a cool dragon boat on the cover to match:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=93284768

And speaking of vikings, these Australian lunkheads apparently think all the other viking metal bands are phonies. Also, they list (along with oi!), as one of their genre influences, "RAC," which I've never heard of before, but I get the idea it might be some scary White Power shit, thanks to the stuff on their website about "ethnic cultural promotion" and race-above-all and Ian Stuart (of Skrewdriver) tribute memorial concerts. So, uh, I'm not gonna listen to them, but I'm kind of curious anyway. Is "RAC" short for "racist asshole music," or what?

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bloodredeagle2

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 11:56 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, "Decommission" not "Decrompression" (a word I'm addicted to here lately, for some reason.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 11:58 (eighteen years ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Communism

― scott seward, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 12:23 (eighteen years ago)

New Mystic Forest Album for 2007!

Avant Progressive Black metal from France

Mystic Forest
http://www.mysticforest.fr/

The 8 main tracks of the new album are recorded, arranged, mixed... I have hard time to find the good feeling for the vocals recording, damn this album is so complicated to record yet it will be so, so… So what in fact?... So Mystic Forest'ic... Yes, for all the ones who really wait for this record you won't be disappointed! I promise that this will be the true representation of what Mystic Forest was destined to be!

Mystic Forest
on Myspace
http://www.myspace.com/mysticforestband

― djmartian, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 12:28 (eighteen years ago)

New Alcest is really good. Very um .. Shoegaz-y Metal is the best way to describe it I guess.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 19:46 (eighteen years ago)

My computer's CD player will not acknowledge that I have put the new Pretty Things album into it, and I've tried several times.

Those looking for some extra-wanky power trio action should check out the John McLaughlin/Jaco Pastorius/Tony Williams Trio Of Doom CD I got in today's mail. Five live tracks and three studio versions of the same material, recorded in 1979. Smokin' hot.

Also, the new Ion Dissonance is incredibly disappointing. They were a little Dillinger-damaged on their last album, but their Quebecois tech-grind was at least diverting. The new album is their attempt to cater to the Hatebreed crowd, and it sucks sucks sucks.

My nominee for most incomprehensible vocal belcher: the guy from Dying Fetus. I was doing that follow-the-lyric-sheet thing with War Of Attrition yesterday, and after three or four lines of each song, I was completely lost - the sounds he was making bore no resemblance to what was on the printed page. Even the cadence seemed off.

― unperson, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

Can't wait to hear the Alcest. I'd decided to wait until I got it from Profound Lore, but I just might cave and snag the leak.

I was actually going to mention the dude from Dying Fetus...that's another death growl that really sticks in my craw.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 20:46 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, I know it's death metal. My emphasis isn't on the indecipherable part, but on the "this guy does tons and tons of research and spends a ridiculous amount of time and effort writing his lyrics, and you can't understand a damn thing he's saying" part. I mean, if he was just belching about disembowelment or something, then I'm all for indecipherable, but when the subject matter is as interesting as theirs, I'd sort of like to be able to understand it. Something about that particular style of death vocals just rubs me the wrong way. Dying Fetus aren't high on my list, either.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 23:28 (eighteen years ago)

I can't deal with cookie monster vocals over proggy technical metal, or slow melodic ethereal songs. Early Entombed, Carcass, Napalm Death, Obituary, Morbid Angel; these groups did it right. When it has a kind of punk rock fuck you kind of appeal, I can roll with it. When it's supposed to be taken seriously, it kind of embarrasses me in a way. I'm also kinda old, so maybe I don't get it.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 17:00 (eighteen years ago)

maybe we should start a seperate death metal thread. i love death metal. i love joe wolfe. he's unbelievable. no fx!

http://www.myspace.com/heinouskillings

― scott seward, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 17:52 (eighteen years ago)

Early Entombed, Carcass, Napalm Death, Obituary, Morbid Angel; these groups did it right.

Exactly. Obituary and Death in particular had that "crazy guy ranting on the bus" style of vocals, rather than the "rottweiler vomiting" style, and that was much more freakish and alienating and "eeeevil" than the predominant DM vocal style, which I don't hate but which frequently diminishes the power of the music overall.

― unperson, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

"crazy guy ranting on the bus" <-- I love that description.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

maybe we should start a seperate death metal thread. i love death metal.

Yes please.

― xox, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 21:43 (eighteen years ago)

Been listening to the new Throwdown album today. Man, those boys really want to be Pantera.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 22:17 (eighteen years ago)

Throwdown keep getting on bills with bands that I like, and they continue to be incredibly boring.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

found a site that had all the scorpions albums uploaded....got In Trance...damn, never heard any really old Uli John Roth era stuff! This shit smokes! what an AMAZING guitarist!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Wednesday, 20 June 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

The new Red Chord album has Moog synth! It's like Geddy Lee circa 1980 is sitting in on keys. Death/grind needs more left-field musical choices like this.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 21 June 2007 04:03 (eighteen years ago)

Songs from dragon-metal vikings Iron Fire did not sink in much after intital listening session, sadly.

A few more notes about that new Pretty Things album: (1) The gloom in dirges like "Livin' in My Skin" and "Buried Alive" is boogiefied in a very Yarbbirds-rooted manner. (2) the "ah yi yi yi yi ya ya ya ya" backup in "Pretty Beat" reminds me of "Love Plus One" by Haircut 100, last mentioned on this thread in relation to the Bongos a few weeks ago. (3) The cute "oh la la" backup going into "All Light Up" often tricks me into thinking it's Bonde De Rolle. But it's still a hard rock album regardless, I swear.

Been finding myself surprised to me liking the below crusty squatter-style punk-metal Canadians (I mean, they seem from their demeanor that they'd be crusty squatters -- I'm not even sure what crust-punk is supposed to sound like these days otherwise); their best song might be a blatant Offspring imitation called (not at all ironically) "America Sucks", for crissakes. Even lamer, one would think, they have a song called "Wakin and Bakin" that asks where the herb is. But I've been liking them a lot regardless. They have a pretty great, really proto-punk (like, Electric Prunes via Voivod?) knack for inevitably slipping into beautiful and creatively thought-out psychedelic parts in the middle of high-energy rants without losing the energy while it happens. Other favorites so far are "Fires Under The Road" (anthemic with cool keyb parts), "Blown To Pieces" (which starts with a cool rumbling "Children of the Grave" type drum intro and turns into what sounds like a heavy version of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" but better than how the Chili Peppers did it then breaks break down an even wilder "Children of the Grave" tribal rumble except the drums also remind me of something off Green Days's Dookie for some reason), "Vive Le Quebec Libre" (cool separatist Frenchy speed-rock), "We Are The Lords" (cool goth funeral pipe organ opening into catchy shout mosh metal), and "Crazy" (again, an unexpected mix of pysch guitar beauty evolving naturally out of a hardcore yelp tantrum that 99 percent of the time I'd have dismissed as rote). Basically I guess the bottom line is they have a suprisingly good drummer and guitarist, and a singer who reminds enough of Dexter Holland (or whatever Orange County local heroes Holland was allegedly ripping off) to get by.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/grimskunk

― xhuxk, Saturday, 23 June 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

RAC = Rock Against Communism, and yes is basically Racist Asshole Music. It started out as a gig put on by Skrewdriver, I think, in response to Rock Against Racism, but became the name for the racist Oi bands, I think now it doesn't necessarily mean Oi, some of the later RAC bands are metal (so I have read, I haven't actually listened to any!)

― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 23 June 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

Despite all the incoherencies and typos in my previous post, I should note hear that it's been years since I've actually listened to an Offspring or Green Day album of my own volition. And give or take the singing, I wouldn't say Grimskunk sound like the Offspring per se.' (In fact, one of their songs, "Wordly Grace," does a loud/soft thing that's a lot more reminiscent of Nirvana.) Their cdbaby page says they've been around for 15 years, so they're apparently not spring chickens and have had some time to accrue some musical seasoning. And again, what's most impressive about their songs is how they initially threaten to be clunky and moshy, then repeatedly manage to pull gracefulness out of their hat. And in all different kinds of ways, too.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 24 June 2007 01:05 (eighteen years ago)

Documentary 'bout Gorgoroth

http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=769427891

in 5 parts. Title is very misleading but the last 2 minutes are somewhat worth it. Great scenery, really awesome

― rizzx, Sunday, 24 June 2007 10:46 (eighteen years ago)

Grimskunk? "America Sucks" -- yep, OC 1980. "Wakin' & Bakin'" -- perfect for a Rodney on the ROQ, Vol. 2 until the Beastie Boy-style rapper shows up. Next tune, "Fires Under the Road," back to OC with some Edge atmospheric guitar tossed in to make it sound earnest and anthemic.

Not bad but not quite good enough to make me want to listen to all the rest of the tunes. Could use a genuine funnybone or discernible evidence of humanity in place of the professionally executed cant.

― Gorge, Sunday, 24 June 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, kinda unfortunate when a punk band's best idea of a joke is "Our folks say we're dysfunctional and girls think we're nuts/We like to kick it back in piece of dirt with a six pack and blunts" (and I'm not even sure what "piece of dirt" means.) I guess I'm just impressed and surprised that any band these days can turn worn-out '80s surfer-core and '90s alt-rock tropes that were never all that interesting in the first place into something I can stomach at all this late in the game. So I'm probably overrating the record, no doubt. Still, I think their hodgepodge is pretty neat, and their keyboard dude kind of rools -- like, when "Divide and Conquer" builds its fairly snoreful Alice in Chains grunge gloom into that transcendant Uriah-style prog-sludge vamp halfway through. I'm hearing Stone Temple Pilots (in "Pyschedelic Wonderdrug") in there too, and "Wakin and Bakin," which is actually pretty catchy (and their least downtrodden song even if it is a dumbass frat party from guys who the frat would never let it), reminds me of 311 for some reason even though I have very little memory of what 311 sounded like. And there are probably three or four songs I like more than "America Sucks," it turns out. So, can't imagine I'll return to the album much again in the near future, and obviously it would've been better as an EP, but that's okay.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 24 June 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

Meanwhile, George might be interested in learning that the space glam aliens in Zolar X have a new album up on cdbaby; doesn't hit me like Timeless so far, but "Now You See It" is sounding good:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/zolarx

Only remotely promising "true metal" CD that came my way this week is the one by Mexican black metal duo Hacavitz on Moribund. No opinion yet; we'll see:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=61263116

― xhuxk, Sunday, 24 June 2007 17:44 (eighteen years ago)

Scratch that. I now do have an opinion, which is that they're not very good (even in the way that the black metal bands on Moribund I like are good.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 24 June 2007 18:36 (eighteen years ago)

i LOVE the hacavitz album!

you know what i really need to hear though? the album marc bell made after dust bit the dust. does gorge have a copy?

http://popsike.com/pix/20060414/4865734049.jpg

― scott seward, Sunday, 24 June 2007 20:58 (eighteen years ago)

No.

― Gorge, Sunday, 24 June 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

i need to find a copy.

― scott seward, Sunday, 24 June 2007 21:07 (eighteen years ago)

Zolar-X newie. I can't take too much "elfin power pop," apparently. I'm going to have get out the reissue of Timeless and see if the vocals were really that annoying.

― Gorge, Sunday, 24 June 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

New Himsa record sounds exactly like Stigmata-era Arch Enemy, and I mean exactly -- I put on Stigmata to compare, and wasn't sure if I'd hit the button for the Himsa CD instead. So, if you like Stigmata, you'll definitely dig it. Way better than anything else they've ever done. Of course, it doesn't come out until September, so I guess this conversation will be picked up then...

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 25 June 2007 03:23 (eighteen years ago)

Best art design of the year has to be the new Graf Orlock CD, which comes wrapped in an elaborate cardboard cut-out of a facehugger from Aliens. It looks so cool, I don't even want to open the static shield bag it came in.

http://i12.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/a6/9f/715f_1.JPG

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 26 June 2007 21:25 (eighteen years ago)

Tomorrow I will begin listening to the Steve Vai Sound Theories Vol. I & II 2CD set I grabbed off the Metal Edge pile. Steve Vai plus a full orchestra. What could possibly be wrong with that?

― unperson, Tuesday, 26 June 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

Just back from Hellfest. Loved to see Neurosis (rain and mud actually added to the shamanistic psychedelia, truly cosmic), Napalm Death, Slayer, Enslaved, Emperor, Immortal, Moho, Brutal Truth, Blind Guardian, Atheist, Ephel Duath, Orthodox, Brujeria... Cynic were rather dissapointing.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 00:40 (eighteen years ago)

that Graf Orlock is pretty decent! but not as good as other one in the promo envelope, the drifty post-rockish split CD between 2 band I'd never heard of

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 27 June 2007 00:41 (eighteen years ago)

Boris tonight(weds). Apparently they have been playing Flood Can't wait!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 00:43 (eighteen years ago)

John, you must mean the Rosetta/Balboa split...I haven't gotten around to that one yet. That one Rosetta double album that involved the Grace/Times of Grace-style simultaneous playback was a really good one. New album coming soon, too.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 00:52 (eighteen years ago)

I saw Doro at the Whiskey last week. Pretty awesome. She's very well preserved.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 01:11 (eighteen years ago)

John, you must mean the Rosetta/Balboa split.

yeah that's it - it's pretty solid!

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 27 June 2007 02:59 (eighteen years ago)

I fully expect that Pig D record to have either Best New Music or Recommended beneath it on P4K by the time I arrive at the office.

[Confidential to Strongo -- you were one album too late!]

― fukasaku tollbooth, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:25 (eighteen years ago)

Immolation's Shadows In The Light hasn't gotten much attention around here, or anywhere else not populated by total DM diehards. It's really, really good, though. There's a guitar riff at the end of the third track, "World Agony," that's pretty much made my week. If you've got a copy sitting somewhere in your promo stack, pull it out and give it another listen.

― unperson, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

i didn't get the new immolation. otherwise i'd probably be talking about it. and i definitely wouldn't have left it sitting in a pile.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 15:05 (eighteen years ago)

I seriously wanna bake Moonsorrow some cookies to thank them for making an album whose effects are kinda Meddle-like - you can get really lost in this record

I think everybody should bake Moonsorrow some cookies, it'd be a nice gesture

― J0hn D., Thursday, 28 June 2007 16:49 (eighteen years ago)

also, the new Mayhem is fucking excellent

― J0hn D., Thursday, 28 June 2007 16:50 (eighteen years ago)

i still haven't heard new mayhem.

― scott seward, Thursday, 28 June 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

New Malevolent Creation in the mail today... Yay?

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 29 June 2007 21:20 (eighteen years ago)

The new Mayhem and the new Dimmu Borgir were released on the same day. I think it made for a very interesting juxtaposition of black metal styles.

― novaheat, Friday, 29 June 2007 21:28 (eighteen years ago)

I still haven't gotten around to listening to the Mayhem, either. Too much good stuff to listen to!

The new Alcest, for instance. It's pretty much perfect.

Also, I'm mighty impressed with the much more focused, death metal approach Through the Eyes of the Dead have taken on their new one. The fact that Erik Rutan produced sure didn't hurt.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 29 June 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

I need to get around to that Mayhem disc too. But I got three Circle albums in today's mail (new one soon on No Quarter, plus a reissue of Sunshine), so it'll have to wait.

― unperson, Friday, 29 June 2007 22:59 (eighteen years ago)

I totally suck and haven't heard any new metal albums from this year at all.

However, I notice Chuck mentions the Clorox Girls upthread, I love them. They're playing here in a couple of weeks but I might have to go back to hometown to meet my old school friend who just got married instead.

None of this has anything to do with metal, sorry.

Slayer rules!

― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 30 June 2007 03:56 (eighteen years ago)

That Clorox Girls album from this year really holds up. Easy one of the punk rock records of the year (or pop-punk, in the old Adverts/Vibrators/999 sense, or something.) Wound up liking it a lot more than Les Hatepinks, who are also real good and who pretend to be French even more than the Cloroxes do.

Finally landed a replacement copy (which just mysteriously showed up on the free table at work) of the Tokyo Dragons' Give Me The Fear, which I'd probably too quickly dismissed upon first hearing a couple years ago then started to regret it when George wrote about it on the rolling metal thread last year, as see below. (I now think it's way better than I thought at first but still not as good as George suggests, and the stripclub-metal tunes "What The Hell" and "Come On Baby" still strike me as fairly rote -- Kiss-and-Crue wannabees begging "shake that ass" are not inherently more interesting than, say, Southern rap rookie Rich Boy begging to "that that ass" in the dumbest song on his otherwise likeable debut album earlier this year. But the Dragons do have lots of good ones, as George suggests -- favorites include "Johnny Don't Wanna Ride," "Ready of Not," "Teenage Screamers" (..."in for the kill," sounds more NWOBHM than Sunset Strip sleaze, and they seem a lot less rote when they do the former) "Rockin the Stew" [whatever that means -- probably just as horny as pleading for ass shaking, but funnier], "Chasing the Night." The one where they repeatedly shout out "this is is it, let's go and get high" is kind of amusing, too.)

Anyway, here are our old comments, for posterity:

Leaning toward thinking Tokyo Dragons (from England I guess, album on Escapi Music) are almost as ignorable as Danko Jones (see above): pro-forma/competent hard-rock/pop-metal riffs under lyrics ("let's go get high," "c'mon baby and shake that ass") stupider than hard-rock and pop-metal ever were. Ha ha, get it? It's a joke. Just not a funny one. Though anybody who wants to try to convince me otherwise is welcome. I can imagine there being a good song on here somewhere; just don't know how much energy I have to dig around for the thing.
-- xhuxk, Wednesday, 26 October 2005 12:30 (1 year ago) Link

In the meantime, I've had a chance to listen to The Tokyo Dragons' Give Me The Fear. Purist hard rock/metal fans (70's/80's/some NWBHM) may want to inspect. At least fair to good -- can't tell more -- only gave it once-twice through. Supposedly unsuccesful rivals to The Darkness which puts them in the same ballpark at the Glitterati.
Don't know anymore about them. Good, bad, indifferent?
-- George 'the Animal' Steele, Thursday, 2 March 2006 17:49 (1 year ago) Link

Back to the Tokyo Dragons whose Give Me the Fear is way more bazooka rock than I originally let in. (Had been totally sidetracked by the glam pop magnificence of Jesus H. Christ and the Four Horsemen.) Tokyo Dragons album title refers to raver about singer being intimidated by a good-looking girl. He wants her to give 'im the fear more, more, more. Lots of jubilant gang vocals and shit hot slashing riffs set to goin' out on the street to have some fun metal.
Corny but really effective.
-- George 'the Animal' Steele, Friday, 3 March 2006 01:45 (1 year ago) Link

the best songs on Tokyo Dragons' Give Me The Fear are "Come On Baby," from which the album title stems, "Johnny Don't Wanna Ride," either a street racing or motorcycle tune, and "Chasin' the Night" which is more careering riff and fun metal.
-- George 'the Animal' Steele, Friday, 3 March 2006 17:29 (1 year ago) Link

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

Uh, on second thought, maybe it is as good as George suggested. I like it a lot. (And Rich Boy begged to "TOUCH that ass," is what I meant.)

Otherwise, I've been a punk rock'n'roll kick this weekend. Liking at least a few tracks on all these:

THE EAT -- Early '80s Southern Florida band I never heard of before, just now compiled on Alternative Tentacles. Not sure how much I buy Jello's label's Angry Samaons comparisons, and no fucking way do these guys deserve two discs and 59 tracks (a fourth of that would've made more sense) but "Living Like A Pig" and "Manatee Smacker" are fun so far.

http://www.alternativetentacles.com/product.php?product=1421

68 FASTBACK -- Aussies from Perth. 10 songs will be much easier to absorb than 59, and they might sound more like the Samoans than the Eat do, though I'm not going to claim even they sound all that Samoan like. Fave song so far is "6 Foot 11," where they rob liquor stores with their Amazon girlfriend.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/68fastback

DUNGEONS AND DRAG QUEENS -- From California, with a butt-of-pants album cover reminiscent of Springsteen and Loverboy. Hard rockers who feel (possibly accidentally?) punk by virtue of energy, lack of pretension, and sense of humor, as indicated by my favorite tracks so far which are "Frenchin Your Fries" (which may or may not = rockin' your stew) and "Gash Ain't For Me". Influences named on Myspace page: "Cheap Trick, The Small Faces, Thin Lizzy, The Who, and many more...." Cdbaby page says "DDQ has shared the stage with such national acts as Nebula, The Black Halos, Y & T, Lords Of Altamont, Public Nuisance, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Priestess, Danko Jones, UFO, Thin Lizzy, The Raveonettes, Urge Overkill, The Hiss, and many others." Like 68 Fastback, their singer seems kinda clunky; but like 68 Fastback, it may well not matter in the long run. (I mean, they'd both be a lot sprightlier if they had somebody higher-registered like the Clorox Girls guy, say, but that's no reason not to like them):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/dungeonsdragqueens

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 12:55 (eighteen years ago)

68 Fastback myspace-claimed influences, fwiw (some of which ring truer than others, and a few of which I never heard of before): "Iggy Pop, Motorhead, Ted Nugent, Rose Tattoo, Bonehead, Devo, AC/DC, Butthole Surfers, the Cult, Cheap Trick, Mutt, the Who, Agent Orange, Mike Ness, Whitey Kirst, Dave Wyndorf, the Vandals, the New Husseins, Mick Videlli, Ron Ashton, Ken Watt, Black Sabbath, Dave Navarro, ZZtop, Alcohol and whatever else is goin'..."

Oh yeah, I've also been liking the commendably plainspoken but cynical but oddly warmhearted mix of noise and rhythm on A.R.E. Weapons' new Modern Mayhem, espeically when it reminds me more of Suicide doing "96 Tears" (did Suicide ever do "96 Tears"? They should have, and actually I'm pretty sure they did, but I'm too lazy to check) than, say, Cake or Soul Coughing or whoever "I Just Can't Get Started" sounds like. Anyway, they are coke-and-heroin-identified Lower East Side hipster scumbugs with despicable celebrities in their families, let's get that out of the way, and I hated their second album a couple years ago after loving their first one, and they put on the most disappointing excuse for a live show I ever saw in New York, so I'm defintely not predisposed to like the new album (put it on purely out of professional responsibility), but I do, because it rocks. Favorites so far are probably "We Don't Care" and "Weird Wild and Free," which both really convince me in their defiance, but they're only the beginning. "Heartbeat" has real funk to it, "Do You Wanna Hang Around?" is as good a ballad as Alan Vega ever did solo probably, "Keys Money and Cigarettes" is an entertaining Throbbing Gristle facsimile, "Hey Joey" has sax in it, "Sweet Jesus" has blasphemy in it," "Too Low" has handclaps in it, "Dreamers" asks where all the dreamers went and I want to strangle them for asking but it find it kind of moving anyway, and I can't think of many bands this noisy and arty who write songs this good (or write songs at all, really), and in the long run they don't seem that arty after all. Didn't one of their sometime-members overdose a year or two ago? Maybe that brought them back down to earth somehow.

Finally, if I haven't pissed off Phil enough, I will now say that the most metal (but not necessarily the best, though they're up there) songs on the GREAT new Aly & AJ album are "Bullseye" (which gets compared to the Runaways in their press release and doesn't really sound like the Runaways per se' but is hooky and punchy enough that I don't mind), "Like It Or Leave It" (which gets its riff from Stone Temple Pilots), and "Insomniatic" (which gets its riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and other parts of its melody from "Come As You Are"), I think. Take it or leave it. (Didn't hear the Kelly Clarkson yet.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

P.S.) Scott devotes a whole page to Buffalo in the new Decibel, cool! (And there's other good stuff in there too. It's in the bathroom now. As toilet reading goes, Decibel is way up there.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

P.S.S.) Also, K. Sanneh wrote about both Aly & AJ and Moonsorrow in the Times this morning, which also made me smile, though I don't understand how Moonsorrow (whose two-song elevator-metal epic I quite enjoy) are "Viking metal," as he says. They don't sound particularly Vikingish to me, though I suppose not all Vikings sound the same. Also didn't realize they were connected to Finntroll, who they sound nothing like. Guess I should read press bios.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

A.R.E. Weapons myspace, and then I'll shut up:

http://myspace.com/areweapons

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:29 (eighteen years ago)

...Oops, no I won't. Aly & AJ's STP tribute is "If I Could Have You Back," NOT the far more Europop-burbling "Like It Or Leave It" (track # 9 not #5 on my advance, though my advance also has "Blush" on it which is not on the actual album apparently, so I'm not sure what that does for track order otherwise.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:37 (eighteen years ago)

Tokyo Dragons myspace page (still has songs from their two-year-old album on it):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=26561177

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 13:44 (eighteen years ago)

btw, A.R.E. Weapons to my ears sound beefier and less emaciated (= more metal) than Suicide ever did.

Also, both the Eat and 68 Fastback probably sound closer to Vom than to the Samoans (which isn't all that close, but hey I'm not the one who brought it up -- I doubt either Vom or Samoans would have come to mind on my own, but now I'm listening for them.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

great album artwork by Travis Smith

Winds - Prominence and Demise

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s855015.jpg

― djmartian, Sunday, 1 July 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

"Great album artwork" because the aliens on the cover have really skinny arms? I'm not sure I get that (though looking at it, I can see how, if it was on some obscure '70s LP cover, it might look cool.)

Chorus hook of "Gash Ain't For Me" by Dungeons and Dragqueens (which seems to be about some sort of shemale): "She's going to leave me for a woman." AC/DC, she' got a woman instead of me. Bambi, don't you understand? It's better with a man. (I'm not sure to what extent the band are Drag Queens.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

Who the Aussies in 68 Fastback remind me of is all those Aussie bands from 20 years ago who were trying to sound like Detroit bands from 18 years before that but couldn't half pull it off -- specifically, Celibate Rifles, I guess, though maybe that's just because I don't really remember much what, say, the New Christs or Eastern Dark sounded like. Which is to say that, though they list Rose Tattoo on their myspace page, their real Oz ancestor is way more Radio Birdman. Which is okay, just not nearly as rocking as if the Rose Tattoo was true. The singing style, for one thing, just really lacks any discernible personality and gets totally lost in the barrage, and the rhythm section doesn't swing much, and they don't seem ready to break a barstool over your head. That said, tracks like "Burnin' Up The Car Park" and "Love It Or Shove It" evolve into healthy hard-pop-rock jams once the words are over, and the hooks in "One Horse Town" and "Coffin Boy aren't hard to grasp, and I still love "6 Foot 11."

The Eat are way more consistently catchy, though, and there is some concurrent Samaoans evolution audible after all in tracks like, say, "Open Man." I'm also approving of "Mary Mary" (about the Virgin mother), "She's Pissed Off" (because she can't sleep with her brother), "Mr. Brown" (about James, and funky enough), "Dream Of Yogi" (about Berra), "M80 Ant Death" (about blowing up bugs with small bombs), etc. Though strangely and sadly the number about watching "McHale's Navy" on TV doesn't quite cut it. But the more I listen, the less outlandish 59 songs seems (though I've yet to spin any of disc 2's live versions, which I just now noticed include covers of "We're An American Band," "Wooly Bully," "Flower Punk," "L.A. Woman," and "Question of Temperature.")

― xhuxk, Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

xhuxk 3ddy will not relent

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

There's a guitar riff at the end of the third track, "World Agony,"

Yeah, that is one catchy song.

― xox, Sunday, 1 July 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know if this is hipster irony or not, but it's pretty funny:

http://www.quiltsryche.com/

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

Threw that new Malevolent Creation into my iPod yesterday...it's pretty damn great! Very melodic, very rifftastic - Chuck would hate the vocals, but might like some of the music. It's way, way better than Envenomed, which is the last thing I heard by them.

Also good, the new Marduk live album (recorded in 2005), Warschau. They're busting out a lot of their Nazi material on this one, plus the booklet is all photos of German tanks rolling through devastated Polish cities. Stay classy, Marduk.

― unperson, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:37 (eighteen years ago)

I was sent two copies of the Malevolent Creation for some reason. Full package, too. Why can't Nuclear Blast send me the full packages for bands I actually like, like Sonata arctica or Candlemass? The music is pretty cool, but I can't stand those vocals.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

New Ted Nugent album coming this year. It's called Love Grenade. I hope it's as good as Craveman. That record kicked a whole lot of ass; made my Pazz & Jop Top Ten.

― unperson, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know if this is hipster irony or not, but it's pretty funny:

http://www.quiltsryche.com/

Is that ever awesome!

I've been completely obsessed with making a 1984 mix for Decibel's running mixtape series. Any time I get to wax nostalgic over Banzai Records is loads of fun.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, on second listen, this malevolent creation isn't bad at all. Good call, Phil. Definitely don't need two of them, though...

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

Oddly enough, I think I'm in a brutal death metal mood today... and I'm actually in a pretty good mood. It's time to pull out all those CDs I tossed aside as unlistenable and see if maybe I was a bit harsh.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 22:57 (eighteen years ago)

got the *Winters* album on Candlelight and here are all the names they throw out there to describe the band's sound:

Ace Frehley

Syd Barrett

Pink Floyd

Rush

Low

Elliott Smith

The Creation

The Kinks

The Small Faces

The Who

Pentagram

St.Vitus

Black Sabbath

Witchcraft

Cathedral

Trouble

Monster Magnet

― scott seward, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

No mention of Redd Kross? They mentioned them before for their ep.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 14:59 (eighteen years ago)

So far, I'm pretty sure I dislike the new album by Venom (who I've never remotely kept up with since the mid '80s) less than I dislike the new albums by The Agonist (who seemed possibly promising since they have a pretty girl singer) or Arsonists Get All The Girls (who seemed possibly promising since they have song titles like "Save The Castle Screw The Princess" and "Shoeshine For Neptune" and "Claiming Middle Age a Decade Early" and "Taiwanese Troft Trouble," but if there are also humorous moments in their actual music they're inaudible to me -- i.e., lads, I have heard Lawnmower Death, and you are no Lawnmower Death. Municipal Waste might have more luck -- their new song titles include "Lunch Hall Food Brawl" and "Septic Detonation" and "A.D.D. [Attention Deficit Destroyer]" -- but since the paranoid control freaks at their label divided their advance CD into 99 song snippets, I still haven't gotten around to playing it, just like Candlemass.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 18:30 (eighteen years ago)

From Ace Frehley to Small Faces? Hmmm, promises, promises.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

xp otherwise, updates on stuff nobody else here will remotely care about even though they should:

68 FASTBACK -- Still way too sonically muffled production-or-lack thereof-wise, but I wound up liking this more than I thought, especially "Coffin Bay," which seems to concern the dumping of murdered bodies in the water, and which melodically reminds me of the Left or the Wipers at least as much as of Celibate Rifles. "I Don't Know" and "Burnin' Up The Car Park" also turned out to be just catchy enough.

A.R.E. WEAPONS -- Maybe a little harder to take than I suggested above if you try to play the album from start to finish, but still a way better third album than I ever would have expected from them. Faves include but may not be limited to "We Don't Care" (...if you like us, basically, and I kinda believe them, and there's a good short reprise of it at the end), "Sweet Jesus" (has he ever been bored? and the guitar sounds almost African), "Heartbeat" (a rap about an acquaintance "lying in bed on a morphine drip" in New York City, where else?) and "Do You Want To Hang Around" (sweetly sung to some girl.)

DUNGEONS AND DRAGQUEENS -- Wound up really really really liking this record a lot; it entirely pulls off the mood of crass powerpoppish forgotten provincial late '70s/early '80s hard rock bands
(like say perhaos the Kings or the Tazmanian Devils or the Holy Cows) jumping on the skinny tie new wave bandwagon, one of my all-time favorite musical genres. There's an AC/DC rip whose words I can't make it out much but it's called "Cooperstown" hence it must be about baseball, there's a song called "Blueball Queen" with a Sex Pistols riff that says she's a monster and she's not coming back, there's an extremely hookful almost country-boogie old-timey hoedown called "Rent My Time" that manages not to come off corny at all, there's a song called "A Streetcar Named Zephyr" that's actually about a girl with a gun just like that unforgettable Tommy Shaw semi-hit from the '80s, there's all kinds of goofy chorus harmonies where the band's sounding like they're having as much fun as any band I've heard this year, and of course there's the aforementioned instant trannie classic "Gash Ain't For Me" (she's a kind of a drag, always smoking a fag, chasing women around, only half a girl, etc) that's so perfect I keep checking google to see if it's some obscure '70s glam cover. But it isn't.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 18:52 (eighteen years ago)

(In fact, for anybody who's read my second book, I'd say that Dungeons and Dragqueens' chorus harmonies frequently easily qualify as "party in the background rock." The Swingin' Medallions would approve; ditto Kix. The Greeks don't want no freaks.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 18:59 (eighteen years ago)

Finally, in the reissues and/or revivals of turn of the '80s prog-pop spinoff bands department, so far I'm pretty sure Asia's Fantasia: Live In Tokyo seems preferable to Violinski's Clog Dance: The Very Best of Violinski. That might change, though. (One guy in Violinski definitely has better facial hair on the album cover -- somewhat, in fact, reminiscent to that of Gogol Bordello, whose new album is by the way also sounding good so far thanks to such highlights as "Wonderlust King," "Alcohol," and "American Wedding." But I guess it's not metal.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 19:08 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of Nugent, another Tom Werman-produced act from the salad days of arena rock, Molly Hatchet's Flirtin' With Disaster -- Live is halfway decent. Considering half of the original band's dead. But the leader, Bobby Ingram, who wasn't in the original line-up but who discovered Danny Joe Brown, has taken over and carried on the name, which was apparently not very nailed down. Kind of proves it wasn't so much the personnel as the style and vibe. Find someone who can still do Frazetta-style covers and you're set.

Comes with a DVD, so you can see the audience, middle-aged white people, no one under 21, shot through with a share of the kinds of chix who always respond to show-us-your-tits (although none do here, it's family entertainment) recommendations. Dave Hlubek, who must weight 350-lbs., still plays guitar, his size seemingly not getting in the way.

They play all the hits perfectly and the middle includes some material veering into old Marshall Tucker territory so this could be just as well on the country thread were it not for the wall of guitar attack. Heavier than new Skynyrd, less corny which wasn't the case originally, and if someone wanted to take a chance on CMT, which they don't, MH would be Crossroaded with Big & Rich or Montgomery Gentry or maybe Keith Urban who professes the great love for playing gee-tar.

Grubbier than some of the melodi-Euro metal I've been hearing this year. Hit list: Whiskey Man, Flirtin', Bounty Hunter, Beatin' the Odds, Dreams I'll Never See.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 19:12 (eighteen years ago)

Molly Hatchet seemingly made for a July 4 festival, the singer going into the pledge-of-allegiance at the end of one song, much to the hysteria of the Kentucky audience. Plus they play Dixie and the theme from Pier Gynt.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

I finaly opened that Graf Orlock CD (the one wrapped in the facehugger), and am enjoying it immensely. Love the combination of movie dialogue and really catchy grind...and when they start playing along with the music from Jurassic Park at the end, it's too awesome for words.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 4 July 2007 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

So, I decided the new Venom album Resurrection is nothing I'm going to return to or even make it all the way through the first time, but still, tracks like "Panedemonium" and "Disbeliever" and "Leviathan" stick to the ribs more than I would have thought, way catchier than most of the stuff that passes as "extreme metal"--a genre I guess Venom somewhat invented, right? (Who else was there way back then? I don't think I've ever actually head Bathory; when did they start?) Also, if they're not considered progenitors of "death'n'roll," they should be -- they still seem to do it better than most bands I've seen classified in said subgenre (though they're kind of considered a joke, right?)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 5 July 2007 11:21 (eighteen years ago)

I think Venom predate Bathory. Early Bathory does sound a lot like Venom & Motorhead, I love songs like Sacrifice off their 1st album.

― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 5 July 2007 11:26 (eighteen years ago)

"...ever actually heard Bathory..."

And actually, Popoff's book has Venom debuting album-wise in 1981, and Bathory not 'til 1984 (one year after Metallica and Slayer.) Angel Witch was 1980, though. Do they count? I never heard them, either.

Tony Jasper and Derek Oliver, after two Venom albums: "Venom are a solid demonic band whose sound is like early Black Sabbath going through a cement-mixer in fifth gear. They promise worse to come."

― xhuxk, Thursday, 5 July 2007 11:28 (eighteen years ago)

angel witch counts for something, though not really death'n'roll. more straightforward NWOBHM with melodic vocals, a little overproduced for my tastes but still fun.

So, I decided the new Venom album Resurrection

wait, that's from 2000. did someone actually reissue that?!

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 5 July 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Sanctuary reissued it with bonus tracks (maybe a whole bonus disc, I forget - I got one and sold it almost immediately). I gave Venom a chance second half of last year, got the box in the mail along with Resurrection and Metal Black and wound up buying the reissues of the first four. All gone now. Venom sucks.

― unperson, Thursday, 5 July 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)

The Black Metal reissue is essential...or at least all the Venom I feel I ever need.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 5 July 2007 18:11 (eighteen years ago)

Welcome To Hell is at least as good as Black Metal IMO, it's rawer.

― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 5 July 2007 19:29 (eighteen years ago)

"Countess Bathory" and "Die Hard" are impossible to top.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 5 July 2007 21:08 (eighteen years ago)

I think the folk metal Finntroll/Korpiklaani loving contingent in here will really dig the new Turisas album that's coming out on Century Media. Plenty of jig-inducing stuff, and the metal part of it is closer to power metal band Black metal. Plus it's a concept album! Smokes the new Finntroll.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 6 July 2007 03:09 (eighteen years ago)

I wanted to like the Turisas disc, but there was something about it (too much keyboard, I think) that drove me away. They have excellent face paint, though. Almost hockey-fan-esque.

― unperson, Friday, 6 July 2007 11:09 (eighteen years ago)

You can never have too much keyboard!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 6 July 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

Just got the Chthonic 2CD/DVD live thing and the reissue of their 2002 album Relentless Recurrence in the mail. The live thing is pretty blazin'; I might go check them out when they hit NYC next month.

― unperson, Friday, 6 July 2007 18:09 (eighteen years ago)

Welcome To Hell is at least as good as Black Metal IMO, it's rawer.

true! the shtick is a little less rehearsed and more obnoxious. plus it's "remastered" - i never knew there were cymbals on that album, my vinyl copy sounds so ass.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 6 July 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

way catchier than most of the stuff that passes as "extreme metal"

Chuck I think it is safe to say that you have made your opinion on this subject known and that all rolling metal thread regulars are familiar with it

― J0hn D., Friday, 6 July 2007 20:25 (eighteen years ago)

Eh, I don't know. It's not like I've mentioned Venom on any of these threads before (and there are plenty of extreme metal records I like more than theirs, as my hedged compliments of their album that I thought was new but apparently isn't ought to indicate). I was just surprised, after not really listening to them in a million years, how even in their way-beyond-has-been stage their hooks seem so much more graspable than music of so many acts they're clearly direct ancestors of. But whatever. (And why do people think they "suck"? I still don't get that -- They sound okay! Also, since nobody argued, I guess they truly are the indisputable inventors of extremeness? I'm still curious -- Chronologically, do they have any competition at all for said title?)

― xhuxk, Friday, 6 July 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

as always I'd defer to Siegbran on the subject but I'm pretty sure Venom coined the term "black metal" - at the time, they & Mercyful Fate (which I just amused myself by beginning to mistype as "Mercyful Fart," but then again I got a 5th-grader's sense of humor) were doing this Yes We Believe In Satan thing that seemed pretty hey-wow to some people - it was like, we're not being coy about it, we just say "fuck yeah, Satan is awesome"

sonically I think they count as extreme mainly because of the weird/shitty production which lends their records a really sordid atmosphere &, on Black Metal, for playing superfast. There were lots of speed metal bands who also played crazy fast, but the speed plus evil equation was kind of like a door opening for lots of people.

Other than that, people often describe them as a NWOBHM band in style.

― J0hn D., Friday, 6 July 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

Got Litmus and Winters in the mail today. Will get to them either sooner or later, not sure which yet.

Also got Circus Diablo, who supposedly contain former members of the Cult and the Almighty (the latter of whom I liked I lot by the way), but who sound completely boring so far. Better sleaze-rock revivalists, though far from great, appear to be L.A.'s Poets & Pornstars, who contain a hot-looking (at least on the CD cover) girl bassist plus a bunch of guys attempting to dress up more or less like Slash. Tastiest tune at this point and time seems to be the sterling hard pop of "Strange," with Bonnie and Clyde number "Partners and Crime" and AC/DC-riffed "Get Your Kicks" a notch or two lower; '90s-style corporate grunge attempt "War On Gravity" and power ballad "Earthman" seem tolerable; latter is followed by a secret hidden bonus track which may well be a cover of AC/DC's "Ride On" but don't quote me on that. Anyway, so far I'd say they're less dull than Velvet Revolver, who might possibly have done a memorable song once but if so I don't remember it.

http://www.myspace.com/poetspornstars

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 July 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

(Actually only guy looks even remotely like Slash -- the rest probably look more like Bo Bice or somebody -- but it seemed funny to say at the time.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 July 2007 19:47 (eighteen years ago)

Me upthread a few days ago:

Gogol Bordello, whose new album is by the way also sounding good so far... But I guess it's not metal

Me contradicting the above at least slightly, on country thread today:

"Forces of Victory" which appears to be Gogol Bordello's idea of mythic pomp-and-circumstance viking-style metal, "Your Country" which gets its funk from "Tramped Under Foot" by Led Zeppelin and tells how your country will go down the tubes like all the other countries (sounded excellent on 4th of July!)

Take your pick.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 July 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

Circus Diablo are on Ozzfest this year! Because, you know, I need yet another reason not to go.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 7 July 2007 19:57 (eighteen years ago)

xp Aaargh. I actually meant only ONE Poet & Pornstar guy looks remotely like Slash (and even he doesn't really, at that much, though maybe he wishes he did.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 7 July 2007 19:57 (eighteen years ago)

Circus Diablo turns out to be not completely awful --First song "Loaded" is an okay Stone Temple in glam mode thing, "Red Sun Rising" does okay with an AC/DC riff, "Commercial Break" is a ridiculous British accent protest poetry jam spoken word bullshit thing that's like a retarded attempt at "Religion I" from the first Public Image Ltd LP and thus hard to hate, plus in general the singer whines tolerably in Billy Corgan mode -- but I still don't wanna hear it again.

Poets & Pornstars album is fairly consistent -- usually decent enough, never truly shitty. "Strange" is less sterling than I suggested when I first mentioned it, but still pretty good. "My Devil's Song" and "Spy Vs Spy" also passable hard rock, though the DiddleyZep boogie "Monkey" might be tops. "Earthman," the power ballad, seems to be an attempt at sensitive rocket man/space oddity/jet boy jet girl glam lyric, especially inept when they say they've never met a pervert who doesn't have a broken heart. But it's still sort of endearing.

― xhuxk, Monday, 9 July 2007 02:11 (eighteen years ago)

Just got the new Amplified Heat, How Do You Like The Sound Of That, in this morning's mail. It's their most overtly late '60s/early '70s disc to date, from the font on down. The power trio sound they've got this time out is just incredible - right on the axis between Grand Funk and Josefus. The vocals kinda bug me on some tracks, but not on others, which is weird because it's all the same guy. Anyway, this is the first time these guys have really clicked for me. This album kicks ass.

― unperson, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:23 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know what you had against the last record/EP! it kicked all kinds of ass. looking forward to hearing the new one. is it on arclight? okay, yeah, it is. i just looked.

― scott seward, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

just launched:

a music website dedicated to avant-garde metal

avantgarde-metal.com
http://www.avantgarde-metal.com/

― djmartian, Thursday, 12 July 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

new Decibel commercial!!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qc0PzWYWPAM

oh i laughed and i laughed.

― scott seward, Thursday, 12 July 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

and cheers to gorge for hepping the dude from bona fide to me. i'll be featuring/reviewing the new brigman and the two reissues in the october issue of decibel. hail baltimore!

― scott seward, Thursday, 12 July 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

Also, ask Rick about the 30-year "anniversary edition" of the Blowin' Smoke single, Brigman's first release in '77, due now.

― Gorge, Thursday, 12 July 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

The Decibel ad is brilliant.

I've really been digging the Litmus album that Scott mentioned in the Krautrock metal thread a while ago. Shameless, shameless Hawkwind rip-off, and extremely long, but incessantly catchy in places.

Oh, and the new Arch Enemy is fun.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 12 July 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

The Fucking Wrath "Season Evil" Self-defeating name. Extra points for brevity -- 26 minutes. Some truth in advertising -- someone saying on the next to last tune, "It's just pile-driving heavy metal rock 'n' roll." Half the tunes are akin to old-timey fighting hardcore. Last tune is a Hemingway tribute, half stoner until in comes the old-timey fighting hardcore breakdown. Standard garbled angry shouter. Good comic book cover art. Not bad.

― Gorge, Thursday, 12 July 2007 21:02 (eighteen years ago)

New Slough Feg album!!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 12 July 2007 21:25 (eighteen years ago)

That Fucking Wrath isn't too shabby. Reminds me of a less-proggy, more crusty Mastodon.

Currently resisting the urge to download the Slough Feg...can't wait to hear it!

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 12 July 2007 21:47 (eighteen years ago)

listening to WAY too much grind this year

― J0hn D., Friday, 13 July 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

digging the new ackercocke! they are on a cool path if you ask me.

― scott seward, Friday, 13 July 2007 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

Akercocke always loses me right when those death vox come in, they just sound so rote. But the arrangements are often amazing...that new song "Axiom" is unreal, I have to say.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 13 July 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

I really need to listen to the new Akercocke. I liked the last one a bunch; reviewed it for The Wire, but I don't remember if the review actually ran or not.

The Fueled By Fire album (which I downloaded from one of those promo digital music player things today) sounds like Exodus.

― unperson, Friday, 13 July 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

anyone on this thread know what the music in this video is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72YLgorOUns&NR=1

not straight up metal, but thought i'd ask here anyways...

― m0stlyClean, Friday, 13 July 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

Is Antichrist the new Ackercocke album? (I assume it is, since I found it on the free table at work this week, but I haven't looked at what year it came out.) Either way, it's been sounding pretty good to me, what with its mix of ogre-metal grumblegrunt with Porcupine Tree or whatever the prog referent is. Maybe the grunting is generic, but it's also not hard to take. And the guitar switcheroos in "Foosteps Resound in an Empty Chapel" were reminding me of Voivod earlier, and "Man Without Faith or Trust" has good rumbling going on underneath. Whenever I've tried to listen to these fellows before, I didn't get it, but there's a first time for everything. Plus I like that guy's mustache.

And now, an updated alpahabetical list of metalish new albums I didn't get around to listening to yet. If I should be making any of there especially high or low priorities, please feel free to explain why:

Bacon Fat
Behemoth
Candlemass
Hatesphere
Kosmos
Litmus
Municipal Waste
Mustasch
Nadja
Neurosis
Raging Speedhorn
Winds
Winters
Year Long Disaster

― xhuxk, Saturday, 14 July 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

I think you'll like Mustasch a whole lot. I don't think you'll like Behemoth, but I do. I love his vocals; they sound like a blast furnace instead of the usual growling. I'm over Neurosis and didn't like Nadja; they rip off middle-period Godflesh, but poorly.

― unperson, Sunday, 15 July 2007 00:04 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks, Phil!

Some notes about other stuff:

Miss Alex White & The Red Orchestra Space & Time (In the Red) -- I kind of like the grain and power of Miss White's voice, in an Exene/Courtney Love/whoever-the-singer-in-the-Alleycats-and/or-Zarkons-was post-Grace-Slick kind of way, but their sometimes sax-and-trumpet-augmented guitar-noise barrage never seems to coalesce into actual songs, and when they try to coalesce, Alex gets introverted somehow. The closing squall-with-yell "Squeaky Clean" is almost halfway scuplted into a tune though.

http://www.myspace.com/missalexwhitetheredorchestra

Cocktail Slippers -- Real good Donnas/Mensen-style five-gal hard rock band from Sweden on Little Steven's usually not so good Wicked Cool garage label. "Mastermind" and "Stop" and "Sunday" seem most tuneful so far. Only ten songs (all under four minutes, four of them under two), so economical too:

http://www.cocktailslippers.com/

Poison "Sexyback" -- CD single on Capitol; also found this on the free table this week -- back cover implies it's from Poison'd, but it's sure not on my copy, so maybe this is some kind of exclusive bonus track on some mass merchant's version of the album or something? I dunno. Either way, I like the idea, a "rock" version of the Justin Timberlake classic (the original of which I hated for at least six months after it came out by the way), but Poison don't nearly pull it off. Brit tween star Lil Chris did it better -- I liked how it sounded like he was saying "take it to the walrus" instead of "chorus."

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I decided once and for all this week that I think The Eat (aforementioned early '80s Florida punk band just reissued on two-disc/59-song set on Alternative Tentacles) were pretty great! They totally sound like a band Richard Riegel would have written a glowing rock-a-rama about in Creem back in the day, and that's among the highest compliments I can think of, and not only because when the do proto-jam-band funky stuff like "Mr. Brown" they remind me of Cincinnatti's old answer to MX-80 Sound B.P.A. (aka Byproducts of America) sometimes. Other times they remind me of the Urinals (in "Get Me High") or some forgotten Indiana punks of the Jetsons/Zero Boys ilk, and they seemingly have an obsession with both Catholocism ("Mary Mary," "Catholic Love") and sea animals ("Manatee Smacker," "Octopus"), and their version of Zappa's "Flower Punk" asks where you're going with that import in your hand and that button on your shirt and the answer is you're going to see Charlie Picket (who I've never heard) at the new wave club and then you're going back to Georgia Tech. Plus they play their instruments really good. The live tracks on the second disc tend to be harder to sift through, but only in comparison to the studio ones on disc one. And side two has all the cover versions, which I like. And surprisingly, if I just let one of the discs play from beginning to end, it's completely painless and I don't get bored!

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 00:33 (eighteen years ago)

Also, oh yeah, I like the somewhat AC/DC-style hard rock riff in "She Loves Strangers," first song on the third David Johansen solo album, which just got reissued on American Beat Records, and the second song "Bohemian Love Pad" is fun, but after that the album goes way downhill, especially compared to his first two solo albums, both of which I've always liked a lot. He's trying to do rock-disco and reggae and Latin stuff ("Marquesa De Sade" is a blatant attempt at the latter, with a lyric that Prince might've written in his sleep) and a soul ballad ("Heart Of Gold"), but unlike on In Style (which was '79; this album's '81), he seems too lazy to come up with actual songs to pull the eclecticism off. Reminds of maybe some lame '80s Iggy or Mick Jagger solo album or something. Christgau gave it an A- after giving In Style a B+, which I find perplexing. (Hardcore Dolls fans, though, might just want to stick to the '78 solo debut, if even that. The '82 live LP Live It Up was good, though.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 00:43 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, LP title is Here Comes The Night (and yeah, not metal per se', but not Buster Poindexter either.) And the Dolls were metal enough once.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 00:50 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the Mustasch is surprisingly fun. Had never heard fo those guys, but they've apparently been around for quite some time.

The Litmus is cool but really long, the Behemoth is solid save for that track with Warrell Dane on it, and the Neurosis...it's fanfriggintastic.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 15 July 2007 01:21 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, listen to the Kosmos album, it's a hoot. plus, away from voivod on drums!

Wowee Zowee! Have You Guys Heard The New *Kosmos* Album? Pashmina, You Would Probably Like It.

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 July 2007 03:20 (eighteen years ago)

maria likes that winters album more than i do.

i had high hopes for the new raging speedhorn, but i don't like it near as much as their last album which i liked a ton.

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 July 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

new hatesphere is just boring. i think they were always kinda boring though. i'd rather listen to soilwork. and i don't even really listen to soilwork. but they do that thing way better.

i got an album by biffy clyro - who i had never heard before even though they apparently have been around since the 90's - and it has moments of almost goodness! but it falls into that foo fighters pit way too often for me to really like it. oh well. one song almost sounds like katatonia, but ends up being boring. i STILL don't understand how some band hasn't taken katatonia's formula to the bank by now. i got one cd last year that was a really good rip of their sound and i actually liked it BECAUSE it sounded like katatonia. i mean, i think it's a good enough sound that it deserves to be ripped off left and right. i'm all for that.

i also got an HONEST TO GOD nu-metal album in the mail! one by *40 Below Summer*. it's such a timewarp. i know a lot of those bands are still kicking around, but it's amazing that new product can stick so close to that formula in 2007. what was the last nu-metal album that actually sold a decent amount of copies?

new album from dead raven choir dude matt rosin on god is myth is really nice. probably belongs on that psych/drone thread. and i quote:

"Every once in awhile we get a promo in the mail from a band/artist that is so completely out of left field and stunning that we make plans right away to put out an album by said band/artist. In this case we were absolutely pleased as hell to learn that longtime DEAD RAVEN CHOIR contributor Matt Rosin (working here as M.KOLOPHONIUM) has his own "ambient drone song" project called GODHEADSCOPE. This musical endeavour presents M.KOLOPHONIUM's attempt to bring Ambient, Noise and Chamber Music together in an all new relationship and the results come together with beautiful and original effect. Imagine if ARVO PART were to arrange and conduct a performance by CORRUPTED and you will only begin to scratch the surface of these deep and mysterious sonorities. For fans of WOLFMANGLER, vidnaObmana, LYCIA, BORIS, JESU, ROBERT RICH, DEAD RAVEN CHOIR and TOBY DRIVER."

still can not wait to hear the new procer veneficus box! really anticipating that. plus, it comes with a leaf. and incense. so cool.

http://god-is-myth.com/images/Web_PV_Boxed_Set_Pic.jpg

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 July 2007 16:14 (eighteen years ago)

also in the ambient/drone category would be the pulsefear album on profound lore. i like that a lot too.

http://www.myspace.com/pulsefear

― scott seward, Sunday, 15 July 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

A friend claims this weekend's Immortal concert in NYC was "the most baddest-ass, evilest, blackest thing that's ever happened." If you went, tell me about it so I can kick myself further for not coughing up the $60 to buy a ticket.

― Je4nne Fuhfuh, Sunday, 15 July 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

Steve Smith was there; read about it at his blog.

http://nightafternight.blogs.com

I was at the Café Tacuba show in Central Park yesterday, and a guy there was wearing an "Immortal Reunion Tour 2007" T-shirt, so I asked him about it. He said it was great; we compared notes based on my seeing them in 2002 or 2003 or whenever they were last here, I forget exactly.

― unperson, Sunday, 15 July 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

can't seem to get enough of the Graf Orlock album, jittery action-movie-samplecore ("cinema grind" as some extremely clever presskit maker called Pig Destroyer at some point) with killer riffs & the kinda 'core vocals that I really hate most of the time these days but work for me here

other than that it's all about the goregrind right now

― J0hn D., Sunday, 15 July 2007 18:33 (eighteen years ago)

I've been really enjoying the Graf Orlock, too. Surprisingly catchy, and the movie samples are funny. Plus when they start playing along with the Jurassic park theme, that just slayed me.

And yeah, that Pulsefear is really good, too.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 15 July 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

I don't get the goregrind thing. I tried that new Foetopsy disc and was just bored. And I won't even listen to, say, Impaled. Some cover art I just can't get past.

― unperson, Sunday, 15 July 2007 18:58 (eighteen years ago)

Bacon Fat - iffy on this. cdbaby stoner boogie from belgium. right now i'd say they need vocals with more personality and riffs with more hooks, but i am going to continue to give this a chance for now:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/baconfat2

Behemoth -- decided not to bother

Candlemass -- not awful, but got tired of it quick.

Hatesphere -- decided not to bother

Kosmos -am LOVING this so far! especially the song they sing in french, but really, it all sounds great. lalena compared one part of it to Starless And Bible Black, which makes sense to me.

Municipal Waste - by the book moron mosh, it turns out. dud, even if they have some goofy song titles.

Mustasch -- sounds pretty good. favorite cut so far is "double nature," HEAVY metal you can dance to.

Nadja -- sounds decent in the background so far, and commendably short (27 minutes), so conceivably a keeper. they may well be ripping off godflesh, but i've never listened to godflesh much, so i wouldn't know. still don't think they sound especially original, but they do fill up the room quite nicely.

Raging Speedhorn -- gave me a headache. dud.

Winds -- snoozey prog, with weedy vocals i didn't like. lalena liked it more than me. gave it to her.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 19:29 (eighteen years ago)

I wanna hear that GODHEADSCOPE. I still haven't heard Winters.

― The Twisted Pollstarter, Sunday, 15 July 2007 19:41 (eighteen years ago)

Nah, on second thought, that Nadja album (EP, whatever) will be forgotten as soon as it's out of the changer, so never mind. Depressive plodding doom-noise muzak really is no big deal these days; it's everywhere, and my shelves only have so much room.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 20:09 (eighteen years ago)

And Winters just sounds lethargic to me, and not in an interesting way, so forget them.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 20:51 (eighteen years ago)

xhuxk, make the new Litmus a high priority listen on the grounds that I played audio generator on their first album. Thanks.

― Matt #2, Sunday, 15 July 2007 21:12 (eighteen years ago)

Also, they play as Arthur Brown's backing band occasionally.

― Matt #2, Sunday, 15 July 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

Bacon Fat just didn't work for me. Quit after three listens. If you're going to do American retro stuff in bad English, your lyrics better be funny and your rhythm section exceptional. She Go Down to Get Me High -- c'mon now, fellas. And if you're doing something called Morefun Boogie, you got twenty seconds, tops, to make the case. Boink.

― Gorge, Sunday, 15 July 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

I'm actually starting to think their rhythm section is kinda funky -- favorite cuts so far are "Dig It Up" (built around a vocal hook from ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'"), "Blues For Carol" (excellent drums in that one, under what sounds like a woman's vocal but maybe it's not), and especially "Louisa."

Liking Bacon Fat almost as much now as Mustache, who are basically pulling off a Monster Magnet thing, seems to me. "Bring Me Everyone" is my other pick besides "Double Nature" for them so far. The vocal chorus symphony in the ending "The End" is cool too.

Liking Litmus so far too -- to the extent that I've got through it. Cut #9 is good Hawkwind space-metal, but also 15 minutes long. (As with all Candlelight advance promos, song titles are unknowable unless I pull back out the press bio, and I'm not gonna.)

Put on Neurosis briefly, but I wasn't in the mood.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 22:48 (eighteen years ago)

(Correct spelling = Mustasch. But whatever.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

Myspace page for Oslo ladies the Cocktail Slippers (rockingest song on the page is "Stop," though their album has three other songs that good, I think):

http://www.myspace.com/cocktailslippers

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)

The vocal chorus symphony in the ending "The End" is cool too.

Actually, that's only the ending part of the ending (song) "The End," duh. Beginning of the song is even better -- a real epic, and it starts out as art-rock that actually rocks, somehow reminding me of Led Zeppelin without actually sounding like them. A neat trick. Then it goes into a sort of piano bar croon part. (Shit, I'm making it sound like Faith No More or somebody. But I doubt they were ever this good.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 23:45 (eighteen years ago)

For the curious...

Mustasch

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=140521953

Litmus

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=92924926

Kosmos

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=163976026

― xhuxk, Sunday, 15 July 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck, turn on Univision. There's this reality show on called Buscando A Timbiriche - La Nueva Banda. Timbiriche were a Mexican pop sextet, a kid band to start, that gave the world Paulina Rubio and Thalia, among others. Now they're trying to create a whole new version, New Monkees style, by winnowing out hopefuls in a Rock Star-like game show format. There was just this bizarre glam-metal version of one of their big hits being performed by this dude with gigantic sideburns and about sixty-five feathers glued just around his left eye.

― unperson, Monday, 16 July 2007 00:14 (eighteen years ago)

ahh, man, litmus is good. i've been meaning to check them out since scott mentioned them, thanks for the link chuck.

terrible cover art (looks like a cleopatra unauthorized hawkwind live album from 1989), though.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 16 July 2007 10:17 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, that Latin reality show sounds wacky, Phil. But I don't have cable, and if I get Univision on my regular TV channels (is that even possible? there are about a hundred channels on there, but I only ever find them by flipping all the way through), I'm not sure where. So I didn't manage to watch the show.

Just realized that Mustasch and Faith No More both have songs about "being aggressive," too, hmmm (though hopefully the similarity ends with that.)

My problem with Bacon Fat isn't their rhythm section (drummer actually sounds real good, and "Dig It Up" works up an okay AC/DC groove amid the ZZ hook and stuff about how you don't need to quit your job); it's the vocals, which just seem kind of weak. But sometimes they pull it off. CD's still in my changer.

― xhuxk, Monday, 16 July 2007 12:46 (eighteen years ago)

Mustasch, to me, sound like a cross between Dopes To Infinity-era Monster Magnet and Blackout-era Scorpions; I don't hear any Faith No More in there at all.

Today's mailbag included the new (and final, apparently) Ministry album, and the new Yakuza, which was produced by Sanford Parker, who's also worked with Minsk and Rwake. So that's a good day as far as I'm concerned.

― unperson, Monday, 16 July 2007 14:49 (eighteen years ago)

So the new High on Fire, not surprisingly, sounds absolutely massive. Endino's mix really suits these guys more than Albini's (admittedly great) sound on the last one, I think. "Waste of Tiamat" is killer.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:37 (eighteen years ago)

Awww man I wanna hear the new HoF album so bad.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:41 (eighteen years ago)

and new Baroness.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, that Baroness is great, too. Relapse is having a really good year.

Haven't gotten around to hearing the new Coliseum yet...

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:46 (eighteen years ago)

new Akercocke is really impressive to me - they seem always willing to stretch. Also, I love their really-committed-evangelical-Satanist angle, it would scare the shit out of me if I were a kid.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 18 July 2007 16:16 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone familiar with a thrashy band called Lazarus? Can't seem to find anything about 'em.

― Fastnbulbous, Wednesday, 18 July 2007 19:31 (eighteen years ago)

Lez Zeppelin -- now lost in the "click here to see all" divide -- furnish a decent listen. Among Zep imitators, they're in the first rank with Great White, better than Kingdom Come, much better than Zepperella on the Girls Got Rhythm tribute band CD.

I'm sure Kashmir brings the house down for 'em evertyime. The two original instros manage to keep the Zep vibe minus the vocals, Winter Sun sounding like it was inspired by LZ III and Roy Harper. When they do Rock 'n' Roll, they sound like Heart doing it.

― Gorge, Thursday, 19 July 2007 21:14 (eighteen years ago)

I'll have to check that out.

Badlands was my favourite Zep imitator. That first album is classic, Jake E. Lee's sharp riffing and the late Ray Gillen hitting the high notes.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 19 July 2007 22:34 (eighteen years ago)

Whatever next ! NME proclaim the resurgence of Thrash Metal
http://www.earache.com/archive/earache/NME_Jul07_Thrash.jpg

― djmartian, Friday, 20 July 2007 16:32 (eighteen years ago)

now it's official. god bless the nme. and the queen. and queen.

― scott seward, Friday, 20 July 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

wtf

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 20 July 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

Is that ever bizarre.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 20 July 2007 19:28 (eighteen years ago)

The most shocking thing from that is the fact NME is £2.10 and people still actually buy it.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 20 July 2007 19:31 (eighteen years ago)

Kosmos is actually really varied, it turns out! You get fast prog ("Psycho"), Euro-space-disco ("Dream"), Middle Eastern whatsis ("Indu Kush"), speedy silly new wave ("Much Too Old"), Kraut rock ("Krautrock"), more electronic whatsis ("Septial"), crazy French rock ("Amerique Innavouable"), space rock ("Mothership" -- actually, I can't remember what this one sounded like off the top of my head but I remember I liked it a lot and "space rock" sounds about right), Uriah Heep-style organ-pysch doom ("Messe Noire"), all sorts of stuff, and it all manages to come off feeling "metal," not like they're bending over backwards to be "eclectic." And the whole thing just sounds really beautiful, too.

Pulled out the Litmus press release; turns out they have a mothership song too ("Destroy the Mothership"), and along with "Singularity" it ranks with their album fastest cuts (almost a staccato kind of post-punk: hence, Hawklordsish?) and therefore it's also one of my favorites. As is "The Machine Age," which sounds like its title, which title you can also actually figure out from the words they're singing while you're listening to it. Meanwhile "Under The Sign" is a good noisy crazy jam workout, "Planetfall/SETI" is the closing cut and gets kinda "jazzy" at the end, and the 15-minute epic is appropriately called "Expanding Universe".

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 July 2007 12:25 (eighteen years ago)

Thing about that Litmus album is yeah, it must last somewhere in the vicinity of an hour, or it sure feels like it, so totally impossible to digest in one sitting. But nibbling on it piecemeal is fine.

Mustasch have plenty of real cool songs, too; that one and Kosmos are going to give Necrodemon a run for my metal-album-of-the-year-money (at least as far as metal albums that other people on this thread call metal albums). Excellent forward motion in the opening cut, "In The Night," for instance, and a real catchy riff in "I Wanna Be Loved." "Spreading The Worst" is a little too grunge maybe (possibly not as good as the seventh song on the current Nickelback album -- okay, I dunno, maybe that's exagerrating) and I probably could live without hearing the orchestrated movie soundtack schlock of "Scyphozoa" again, but the rest makes up for it. They seem to attempt their own mid-Eastern move in "Forever Begins Today"; corny, but it makes for lovely melodies. And otherwise they do the Monster Magnet trick of turning toughness into sexy dance moves. (And I'm actually sounding more ambivalent on the album in this description than I actually am, for some reason -- like, I said, I like it a bunch.)

Wound up liking maybe half of that Bacon Fat album -- enough to hang onto it: "Dig It Up," "Pretty Little Thang" (just a cool rhythmic vamp, mainly), "Blues For Carol" (some Detroit Cobras style bluesabilly in that one, could afford to be faster but that's ok, and the high-registered singer of which, who may or may not be a woman, is named "Delvis") "Miles Dewey 111 Part 2" (their harmelodic Get Up With It style jazz funk fusion jam, as the title suggests, and they pull the style off as well as any jazz band I've heard lately), "Louisa." "Bodeguita Brew" and "Humbucking" have commendable fake ZZ Top grooves to them, I think, but lack vocal acuity; Hendrix cover "Red House" is kinda pointless but also painless. Don't have much use for generic ass-shake "Shake That Ass," "She Go Down To Get Me High," stodgy "Gimme Some More," not-much-fun "Morefun Boogie," and the closing reggae-metal disaster "Raggafari Jack," which intentionally or unitentionally makes me queasy in a Chili Peppers kind of way. So a mixed bag, and yeah, very American as a second language. But still not bad for Belgians.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 July 2007 12:48 (eighteen years ago)

And yeah, I mentioned Nickelback. Somehow a copy of All The Right Reasons mysteriously fell into my lap this week -- an album which I believe has sold something like 5.9 million copies so far and is at something like #12 on Billboard's album chart after something like 93 weeks, and which an Internet search suggests has spawned something like seven hit singles (or "airplay tracks", or whatever -- "Photograph," "Animal," "Far Away," "Savin' Me," "If Everyone Cared," "Rockstar," "Side Of a Bullet" -- only a couple if which I remotely recognized, but then again I almost never listen to the radio these days, and even if I did I seriously doubt I'd ever brave putting on a commercial "active rock" station.) Anyway, out of curiosity and/or professional responsibilty, I decided to play the darn thing, having never consciously listened to Nickelback before in my life. And my verdict is: I don't totally hate it. Just most of it. Favorite cut is undoubtedly "Photograph," the power ballad, which is no Def Leppard but which is still about yearning for the small town arcade and high school the singer (whose old self would hate him now) says he never graduated from and wonders if they'd let him back in; really, a country-rock guy like Jack Ingram (who redid Hinder's "Lips Of An Angel" and made me like it) should cover this in a less plodding way, and it might sound really good. I also don't hate "Animals," which is probably the least plodding song on the album (actually kind of speedy), and also turns out to be about, uh, getting a blowjob while driving a car fast ("Got your head between your knees/Got both hands on the wheel," jeesh). And "Next Contestant," which I'm kind of surprised isn't a "hit" since it's pretty catchy in a Stabbing Westward bubblegum-Nine Inch Nails way, has the singer daring guys to hit on his girlfriend again so he can beat them up, what an asshole. "Rockstar," a very vaguely Southern rock midetempo, actually tries to have a sense of humor about wanting to be a rock star (with, you know, drug dealers on speed dail, getting washed up singers to write all the songs, staying skinny because you never eat) but of course Chad Kroeger moans it with no sense of humor at all -- maybe I'd like it okay if Joe Walsh sang it. (He could even get the Shop Boys to back him up, maybe). And "Someone That You're With" is clearly about being jealous of the guy she's with, duh. Honestly, in total, the topics of the songs are pretty easy to figure out most of the time, which does count for something. But most of the rest is the expected constipated bleh -- "loud mush," as Chris Cook once called Pearl Jam, but in a fifth or sixth generation version. (I was surprised to note on AMG that Nickelback have a bunch of albums, too -- Shows how much I've paid attention to them over the years; for all I knew, this could've been their debut record. As is, though, it almost counts as a Greatest Hits.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 July 2007 13:20 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, her head is between Chad's knees, not her own.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 July 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, i was wondering about that.

― scott seward, Sunday, 22 July 2007 15:01 (eighteen years ago)

You probably missed Nickelback doing a ZZ Top set on network TV a few weeks ago. It was some tribute show to the ZZ's, Heart, Genesis and Ozzy. I skipped out after ZZ Top and Heart. NB performed a letter perfect set of 80's ZZ Top, just like the records, but a couple minutes too long on "Sharp-Dressed Man." Then ZZ Top came on and demonstrated how you could definitely not be letter perfect -- Dusty Hill's voice was shot, he squeaked on the high notes, and Billy G's guitar was slightly out of tune on one song -- and do a job that greases perfectionists. Actually, it was kind of neat how Billy G demonstrated wrestling an out-of-tune guitar back into it without losing momentum. Definitely a sloppy band that does sloppy entertainingly. Plus they had a James Brown-thang going in which some guy comes out from the wings and lights up a cigar for him while he's playing "Tush."

Nickelback weren't bad but I wouldn't walk across the street for it.

― Gorge, Sunday, 22 July 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

The one and only thing that interests me about Nickelback is, I was recently talking to a publicist who says the band routinely turns down interview requests from major magazines. Entertainment Weekly wanted to do something like four pages on them, which most bands would kill a nuclear family member for, and Nickelback said, "Nah, don't feel like it." They've sold enough records that they don't need to bother with the music press at all anymore, so they don't. I think that's kind of admirable, given how much most critics loathe them - sort of in the same way I admire atheists, who've walked away from the game entirely, more than I admire metal bands who are always writing one "we hate Jesus" song after another.

― unperson, Sunday, 22 July 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

i know next to nothing about nickelback, but i have always been impressed that they have stuck with roadrunner forever. i can only imagine the big money offers they have received as one of the only rock bands on earth that can move multi-millions in this day and age.

roadrunner's all over the place roster is a sight to behold:

http://www.roadrun.com/artists/

― scott seward, Sunday, 22 July 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)

Well, Roadrunner was absorbed into Island Def Jam Universal a couple of years ago. That's how they've hung onto Slipknot, too.

― unperson, Sunday, 22 July 2007 18:59 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, for a few years there Road Runner was all nu-metal, but they've been diversifying their roster recently. It's starting to approach the oddness of their early-mid 90s roster, when they had death metal, hard-core, grunge, aggro, techno, and pop acts. You can find all sorts of odd records with the Road Runner label slapped on them in the dollar bin. Anyone remember Die Monster Die?

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 22 July 2007 20:15 (eighteen years ago)

I saw that VHI thing with ZZ Top. Heart made the mistake of having Alice in Chains play their tune before them, and AIC blew them off the stage, badly. Genesis and Ozzy were the other two "honorees" and let's just say it was all downhill after ZZ Top. Ozzy's done.

― Bill Magill, Monday, 23 July 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

Just got the new issue of Decibel in the mail and it's seriously the best one in quite some time, imo. Hats off to Scott for his assemblage of awesome 70s rock.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 10:07 (eighteen years ago)

dammit i want to read that. is decibel carried by any chains?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 10:22 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck talked about Buffalo reissues way back in April, and Scott reviewed them in last month's Decibel. Yet I can't find any 2007 domestic reissues anywhere. Is there a U.S. release date, or are y'all just teasing us with your xpensive imports?

― Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

the buffalo reissues are put out by Aztec, an Australian label. So, yeah, they are imports. But someone in the states must carry them. i don't know how much they cost though. dude e-mailed me and said he was sending my thing on Buffalo to the members of the band. they deserve the love.

Just finished my George Brigman write-up of his three CDs! god that new album is AWESOME. gorge already knows that. i was kinda surprised by how much i like it.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 15:06 (eighteen years ago)

this album, by the way, in case anyone cares, is DEFINITELY going on any year-end list i make:

http://www.myspace.com/graveinthesky

(myspace doesn't do their sound justice. but whatever. every time i play their album, i am staggered. jaw drops. the whole bit. and i'm bitter and jaded!)

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

The Aztec stuff is worth the price you pay to get it. I haven't been disappointed with any of it and paid. I have most of the Buffalo CDs, Lobby Loyde's Obsecration, the Coloured Balls, Buster Brown and a live CD by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. It's a bit of a toss up to choose the best. The bands are all of a kind, sometimes linked in personnel, and what they did -- an Australian-flavored lower middle class heavy rock with roots in the pubs -- they did very well.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

That grave in the sky is definitely interesting, I'll have to check out the rest of the album, if I can get my hands on it.

And that new Baroness continues to grow on me.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

Got the new Mountain in the mail today. Leslie West, Corky Laing, Kenny Aronson on bass and various guests, including guitar by Warren Haynes on two tracks and vocals by Ozzy Osbourne (trading verses with West) on one. It's called Masters Of War, and it's a whole album of Dylan covers. The title track opens it, and that's where Ozzy turns up. The songs are super doom metal-ized, and some of them are decent, though Neil Young did a better job of turning "Blowin' In The Wind" into a world-destroying noise-fest back in '91. Tons of reverb on the drums.

― unperson, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 21:43 (eighteen years ago)

I really liked the first two Baroness EPs (haven't heard 'Third' yet). I can't wait to hear Red.

― rockapads, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 23:13 (eighteen years ago)

I want to hear Red. The split with Unpersons was great.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

Phil did a split CD with someone? (kidding)

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 23:27 (eighteen years ago)

Got the new Ted Nugent album, Love Grenade, in today's mail. It includes a new version of "Journey To The Center Of The Mind," and no he didn't change the lyrics to include a spoken-word bridge denying any drug meanings; he just cranked the guitars a little louder. It's another power trio record - the bassist is Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees, and Tommy Clufetos is drumming again. On first listen, it's as good as Craveman, which makes me happy.

― unperson, Friday, 27 July 2007 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

Phil, who's serving the pr for this one?

― Gorge, Friday, 27 July 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

On first listen, it's as good as Craveman, which makes me happy.

Awesome! Ted's playing the county fair in my hometown next week, and me & the old lady are driving up to check him out. I was disappointed that Animal Mendoza was no longer with him, as this would've been the closest I've been to seeing an actual Dictator live (if Mendoza even counts). Nevertheless, very excited...

― Handsome Dan, Friday, 27 July 2007 22:04 (eighteen years ago)

>Phil, who's serving the pr for this one?

Kayos PR. I don't have the press release in front of me; will post the info on Monday.

― unperson, Friday, 27 July 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

finally got around to the "new" Marduk record, Rom 5:12...fuckin' great stuff! was Plague Angel this good?

― J0hn D., Monday, 30 July 2007 03:06 (eighteen years ago)

Hot damn! You would have to be a SERIOUSLY cranky stoner rock fan to not like the new Decibel. What a bounty! Even George would have to like it! I will have to keep an eye out for stonerrock.com bitching about the top 20 list.

― scott seward, Monday, 30 July 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

The new Arch Enemy album is so fucking good. John D., I know you loved Doomsday Machine...this one is gonna tear your face off. The guitar solos are a huge leap forward, the riffs are like speeding bulldozers, the songs are just better in every way...and Angela gets so angry sometimes she sounds like Udo Dirkschneider. Plus, dialogue samples from Caligula!!!

― unperson, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 01:57 (eighteen years ago)

Yup, I've been digging the hell out of the Arch Enemy as well. So much stronger than the last two! The Amotts are all over the album, and Angela sounds pretty darn good as well.

I can't wait to see the stoner Decibel, been looking forward to that one for some time. Well, a month and a half to be specific.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

another cool thing: monte from roadrunner records liked my filthy 50 and he sent me the three radio shows he did with ian christe where they play nothing but buffalo and early 70's stuff on ian's metal show for Sirius. very cool. now i need those first two Stray albums.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 02:25 (eighteen years ago)

In the mail when I got back from Comic Con: Winds, Mondo Generator, and Ackercocke. The green packaging on the Ackercocke CD sort of threw me. Not exactly a common color for black metal albums.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 03:55 (eighteen years ago)

My most metal moment at San Diego Comic Con: Some guy at a booth that was playing death metal music gave me a severed finger because I was wearing a Soilwork shirt.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 04:23 (eighteen years ago)

there ain't no metal on that new alcest album, it's straight-up shoegaze! not that i have a problem with that. press stuff sez burzum + slowdive. but it's all slowdive. and again, i dig it.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 17:15 (eighteen years ago)

i guess metal dude + shoegaze means that you have to bring up burzum. plus, it's on a metal label, and they wouldn't want to scare anyone.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Just the tiniest traces of black metal on the Alcest, but yeah, total shoegaze. Amazingly, Neige insists he had never heard Slowdive or MBV prior to writing the album!

The Pig Destroyer is great and all, but this could very well be my favourite album of 2007.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 20:08 (eighteen years ago)

Gorge: press contact for Nugent is carol at kayosproductions dot com.

― unperson, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 20:09 (eighteen years ago)

My Voice piece on Latin retro-thrash is up. Here's a link.

― unperson, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 00:22 (eighteen years ago)

The new Arch Enemy album is so fucking good. John D., I know you loved Doomsday Machine...this one is gonna tear your face off. The guitar solos are a huge leap forward, the riffs are like speeding bulldozers, the songs are just better in every way...and Angela gets so angry sometimes she sounds like Udo Dirkschneider. Plus, dialogue samples from Caligula!!!

I wanted to buy this today but is it not out yet? I liked Doomsday Machine but not as well as Wages of Sin

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 1 August 2007 00:29 (eighteen years ago)

September 25 release date for Arch Enemy. Doomsday Machine had some crazy riffing and one of my favorite metal songs ("Nemesis"), but there was a lot of forgettable stuff. Wages of Sin also had some great tracks, but it was pretty inconsistent. I think Anthems of Rebellion might be my all-around favorite, just fast and brutal and chock-full of great tracks. I'm really looking forward to the new one.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 00:41 (eighteen years ago)

nice one, phil. it's nice to hear from those dudes.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 03:23 (eighteen years ago)

I think I mentioned this in the death metal thread, but I saw Fueled by Fire open for some band in Los Angeles, maybe Municipal Waste, and I wasn't impressed at all. Didn't really strike me at the time as being the forefront of anything besides the list of things that were boring me at the moment, but what do I know? Good article, but I wish the music was as good as your article. I'm a much bigger fan of the British thrash revival than the Latino thrash revival, personally.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 03:28 (eighteen years ago)

i loved that merciless death album. i dunno, i like most of the stuff i've heard on myspace too. i love the super-fanatical period details. like civil war recreationists. and i like most of the bands that they are trying to sound like.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 03:33 (eighteen years ago)

Finally got around to listening to the Rosetta/Balboa split CD, which is really, really good. I've always liked Rosetta, but I'm really impressed with these Balboa dudes. They just continually pull the rug out from under us on all three songs...I'd like to hear more of them!

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 22:28 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, and that new Municipal Waste album...so friggin' awesome.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone else like me hold out for Slayer's 'Christ Illusion' ltd. edition? They did the same for 'God Hates Us All' so waiting paid off for some DVD supplemental stuff and some kick-ass special art packaging (check out the hand - ooo scary!). I'm totally digging the record too - up there with Seasons for me!

― BlackIronPrison, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

I didn't hold out for the special edition, but I thought "Christ Illusion" was pretty good. I dunno if I'd need an extra DVD with it. Actually, I really hate this new trend of releasing the "Bonus DVD" version a few months down the line to sucker people into buying the thing twice.

― novaheat, Thursday, 2 August 2007 10:36 (eighteen years ago)

It's not working, btw...according to a news item on Blabbermouth, they've only sold about 2300 copies of the deluxe edition so far, with total sales of CI hovering around 120,000 in the U.S.

― unperson, Thursday, 2 August 2007 10:40 (eighteen years ago)

I got the special edition in the mail the other day. Extras are pretty scant, and a bit of a rip-off for the fans, but hey, if you don't have Christ Illusion yet, it's totally worth it, cos the actual album is so darn great.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 2 August 2007 10:51 (eighteen years ago)

I like this from the thanks section of the liner notes of the new (forest green) Akercocke CD: Matt Wilcock thanks my amazing pink lady Kat for keeping me sane and happy within my realm of evil and impending doom.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 3 August 2007 03:38 (eighteen years ago)

This CD isn't dead so far, either. Definitely the best thing I've heard from them, although I've admittedly only heard the last album, which had some transcendental bits and a lot of unlistenable stuff.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 3 August 2007 03:38 (eighteen years ago)

Bad. Not dead. Although dead is probably accurate in that context, as well.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 3 August 2007 03:39 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Anneke's new band Agua de Annique. The title of the album is *Air*. I think it's a concept album about stewardesses. I like it. But then I just like her voice. But the music is good too. One of the few times i've gone to the trouble of doing the password/on-line listening thing.

Anyway, fans of later Gathering will like it.

http://aguadeannique.com/press/wp-content/gallery/air_promotional/AGUA%20DE%20ANNIQUE%20HIGHRES2.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 3 August 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

I've heard two of Anneke's new tracks on her website, and quite like them. Not a surprise she took the more introspective route. So the rest of the album holds up well, then?

― A. Begrand, Friday, 3 August 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

you'll dig it.

― scott seward, Friday, 3 August 2007 23:31 (eighteen years ago)

It's not working, btw...

Good. It's one of the more transparently money-grubbing tactics I've seen in awhile, and the record companies pretty much pulled that stunt with every big record last year.

It wouldn't be so bad if the extras didn't suck, but inevitably they do.

― novaheat, Friday, 3 August 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

Even Century Media is getting in on it. Now with their classic reissue series, which is actually pretty good, but with rereleasing the last Into Eternity record with a mostly pointless bonus disc featuring tracks you can already get on their other records. Roadrunner is the worst, though. That Opeth Ghost Reveries special edition deal was a total ripoff. I would have been angry if I had paid for it.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 3 August 2007 23:48 (eighteen years ago)

(Not with, not now with)

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 3 August 2007 23:49 (eighteen years ago)

After Forever's singer is really tall.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 4 August 2007 23:24 (eighteen years ago)

Not really metal but...

anathema is planning to play alot of new material on tour with porcupine tree throughout europe in the autumn..

porcupine tree have kindly asked anathema to support them on their full european tour in the autumn.. this tour is still in the planning stage and will cover alot of territories.

anathema have decided that - rather than rushing into the studio to finish the album in time for the tour, (and not being able to work with the producer we would like) - it will actually benefit the band and the new album to play the new songs live before recording them.

so you can expect to hear songs like 'angels walk among us' 'paradigm shift' 'hindsight' 'get off, get out' 'lightning song' 'one day' 'summernight horizon' 'further' 'a simple mistake' and others on the tour with PT..

our new american manager is helping to put everything in place for us to record and release this ambitious music. he is negotiating deals in the USA and advising us on our best way to go. the response from record companies has been very positive.

we intend to record approximately 85 minutes of music for this album. at least 14 songs. the idea AT THE MOMENT is to release a double album called simply..

'paradigm shift'

again this not not confirmed, PLANS CAN CHANGE.

a double album WILL NOT mean it will be a huge, overbearing, very long album...

it may only be two groups of seven songs.. split over two CD's in order to be easily digested by the listener. it definately will not be a self indulgent album. it definately is not a 'concept album'.

themes of life, healing and unity will run through some of the songs...

the recent shows we have played this year have been great. we had some great nights, some great audiences and great laughs. thanks for everyone who helped make it happen. special thanks must go out to Derek and Alx at the agency, Mick Reed, Milly Evans, Raymond, Ian, Loz, Ozzy and Hans for making it all work.

we have loved playing. we look forward very much to introducing this intense, passionate new music to the public on tour with porcupine tree. we then look forward to recording what i personally think will be a wonderful record after the tour. it is the first album we have made that will be truly complete. it will change lives. hopefully beginning with ours.

wishing you all the best

danny.

― no-nonsense, Sunday, 5 August 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)

Scott, I love pics of girls but you gotta chip 'em for web display.

Bring up "paint" and hit "stretch/skew" -- then type in 50 percent or more for horizontal and vertical, and work from there.

Lord have mercy, pleez.

― Gorge, Sunday, 5 August 2007 07:42 (eighteen years ago)

Way behind on this thread, and on metal in general probably. The stoner-rock Decibel is indeed pretty nifty; lots of records in there (well, in Scott's Top 50 sludgers of the late '60s and early '70s thing anyway) that I'd never heard, or even heard of, before. The Top 20 stoner-rock LPs of all time thing should have had more '70s stuff and less Melvins and Fu Manchu and High On Fire (the latter of whom I honestly had no idea anybody really thought of as stoner metal) on it, but that's okay.

Phil, you should know that we went to an all-Hispanic five-band metal show at our new favorite Sunnyside, Queens neighboorhood bar Breffini Inn (40th St and Queens Blvd) Friday night; too bad it couldn't have been tagged at the end of your Voice Latin thrash article, but they drew a pretty decent crowd anyway, and the bar's saying they may turn it into a regular event. We only stayed for a couple bands though; Caminus ["The ecuatorians Head Hunters," the flyer says -- I guess that means they come not from Ecuador but the equator, which is hot as hell!!!] and Erasmania ["death and roll from Mexico"] were kind of fun, but we didn't stick around for Head Crusher ["from the mean street of Columbia" -- there is one one mean street there apparently!) or Blood of Kain from 5 Points or the Grieving Process from New Jersey. Actually, we talked to the promoter, who was a really nice guy (who apparently also runs Red Bone Tattoos) even though he had two actual small horns emerging from his forehead (well, horn-like bumps anyway), and he said that all the bands are actually now local (NY or NJ), though some of them obviously hail originally from South America. He also talked about how those Hispanic-metal shows around here that were trying to charge $40 or $60 at the door last year didn't make much money since, duh, nobody could afford to go. He was charging $10 a head, and folks showed up. And it's cool to see this Irish dive bar branching out. (They also have a zydeco DJ night on Sunday nights, plus '80s and reggaeton nights, etc.)

As for keeping up with actual metal CDs, I didn't hate Daath or Turisas or Mehida, but I also didn't get very far into them before I decided they wern't very exciting. And I won't be putting them back on.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

caminus

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=19608169

transmania (T looked like an E on the flyer!)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=183887918

head crusher

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=8072455

blood of kain

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=11141531

the grieving process

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=82971121

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:05 (eighteen years ago)

>> press contact for Nugent is

Thank you very much, Phil!

― Gorge, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:12 (eighteen years ago)

So here's the loud rock stuff I've been listening to in the past few weeks that isn't real "real metal" per se' (or, well, maybe some of is, but who cares), most of it found either on the free table or cdbaby:

SPONGE, For All The Drugs In The World, from 2005 -- One of my favorite fake grunge bands of the '90s ("Molly" aka 16 Candles Down the Drain is still an all-time classic), mainly because Vinny Dombroski is such a good Detroit Polish Catholic name (I actually interviewed them for Spin once and forget whether he came from Hamtramck or not but he should have), plus when they're good they basically sound a louder version like the Psychedelic Furs in 1980 or 1981. On this album that'd more or less be "Treat Me Wrong," "Unpopular Girl," "Punch In The Nose," and "Sanitarium" -- all real new-wave catchy and reasonably light on their feet with energetic guitar strumming. Sometimes there are saxophones too. But usually, at least on this album (don't have any of the old ones anymore), they're a lot more sluggish; I guess the Pearl Jam or whatever tedium influence is what let them pass themselves off as grunge, but it doesn't make this album any more listenable. (Martin Popoff seems to have liked them a lot -- compares their sound sometimes to the Manic Street Preachers, but not being British or, uh, maybe Canadian I still have no idea what the Manics sound like. He might be right though.) Anyway, somebody should put together a best-of CD. It might not rank with Stone Temple Pilots', but at least it might be a keeper; this CD's not quite that. If I kept it, it'd just end up in a storage box within three weeks, and I'd never see it again. But Sponge deserve some shelf space.

TIAMAT Vote For Love EP, 2002 -- No room for this, either, especially since most if not all of these three songs probably came from some 2002 Tiamat album that I probably already have in the storage space somewhere (only albums by them on my shelf still are A Deeper Kind of Slumber and Wildhoney, with Prey from 2003 still in the thin-cardboard-cover-advance-CD box), but I just wanted to say that the second song on this, "So Much For Suicide," is extremely beautiful regardless.

(more coming...)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

Icons of Evil continues to deliver the goods, where the hell did I put that Vital Remains early singles comp...it's around here someplace

― J0hn D., Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:31 (eighteen years ago)

new Deathspell Omega is HUGE. i'm loving that one for sure

― rizzx, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:32 (eighteen years ago)

i've been listening to randy holden and funkadelic all day. speaking of which, don't forget to vote!

Music For Your Mother - Funkasinglespolladelic

― scott seward, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

arrrrrrgh, i still haven't heard new deathspell omega. i might have to just buy a copy on-line. or have the record store order me one. i've been eagerly anticipating it.

― scott seward, Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

waiting for the new DO to come in the mail, I ordered it last week. Marduk holding me over 'til then though. And the Vital Remains. And the Death Breath "Let It Stink" EP which despite some of the worst drum gating I have ever, ever heard anywhere is still a short fun blast. And has a great cover besides.

― J0hn D., Sunday, 5 August 2007 19:37 (eighteen years ago)

Cover art is the best thing about the Death Breath.

I'm gonna be reviewing Deathspell for the Voice.

― unperson, Sunday, 5 August 2007 20:13 (eighteen years ago)

xp actually that Sponge CD I posted about was 2003.

THE FLAIRS Shut Up And Drive, 2006 -- I'm pretty sure George posted about liking this last year, but I didn't hear it til this month, and I like it a lot. Three-girl/one-guy hard pop that sound sort of like a metalled-up version of Avril/ Skye teen-pop; obvious comparison is Damone, who made one of my favorite albums last year, and these folks are almost on that level. They do a really cool version of Skid Row's best song "18 And Life," for one thing. Most O.T.T. (as Popoff would say) metal track is probably "Sorry 4 Lovin' You"; most Damone "Falling Into Pieces"; most teen-pop "Enemy"; most gang-shouted "Runaway"; best melody might be "Stay The Same," but it has lots of competition.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=3566690

LABRETTA SUEDE AND THE MOTEL 6 -- Distillers-type punkmetalabillies with wild gal singer from New Zealand; best when they stay more hopped-up Cramps style and avoid Courtney Love-type emoting (which Labretta's awkward at): I like "Skinny," "Mr. Mysterious," Misfits-speedy "24 Hour Pussy Corps"; decent verion of barrelhouse r&b oldie "New Orleans"; "Holler" where Labretta's living in a roach-infested room with annoying people making the bedspring squeak upstairs. Guitar guy frequently and efficiently brings the music into metal territory.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/labrettasuede

THE GREATEST HITS -- Northwest Corridor Hanoi Rocks glam-sleaze types who do their best to lure in customers by putting what I assume are two of their groupies (or two of their sisters dressed up like groupies for all I know) on their album cover. Very poppy, in a Faster Pussycat or maybe Enuf Z'Nuf kind of way, though some big-budget studio production could make the sound less thin. Some cool guitar parts, though, and no truly bad songs, and I really like "Hangover City," "Stuck On A Dream," "Terminal Sleaze," "Spanish Fly," and especially "Fatal Reaction," which starts out sounding like "Homicide" by 999 and has a better "now I lay me down to sleep" nursery-prayer part than the one in "Enter Sandman".

http://cdbaby.com/cd/greatesthits

SIDEBURN -- George, you need to hear these guys. AC/DC-style bar-boogie brawlers from Switzerland; they sent me three of their albums, and this is the only one I listened to so far, and it's great. First song "Baby Don't Care" starts out like '70s Aerosmith and turns into Nazareth; "Walls Of Shame" is really hard heavy bad-guy breaking-barstools-over-heads boogie (I want to say Point Blank but there might be a better comparison out there I'm just not thinking of); "Never Kill the Chicken" is their token country swamp-funk metal cut; "Giov in L.A." is English as foreign language gibberish about driving in the USA which they probably never actually did "Trouble Maker" and "Boots For Hire" are almost Motorhead-tempo, though the former has croaking Krokus vocals and the latter is more like speed-Slade or something. Some Accept and Rose Tattoo in here somewhere too, I bet (in fact they mention Rose Tattoo as an influence on their cdbaby page, plus oh yeah Rhino Bucket):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/sideburn3

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:18 (eighteen years ago)

So the new Mondo Generator record is actually pretty good, way better than the last one. It's really funny, because it seems like Oliveri took all the ripping punk stuff from Queens of the Stone Age, while Homme kept all the experimental stoner stuff. I like it better than the new Queens record, but those two really need to reunite.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:39 (eighteen years ago)

xpLANA LANE -- She's always seemed likeably/passably marginal as a hack watered-down version of Gathering style dark Gothic sorceress metal goes, but her all-cover-versions Gemini album from '06 (just picked up from the free table at work, like lots of these, when we moved from the sixth to the seventh floor two weeks ago and lots of people cleared unwanted CDs from their desk that had been accumulating over the past several years) has her exploring the '60s and '70s witchy-woman pomp-rock roots of sorceress metal, a pretty good idea at least on paper. She comes up with Cream (two songs), Jefferson Airplane (two if you cound "Wooden Ships," which she does), Foreigner (two -- "Starrider" and "Long Long Way From Home," cool choices!), Moody Blues (two), Heart (one, "Dream of the Archer"), and a medley of Pink Floyd snippets, which sounds about right influence-wise. Sounds okay; doubt I'll play it again. Two notable things about it are that (1) she must be the first person ever to do "White Room," "White Rabbit," and "Nights in White Satin" on the same album (not sure if that's a race statement or what) and (2) some of the songs (just like on that Tesla album from this year) actually get better when the singer stops singing and the band (including Vinny Appice on drums and George Lynch on guitars and somebody on flute) gets to take the music somewhere it hasn't been before.

http://www.thetank.com/llgem.htm

FEDDY -- Catchy and wakcy electro-rock EP from Russia; "Beatles meets Sex Pistols meets Prodigy", he claims -- that's sort of metal, right? Anyway, it's a trifle, but a cute one. Not quite Plastic Bertrand, but "Ts'u'me & Tsunami" and "Nirvana a Go Go" (also available with a title consisting of Russian letters which don't exist on this keyboard) and "Our Lives" have no dearth of heart or hooks.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/feddymusic

CHOOGLIN -- Wrote about these guys on the country thread a few weeks ago and on returning to their album I'm realizing they have plenty of rocking and howling Humble Pie boogie in their sound (esp. "This Demon Life" I guess), which also makes them metal-thread eligible in my book. Here's what I had said on the country thread in June: Chooglin' from Minnesota: So far I like their "I'm Your Man"-style hard garage burner "Treat Her Right" and their lovely "Free Bird" style garage jam "You Sucked The Life Out Of Me Baby" better than their James Brown rip "Do It To It," but we'll see. Only 10 songs, so not that much work. Name via Creedence:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/chooglin

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:41 (eighteen years ago)

Re Sideburn from Switzerland -- that album cover with the Zzyzx Rd. sign is in southern California in the Mojave. Strangely, I've actually been there although I reckon tourists from die Schweiz are rare.

― Gorge, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

Other things utilizing Zzyzx Rd.: a Stone Sour song, and a movie that was infamous for being the lowest grossing movie of all time ($30), although it was meant to be straight to DVD, and they just dumped it in an obscure theater somewhere in Texas for a week because of SAG rules.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)

Yep, I'd say Sideburn has a heavy Nazareth ca Loud & Proud thing going on for "Never Kill the Chicken." They must know the Hank Davison Band. Both have the same kind of fan thing re 70's hard rock going on.

― Gorge, Sunday, 5 August 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

xp ...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD -- Picked up their 2001 debut EP off the free table, too, because I remember once upon a time thinking they weren't completely horrible (though nowhere near as good as indie folx claimed), and I thought an EP would be an easy way to give them another quick once-over, since maybe I'd missed something. Turns out they sound like fucking Smashing Pumpkins! What was supposed to be so great about them again??

― xhuxk, Sunday, 5 August 2007 22:26 (eighteen years ago)

people liked their earlier rekkerds cuz people forgot what sonic youth sounded like when they were good. same with blonde redhead. i think. then they became something else. more commercial or whatever. the first trail of dead album ain't that bad.

― scott seward, Sunday, 5 August 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

new Deathspell Omega is HUGE. i'm loving that one for sure

it is pretty good. i'm still waiting for it to soak in enough to not just be a bewildering assemblage of discordant, fucked up riffs. think i dig it more than ...circvmspice but a little less than kenose.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 6 August 2007 00:13 (eighteen years ago)

if it's anywhere near as good as kenose i'll probably love it. or at least be scared of it.

― scott seward, Monday, 6 August 2007 00:18 (eighteen years ago)

The B'z, "Real Thing Shakes" -- real good faux AC/DC from Japan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0HgSvc_t0

Now available in the United States on the otherwise not especially rocking Daisuke Matsuzaka: Music Of The Mound eight-song mini-LP, compiled by EMI Music Special Products and put out via the Red Sox Foundation and the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. I'm not making this up. There is also a song called "Gyro Ball" that does not list the artist, and a sort of bubblegum Japanese folk-pop thing called "My Way" by Def Tech that also has a video up on youtube and which quotes "Give It Away" by the Chili Peppers. Plus contributions by Ugly Duckling and Ak'sent featuring Beenie Man, plus LL Cool J's great "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and Duran Duran's pretty good (one of my favorite songs by them actually) "The Wild Boys." Not being a Red Sox fan, I don't understand this thing at all -- do these songs all get played at the game, when Matsuzaka comes to the mound or something? I wonder if they ever put out an EP decicated to Luis Tiant's hesitation pitch. I do know that Warren Zevon had a song about Bill Lee once. Anyway, whatver. "Real Thing Shakes" is pretty rocking, if you ask me.

― xhuxk, Monday, 6 August 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

it's kinda criminal that ordo ad chao isn't getting any/ain't gonna get any outside-of-base-camp notices - great release by seminal figures within the genre & actually arty enough to appeal to ppl who're looking for outsider thrills but I guess lacking the crucial "you've never heard of it" hook or something

― J0hn D., Monday, 6 August 2007 02:21 (eighteen years ago)

i've never been on the rolling metal thread before, sadly, but this seems to be the appropriate place to discuss: ann wilson, "the immigrant song." i can't tell if it's the most misguided led zep cover ever or an accidental work of genius. though my first conclusion was that it's pretty much impossible to believe that anyone produced by longtime k.d. lang collaborator ben mink -- very atmospheric, very adult, very self-conscious -- could ever be my overlord. and i don't ever want to hear "the immigrant song" sung by someone who could not be my overlord. (on the other hand, fergie's cover of heart's "barracuda" on the shrek the third soundtrack, where it immediately follows the original "immigrant song," is damn near perfect. maybe fergie shoulda covered "immigrant song," too, instead of ann.)

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 17:52 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, fcc -- you're really risking riling up the Self-Appointed Metal Purity Brigade that tends to dwell in these parts. Good for you!

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:05 (eighteen years ago)

am i going to have to get a bodyguard or something?

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:16 (eighteen years ago)

BHAARRAAAAAAAHHHH HOW DARE THEE DISCUSS THY FALSE METAL ON THY METAL BOARD!!!?!??!

― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:27 (eighteen years ago)

just kidding obviously, i have no idea who ann wilson is.

― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

am i going to have to get a bodyguard or something?

-- fact checking cuz, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 6:16 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://immortal.battlegrim.net/img/photos/photosession_2002_sons_of_northern_darkness/big/photosession_2002_sons_of_northern_darkness_08.jpg

quite possibly.

― latebloomer, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:30 (eighteen years ago)

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/0/06/300px-Varg-vikernes.jpg

Bolt the door, Varg is loose!

― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:40 (eighteen years ago)

A record shop owner off Lehigh University in Bethlehem used to always refer to Heart as Lez Zeppelin. This was way before there actually was a real Lez Zeppelin (see upstream). It came out of the band's penchant for doing Rock 'n' Roll on tour and one of the first ad campaigns for them which smuttily insinuated they were. I remember it and the Wilson's complained mightily about it. Last year, the band did Immigrant Song on an episode of Crossroads for CMT.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

DEATH TO FALSE METAL

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

#
Anonymous said,
on July 7th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

Posers they were, posers they are, and posers will always be. A band of newcomer kids (actually what this guys were doing before 1998?) who trying very hard to copy the Great Old Mayhem, in the end, everybody can realize what kind of pussies they are. Changing every 2 years ideology .After “orthodox black metal” (that time their long tongues asslicking ofermod, funeral mist, malign etc) now they are “Anti-Cosmic” ( This time they were made some good blowjobs to their new dead idol, the jew-loving cretin Jon Nödtveidt ). They are a bunch if trendy wimps and i`m glad that now many ppl can see it now clearly.

PS. Seriously, this shamale Erik doesn`t look like a twin brother of Dani from Cradle of Filth??? :)
#
Anonymous said,
on July 11th, 2007 at 10:15 am

Anonymous: People like you is why so many think that metalheads are stupid
#
alejandro said,
on July 12th, 2007 at 9:58 am

musically, these guys are light years ahead of the rest of the genre.

mentalitywise, it’s certainly an improvment…. keep working at it tho.
#
hahaha said,
on July 15th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

i love to see jealous people, they’re the most idiot fetidous kind of shit
comparing watain with cradle of filth is not so fun as will be see’ing you saying all this things/thinks in front of then hahahaha..
#
David said,
on July 20th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

“It does not make any sence”. Word! Get real Erik. Your fail to grasp the real world. Your god does not exist.
#
Repulsive Records said,
on August 1st, 2007 at 2:02 pm

This “David” seems to know a lot :-). When you work with the forces of chaos there´s no way one can deny the existens of the true lord.

The “Anonymous” on the July 7th. A Nargaroth loving mongoloid who never would have the guts to tell that to their faces. I would like you to tell me a more serious band when it comes to true satanism, not some “inverted christian” crap like even Euronymous said his view was. How many of the “old bands” stick to what they preached? Just in it for the rebelious value. Fuck off pro-cosmic lifeloving insect.

― latebloomer, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 19:25 (eighteen years ago)

A record shop owner off Lehigh University in Bethlehem

any chance that was joe hanna? not that i can imagine him ever thinking or talking about heart, but how many record shop owners off lehigh could there have been?

heart also recorded a not-so-good version of "stairway to heaven" in their heyday.

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 19:52 (eighteen years ago)

I felt bad for Heart when Alice in Chains blew them off the stage at one of those dumb VHI awards shows-and AIC was the one honoring them. Ouch.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 20:03 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, it was Joe Hanna. And he did indeed know of Heart. Play It Again started out as a used record store that did -only- classic rock. You may know this but it was actually a pair, with one in Allentown run by a partner who was technically his boss.

I used to go to Play It Again at lunch and browse.

This led me to getting him interested in distributing an old fanzine I did, Chainsaw. After he started selling them -- and they went fairly quickly -- I was able to interest him in carrying some of the independently made records reviewed in the zine. This caused a little friction with his partner. However, as it developed, the partner wanted to get out of the business and did. Hanna started carrying indie records on my recommendation and the store grew from there.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 20:14 (eighteen years ago)

thanks for that, george. i knew about the pair of stores, but not about the stores's classic rock roots. joe was my musical big brother, helping me discover country, soul and quite a few indie-rock records that i could now sell at great profit if i were so inclined.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

Last year, the band did Immigrant Song on an episode of Crossroads for CMT.

well, yeah, and they had Stairway to Heaven in their live set before Dreamboat Annie came out, but are you saying "they should be glad to be called Lez Zeppelin"

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 8 August 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, fcc -- you're really risking riling up the Self-Appointed Metal Purity Brigade that tends to dwell in these parts. Good for you!

Heart's a lot closer to metal than Big and fucking Rich or the other country artists you used to drag into the metal thread before by way of saying "I like this better than death metal," Chuck. The "purity brigade" is only interested in keeping the thread =actually about music with some sort of metal aspect= instead of becoming "thread where guys who like metal also talk about whatever else they like," as we have, like, millions of other threads for that. Or can start our own, even.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 8 August 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

"also really rocking my socks off this week is Tierra's City Nights, which may not count as metal to you guys but it's a lot better than Slayer"

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 8 August 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

Oh horseshit. Where exactly have I talked about music that has no "sort of metal aspect" here, John? (Actually, Phil saying he likes the Rhianna CD or Scott listing teen-pop CDs he just bought stretch the definition as much as anything I've posted.) (Okay, maybe I did say once that I liked the Hilary Duff album more than the Pissed Jeans record. I'll give you that one. But 99.999 percent of the time, if I don't hear metal in it, I leave it off this thread, and you know it.) (And actually. Heart really aren't all that much closer to metal than Big & Rich. But I also haven't been talking about Big & Rich here, so I'm not sure why they're even an issue.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 17:10 (eighteen years ago)

also, a few "metal aspects" in Big & Rich, fwiw:

-- loud guitars
-- AOR production
-- Metallica-like harmonies
-- AC/DC cover
-- The word "hell" in title of new album

But again, I haven't discussed it here. So a moot point for sure.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Someones gonna be along in a min to say Metallica aren't metal anymore , aren't they?

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

Well, maybe they're Queen harmonies then. Or Kansas harmonies. (I know, I know, therefore = not metal!)

Actually, it was John's goofy (and halfway funny, since so over-the-top) column in the new Decibel about Foreigner and Warrant not being metal that kind of stirred me up, so I'm glad he's the one who took the bait. But I don't want to turn this thread cranky; I prefer it as its usual good humored self. I'll still post about whatever metal-guitared music I think fits, though.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 17:54 (eighteen years ago)

http://tkis.com/humor/never-give-up-l.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:03 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, I just realized I haven't mentioned it yet (though some of y'all know because I asked you to start contributing) - I've been named editor-in-chief of Metal Edge magazine. Anybody who'd like to start writing for ME, feel free to drop me a line.

― unperson, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:24 (eighteen years ago)

>>But I don't want to turn this thread cranky; I prefer it as its usual >>good humored self

http://www.dickdestiny.com/zak.jpg
Cranky? Who could be cranky here? Huh?

― Gorge, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:44 (eighteen years ago)

you do know that's a humor column, right, Chuck - if I got "halfway funny" then I was halfway successful

sorry to be a grudge-carryin' dick but you really did haul in some new country a couple of rolling metals back and I feel I gotta keep you on yr game or you'll be telling me how Toby Keith's session guitarist using a post-production distortion effect on his comped-from-twelve-takes eight-bar solo makes him more metal than Gorerotted

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:58 (eighteen years ago)

also Chuck since I'm cranky but affectionate I feel it's my duty to tell you that if you responded to that column then you're the guy who took the bait

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

Nice work on your new gig, unperson.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:17 (eighteen years ago)

Congratulations, Phil!

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

They dont stock it in my local Wh Smiths anymore!!

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:19 (eighteen years ago)

if you responded to that column then you're the guy who took the bait]

Believe me, that definitely occured to me too. But it was fun bait to take. (And yeah, I do realize it's a humor column, It even makes me laugh sometimes.

But again (for the zillionth time), "1000 times better" + "reasonably metal" =/ "more metal." (I've never given a fig for "more metal", and never will, I promise.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:23 (eighteen years ago)

Metallica are still metal. They're just crappy metal (at least, as of the last album).

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:38 (eighteen years ago)

Winds is okay, but pretty sleepy. They're basically prog metal, but the songs never really peak, possibly due to the incredibly thin production job. There's just no punch to it at all. It's mostly making me want to take a nap.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

I'll admit that I'm very tired today, but metal should never make me more tired.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)

Gah, this new Iced Earth cd has voiceovers. Curses. Album's not too shabby, though.

I have to hear that new Symphony X, though...that's the one power/fantasy metal disc that's getting a ton of hype.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 9 August 2007 08:09 (eighteen years ago)

By voiceovers, do you mean some promo thing or Christopher Lee style narration?

― Matt #2, Thursday, 9 August 2007 09:21 (eighteen years ago)

I bit the bullet and ordered that Cactus live thing from Rhino Handmade. Should be coming soon. I hope I haven't been had. Anything with a wailing Jim McCarty guitar's gotta be worth it, though.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 9 August 2007 13:57 (eighteen years ago)

I e-mailed them to send me a review copy, but they haven't yet, the bastards. I might have to buy it myself.

― unperson, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

Do they do review copies of the limited edition Handmade stuff?

The last thing I got from them was the Dio-Sabbath at Hammersmith thing, which was worth every penny.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:19 (eighteen years ago)

Sometimes they do, yeah. They sent me a review copy of the Dio thing, and a 2CD set by jazz bagpipe player Rufus Harley.

― unperson, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:29 (eighteen years ago)

New Symphony X is totally awesome! I highly recommend it.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 9 August 2007 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

Got the new Rhino metal box today...well, the CDs, not the snazzy Marshall box. They've done an admirable job compiling it, despite some glaring omissions. Then again, those gripes were inevitable with a set of this kind. The second disc covers 1980-83, and is flat-out perfect, as far as compilations go.

By voiceovers, do you mean some promo thing or Christopher Lee style narration?

Basically Jon Schaffer telling me every 60 seconds that he hopes I'm enjoying my promotional copy of the album. They use three different messages, which is funny. I can (sort of) live with voiceovers over instrumental sections, but not atop the lead vocals. That's just assholish.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 9 August 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

Well, at least he's courteous enough to let you know that you haven't stopped listening to Iced Earth. Because, you know, you might think you were listening to Lordi or something.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 10 August 2007 00:35 (eighteen years ago)

I'd rather listen to Lordi. Actually, though, Schaffer and Ripper sound pretty great at certain moments. Like the ludicrously titled "The Clouding"...quality epic tune, that one. It's typically bloated, but nowhere near as abysmal as that Manowar album, which is the worst album I have heard in years.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 10 August 2007 01:33 (eighteen years ago)

Man, that bums me out. I really like Iced Earth's older stuff.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 10 August 2007 02:53 (eighteen years ago)

Real quick (or maybe not):

Priestess, Hello Master -- From late last year, apparently? Seems listenable in a sort of sub-Soundgarden pretending-to-sound-'70s-rock-without-actually-sounding-all-that-'70s-rock kind of way: actually probably more compact and less pretentious than Soundgarden, so maybe even better in some ways. But I'll never care about them as much as I cared about Soundgarden, which wasn't really all that much.

New Model Army, High -- Never heard these Brits before. Christgau seemed to admire their '80s stuff, which he pegged as an oi! band going pop and staying hard-ass anti-Thatcher and possibly flirting with fascism sometimes but with words that he said didn't communicate as much as they pretended to. Not really all that sure what he thought of their sound per se'; guess he found it anthemic. (He compared it to the Tom Robinson Band trying to be the Clash, so yeah.) And, on this new album featuring a singer who unfortunately is not called Slade The Leveller, it is indeed anthemic, pretty much. Makes me think I should check out their stuff from 20 years ago. The track I really like is "One Of The Chosen," which sounds sort of like Midnight Oil with Killing Joke tribal/martial drums (drummer's pretty good in general), or almost like Noir Desir if they sang in British instead of French. The rest tends to be slow and serious and poetic and powerchorded, not bad at all, but not in a way that I'll ever be returning to.

DIRTY PROJECTORS, Rise Above -- "Interesting" (in "theory") concept: All the songs have the same titles as songs on Black Flag's Damaged, but the band says they hadn't listened to the Black Flag album in 20 years so they just played the songs from memory, thus creating entirely new songs. Supposedly. I dunno, Scott might like this. They hit me as sort of, um, quasi-psychedelic freak folk or something. I don't get Grizzly Bear, who they're apparently associated with somehow, either. I thought I liked Cerebus Shoal for a while (or at least I liked the fact that they live in a farmhouse commune in New England or something), but I don't actually put their records on much. These guys have a sound that reminds me of them, but isn't as good. (And it's possible if I listened closer it wouldn't actually remind me of them, or freak-folk, at all.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 11 August 2007 13:11 (eighteen years ago)

(Actually, copyright on the back of Priestess CD says 2005, so I guess I'm way behind on that one. Not sure why it came in the mail this year. I had sorta heard of them; got the idea they were some sort of Darkness type hype at one point? But it's possible I wasn't paying close attention.) (Not that I have anything against the Darkness, or against hypes in general. But I don't hear much distinctive about what Priestess are doing to justify hyping.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 11 August 2007 13:21 (eighteen years ago)

And I guess what I'm saying about Dirty Projectors is they basically go in one ear, out the other.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=78835169

Year Long Disaster self-titled CD: From L.A., better (more interesting guitar and stronger singer who howls like Chris Cornell) quasi-Soundgarden than Priestess; still not thrilled by them. Guess I just don't like quasi-Soundgarden much. Back of their advance CD compares them of course to Zep/Cream/ Free/Sabbath, but they sound more '90s than '70s to me. Liked their EP a couple years ago; full-length is too much of a not really all that exciting thing.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=4096706

By comparison, Priestess (from Montreal, apparently):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=12874459

― xhuxk, Saturday, 11 August 2007 19:59 (eighteen years ago)

Turbonegro, Retox -- same old shit, but with diminishing returns. When the only album I've ever truly loved by them, Apocalypse Dudes, came out (almost ten years ago, what the hell?), I was fairly convinced they were one of the greatest rock bands on earth. Now I'm not even convinced they're a very good joke band: "Stroke The Shaft," "Wanna Come," Everybody Loves A Chubby Dude," "Hell Toupee" (= hell to pay, but about losing hair -- Edd Hurt really liked this one on the country thread, but I just think it's an okay novelty song), geddit huh? I'm not sure what to make of a joke band who are never really all that funny, especially when it's pretty rare for their riffs to actually stick to my ribs. On this album "Boys From Nowhere" does okay in that department, maybe "You Must Bleed/All Night Long," maybe a couple other things. But I'm really beyond the point of caring much with these dudes.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 11 August 2007 21:15 (eighteen years ago)

Hi, I don't know much about metal, but I want someone to explain to me why the new Deathspell Omega record, acquired online by my brother after I showed him the 'Grim, Unrelenting Art' thread on ILE, is becoming one of my albums of the year after not quite one whole listen. I mean, what is it that makes this so utterly transporting a musical experience? Why do I feel such unprecedently low levels of listener complacency? Where else can I turn for this feeling of challenge, of reward?

― Just got offed, Saturday, 11 August 2007 21:17 (eighteen years ago)

well, you sort of answer your own question: have you not looked around that realm of metal much? if not, listen to Emperor, Immortal, Enslaved, Darkthrone, the new Mayhem album, Gorgoroth, Blut Aus Nord (imo a much better French black metal band than DSO, though I haven't listened to their new one yet - but I didn't love Kenose the way everybody else did), Drastus if you can find Roars from the Old Serpent's Paradise

I'm sure others will chime in with more, though DSO does seem to be this season's "metal that's reaching non-metal people." Their previous one, Kenose, may also punch your buttons.

― J0hn D., Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

oh yeah the other one that a lot of people who don't usually listen to metal seem to be getting pretty into is the new Watain

― J0hn D., Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

Scorpions Humanity Hour 1 -- Um, not horrible. I guess. First song "Hour 1" is even kind of rocking. The rest is, I guess, fairly competent, including the song that Billy Corgan sings on (and I could fortunately barely detect he was there) and the closer "Humanity," which is more fun if you hear it as "You Manatee." Anyway, one particularly rocking song (there may be more, but I didn't notice) and a bunch of competent ones more or less puts this on the level of most recent Scorpions albums I've listened to, which probably isn't all that many. I obviously need to catch up one of these days with all those old ones that Dave Queen likes.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

xpost: Cheers! I've heard a lot about the likes of Emperor; doubtless I'll be on their case before long.

― Just got offed, Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

listening to the new Deathspell now. Pretty good, better than Kenose I think, though they still don't quite grab me completely. Will give it time though. If I were you, lovin' this, I would pick up Gorgoroth's Ad Majorem Gloriam Sathanas without delay. There's a song on there called "White Seed" that's gonna knock you flat. One thing DSO does that may smooth the path a little is the vocals are deep & kinda death-y, rather than high tortured screechy. The other thing you really really wanna cop is Gorguts's Obscura which is an anomaly (essentially death metal combined with no wave) but reliably mind-blowing.

Guitars here on DSO's fourth track, "The Repellent Scars of Abandon & Election," are fuckin' killer for sure I must say

― J0hn D., Saturday, 11 August 2007 23:03 (eighteen years ago)

DSO's fourth track, "The Repellent Scars of Abandon & Election,"

I was gonna say, this track was the one that really jumped my start-cables. That riff, that sound-pattern in the final two minutes is absolutely killer. The penultimate track is another beaut.

― Just got offed, Saturday, 11 August 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)

I also kinda want to get hold of Ulver's early stuff. I know it won't be quite as bewildering or musically unpredictable as Blood Inside (which I regard as an absolute masterpiece), but I've heard very, very good things.

― Just got offed, Saturday, 11 August 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

"White Seed" is awesome! Such depth in the guitar layering!

― Just got offed, Sunday, 12 August 2007 11:59 (eighteen years ago)

Bitches Sin Invaders (from 1986, though I'm sure it wasn't on cdbaby then) - I totally love this album. I wrote about a new compilation by them way upthread somewhere; supposed NWOBHM hacks (at least according to Martin Popoff) who are turning out to be one of my favorite bands of that subgenre (a subgenre I'm starting to love in general even though I used to deny it ever existed, and I'm still not convinced it was a sound per se -- like, what do Def Leppard and Iron Maiden and Motorhead and Saxon have in common besides their time and place, exactly? Kind of reminds me of my reaction when people used to say a rap record sounded "very West Coast," which I'm still not sure is an actual sound either.) Anyway, this Bitches Sin album rocks gorgeously, but a lot of it I'd almost define as psychedelic in a blindfold test -- for instance, "Dawn Of Destruction," at its melodic root, is basically "For Your Love" by Yardbirds. The two songs with "bitch" in the title are almost punk-fast (those are the "OTT" ones I guess), and "Out Of My Mind" has a funky forward motion like Bang Tango a few years early almost. "Ice Angels" starts out sounding like a teenage power-metal version of "Ohio" by Neil Young then goes prog in the manner of the first Def Leppard album, with the kind of teen tragic fantasy words Def Lep could have written: "All I feel is pain/The fear kills my brain/God I wonder why/As I start to die..." -- which reminds me that the mood of Metallica's Ride the Lightning is really not all that far from the mood Def Lep started out with. Also, Bitches Sin do some great guitar solos.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bitchessin1

Orange Escape From L.A. New L.A. pop-punk on Tim Armstrong's Hellcat label. Their version of "Karma Chameleon" is worth one listen at least, and "The Last Punk In L.A." might be better, and they seem to have a hidden track at the end where the go "scary metal" about dumb old horror movies or something, so I don't hate this, but that also doesn't mean I made it through the whole CD or will:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2377434

Black Oak Arkansas Live Mutha! reissue on American Beat, recorded Mother's Day 1975: Sounds pretty weak compared to Raunch N Roll Live, as far as I can tell. Some people (= Popoff for one) underrate these hicks, but maybe this is partly why.

Fire Engines Hungry Beat reissue on Dan Seltzer's Acute Records label; noisy Scottish post-punk quasi-funk recorded, wow, in May 1980, which I guess puts them chronologically on par with the first Gang of Four album, and the guitars (two guys) remind me a lot of what I like about Andy Gill's, so that's somewhat astounding. Sometimes (i.e. opener "Candyskin") they shamble sorta limply, and the singer of course just whines incomprehensibly offbeat, and they don't hit me as as weird as Big Flame did a couple years later, but lots of times the singer keeps his mouth shut (the instrumentals are some of the best cuts), and I still basically really like their oveall sound, especially in stuff like "Meat Whiplash" (the title of which apparently inspired a similar noisy Brit indie band a few years later) and "Everything's Roses" and both versions of "Sympathic Anaesthetic," which have a sometimes almost no wave roiling-and-lurching forward motion to them -- kinda cool, for a bunch of Limeys anyway.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 August 2007 22:13 (eighteen years ago)

"incomprehensibly off-key, I meant. But yeah, probably off beat, too.

Hanoi Rocks Twelve Shots On the Rocks reissue on Castle (original was apparently 2003, if I'm reading the liner notes right) -- Sound on this is so muddled, and they have such a sloppy rock'n'roll aesthetic in general, that for a few days I just assumed it was a live album, but nope, apparently studio, and it wound up being really good, too. Really surprised by how heavy and epic and doom-ridden the closer "Winged Bull" is. (Oh yeah, there are actually 17 cuts -- simple subtraction would suggest that five of them weren't on the original version, but I didn't go check.) Rhythm of "Whatcha Want" (which is way better than the still irritating Beastie Boys song of almost the same name) is very blatantly "Welcome to the Jungle," which qualifies as justice given how GnR were clearly a Hanoi Rocks ripoff band when they started out anyway. "In My Darkest Moment" is the token Mott-style piano ballad. My wife swears "People Like Me" sounds a lot like "Surrender" by Cheap Trick, but I don't really hear it myself. "Delerious" is deleriously catchy, "Bad News" has a cool solo, etc. A keeper.

Monks Let's Start A Beat!" Live From Cavestomp, Varese Sarbande (!!?), 2000, found on the free table by me last week. This was their live reunion album 32 years after the fact, so caveat emptor. And I'm sure cutesy shit like "Cuckoo" and "Higgle-Dy Piggle-Dy" goes over like gangbusters with the folk- art-by-insane-people fans at WFMU. So I went into this pretty skeptically, but I wound up liking more of it than I expected, both for the loud obsessive Kraut-space free-rock droning chaos toward the end ("Blast Off!"/"I Hate You"/"Monk Jam," all basically better when the singer isn't singing) and the more carnival-organed German caliope oompah-folk stuff earlier on ("Boys Are Boys," "Hushie Pushie," etc.) And "Complication" is still at least as entertaining as anything by the Shaggs. Or okay, maybe better.

Dalek Deadverse Massive Vol. 1: Dalek Rarities 1999-2006. Makes sense this is on Hydra Head, obviously. I thought the album they put out this year was really boring, but lots of the stuff here apparently dates back to when Scott was raving about them in the Voice and they were inventing shoegaze metal, and they still do it better here than most Neurisis types today, at least when they stop the monotone rapping, though that at least provides variety if nothing else. I really like the avant noise workout "3:46" despite "here's your fucking three minute pop song" (same thing country band Halfway to Hazard complain about on their new album, how daring!) And I kinda especially hate when the vocals turn into conventional hard-guy rap "spitting knowledge" like in "Streets Are Amped," but even then a cool psychedelic middle Eastern jam emerges out of it. Melody in "Music For ASM" is somehow reminiscent of "The Overload" by Talking Heads (their most goth-doom song ever!), I'm pretty sure. "Megaton" belongs on the dub-metal thread.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 August 2007 22:43 (eighteen years ago)

Notorious B.I.G., Born Again - Got it out to listen to while I was cooking dinner because the other stuff I was listening to was messing with my emotions. Some very tight songs on this one, a decent verse from Eminem and a terrific Hot Boys collaboration - still, it's the ghostly terror of "Who Shot Ya," near the end of the album, that summarizes the album's necessarily incomplete, somewhat frighteningly disjointed tone. Under-repped by ppl: "I Really Wanna Show You," a very funky number with an offhanded 2Pac dis and an undeniable debt to the D.U. Not as great as the Life After Death, obviously, but worth bumping every now and then.

― J0hn D., Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

Jethro Tull, Benefit - Anybody who ever got into Tull at some point and then grew out of them knows: you can't go home again. What you can do, though, is knock around long enough to forget what it was about home that bothered you so much. Once you get to that point, stopping by the old place is frankly a blast, if you can just check your attitude at the door. Benefit exorcises the last of Tull's bluesbreaking demons and is maybe the band's most interesting album: neither art- nor blues-rock, it's a cautious, curious oddity in the catalog, and the production's focused on the record rather than the people making it, which is key. By '75, this distinction will have found the wastebasket and we'll be subjeted to Too Old to Rock and Roll...Too Young to Die!!!, but let's not bring up old family fights, shall we?

― J0hn D., Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:16 (eighteen years ago)

Hey, at least I haven't started sorting through the big box of used '70s German 45s that Metal Mike Saunders mailed me last week. (Not yet, anyway. Just wait.)

And Tull makes perfect sense on this thread obviously. (Would have gotten to them before John, but I still didn't make it through that The Best of Acoustic thing yet.)

But yeah, I get the point -- one-sentence appraisals of bands that all sound exactly the same as each other are way more interesting.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

(And fwiw, Dalek's '07 album got reviewed in Decibel, a magazine which also just devoted a few pages to Scott's list of 50 albums from the '70s. So I'm still not sure which albums I just posted about John doesn't think belong here.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:25 (eighteen years ago)

Tull makes sense on this thread like Muddy Waters makes sense on the hip-hop thread, Chuck. No time for that now, I'm too busy enjoying

Joe McPhee - Nation Time - Vandermark comments on McPhee's "ability to integrate unconventional sounds and extended techniques with pure melodicism," and the accuracy of his observation is in evidence from the disc's opening "What time is it?" A vaguely Monk-esque piano bit glides almost unnoticed into a somewhat edgier guitar figure, and just as it seems that everything's going to be kind of mellow, somebody gets going on an electric piano. Piano and electric piano! While there's certainly a debt to Coltrane across the whole thing, there are also traces of Ayler, and of the loose-getting-tight jamming of the Grateful Dead or the Allmans, even. Recommended without reservation.

― J0hn D., Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:55 (eighteen years ago)

I mean for fuck's sake Chuck, the fucking Monks. There's a whole board here. I don't care if Decibel or Metal Maniacs or Boiled fucking Angel gave 'em props, or how much I like them myself. They have nothing to do with this thread unless this thread's secret title is "music that Chuck, who likes metal, also happens to like."

― J0hn D., Sunday, 12 August 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

Except the fact that the Monks (and Tull) frequently made music that sounds like heavy metal, that is (not that should remoetely matter, of course).

But fuck it. If you guys want this thread to be as insider-boring as, say, the rolling snap thread, just post after empty post saying "the new Gorgoroth kills," that's fine with me. Won't be the first time here. I should've known it was too good to last.

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 00:07 (eighteen years ago)

unless I misremember, I'm the guy who started the first rolling metal thread. your characterization of people's writing about the many different and quite disparate sounds coming out of the metal world is both inaccurate and dishonest, you've been reading this thread as long as I have - as elsewhere, there are plenty of one-line posts, and, as elsewhere, there are plenty of other things. For every "Gorgoroth is killin' it" you can c/p, I can counter you with posts from Scott or Adrian or Jeff or Pye Poudre talking in detail about stuff. My quibble isn't with longwindedness, Jesus, how ripe would it be for a motormouth like me to bitch about people writing long grafs? My bitch is that you seem to think that if you're listening to it, that when it counts as metal, and that moreover, those of us who've enthusiastically followed the growth of the genre over the past twenty hears have got our heads up our asses because we don't give a shit if we hear more blues-based fuzztone metal ever again.

Except that I do like that kind of music. Last month I went on a huge Richie Blackmore kick. I enjoy that music. It's called blues-based rock.

― J0hn D., Monday, 13 August 2007 00:14 (eighteen years ago)

And I call it "metal" (as do lots of other people, including plenty of Richie Blackmore fans.) And metal isn't "whatever I'm listening to" (and you know that, and always have). I call it metal (or associate it with metal) if, uh, it sounds metal.

This year, I've also put up countless posts (feel free to go back and count them) where I've distinguished between "metal as I've always defined it, which might include how Richie Blackmore fans define it" and "metal as defined by people who want to conscribe the definition way more than I do." Which is fine; I like both kinds of music, and I acknowledge the existence and validity of both definitions. In other words, I'm not the kind of nincompoop who would pretend that my definition is the only definition. The fact that different people define the genre differently makes things more interesting, not less. And right -- in the past (including much of the thread, this year), people have said interesting things from all sorts of perspectives. I agree. Which is wonderful, and it's why I've stuck around. If you look at what I wrote in my previous post, what I'm predicting is that "the new Gorgoroth kills" is what the thread could turn into, again. When I've left rolling metal before, it's when the writing here got duller and more meaningless and the definitions got more stick-up-the-ass circumscribed. Lately, in the past couple weeks or months, the thread's been starting to read like it's dying again. Temporary, maybe. But guess what, John? It just got a little bit deader.

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 00:36 (eighteen years ago)

I'm talking about posts like this:

or this:

TOP TEN METAL (AS DEFINED BY SILLY *DECIBEL* TYPE FOLX)
Necrodemon – The Field Of Hyperion (Open Grave)
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
The Hidden Hand – The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote (Southern Lord)
Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)
Minsk – The Ritual Fires Of Abandonment (Relapse)
Virgin Black – Requiem Mezzo Forte (The End)
Lordi – The Arockalypse (The End)
Rwake – Voices Of Omens (Relapse)
Therion – Gothic Kabbalah (Nuclear Blast)
Melechesh – Emissaries (Osmose Productions)

TOP TEN "HARD ROCK" OTHERWISE CATEGORIZED
Trigger Renegade – Destroy Your Mind (Black Top Fade)
Black Angel – O’California (Outsiders Record Company)
The Sirens – More Is More (MuSick)
Glenn Stewart – Glenn Stewart (Floodzone Ent. Group)
Les Hatepinks – Tete Malade/Sick In The Head (TKO EP)
Crash Street Kids – Chemical Dogs (Hot City Recording Company)
Renegade Rail -- Ragged (renegaderail.com)
John Waite – Downtown—Journey Of A Heart (No Brakes/Rounder)
Altered State – Get Real (Altered State)
Dirty Sweet – Of Mavericks & Beggars (Seedling)

Personally, I think I've been pretty good humored about it all. Til now.

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 00:43 (eighteen years ago)

Or this, which I really wished would have started an interesting discussion about the argument I was making, which might have even enlightened me as to why my argument is wrong (which it might be, and if it is, I still want to know why). But no dice:

Meanwhile, here is a list of metal albums I've enjoyed and therefore kept this year that I am already starting to forget what they sound like. (A real problem with the genre these days, and the sheer quantity of at least marginally decent stuff probably doesn't help, I don't think. It sort of all mudddles together over time. Which is also the reason that "real" metal albums hardly ever end up making my overall year-end top ten, no matter how many I approve of as the year progresses. This year, Necrodemon probably still have the best shot, though it's still a long shot. Really, they're not too far from making this list, to be honest.) These are in order, I guess, of how much pleasure I remember getting out of the CDs last time I played them. If anybody wants to refresh my memory about what is so great about them, feel free. Another thing standing in their way, probably, might well be a general lack of truly discrete songs to latch on to. But they all sound good, which counts for something, of course. I'm not dismissing them:

Kekal – The Habit Of Fire (Open Grave)
Lengsel – The Kiss The Hope (Whirlwind)
Moonsorrow – V: Havitetty (Unruly Sounds)
Cruachan – The Morrigan’s Call (Candlelight USA)
DHG/Dodheimsgard – Supervillain Oulast (Moonfog/The End)
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
Manes – How The World Came To An End (Candlelight)
Giant Squid – Metridium Field (The End ’06)
Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)
Rwake – Voices Of Omens (Relapse)
Spellblast - Horns Of Silence (Metal Crusade)
Ensiferum –Victory Songs (Candelight)
Krypteria – Bloodangel’s Cry (Caroline/EMI)
Suspyre – A Great Divide (Nightmare)
Kotipelto – Serenity (Candlelight)
Vintersong – Solens Rotter (Napalm)
Virgin Black – Requiem Mezzo Forte (The End)
Therion – Gothic Kabbalah (Nuclear Blast)
Melechesh – Emissaries (Osmose Productions)
Panzerballett – Panzerballett (Bad Land ’06)
Funeral – From These Wounds (Candlelight)
Die Berbannten Kinder Evas – Dusk Und Boid Became Alive (Napalm)

And meanwhile, on my favorite albums of the year that true heavy metal fans would no doubt more consider "hard rock" or "punk rock" or "garage rock" -- Trigger Renegade, Gore Gore Girls, Funny Money, the Rich & Famous, the Sirens, Clorox Girls (hell, throw Miranda Lambert in there if you want -- she rocks as hard as any of these guys) (George Brigman is somewhere in between I guess), I have no problem remembering plenty of songs. Which means they'll probably all have a better shot of making my year-end list than even Necrodemon. So maybe true metal fans just don't care about songs very much? Or maybe we just have different ears.
-- xhuxk, Friday, May 11, 2007 1:12 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 00:56 (eighteen years ago)

And as for the Monks, I guess it's just perverse to think, in a year when all sorts of metal bands have been trying to incorporate noisy freeform space-rock drones and Central European oompah-folk jigs (both discussed all over this thread), that, say, Litmus or Kronos or Korpiklaani or Finntroll fans might be interested in the Monks having once worked very similar sounds into loud rock music, a few decades ago. So yeah: bringing them is just random. Right.

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 01:27 (eighteen years ago)

OK so wait: so it's cool for you to give other people shit about their definitions of metal, but when somebody does the same to/for you, you stomp off sulking? C'mon, man, that's just bullshit.

Sorry if me giving you shit about bringing THE MONKS into the metal thread is fucking traumatic or something. Remind me to be as sensitive when you're dismissing 90% of the metal that people here (some of whom are writers you respect!) dig.

In re: the forgetting what they sound like thing, this happens to me with all kinds of music, I think it's a byproduct of the cumulative effect of listening to so much stuff that comes in the mail daily & of having listened to all that music for so many years - it happens with books, too, I've started conflating plots & characters in my mind when I remember stuff I read six months ago. But you ignore this possibility, preferring to assign the blame to "real" metal. If you didn't make a point of sniping at this stuff every damn time you mention it, I probably wouldn't feel childishly driven to kick back, but you do, so I do. But I'll stop. Bye.

― J0hn D., Monday, 13 August 2007 04:27 (eighteen years ago)

sad...

― JN$OT, Monday, 13 August 2007 08:15 (eighteen years ago)

John, again, I disagree with how other people define metal (including, right, plenty of people who I respect), but never fucking once have I said their definiton doesn't belong here. You have, repeatedly. It's stupid, and I'm sick of it You want my definition gone, and you just got your wish.

― xhuxk, Monday, 13 August 2007 09:57 (eighteen years ago)

Well, I think you're being disingenuous, but I'd rather cheerfully volunteer to quit jabbing my elbow in your ribs than have you storm off. To to say my piece and then shut up: your definition includes repeatedly reposting stuff from the country thread? The hell it does, that's exactly the proprietary "this isn't the metal thread, it's the thread that belongs to me" stuff I'm talking about and I'm giving you shit about it, and that's all. Hard country ain't metal, I have a loose enough definition of the stuff - if it was just proto-metal like Rainbow or Pentagram or what-have-you, it'd be one thing. Instead it's Yolanda Thomas (four visitations on the 2006 thread!). Yolanda Thomas! Power pop! So I see the Monks and I go jeez, Chuck, you know very well that has pretty much nothing to do with any metal at all. And I like the Monks. So I yank yr damn chain about it the same way you go out of your way to yank chains about how you think Slayer is garbage & death metal's worthless & grind doesn't even count for shit and so on whenever the thought occurs to you. Big evil genre purist J0hn, throwin' spitballs. I apologize, do yr thing, I've got no business questioning the metalosity of Southern Outlaws: the Ultimate Southern Rock Collection.

― J0hn D., Monday, 13 August 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

Holy hell, I can't access the board for a few days and this is what happens? Calm down, guys, I like this board precisely because it doesn't have people sniping at each other...

Remember: it's just the Internet. Nothing on it actually matters.

John: Pig Destroyer, as mentioned above, seems to be another of those "metal for not metal people" albums.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 13 August 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I've decided that, besides the fact that it puts me to sleep, the new Winds album is bad because IT MAKES HELLHAMMER SOUND LIKE A PUSSY. That's pretty freaking impressive.

The new Mondo Generator, on the other hand, grew on me a lot. It's more of a collection of songs than a coherent album, but there's some pretty good songs in there, most notably the title track, which sounds kind of like Monster Magnet, "So High," and the spaghetti Western-sounding "Take Me Away" (which was actually available on an acoustic EP that Oliveri put out, but it was good then and it's good now). Too bad it only sold 300 copies.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 13 August 2007 23:32 (eighteen years ago)

(Also also, there is a picture of me with the singer from After Forever over on the What is that which is what you look like in 0807? thread, for those of you interested in seeing me looking silly in a Nightwish shirt next to the most attractive girl I will probably ever be in a picture with)

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 13 August 2007 23:38 (eighteen years ago)

Remember: it's just the Internet. Nothing on it actually matters.

this is seriously good advice. if you start to feel emotional about something somebody said on ILX, walk away for a few days.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah. Look, Chuck, if you check this board again, I just wanted to let you know that I think it would be a shame if you stopped posting on here. I've learned about a lot of really cool stuff through your posts, tangential as they may be. I personally don't really mind the tangents, but I think John is just asking you, in his own way, to consider a little more carefully whether something belongs on the thread or not. It's true that a lot of things you write about are related in some way to metal, but it's also a bit silly to call a cow a chicken when it's clearly a cow (although for what it's worth, I don't dispute Jethro Tull's place on this thread, they do have a Grammy to prove it). So, I don't know. Take a deep breath and think about it. This board would be a much less interesting place without your point of view.
/sincerity

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 02:44 (eighteen years ago)

I value Chuck's presence on this thread.

And Jeff, you lucky bastid. Floor's hot. Though I wish she wouldn't do the thing where she sings in front of an electric fan, that's so tacky. "Energize Me" is a bit of a silly song, but it's one I've been playing a lot for months.

The latest disc from the perpetually brilliant Profound Lore is the new Portal album, and it's typically great, some freakydeaky death-doom with cool poetry and a singer who wears a ludicrously gigantic Gandalf hat that covers his face.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 03:46 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah. Look, Chuck, if you check this board again, I just wanted to let you know that I think it would be a shame if you stopped posting on here. I've learned about a lot of really cool stuff through your posts, tangential as they may be.

This OTM x 1000!

BTW, great pic, Jeff.

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 08:13 (eighteen years ago)

fourthing the "chuck, don't leave!" sentiment. (also, i think the monks are pretty metal at times.)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 08:29 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck annoys me just as much as, if not more than, he annoys John. But he should quit being a crybaby and stick around.

I got that Cactus 2CD live thing in yesterday's mail. There's a 20-minute track on it just called "Slow Blues (Medley)."

― unperson, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 11:05 (eighteen years ago)

I've never heard Yolanda Thomas, but the first two comments on her cdbaby page compare her to Lita Ford, so xhuxk isn't the only one who hears metal in her music. If that's his worst offense, and it's from a year ago, it's not particularly damning. And even if hard country ain't metal, a discussion of hard country can illuminate certain aspects of metal. Look, xhuxk's got a notoriously wide strike zone when it comes to metal, but it's consistent, and it keeps the game lively.

Lurkers for Xhuxk!

― Thus Sang Freud, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 11:15 (eighteen years ago)

Well, if you go back and read what I wrote, that's because it happens with "real metal" more than other genres (at least other genres with loud guitars.) I even had a theory about why. Which I've posted twice.

If you didn't make a point of sniping at this stuff every damn time you mention it

There are scores of posts on this thread (in which I'm writing about "real metal" I like) where I don't snipe at the genre at all. Most of them, probably.

your definition includes repeatedly reposting stuff from the country thread? The hell it does, that's exactly the proprietary "this isn't the metal thread, it's the thread that belongs to me" stuff

Nope. It means that music can walk and chew gum at the same time, that it sounds like both country and metal. Really not that hard to figure out.

Hard country ain't metal

Except when it is. And right, as Sang Freud says, even when it's not, that doesn't mean metal can't learn from it (or it can't learn from metal.)

I have a loose enough definition of the stuff - if it was just proto-metal like Rainbow or Pentagram or what-have-you, it'd be one thing.

Rainbow and Pentagram weren't "proto"; they were metal -- all you're saying is that your definition of metal includes stuff that people have always called metal, except you don't call it that. So: really not all that loose a definiton, obviously.

Power pop!

Can sometimes be metal, too. (See: Cheap Trick.)

So I see the Monks and I go jeez, Chuck, you know very well that has pretty much nothing to do with any metal at all.

Nope. Go back and read what I wrote. They have plenty to do with metal. I don't "know" otherwise.

it's also a bit silly to call a cow a chicken when it's clearly a cow

Yeah, good point, maybe, but unlike in zoology, tons of good music can qualify as both a chicken and a cow, and that's exactly what makes it interesting music. Plus, I really like platypuses.

Okay, whew == I'll try to stop being cranky now. Thanks for all the encouraging comments. I still may take a break from this thread for a little bit; we'll see what happens. But carry on, dudes.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 11:41 (eighteen years ago)

(Btw, re: reposting: I don't do that very much anymore, either because I don't have time or I'm lazy or this hasn't been so great a year for country-metal -- interesting, as Sang Freud said, that John had to go back to threads from previous years to find most of the offenses he accused me of -- but my philosophy has always been that different people read the country thread and the metal thread. So if a musical release seemed like it would interest both of them -- as lots of country music with metal guitars or metal music with country twang ought to, if they've got open and curious minds -- it seemed silly to "choose" whether said album was a chicken or cow. Nothing proprietary at all -- just trying to open up discussions on both fronts. And often, the tactic worked -- how country-thread posters responded was different from how metal thread posters responded. Made things more interesting!)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 11:53 (eighteen years ago)

I got the Cactus yesterday too. I'm only partway through Disc One, but the version of "Parchman Farm" is amp-shredding bliss. Plus, there seems to be another guitarist who I have never heard of, but kicks some ass.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 14:02 (eighteen years ago)

Downloading a YSI file (sent by the label guy, so probably watermarked) of the new Down disc now.

― unperson, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 19:36 (eighteen years ago)

Listening to Saint Vitus's Heavier Than Thou in anticipation.

― unperson, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 19:37 (eighteen years ago)

It's a chicken! It's a cow! It's -- CHICKENCOW!

I certainly can't deny that, Chuck. I'm just saying, both of you have good points. But like I said, it doesn't bother me any, if I don't want to read the review I just skip over it. Mostly what's bugging me here is that I come to this thread because its professionals talking professionally about music that they love, as opposed to Internet monkeys calling each other gay for liking Dimmu Borgir. So as I said, and has been reiterated by other people, let's just chill out and go back to talking about the music we love.

That being said, I have nothing new to talk about. I should have some new stuff arriving soon (HIM, After Forever, and Baroness), but it isn't here yet. I did hear some tracks off the new After Forever at the listening party, and they actually sounded way better than anything I've heard from the band in the past (the best thing they've done to date is a cover of "The Evil That Men Do"), so I'm actually kind of interested to sit down with the album.

Oh, and I realize this is a one sentence review, but Ride the Sky is absolute rubbish. European AOR radio rock in the worst way possible.

Holy crap! Phil, you lucky bastard.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

New Baroness is pretty good but I'm not convinced it's as good as the ep's.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

I have the After Forever and HIM discs sitting here. I have yet to find a CD player that will recognize the ultra-watermarked HIM disc, though.

Got the new Coheed & Cambria the other day. It's heavier than their earlier work - I like it. They're still trying to be Rush and winding up Triumph, and the vocals are hilariously overwrought and over-enunciated, but I have a soft spot in my heart for them. Us Jersey dorks gotta stick together, I guess.

― unperson, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

The watermark is just a giant sticker stuck to the underside of the CD that says "NO" in big block letters.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 20:16 (eighteen years ago)

Jeff, the After Forever leaked early this year. Just do a google blog search, and you'll probably find a few rapidshare links posted by some kids.

The new Baroness is gooood. I'm a bit wary of the Down (have yet to hear it), as I didn't really like the second album very much. But I hope I'm mistaken.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 20:26 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not convinced Chuck isn't whatever the metal equivalent of a "rockist" is, with regards to 70s rock compared to new metal styles, but I sure enjoy his input and the lively discussions that sometimes result from it.

I've been lurking on this thread for three years and when I first started reading it, I figured he was just a contrary hipster dude trying to get a rise out of people, but I have come around to many of his ideas and I respect his respect for the originators of the styles that shape what we listen to now as well as his steadfast refusal to jump on bandwagons.

I hope this blows over and Rolling Metal will continue to be a bookmark in my browser. <3 to John & Chuck!

― rockapads, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

I've got no business questioning the metalosity of Southern Outlaws: the Ultimate Southern Rock Collection.

And how, sir. And how.

― novaheat, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 23:33 (eighteen years ago)

I'm just sad people missed this question before the thread imploded; still curious what the answer is. (I.E.: What does it mean to sound NWOBHM?):

NWOBHM ...I'm still not convinced it was a sound per se -- like, what do Def Leppard and Iron Maiden and Motorhead and Saxon have in common besides their time and place, exactly?

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

The thing with NWOBHM was supposed to be young metal bands bringing punk influences (conscious or unconscious - usually the latter) into what was a pretty tired sounding genre by then. Yeah I know Motorhead, AC/DC, Priest etc were putting out good records in the early 80's, but a lot of the older bands had descended / were descending into irrelevance by then. Purple, Sabbath, Kiss etc etc. It was the folly of youth building a new order! Early Maiden, Leppard, Angel Witch etc all had that piss-and-vinegar energy going, way more than their influences by that time. Apart from Saxon, who were all about 40 even back then, but they had a good manager I think and managed to jump on the gravy train.

― Matt #2, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 00:00 (eighteen years ago)

I'd say Def Leppard's Bludgeon Riffola style had a basic gritty form in common with Saxon -- the denim and leather thing, a desire to write tunes without quite the moxy and ability to do it. Def Leppard were from Sheffield, relatively out of the way of the Brit industry.

Motorhead and Girlschool had similarities in their sound and way of doing things, perhaps because of a mutual admiration society.

Their were stylistic similarities within the catch-all term but their was a lot of variety in the acts. Almost everyone put out at least one piece of crap which people kind of fooled themselves into saying they liked at the time because it was the community thing to do.

Witchfynde was all over the place in terms of style album-to-album and their whispery moaning and melancholy singer dictated they would sound unique. The inconsistency hurt them but was probably as much a result of their underfunding label as anything else. Looking back at the catalog and listening to it again makes for a better experience. Time made me much fonder of them than I was originally. "Stagefright" is their piece of art masquerading as something poorly produced and not nearly as iron-fisted or black as it wanted to let on.

The first Metal for Muthas LP was all over the place. One thing the bands had in common was a muddy sound which, at the time, seemed a virtue.

The genre even roped in people who'd failed the first time around. Nutz -- a band that had cranked out around five albums for a major label to little effect -- turned into Rage and enjoyed a couple more years of life. Nutz had started out as a complicated-sounding hard rock band which delved into bits of prog while being essentially a pub act. For their NWOBHM incarnation they simplified it, going more boogie and turning up the guitar.

Samson and Iron Maiden were intertwined for a short period. There's a Maiden tune on their second album, Head On, the record also featuring Bruce Bruce on vocals before he just was Bruce. Triva note: Can you name it?

Samson's third LP and the last with Bruce Bruce -- Shock Tactics -- was great. But Samson were stalling and Iron Maiden wasn't, so it was a good choice to leave. The former replaced Bruce with another good singer -- Nicky Moore -- but he had the misfortune of weighing about 400 pounds.

The NWOBHM is almost more fun to remember for its perishers, ugly losers and strugglers. Who has their Vardis albums? Remember Steve Zodiac, the really poor man's Johnny Winter? I'll have to get out 200 MPH which is the only thing I still have. It seemed better than average then. Now it's a curiosity.

How 'bout AIIZ and Quartz? How 'bout Demon, which tried to make a rock opera out of their appreciation of Camus?

Witchfinder General went nowhere despite everyone now saying Death Penalty is classic. The follow-up definitely wasn't. That coupled with the short reach of the label and the crass woman-hating image ensured they'd be buried and I say it as a big fan.

Def Leppard, obviously, wanted to appeal to women. They just didn't know how to get there until Mutt Lange. They avoided shooting themselves in the feet and raging alcoholism just long enough to get the break and assets they needed.

Saxon, despite having some singles success in England just never achieved the momentum enjoyed by Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 00:27 (eighteen years ago)

There are definite sonic similarities between Def Leppard, iron maiden, and Saxon. I always thought Motorhead got lumped into that group purely by dint of being in that place and time, as opposed to any actual musical connection. However, if you listen to bands like Diamondhead, Raven, Jaguar, Savage, etc., they definitely occupy the same sphere of fast, poorly-produced punk and hard rock derived metal, with similar lyrical content.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 00:31 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, what they said (this is what I get for arriving late for the discussion).

Seriously, what I hear in NWOBHM is the sound of young energy. The two previous waves of metal, from the progenitors (Sabbbath, Purple, etc), to the second wave (Rainbow, Scorps, Priest) were much more about grandiosity and flamboyance. The NWOBHM kids, though, were far more aggressive, whether it was the dual guitar harmonies, the tight riffing, the vocal style, fast tempos, slower doom, or all of the above. (of course, Biff Byford was a dinosaur even back then, but hell, "Power and Glory" scorches nonetheless)

I remember hearing how Joe Elliott hated being lumped in with the Nawobbum, he was more into glam rock than metal. And Motorhead, their success just coincided with the movement, I can't lump them in with the rest. They were perpetual outsiders.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

Obviously Mr. Elliott has made his views on the matter quite clear, but the first two Def Leppard albums definitely share DNA with his peers. Obviously, on later records they would distance themselves, but the early stuff at least fits in.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:13 (eighteen years ago)

Obviously.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:13 (eighteen years ago)

And definitely. God, I need to proofread my posts better.

But yeah, I agree with Adrien, the energy is what makes those bands so enjoyable. Otherwise, those records would be nigh unlistenable, what with the complete lack of production and recording technology. What was really important about NWOBHM, I think, is that you can see the blueprint for the next decade or so of metal in those primitive tunes.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:18 (eighteen years ago)

Weren't you around for that whole thing, Chuck? I mean, you should be schooling US on this. Or were you just not paying much attention at the time?

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

Ha ha, I'm a total poser -- I was wearing a skinny tie at the time and listening to new wave. (I did kind of like Motorhead, and was curious about Girl and Marseille; eventually bought the first Def Lep album, but almost definitely not the year it came out. In 1980, give or take AC/DC and "Wango Tango", I really wasn't paying attention to metal much at all. I think I considered buying LPs by Angel City and Shakin' Street around that time too, but never got around to it until later. But they were from Australia and France, so they didn't count.) And even now, you guys are clearly all way less clueless and illiterate about NWOBHM than I am; these are great answers! (Way better than Martin Popoff's NWOBHM definition in the glossary of the metal guide I've got, where he names some bands but never gets around to what sounds he thought they shared. Though apparently he put out an actual guidebook to NWOBHM singles later -- I just googled him; holy shit he's writen a lot of books! -- and I assume he goes into more detail there. Maybe I should order a copy.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

Here are some lesser-known albums I like, a lot of which I picked up when Metal Blade's college radio representative kindly allowed me to rate their warehouse:

Savage - Loose and Lethal
Jaguar - Power Games
Diamond Head - Diamond Nights
Raven - All for One
Cirith Ungol - King of the Dead (not actually British, but definitely of the style)

There are probably more hidden in my library, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:50 (eighteen years ago)

Marseille was a classic case of a band with no unified sound or vision, making three stylistically different albums that coulda been done by three different acts with no common members. The first was the comedy track, for want of a better description, to a homemade porn flick and was immediately recalled.

The second got them some regional airplay in the States. Looking back, I thought it hinted at the way Def Leppard would sound when they went upscale. I give credit to the producer, probably Tony Platt or someone similar, for shaping it into something. At the time it sounded good and still does. And the third album had the band doing a very AOR-pomp rock like thing with twee imagery. Most people in the US who know them only know the second album which is the only thing you could see or hear for the most part.

You can go through the lists of releases on Neat and Mausoleum and come up with quite a bag of entertaining gobblers, many of which were reissued a few years ago to suffer the same faint as they did originally. Someone thought it was a brilliant idea to resurrect Geordie sans Brian Johnson for the NWOBHM. It wasn't.

Neat records, I came to find, did not maintain their Neatness for much longer than six months. Still, that's the stuff of which are formed the cobblestones of the genre.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

Raven's All For One is an all-time fave of mine. They were a bit of an oddity, I guess being up in Newcastle, far removed from London, but they kicked some major arse. It's too bad it all went to hell after they signed with Atlantic. One of the swiftest, most irreparable declines I've ever seen.

One underrated band is Tokyo Blade. Night of the Blade, especially...like Grim Reaper, they were one of the last NWOBHM gasps, and it's a terrific album. So good, I had to include "Lovestruck" in my 1984 mixtape in the current Decibel!

Gotta say, Rhino's new Heavy Metal Box does a fabulous job covering the NWOBHM years. Impossible to include everything, but there's a fairly large chunk devoted to the scene. I'm so glad they stuck Tygers of Pan Tang's "Gangland" on there. Wicked song.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 03:57 (eighteen years ago)

I have certain feelings of guilt for repeatedly playing the new Nightwish single, "Amaranth". Never cared much for the band and this is Disney-metal at its most embarrassing, but I keep coming back for that chorus again and again.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:25 (eighteen years ago)

If there's one thing Nightwish is better than anyone else at, it's hooky choruses, and yeah, "Amaranth" is ridiculously contagious. The new album is pretty solid, and the new girl holds her own. Though I wonder how she'll sound tackling the old material.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:29 (eighteen years ago)

lol @ that video

― rockapads, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:42 (eighteen years ago)

Chorus sounds kind of like the Corrs, and I like the Corrs, but it sounds a little odd coming from Nightwish. I'm still withholding judgment on the new singer.

Honestly, though, I hate how people always throw like 15 disclaimers in front of anything nice they say about Nightwish. The band is talented, they know how to write songs, and said songs are catchy as hell. It isn't sweaty dudes in leather making nasty music, but who cares? It's just as valid.

(Also, I hate you for having that album before me, Adrian =p)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:43 (eighteen years ago)

Heh, again Jeff, the Nightwish all over the internet, it's very easy to find (that's how I got it). But the leak is a voiceover promo, so you have to endure that...though it's nowhere near as annoying as the Iced Earth.

And good comment about folks' reluctance to own up to the fact that they're very good at what they do.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:52 (eighteen years ago)

I don't download music. Partly on principle, partly because I have a laptop and the speakers suck, and partly because having music played directly from my computer would probably screw with my voice recognition, which doesn't need any help with screwing up. Also, don't want any viruses. I suppose I'll just wait until it comes out, or until it comes up for review on Outburn, since RoadRunner doesn't do voiceover promos.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 20:56 (eighteen years ago)

That's too bad. Oink can be a critic's best friend...especially if said critic lives in Canada and the mail takes longer to arrive!

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:03 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of Canada, with the Alcest record finally out I placed my first order with Profound Lore. The Alcest, Angelic Process & Caina albums.

Everyone who has talked up these on this thread - huge, huge thanks. Absolutely love all three.

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:06 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, I'll give you that. I'm not saying anyone else shouldn't download music, I just don't.

Anyway, I have very little patience for power metal these days. Occasionally someone comes along that I think does something interesting with the sound, like Sonata Arctica, but most of the bands are content with trotting out the same old boring clichés, and they don't even really do it well. Nightwish know what the hell they're doing, and they continue to push themselves. I think that's why they've managed to become as big as they are, as opposed to all the bands that stay stuck in Napalm obscurity.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:08 (eighteen years ago)

Same with me, power metal has been boring me lately, which is why I've been reluctant to get into that new Symphony X. I've been so addicted to the Profound Lore stuff this year, it's like I've become a shameless streetteamer (and EZ Snappin, three better 2007 CD purchases you could not have made!).

But it's been the female fronted power/melodic/whatever bands that have really stepped up this year. Elis, Epica, After Forever, Within Temptation, and Nightwish have all sounded great, and lesser-knowns like Visions of Atlantis, Octavia Sperati, and those goofballs Battlelore have sounded good, too.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:15 (eighteen years ago)

Symphony X are one of those bands that do their thing very well, though. There's some fantastic stuff on that record. Give the title track a shot, if nothing else. Really hit me emotionally. Something about acoustic guitars used well in metal totally gets me.

Funny, I love that female fronted stuff, and I haven't heard any of those. Probably should get on that.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:21 (eighteen years ago)

I loved Wishmaster best of all because it was the hookiest...am skeptical about anybody being able to take Tarja's place, but am eager to hear it.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:34 (eighteen years ago)

I totally agree with John. Everyone is like "Oceanborn is the best," but the songs just aren't nearly as memorable as Wishmaster. Wishmaster is the album that got me into Nightwish, though, so it's also the sentimental favorite.

The new girl has an undeniably good voice, it's just weird to hear someone else on top of Nightwish.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

Honestly, though, I hate how people always throw like 15 disclaimers in front of anything nice they say about Nightwish.
Well, it wasn't meant to be a disclaimer about the band, I own "Oceanborn", bought when it came out. It's just that I lost my interest quickly with each album and got tired of the operatic vocals. Actually I don't think "Amaranth" has many redeeming qualities other than the vocals and chorus, which is not something I expected from Nightwish (but a hell of a catchy one). That's why I'm surprised at liking it.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

It's definitely my least favorite album-preceding single I've heard since I started listening to the band. It's certainly different, and catchy, but doesn't grab me the way "Nemo" or whatever it was that preceded Century Child ("Bless the Child?").

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 21:51 (eighteen years ago)

I hope Alcest sell a load of albums, since I discovered "Le Secret" back in March, I've pushed it madly to everyone I know.

Ordered the Angelic Process album, too. I was a bit skeptic at the reviews but those Myspace samples sound great.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:00 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, you guys are talking about Nightwish!

A tune of theirs came on last week when I spent a couple hours with Pandora set to "Blue Oyster Cult". I'd never heard of them, and it quite kicked my ass. Then I forgot to come here and ask youze about them.

Adrian-- new Battlelore is good? I LOVE Sword's Song, then got the one after that and didn't like it at all.

― Jon Lewis, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I actually enjoyed the new Battlelore more than their last one, which was pretty decent.

The Nightwish disc is much more consistent than I thought it would be. "Eva" and "Meadows of Heaven" are both friggin' awful, but the rest of the album is pretty much typical Nightwish, only with the operatic thing toned way down. Anette does a bit of vocal gymnatics from time to time, but the disc is better when she goes for the more straightforward rock sound like on "Amaranth". But no, there's no "Nemo" or "Ever Dream" on here. I think I played "Nemo" hundreds of times in the summer of 04, I couldn't get that tune out of my head.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

I shall soon be listening to that High On Fire album :)

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

for me the Nightwish tune that did it & will always do it is "Bare Grace Misery" - unstoppable hook and that voice. I mean, Tarja wasn't just like an opera singer: was was one, and the depth of her voice was remarkable. Stuffed into that power metal digga-digga-digga sort of environment, it became this thing of just super-intense POWAH.

yes I am preemptively hating on the new singer. I was pissed when I heard Tarja was gone & I'm guessing her solo stuff will be Celine-y Europop. Which could be good, too, but Nightwish had something special going on.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:26 (eighteen years ago)

That Deciblog clip of Tarja singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was absolutely horrific.

I think Nightwish will be rejuvenated, cos apparently that band had absolutely zero chemistry before. Tarja didn't rehearse, didn't even interact socially with the band, they just showed up to the studio and shows like people showing up to the office. But yeah, that voice is simply incomparable.

I haven't bothered to listen closely to the lyrics of "Bye Bye Beautiful", but one has to wonder if it's about the former singer. It's quite the kickin' tune...the bassist guy on second vocals is their secret weapon.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 22:34 (eighteen years ago)

"Bare Grace Misery" was one of the songs that got me into Nightwish. Someone in a chat room I used to frequent sent me a few songs from Wish master over ICQ, and that was one of them that did it. Also, "Kinslayer" and "She Is My Sin" and "Come Cover Me"... who am I kidding, I love every song on that album. Jon, I would recommend starting with that album, which is both their most accessible and most consistent. Century Child and Once have phenomenal songs, but aren't as consistent, and Once has that terrible eight minute Native American song smack in the middle. Ocean born is good, although as I said above, not as many memorable songs, and Angels Fell First has some good tunes, but they're still finding their sound.

Adrien, have you heard Tarot? Heavy power metal side project of Nightwish's bassist. He does all the vocals on that one. I have the one they put out on Metal Blade a few years ago, with a flaming guy and a giant hand of doom on the cover, called Suffer Our Pleasures. Pretty rocking.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 23:34 (eighteen years ago)

I've heard of Tarot, but have never heard them. I've also been meaning to check out Sinergy, which a bunch of European writers I met last year kept recommending.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

I really like Sinergy. Their first album, Beware the Heavens, has Alexi on guitar, and it has some cool songs on it. Their last one, Suicide by My Side, is also good, although Kim Goss sounds a bit too much like Bruce Dickinson on some tracks, which is scary because she's a girl. You might also want to seek out the cover of "Alone" that she did with the keyboardist from children of Bodom, surprisingly well done.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:06 (eighteen years ago)

(Which is actually funny, because apparently the singer from After Forever covered it with After Forever's keyboardist for a single from the new record, and I wasn't sure whether or not to go "... you do realize that this has been done before, right?")

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:08 (eighteen years ago)

Grrr, the only Nightwish eMusic has is the live End Of An Era. Not a good place to start, I gather?

― Jon Lewis, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:46 (eighteen years ago)

Haven't heard it. I have an EP with some live tracks, it's OK, but they're really a studio band.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:49 (eighteen years ago)

Although they were quite good when I saw them live a few years back! But I don't know how that translates to recordings.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:50 (eighteen years ago)

The End of an Era live thingy is really good. Sounds great, and the DVD is very well done, too.

I'll look for that Sinergy stuff, thanks for the tips!

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

I haven't heard them their second album, so don't take what I said above to mean that the second album isn't any good. It could be. I just know that I like the two that I have. Don't expect to be totally blown away. They are power metal with a female vocalist, but they know what they're doing, and the guitar playing on the first album is, as you might expect, excellent.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 16 August 2007 00:57 (eighteen years ago)

This is to Chuck: I tried using the "send an email to this user" function of ilx for this, but the thing kept telling me my password was wrong - just wanted to let you know there was a fuckup somewhere between the final edit & the print run of the new Decibel and my column will be a rerun. Of the last one. I didn't do this on purpose, I would run the same column twice for lulz, I have a much funnier one written that'll wait a month now I guess. Wanted to let you know, jd

― J0hn D., Thursday, 16 August 2007 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

haha "would run" above should read "wouldn't run"

jeez

― J0hn D., Thursday, 16 August 2007 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

Holy crap, Phil, you weren't kidding about the HIM CD. I mean, it plays fine on my stereo, but they went really hard-core on all the watermarking warnings. Bright yellow sleeve with a ! Warning logo on it, all sorts of releases and disclaimers. "Thank you for agreeing to our restricted release terms. Please enjoy the music! Or else."

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 17 August 2007 02:40 (eighteen years ago)

Also on the package: Baroness's Red Album (which is, indeed, red), Aghora (female fronted metal with the drummer from Death and Cynic), and After Forever, and USSA, hard rock featuring the guitarist from Jesus Lizard and Paul Barker of Ministry. Paul is not the walrus.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 17 August 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

just popping my head in to say that i may be taking a little break from ilx, but i'm still driving the troo & the kult ku-raaaaaaaazy:

http://forums.southernlord.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25252&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

and, oh yeah, you guys sure do like girly-ass girly metal! hahahahaha! bye now!

― scott seward, Friday, 17 August 2007 03:46 (eighteen years ago)

For Scott, when he gets back in a month: Man, imagine what his response would have been if you had given him a BAD review!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 17 August 2007 03:53 (eighteen years ago)

Man, some people are touchy. Interesting thread.

Heh, and I won't deny I have a weakness for the girly metal!

And I still think that new Baroness is really, really good, spun it again last night and loved it.

And Cephalic Carnage's Xenophobia has grown on me ot the point where it might wind up being my fave death metal disc of the year. It always takes a while for their stuff to get under my skin.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 17 August 2007 09:31 (eighteen years ago)

I had to laugh when i saw Scott popping up on the SL board. A few pages in you will see me defending him. I will get the blame for telling him no doubt haha.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 17 August 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

(i'm pfunkboy on there obviously)

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 17 August 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

This line from that thread made me laugh:

Well how about you go suck some ALCEST cock then, NIGEL HIPSTER?

― A. Begrand, Friday, 17 August 2007 21:22 (eighteen years ago)

Oh man that was Eiren. He's got everyone fed up with that term.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 17 August 2007 21:24 (eighteen years ago)

That thread is exactly why the only music board I post on as this one. And there's even drama here!

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 17 August 2007 22:02 (eighteen years ago)

It's usually a very good board!!

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 17 August 2007 22:07 (eighteen years ago)

new high on fire is great

― latebloomer, Saturday, 18 August 2007 20:04 (eighteen years ago)

Draugar -- anyone heard of them/him? just came up on pandora under the xasthur station. dark moody black metal with some harsh harsh vocals (sorry the description isn't that specific as far as bm goes). first google search result revealed that he's another one man band, american. song was "infernal existence" on the album weathering the curse. anyone know of the rest of his work is any good?

― Mark Clemente, Monday, 20 August 2007 18:33 (eighteen years ago)

Spektr, too, any recommendations on these guys? The Pandora Xasthur station is full of moody ambient bm.

― Mark Clemente, Monday, 20 August 2007 18:50 (eighteen years ago)

High On Fire's new song "Rumors of War" might be one of the best punk-metal songs ever. Like "Ace of Spades" or "City Baby Attacked by Rats" good.

― bendy, Monday, 20 August 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of girly metal, I was really surprised by this Aghora record. The singer has a nice voice, and it has cool, twisting prog noodling, but manages to stay melodic. Killer drumming, too, as one might expect. Adrien, I think you'd really like this.

And, speaking of Relapse stuff, I like this Baroness record. I haven't heard the EPs, so I can't compare it, but nothing wrong with the full length. Cool psychedelic hard post-rock, with textures and layers and stuff. I found it a really enjoyable listen.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:00 (eighteen years ago)

It's good but not as good as the ep's which were brilliant.

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:02 (eighteen years ago)

I will take your word for it. And then go back to thoroughly enjoying the full length =P.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

I thought I had the Aghora, but I don't yet. I'll watch out for it.

I have the First EP, and while really good, I think I prefer the slightly less aggressive sound of the album. Is it me, or does The Red Album contain the odd hint of Built to Spill?

― A. Begrand, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:21 (eighteen years ago)

I've only heard enough of Built to Spill to know that I don't really like them, so I can't say. There were points where I was picking up hints of some classic rock band, but I couldn't place it for the life of me. Maybe on second listen.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:23 (eighteen years ago)

Man, am I primed for the High on Fire. Goddamn I can't wait.

― Bill Magill, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:25 (eighteen years ago)

Another part of the Baroness album I'm liking is Baizley's vocal work, which is considerably more melodic than the First EP. I'd also like to hear that split with Underpersons that came out a short while ago, it's gotten some rave reviews.

The High on Fire disc is immensely satisfying!

Oh, and that new Iced Earth album is just awful. Almost Gods of War awful. Its only saving grace is "The Clouding", which i think is pretty killer.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

Unpersons, not Underpersons, dummy.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:33 (eighteen years ago)

More High On Fire love here - their best album by far. "Turk" is the most 'Lemmy' Matt Pike has ever sounded

― If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:36 (eighteen years ago)

The new Today is the Day is sounding really good so far. Stifling production, and Derek Roddy puts on a vertiable clinic on drums.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 20 August 2007 20:48 (eighteen years ago)

Draugar -- anyone heard of them/him?

if you like that song you'll probably like everything by him. he always paled in comparison to leviathan (and even xasthur) to me, didn't seem quite as imaginative. same vocal effect (i'm told it's a guitar POD) leviathan uses, too.

Spektr, too, any recommendations on these guys?

near death experience should be pretty easy to find and is worth hearing if a little lacking in focus (and it could've used more vocals). they have a new ep called mescalyne! haven't heard that yet.

you might also want to check out haemoth, shares a member with spektr and their kontamination cd is fairly similar in tone but more straight ahead in material. there are still some unsettling ambient interludes but not the weird industrial elements of spektr.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 21 August 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, so this new Akercocke album is really cool. Consider me won over! I kept hearing these guys sporadically, and never really took in the real diversity they bring. Better late than never, I guess.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 10:56 (eighteen years ago)

The Hidden Hand breaks up. Note description of mind-roastingly awesome-sounding new Wino project at bottom of article.

― unperson, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

Damn, that's a real shame.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 17:32 (eighteen years ago)

It kinda is; I didn't like the first Hidden Hand disc, thought it was a real step down after Spirit Caravan, but they seemed to be hitting their stride on the new one.

― unperson, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 17:42 (eighteen years ago)

Offsite varietal reading, some comedy and superciliousness. Speculators and the price of the old Les Paul Standard, one of the original guitars of hard rock and metal.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

re Gorge's citation of David Allen Coe's Penetentiary Blues on last year's Rolling Metal, Deer Tick's boxcar ("vs." Coe's cellblock) obsessions and vibe, times, in this case, sandblast vocals=country with metal appeal. The feature (stream/download) track is atypically skiffle-sh, but with the voice (note "fried ice cream" ref): just a taste of an abrasive maze (reviewers can request from ForceFieldpr)
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=974

― dow, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 18:38 (eighteen years ago)

I know Amplified Heat was mentioned upstream but the quotes went into the great beyond of "click here..." Anyway, ArcLight sent a promo of the
new one unbidden, so I gave it a listen yesterday and fell asleep half way through, waking up in time for "Amplified Boogie" which seemed the best of the material while I was conscious.

My initial impression was the debut from a couple years ago was better but this will need a few more listens. Sounded best when there was no "singing." Lyrics are eye-rollingly awful, not that original early-70's trios didn't have similar abilities. It reminded me of the debut by Hookfoot, possibly first-two-LP Frijid Pink.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 20:54 (eighteen years ago)

That Akercocke surprised the hell out of me. I requested it because it was mentioned favorably on this board, and I really enjoyed it. They are definitely getting their shit together.

The USSA record is good. Not great, but good. It's a throwback to mid 90s heavy alternative, the really dark, oppressive stuff that clogs up clearance bins at used CD stores because nobody bought it when that sound was still relevant. Nonetheless, these guys do a good job of it.

I also like the After Forever. They still suffer from a slight lack of hooks, but the new one has great production, and Floor really belts that stuff out.

The new HIM record sounds like HE's been listening to a lot of Type O Negative.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 21:40 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the Akercocke is damn near brilliant. I'm going to have to give a closer listen to the stuff off Words That Go Unspoken, because that one didn't draw me in at all when I first heard it.

After Forever's gloriously 80s-ish "Energize Me" and eco-tune "Equally Destructive" have hooks aplenty. Great songs!

And the more I listen to the new Today is the Day, the more I like it. Typically psychotic stuff.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

Those are, in fact, the two After Forever songs that I mentioned in my review as being good ones (along with the bizarrely apocalyptic "De-Energized").

Honestly, with the exception of a couple tracks, I don't think they really had it together yet on Words That Go Unspoken.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 23:01 (eighteen years ago)

one of the finest tracks of the year:

Rosetta - Wake (from the upcoming album Wake/Lift)

listen on myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/rosetta

epic, expansive, exhilarating

― djmartian, Thursday, 23 August 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

That song definitely bodes well. As did the recent split with Balboa...Rosetta's definitely on to something.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 23 August 2007 18:47 (eighteen years ago)

Downloading the new Black Dahlia Murder now. I liked Unhallowed a lot, but Miasma was too metalcore-y. The new one's called Nocturnal and the cover sorta looks akin to the debut, so I have hopes for it.

― unperson, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:06 (eighteen years ago)

I enjoy the BDM in small doses, they do get a bit samey after a while. Their vocalist is an entertaining frontman, though. Hopefully they've been able to elevate their game like Through the Eyes of the Dead has done on their new one.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:26 (eighteen years ago)

I think they had one really cool song on the first one. "Contagion." Yeah, that was good.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:39 (eighteen years ago)

I didn't love the Through The Eyes... album, though it was very well produced. The War From A Harlots Mouth (lack of apostrophe in original) disc is very good, though.

― unperson, Thursday, 23 August 2007 20:09 (eighteen years ago)

In the mail yesterday: Out Of the Dark (Nuclear Blast anniversary thing with their "dark" metal singers singing on songs written by Peter formally of Soilwork), Bullets and Octane, and Icarus Witch. Not a particularly stunning package, but hopefully some of them will be good.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 23 August 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

Definitely like: New Blue Cheer album What Doesn't Kill You...; Stiv Bators L.A. Confidential reissue.

Leaning toward possibly liking but need to play more to make sure: New Ted Nugent album Love Brigade; Wooden Shjips (probably not metal enough for John D); Baroness; Gentleman's Pistols; Vried; Hearse; Hot Rod soundtrack (feat. lots of songs by Europe).

Didn't play yet but kind of curious about: Coliseum; Exterminance; Nightwish

No use for: A whole bunch of other things I listened to (including but not limited to After Forever, Himsa, Zoroaster.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 August 2007 01:57 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, Love Grenade (duh).

― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 August 2007 01:58 (eighteen years ago)

chuck, we wish we'd seen you in nyc. i assumed skot told you. he said he posted it on a thread which you might not have seen. anywho, next time we're in ny, we'll def look you up. we were thinking next year we'll swap our house with someone with an apt. in ny for the month of aug.

― Maria :D, Sunday, 26 August 2007 01:59 (eighteen years ago)

Wooden Shjips are great.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 26 August 2007 02:32 (eighteen years ago)

The limited edition cover for Love Grenade defies words.

http://idolator.com/assets/resources/2007/08/nugeeeey.jpg

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 26 August 2007 04:05 (eighteen years ago)

Pathetique

― dow, Sunday, 26 August 2007 04:10 (eighteen years ago)

As Ted has said many times over, if you don't have a sense of humor when dealing with him, you'll hurt yourself. Shoo, Don.

― Gorge, Sunday, 26 August 2007 08:29 (eighteen years ago)

Spinal Tap lives!

― JN$OT, Sunday, 26 August 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

speaking of which, in case anybody missed it:

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/08/24/ted-nugent-threatens-to-kill-barack-obama-and-hillary-clinton-during-vicious-onstage-rant/

Maria: No problem! I will catch you guys next time you're here (if I don't get to the island first)!

― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 August 2007 13:00 (eighteen years ago)

But what does that have to do with grenades?

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 26 August 2007 19:56 (eighteen years ago)

So if you don't like sexism you have no sense of humour?
x-posts

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 26 August 2007 20:26 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, there's a grenade in her mouth. The picture totally makes sense now.

Have to wonder what was going through the model's mind while posing like that.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 26 August 2007 20:35 (eighteen years ago)

The cheque

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 26 August 2007 20:39 (eighteen years ago)

Wooden Shjips are great.

Nah. They do an passable, if not remotely original post-pysch/kraut/Velvets/Sonic Youth/whoever drone thing, but they could sure use a singer with half a personality to his voice, or some energy, or some songs at least. Sticker on the cover of the promo compares them to Scientists, Suicide, and "early Echo and the Bunnymen" -- all of whom did have songs, to some extent, so I'm not buying it. Actually, they could afford to be a lot more metal --Litmus, say, drone with way more oomph, to my ears.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 August 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

OTM. i like wooden shjips but they're not really that exciting. and none of the comparisons people make ever seem right.

is that bloody litmus album out? i haven't seen it anywhere and i want it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 27 August 2007 02:33 (eighteen years ago)

Out Of the Dark: Hey, it's an All-Star anniversary tribute album. In other words, it's a ridiculously mixed bag. All the songs were written by the former guitarist from Soilwork, and that should give this some consistency, but not really. The song with In Flames Anders never gets out of first gear, the one with the guy from Death Angel just does not match his style, and the one with Soilwork Speed is a freaking power ballad, and not a good one. The John Bush track is pretty great, because it's John Bush, and the one with the guy from Scar Symmetry kind of blows away all the other Gothenburg guys. Pretty inessential, overall.

Icarus Witch: Way better then the first record, some good hooks, mostly just reminds me of Leather Wolf, who were way better. Fantastic cover of Def Leppard's "Mirror, Mirror" in the middle of the album, but unfortunately that just highlights how much they pale in comparison to the original NWOBHM bands they're trying to emulate.

Bullets and Octane: I like this. Basically just modern power pop, like Marvelous 3 but with slightly more balls. Forgettable, but fun. Lot of good hooks here.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 04:37 (eighteen years ago)

So that's another Nuclear Blast comp then? I have Into the Light, but can never get past playing "Hearts on Fire" from the bonus disc over and over. Cos that song's so awesome in in its corniness, the greatest curling power metal anthem ever.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 05:12 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, sorry, should have specified that. It's the "evil" companion to the power metal disc. A lot of their death/thrash vocalists.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

some of the stuff that i've liked a lot this year:

king diamond - 'give me your soul...please'.
though obviously not quite on par with their classics, this is still pretty awesome stuff. even the intro (which then goes straight into the 'painkiller' riff, more or less) is killer. and what's even better is that it has me going back and re-discovering all the stuff they've put out since 1990's 'the eye', which is pretty much where i stopped paying attention.

warning - 'watching from a distance'.
now, as a casual doom metal fan whose preferences are really those of classic pentagram/the obsessed/st vitus etc., i keep getting disappointed with most of the newer stuff that people rave about (for example, i've never managed to make it through an entire album by electric wizard). but boy did this one hit home. it's slow-paced doom in the same tradition as, i guess, early funeral, that's just so beautifully melodic that it keeps me coming back for more. what totally makes this album special (and i say so not having heard any of their other stuff) is the great interplay between patrick walker's vocals and the rest of the music. it doesn't get boring for a second.

and while still waiting for the new darkthrone, the 'nwobhm' (that's 'new wave of black heavy metal' in case you wondered) ep deserves a mention. in all honesty i haven't played it that much, but i still want to stick up for them in light of all the negative feedback they get nowadays. i mean, to me, ever since 'sardonic wrath' darkthrone sound EXCITED again. what more could you ask? it sounds like they fucking love what they're playing, and that's part of what makes it so good.

― saxomophone, Thursday, 30 August 2007 16:03 (eighteen years ago)

John: thanks for mentioning Blut Aus Nord in the context of Deathspell Omega a while ago. I've been enjoying the latter, and hadn't heard of the former, and now I'm enjoying both.

Not that "enjoying" is quite the right word here. I find, after _Fas_ especially, that I feel as if a period of time has passed without my totally understanding what has happened, and that I feel slightly uneasy, as if I may have accidentally chewed through my own neck without totally meaning to.

― glenn mcdonald, Thursday, 30 August 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

what do yall think of Yakuza? Heard two new tracks on myspace: one had great integration of sax with guitars, etc., though impressive beginning and end where wrapped around a short fast generically uggabugga break. Other track had a seemingly unique vocalese, chopping and speeding syllables. YouTube live stuff (the ones linked from MySpace) were uneven, but that sax was like electic cello or viola, fit perfectly. The saxist and guitarist emitted good vocal sounds. Albums?

― dow, Thursday, 30 August 2007 22:27 (eighteen years ago)

I really enjoyed Yakuza's Samsara, but haven't had the time to give a close listen to their new CD yet. I hear there's not as much sax on it this time, and if that's the case, I'll be disappointed. I've always thought Lamont shuold do more of that on his albums.

Anyone else into the new Evile? Yet another thrash revival band, but this is one of the hookiest new thrash records I've heard all year, ranking right up there with Municipal Waste.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 1 September 2007 21:17 (eighteen years ago)

I like the new Yakuza. It's closer in spirit to Samsara than to Way Of The Dead; more psychedelic and throbbing, less thrashy and skronky. No surprise really, since it was produced by Sanford Parker who's been doing stuff with Minsk and Rwake. There's one track that features Chicago out-jazz percussionists Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake.

― unperson, Saturday, 1 September 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of psychedelic, the new Zoroaster album is very impressive. Catchy stoner/sludge/doom, but often veers off on crazy psych tangents.

Far less immediate, but equally melodic is the new Atavist CD, which really takes its time like last year's Asunder album, but is as satisfying as anything I've heard lately. And I'm picky when it comes to doom. Chalk up another winner for Profound Lore.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 1 September 2007 23:07 (eighteen years ago)

Epica and Gotthard CDs that came in the mail are both extraordinarily boring. I got about maybe half a track into both.

I did, however, get to hear some tracks from the new Down record. Sounds really good. They seem to be going for more Black Sabbath this time around.

I also, very belatedly, listened to DHG and Hacride. Like both a lot. Hacride gets a little samey after a while, though.

I have the new Nightwish live set and new Slough Feg, both of which I'm very excited to listen to.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 1 September 2007 23:11 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the complete list of what Metal Mind Productions just sent me:

Artillery, Through The Years 3CD boxed set
Blessed Death, Kill Or Be Killed
Defiance, Insomnia
Front Line Assembly, Millennium
Front Line Assembly, Monument
Front Line Assembly, Reclamation
Karma To Burn, Mountain Mama's (3CD set of all their albums)
Kinetic Dissent, I Will Fight No More Forever
Optimum Wound Profile, Lowest Common Denominator
Optimum Wound Profile, Silver Or Lead
Paradox, Heresy
Paradox, Product Of Imagination
Pestilence, Spheres
Quick Change, Circus Of Death
Shelter, Beyond Planet Earth
Shelter, Mantra
Treponem Pal, Furytales (4CD/1DVD boxed set)
Trojan, Chasing The Storm

― unperson, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)

Karma To Burn are awesome!!
FLA - Millennium is one of their "metal" albums and is great.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone else into that new Evile album? I just tossed it in to try it out, and was bowled over. On the surface, it's nothing special, basically your same old thrash rehash like everyone seems to be doing these days, but these boys actually have a grasp of how to create a killer hook. So while these songs are rote, they are insanely catchy, kind of like early Destruction. Pure fun.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 18:52 (eighteen years ago)

HELP:

Does anybody have expertise with Mexican epic metal?

Here's the situation. A few years ago, my friend in Detroit delivers pizza to a auto body repair shop in mexicantown, a part of Detroit. There is a TV on, playing heavy metal in what could only be described as the "epic" style. The video features men on horses, swords, and generally has an "epic", medieval quality so beloved by metal bands. However, MUPPETS soon appear in the video and take part in the epic battle taking place in the video. My friend, a metal fan of many years, was transfixed, mouth agape. Alas, he does not speak spanish and was unable to either ask the mechanics what artist was, nor does the video end with credits. He has been unable to track down what band or video this was, but we are seeking to find this name of this epic mexican metal video featuring medieval horsemen. And muppets.

Please help us identify who it was.

Chelvis

― Chelvis, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

I have those Optimum Wound Profile records. Neither of them made a huge impression on me, but they're okay.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 19:25 (eighteen years ago)

listened to new record from PsyOpus the other day, kind of blew my mind at how ridiculous the playing was, crossing the threshold from ultra precise into bends and blurs (in fact, I think the bass *was* just sliding up and down the fretboard). I then read a story about the guitarist Christopher Arp about how he couldn't get anyone to sponsor him because they didn't believe he was actually playing the stuff on the record.

― Dominique, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 19:31 (eighteen years ago)

wasn't that artillery box supposed to be a 4 cd set, comprising all of their studio output?

― saxomophone, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

That Psyopus album is insane, I couldn't believe what I was hearing the first time I listened. I just wish they'd left it as it was instead of tacking on that awful hidden track at the end. AnnoyingAnnoyingAnnoyingAnnoying...

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 19:36 (eighteen years ago)

That Nightwish live set is fantastic so far. I've only listened to the first disc, and I haven't watched the DVD yet, but it sounds great. If the person up thread who asked about Nightwish is still wondering about whether or not to listen to the live songs on eMusic, I second Adrien. Great stuff.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 19:45 (eighteen years ago)

It's funny, on the documentary when they show the hours before that show, the keyboard player looks like he wants to crawl in a hole and die...they're a couple hours away from publicly firing their singer, and the tension is unreal.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 20:53 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, the drama.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 4 September 2007 21:19 (eighteen years ago)

Speaking of Yakuza, Whiney writes about them in PTW today, though I don't see how his comments add up to the 8.0 rating (grudging admiration?)
http://paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=1054
Also: Robbie on Baronness
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=1003
And me on Time Of Orchids
http;//www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=948

― dow, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 15:53 (eighteen years ago)

erm--Time Of Orchids is actually here
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=948

― dow, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

Baroness has shoved its way onto my list of 2007 faves. I liked it when I first heard it, but these days I can't stop listening to it. And yes, I think the album is better than the EPs (good as they are), which might sound like blasphemy to some.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 17:44 (eighteen years ago)

So nobody has any idea about the epic, mexican metal, or I'm violating some Off Topic rule? Should I post this as a new question?
Yes, I've only posted to ILM about 5 times.

― Chelvis, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 22:49 (eighteen years ago)

I thought someone might have replied. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question though, sorry,

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I tried looking, but found nothing. I found the description of the clip fascinating...I'd like to see it, too!

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 23:55 (eighteen years ago)

Got the Dethklok record in the mail today. It has a voiceover, which I hate. Oh well.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 6 September 2007 01:02 (eighteen years ago)

chelvis: have you tried youtube? the metal archives? if i were in your position i'd register at spanish language metal forum and hope for the best. you could try the chat at heavytorrents.org

― saxomophone, Thursday, 6 September 2007 10:23 (eighteen years ago)

Could the muppet video be "La Posada de los Muertos" by Mägo de Oz?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH961chmni8

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 6 September 2007 10:38 (eighteen years ago)

hahaha awesome

― saxomophone, Thursday, 6 September 2007 10:47 (eighteen years ago)

You know, Mago de Oz was my first guess, but they're from Spain, I think.

― unperson, Thursday, 6 September 2007 11:03 (eighteen years ago)

Saxo and No-nonsense, thanks for your comments! I will keep searching!

― Chelvis, Thursday, 6 September 2007 19:42 (eighteen years ago)

Strapping Young Lad provide a key plot point in Shoot 'em Up.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 8 September 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, with the instant classic "Talk about shooting your load" scene and now SYL on the soundtrack, I'm really regretting not going to see that movie.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 8 September 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

It was possibly the most bad ass thing I've seen since Crank last year, and way more metal on the soundtrack as well (there's a fantastic scene set to "Ace of Spades"). I'm kind of surprised there isn't a thread about it over on ILE, they have threads about every other movie there.

The Dethklok record is amusing. The voiceover promo is pretty annoying, especially since it's pretty innocuous on the first half and then really obnoxious on the second half, where most ofthe good songs are. My big problems are with the production and the sequencing, especially since they start the album off with a couple midtempo tracks that don't really give it the proper momentum.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 8 September 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

Loving the new Witchcraft; decided I like the new Baroness; am having fun listening to the new reissue of Warfare (who I'd never heard of, and who Martin Popoff seems iffy about though they apparently remind him somehow of Venom, and who seemingly started turning NWOBHM into thrash early in thrash's lifespan -- band's led by some dude from Angelic Upstarts, produced by Lemmy, linked somehow or other to Tank, and they cover "Eve of Destruction," though not as ridiculously as Metal Mike Saunders used to ["take a look around to Selma, California," urp], or as irresistibly as, say, the Anti-Nowhere League covered "Streets Of London." They're catchy, though.)

And oh yeah, wrote this on the country thread last week:

BLUE CHEER - Believe it or not, their new album What Doesn't Kill You..., which I like a lot but is generally as heavy as you'd hope, actually has a country song on it -- Or at least a country-Stones (turning into Allmans maybe) song, like something Black Angel would do: "Young Lions In Paradise," which checks in at 6:45, and it's real good. Otherwise at least two songs (including the 9:26 pachyderm-blooze stomp closer "No Relief") mention gypsys, and at least one "Just A Little Bit (Redux)" has a bassline that sounds like "Cool Jerk" as done by Grand Funk Railroad (or perhaps Blue Cheer).

― xhuxk, Sunday, 9 September 2007 00:15 (eighteen years ago)

I would be surprised if that Baroness record didn't wind up on my top 10 at the end of the year. It's one of those records where I keep discovering new things every time I listen to it.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 9 September 2007 00:51 (eighteen years ago)

What surprised me most about that Baroness CD is that so much of it had guitars that made me think "jam band"; what surprised me even more is that I liked it anyway (and actually loved some of those parts -- especially in "Wailing Wintry Wind" and "Teeth of a Cogwheel" I think) regardless. I want to say they do Southern rock (as in: post-Allmans) better than any of the Pantera-type bands who are always said to sound so "Southern," but I have no idea if that's Baroness's intention.

What suprised me most about the Witchcraft album was probably either the sax solo in "Remembered" or the fact that "Walk Between the Lines" seems to take its recurring guitar riff from "London Calling" by the Clash. My favorite tracks might be "Samaratan Burden" (especially its extended Celtic ending) and psych-metal jam "The Alchemist Part 1/2/3," though, which are just plain beautiful. "Hey Doctor" always makes me think of "Tales of Brave Ulysses" by Creem.

Hearse album on Candlelight on in the background now. So far, I think I like them more than Gentelmen's Pistols (who seem like I should like them on paper but haven't really held my attention.)

Didn't really like the Freedom Call album.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 9 September 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

The sax solo in the witchcraft is great. Currently enjoying new Wolves In The Throne Room. Baroness will be in my top 10 BUT I did expect it to be better than the ep's which it is not. I miss the aggression which is not often I say that, but I think that's what the 1st album needed.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 9 September 2007 15:03 (eighteen years ago)

Didn't like Exterminance, either.

And "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" by Cream, I meant, duh.

And oh yeah -- actually got out of the cave and went to see Katatonia, who were real good, at B.B. King's Thursday night. They sure do have a lot of six-foot-tall Scandinavian fans with really long hair (and at least one of whom had a Dream Theater T-shirt on.) We also talked to people in the crowd from Poland and Egypt. The ones from Poland were more drunk.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 9 September 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

i don't even know what rolling thread i would talk about the new ulver album on. the rolling astral projection plainsong artsong prog thread?

― scott seward, Sunday, 9 September 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

Make it so, Scott!

― JN$OT, Sunday, 9 September 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

It will bring Louis to thread.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

Hearse album on Candlelight on in the background now. So far, I think I like them more than Gentelmen's Pistols

Actually, the more Hearse plays, I think this was a lie.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:55 (eighteen years ago)

>I want to say they do Southern rock (as in: post-Allmans) better than any of the Pantera-type bands who are always said to sound so "Southern," but I have no idea if that's Baroness's intention.

The first time I played this record, the phrase that popped into my head was "Southern prog."

― unperson, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

I need to listen to that Witchcraft album as soon as I get back to the office tomorrow. This weekend it's been all about the 3CD Defiance collection on Metal Mind (licensed from Roadrunner). And that new Ulver is a lot of good things, but it sure ain't metal. In my review for Metal Edge I'm describing them as the anti-Sunn, in that where Sunn makes me want to hide in a cave wearing heavy black robes, Ulver's new one makes me want to run through dew-dappled fields in a flowing white robe. Their cover of Black Sabbath's "Solitude" is amazing.

― unperson, Sunday, 9 September 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

The Ulver album is lovely, but yeah, talk about minimal. Not quite on the level of Blood Inside, but vocally, Garm has never sounded better.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 9 September 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

Southern prog, yeah, can't think of many other current examples (Mastodon?) But there were some in the 70s, like Bosch, who used to rent movie houses and play while light shows and movies projected directly on them (and the screen), and brought the Norse to barefoot boys lak me. Dixie Dregs might count, but to me they were fusion, meaning not as good as prog, but I wouldn't say that to the Wayne's World housepainters who came reeling into the store many years later, demanding the new Deep Purple with Steve Morse. "I guess... that sounds kind of sad of us," one of them suddenly blurted. I assured him that anything he wanted to pay me for wasn't sad, alarmed as I was by daylight moodswings in one who had come reeling in on Saturday night, pissed that we didn't have the right Tangerine Dream--we had 20 others, but if they weren't the one, fair enough.

― dow, Sunday, 9 September 2007 20:22 (eighteen years ago)

>(Mastodon?)

There's a little Mastodon audible in Baroness.

― unperson, Sunday, 9 September 2007 21:22 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, I just listened to this. They really cleaned up their sound (and lost some heaviness) since the EPs. I don't dislike it though.

― rockapads, Sunday, 9 September 2007 22:12 (eighteen years ago)

I definitely heard Mastodon in there, and some High On Fire. And Southern rock, and psychedelic, and stoner, and prog, and post-rock, and all sorts of other stuff. I think that sheer unpredictability and genre-bending is what makes me like it so much.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 9 September 2007 22:18 (eighteen years ago)

Most people reckon there's a Torche influence on the album. Wish I had went to see the Torche/Baroness tour last year.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 9 September 2007 22:47 (eighteen years ago)

I just don't think of Torche as being big enough to be influential - they're sort of plowing a similar groove, though. Torche is poppier, in a way - more about memorable choruses where Baroness is more about non-wanky instrumental exploration.

― unperson, Sunday, 9 September 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

Don't have to be big though, they toured with them and possibly that has influenced them. No doubt wanting to get away from the accusations of being Mastodon Jr that they had with the eps.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 9 September 2007 23:09 (eighteen years ago)

A lot of the vocal melodies on the Baroness do remind me a little of Torche. Though done with a raspier voice, of course. There's so much diversity on it, but it's one of the subtlest metal albums I've heard in ages.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 10 September 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

That was a good review you did of it on Popmatters, I think I may have to pick it up.

― Bill Magill, Monday, 10 September 2007 14:32 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks! The Red Album is a definite top tenner for me, that's for sure. I just have to replace the 99 track promo now...

― A. Begrand, Monday, 10 September 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

I downloaded the first two EPs yesterday and listened to them on the way home. Those of you who like them better than Red Album are just talkin' crazy talk.

Also, I am right now listening to Katatonia's Live Consternation, which is the first time I have ever heard anything by Katatonia. It's pretty damn great; I have officially Been Missing Out. What's my next move, Scott Seward?

― unperson, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:27 (eighteen years ago)

Listen to Discouraged Ones or Brave Murder Day next. Discouraged Ones is more shoegazey with clean vocals. Brave Murder Day is earlier and more doom/death with Mikael from Opeth on death vocals. Both are classic. If you like those proceed to Tonight's Decision. Then Last Fair Deal Gone Down. Then Viva Emptiness. Then the new one. They get progressively more polished and accessible as they go along, but they are all fine albums. Discouraged Ones is my fave. Their first album is classic doomdeath as well. Dance Of December Souls. And quite a long way from what they would become.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

Also, I am right now listening to Katatonia's Live Consternation, which is the first time I have ever heard anything by Katatonia.

WHAT

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:48 (eighteen years ago)

Hate to open myself to criticism like in the Opeth thread, but damn, do I love The Great Cold Distance. Polished, yeah, but those vocals are so much stronger and resonant than any other Katatonia record. Discouraged Ones is really great, though...hell, all their stuff is.

And I am loving the new Witchcraft! More psych, less doom, and the songwriting, singing, production is so much stronger.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:51 (eighteen years ago)

I like the great cold distance fine. i have definitely warmed up to it. it helped that i finally bought a proper copy of it. i was just listening to a horrible promo cdr for ever. i still think the songs on viva emptiness are stronger though. and catchier! i need to buy that new live thing.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:57 (eighteen years ago)

listening to a completely kick-ass estonian band now. estonian pagan war metal band. kinda the estonian amon amarth. *Tharaphita*. i am reviewing, like, 15 estonian metal albums this month. this album, in particular, rules.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 18:59 (eighteen years ago)

There are some parts on the live album where Renske and Nystrom trade lead vocals...that's something I'd like to hear from them more often, it really works well. Wish I could see the currtent tour, it's quite a bill, with Insomnium, Scar Symmetry, and Swallow the Sun opening.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

actually, phil, the black sessions box is a cool sampler too. 2-discs of stuff from the "modern era" katatonia singles and albums and a great live dvd. if you want to go that way.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

I actually just listened to Brave Murder Day last night for the first time. It was pretty fantastic. Maybe it just hit the spot last night, but I think I liked it more than Discouraged Ones. I can't remember any of it today, though. Maybe that will change with subsequent listenings.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 13 September 2007 03:01 (eighteen years ago)

I seem to have a knack for killing this thread... anyway, I got Through the Eyes of the Dead in the mail. It holds absolutely no interest to me, and I just find it kind of annoying to listen to. Can't even really get up the motivation to trash it in my review. It's just thoroughly uninteresting.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 17 September 2007 02:37 (seventeen years ago)

I really like the TTEOTD! Nothing earth-shattering, but as far a straightforward death metal goes, it's very solid. I like the new vocalist a lot more than the old guy.

I've been inundated with good music lately, which is why I haven't posted, I've been too distracted. The new Witchcraft is awesome, as I mentioned above. Agua de Annique is surprisingly solid...I sort of knew I'd like it based on the tracks I'd heard a few months ago. but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I have been. And Killusion's The Howling Wind, holy crap is that album amazing in its Hellhammerishness. Or Celtic Frostiness.

I've been enjoying some cool kvlt goodies from local label Suffering Jesus, too, including a wacky compilation of wildly diverse demos by Tjolgtjar, and a very enjoyable D-beat black metal (well, it's more hardcore than BM) disc by an obscure Quebec dude called Malveillance.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 17 September 2007 03:53 (seventeen years ago)

It could be that I find straightforward death metal boring. Actually, I think that is it. Not to take away from anyone else's enjoyment of such, but it's just not my bag.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 17 September 2007 04:26 (seventeen years ago)

aren't malveillance NSBM? not that it matters, just find the idea of right wing dudes loving the discharge kinda odd. but i guess i like graveland soooo...

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 17 September 2007 07:23 (seventeen years ago)

Apparently the Malveillance guy was trying to distance himself from the whole NSBM scene, and this new CD was recorded after that. What with him screaming indecipherably, and in French no less, I couldn't be bothered to figure out what he's yelling about, anyway. The music's actually pretty decent.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 17 September 2007 08:45 (seventeen years ago)

From the country thread; sorry if they're not metal enough. (Otherwise, I like the new and probably even less metal Ulver album, especially the Sabbath cover and the parts I assume have saxophones. And I decided the new Zolar X X Marks the Spot album is at least more rocking in the guitar department than their outtakes-tapes-anthology or whatever it was Zap! You're Zolarized from earlier this year, and as resurrected space-glam- metal goes, neither of those new ones stacks up to Timeless from a few years ago [and recorded light years before that]. And it's not like I've pulled that one out lately either, actually.) Anyway:

Most (okay, probably only) country song on the new Einsturzende Neubuaten album Alles Weideroffen is "Nagorny Karabach, which has a very recognizable Lee Hazelwood (R.I.P.) clippity-clop to it. Lots of repetitive electronic factory clang to the rest of the album, often building gradually into something tangibly if Teutonically identifiable as a groove, with repeatedly chanted harangues on top, which slow-building sometimes makes me more impatient than other times. Faves are opener "Die Wellen" (reminds me of Faust), humorlessly titled and minimally starting "Let's Do It Dada," nine-minute "Unvollstandigkeit," and "Ich Warte" (maybe their most danceable track since Adrian Sherwood produced "Yu Gung" for them 22 years ago.) Part that sounds like "bacon bacon bacon bacon" in "Von Wegen" is also neat. Didn't know they still had it in 'em.

― xhuxk, Monday, 17 September 2007 11:24 (seventeen years ago)

I was kinda wondering how they'd respond to Hazlewood's passing - they did record that cover of "Sand" lo these many years ago. I have a copy of that new album here, but haven't listened to it yet.

― unperson, Monday, 17 September 2007 11:29 (seventeen years ago)

And..the reviews are in!

― unperson, Monday, 17 September 2007 11:30 (seventeen years ago)

dude do NOT read reviews of your own work, that way lies madness

especially online reviews, c'mon now

― J0hn D., Monday, 17 September 2007 12:34 (seventeen years ago)

Speaking of Baroness (as we last were about a week ago) they're having a listening party on PaperThinWalls.com: album's streaming, with artist comments on each track (written, not butting into the music, like in "music documentaries," curse most of 'em)

― dow, Monday, 17 September 2007 19:34 (seventeen years ago)

The new Hatesphere album, um, exists.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 17 September 2007 21:56 (seventeen years ago)

Finally got around to hearing the new Black Dahlia Murder today...it's pretty strong, better than Miasma. Nice to see BDM and Through the Eyes of the Dead, two bands I couldn't tell apart a year ago, finding their own identities.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 17 September 2007 22:31 (seventeen years ago)

Got an advance of the new Arch Enemy today. I've had a downloaded boot for awhile, but it's good to have the "real" version. It's a very strong record. And yeah, the BDM disc is really good, too. I don't know if it's top ten for me, but it's very solid.

― unperson, Monday, 17 September 2007 23:14 (seventeen years ago)

I can't get enough of the song "Hatredcopter" on the Dethklok CD. Catchy as hell, with an actual clean vocal chorus, and some pretty impressive shredding. Pretty awesome.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 00:18 (seventeen years ago)

The Dethklok leaked today, so I'll give it a listen when I can, it can't not be good, especially with Hoglan on drums. And yeah, the Arch Enemy is killer.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 01:03 (seventeen years ago)

That wasn't me, I swear!

It's good, a very entertaining listen. I think the sequencing is problematic (starts off with two midtempo songs), and the production is kind of thin. Hoglan, unfortunately, doesn't really add much. However, most of the songs are either catchy or funny or both. Basically, it's This Is Spinal Tap. Definitely worth listening to loads of times.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 01:23 (seventeen years ago)

I am listening to the new Electric Wizard album, Witchcult Today, right now. It is unbelievably fucking great. I have no idea who's in the band at this point, but it's definitely a two-guitar lineup like We Live. So fucking heavy. So far my favorite song is "Dunwich," but "Torquemada '71" is running a close second.

― unperson, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 17:02 (seventeen years ago)

I'm excited about the new Arch Enemy! New Ulver is nice.

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 17:06 (seventeen years ago)

hi i dont really want to sift through the whole thread or start a new one, but can you guys point me towards some good metal blogs?

i'm more looking for stoner/artsy-fartsy hardcore stuff, but any metal blogs you like will do.

thanking u.

― gr8080, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 20:18 (seventeen years ago)

I didn't even know there was a new Electric Wizard on the horizon. Glad to hear it smokes.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 21:12 (seventeen years ago)

Cosmo Lee's Invisible Oranges is the best metal blog going right now:
http://invisibleoranges.com

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 21:48 (seventeen years ago)

thanks.

― gr8080, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 21:48 (seventeen years ago)

I am listening to the new Electric Wizard album, Witchcult Today, right now. It is unbelievably fucking great. I have no idea who's in the band at this point, but it's definitely a two-guitar lineup like We Live. So fucking heavy. So far my favorite song is "Dunwich," but "Torquemada '71" is running a close second.
-- unperson,

wtf they werent supposed to be in the studio til autumn to record it??????????

Its the same ine up as last album, phil.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:06 (seventeen years ago)

I'm amazed they've done it all so fast. Someone steal their weed?
Hows the "real" singing that's meant to be on it?

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:11 (seventeen years ago)

Thanks for link, Begrand, that blog seems pretty ace.

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago)

What do you think of the new Wolves In The Throne Room, Roxy?

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:23 (seventeen years ago)

I haven't listened to it with much attention yet, but it sounds pretty interesting to me so far. Right now I am hung up on Dodheimsgard.

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:40 (seventeen years ago)

If you're reading this thread hoping to find out about bands you don't know who are kinda like bands you know and like, then you might enjoy this:

empath
(metal-band similarity analysis based on Encyclopaedia Metallum user ratings)

Also, some background here.

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 01:33 (seventeen years ago)

glenn you are a crazy man. in a good way! and a helluva writer, that's for sure. just in case i never told you that.

so, i didn't really have any big expectations for a new monster magnet album, but i dig the new one. like most of their albums it has its share of filler and songs that could be 3 or 4 minutes shorter. but it's also got the standard 2 or 3 super cool songs that rock out beautifully. you could take the 3 or 4 best songs on their last 3 or 4 albums and make one AWESOME record. if you felt like doing that. i do love ed mundell too. so it's always worth hearing him play. the stones cover is just okay. kinda like something that would be on the i still really really know what you did last summer soundtrack. if such a thing existed.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 15:35 (seventeen years ago)

Curious to hear thoughts on the new Between the Buried and Me album. I've not yet had a chance to listen to it (hopefully tonight) but I picked it up yesterday. I've read a lot of hyperbole about it though. I really enjoyed Alaska.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 15:41 (seventeen years ago)

brave murder day in the decibel hall of fame this issue! god they were so young. they looked like hanson back then. reading that thing i just wanted to dig my copy out and play it at top volume! but it was like one in the morning when i was reading it so that wouldn't have been so cool for the family. plus my copy is in a box somewhere.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 15:57 (seventeen years ago)

I liked the Dillinger Escape Plan at first; they were sort of exhilaratingly berserk and ultra-precise at once, and that was still new enough to my ears to be interesting. But Calculating Infinity was ultimately just kind of exhausting to push through, and the EP with Mike Patton was even more so. I barely remember what Miss Machine sounded like. I gotta tell you, though, I'm listening to Ire Works right now and it's really, really fucking good. Some of it sounds like their old stuff, but there are a couple of instrumentals that sound like Fantomas, and a couple of goddamn glitchtronica tracks (and no, I don't think it's just the stream fucking up). It's like their old stuff, but produced by Squarepusher. I swear, trying to put together a Top Ten for this year is gonna be fucking nightmare. And I never thought I would find myself crawling back to a band I pretty much entirely shrugged off two records ago.

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago)

Didn't like the early stuff much but Miss Machine was awesome.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 18:05 (seventeen years ago)

I loved Miss Machine, but the new MySpace track didn't exactly blow me away.

I really like the Between the Buried & Me. It's more melodic, with a huge Floyd influence, and lots of wild stylistic hairpin turns. First track in, they go from a Dark Side of the Moon sound to Emperor in a matter of seconds, and don't make it sound contrived. The songs hold up, too, it's not like it's Mars Volta-style wank or anythnig.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 18:50 (seventeen years ago)

I kinda liked the BTB&M, but it didn't convert me to their cause or anything. It was just diverting while it was happening. I'm telling you, when you hear the whole Dillinger disc, your world will shift.

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago)

I gotta get a hold of the new High on Fire today.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago)

My vinyl of High On Fire is on the way according to a email from Relapse.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago)

The HOF disc is also ass-rapingly great. Man...Phantom Limb, Red Album, Death Is This Communion, Ire Works - Relapse is having one hell of a year.

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:24 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I don't know how on earth I'll be able to put together a top 20 list. Far too many great titles this year.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:30 (seventeen years ago)

The new High on Fire is fucking awesome.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:34 (seventeen years ago)

I gotta get the Baroness at the same time too.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:35 (seventeen years ago)

There's a new Monster Magnet album?! Man, how did I miss that one?! I mean, obviously it hasn't come out yet, but I didn't realize it was even finished.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:45 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, it's decent. More psych than heavy, which disappoints me, because I'm a bigger fan of Superjudge than Spine Of God or, obviously, their more recent stuff. But it's not terrible, and the guitar solos kick much ass.

Also really, really good: Gallhammer's Ill Innocence. I was really hoping this wouldn't be some kind of Shonen Knife-goes-black-metal novelty act, and it's not. These three lil' Japanese girls rip shit up.

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 20:02 (seventeen years ago)

Got new Baroness today.

― roxymuzak, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago)

First track in, they go from a Dark Side of the Moon sound to Emperor in a matter of seconds, and don't make it sound contrived.

Sounded more like a cross between Queen and Supertramp to me. Pretty weird way to start the album. I kind of wish they'd just ditch the prog-death thing and just make full songs out of the weird intros and interludes.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 20:09 (seventeen years ago)

A Life Once Lost, Iron Gag: These guys sound like a slightly slower and more overtly redneck Lamb Of God. The riffs are crunchy and Southern-rockish, and some of the guitar solos wouldn't sound out of place on a Molly Hatchet album. When they get thrashin', though, they're also pretty swell. Their band name probably gets 'em lumped in with a bunch of crappy metalcore outfits (Every Time I Die, All That Remains, As I Lay Dying, etc., etc.) way too often for their career's sake. Oh, well.

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 21:41 (seventeen years ago)

Hey, All That Remains isn't crappy. At least their last album wasn't...anyway, I was quite surprised by how strong Iron Gag turned out to be. I was never a big fan of ALOL before. It's still nothing new, though, but done well enough.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 23:20 (seventeen years ago)

I think I was seriously unimpressed by the last All That Remains record. I wasn't very impressed by A Life Once Lost either, but I haven't heard the new one.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 23:25 (seventeen years ago)

the whiff of southern stuff on iron gag is the ONLY stuff that interests me about that album. and there isn't enough of it. there rarely is. too bad monster magnet is from new jersey. they would make a great southern rock band.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 23:47 (seventeen years ago)

The Morningside are a new band from Moscow who play atmospheric metal of the Agalloch/Katatonia/Paradise Lost kind, with blackened vocals and acoustic guitars. They have an 11 minute free mp3 online, a pleasant listen.

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 20 September 2007 09:37 (seventeen years ago)

The High on Fire slays. Rumors of War is the best Motorhead song Motorhead never recorded.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 20 September 2007 17:33 (seventeen years ago)

[OK, I'm mostly-cross-posting this from the metal-archives discussion forum because the audiences there and here seem like they're probably a little different...]

Since I had all this data from the Encyclopaedia Metallum, for my earlier similarity analysis, I thought it would be interesting to see which bands produce the widest and narrowest ranges of ratings. To do this meaningfully I counted only releases that have 4 or more reviews, and only bands that have 4 or more of these releases and at least 10 different reviewers. For these I then averaged the ratings for each such release, and ran standard deviations on the sets of averages. So a low standard deviation means there's some consensus that the quality of the band's output is consistent. High means consensus that the quality varies widely.

Here are 25 most consistent. The first number is the standard deviation, the second is the average rating of the releases used in the calculation.

1. Coroner · 0.908 · 88.21
2. Helstar · 1.455 · 90.54
3. Moonsorrow · 1.676 · 89.98
4. Dark Angel (US) · 1.767 · 82.15
5. Candlemass · 1.842 · 89.78
6. Lamb of God · 1.845 · 68.5
7. Obituary · 2.004 · 85.32
8. Type O Negative · 2.035 · 89.16
9. Accept · 2.193 · 88.06
10. Agent Steel · 2.479 · 90.49
11. Fates Warning · 2.531 · 93.36
12. Alice in Chains · 2.538 · 88.83
13. Iron Savior · 3.025 · 88.25
14. Falconer · 3.083 · 84.42
15. Therion (Swe) · 3.159 · 90.38
16. Sodom · 3.294 · 83.4
17. Kamelot · 3.463 · 90.52
18. Gorgoroth · 3.496 · 84.71
19. Judas Iscariot · 3.602 · 89.03
20. Bolt Thrower · 3.652 · 88.31
21. Suffocation (US) · 3.701 · 86.48
22. Angra · 3.758 · 88.63
23. Enslaved (Nor) · 3.926 · 88.85
24. Vader · 4.162 · 85.78
25. Bal-Sagoth · 4.249 · 89.9

I sense a hastily-assembled cash-in Coroner boxset in our future. I think this also means that Fates Warning is the most consistently great band in all of heavy metal. So now we know. And Lamb of God gets some sort of weird prize for being the most consistently mediocre.

Here are the 25 most inconsistent:

Sepultura · 25.022 · 67.55
In Flames · 21.621 · 60.74
Megadeth · 19.333 · 71.54
Krieg · 18.455 · 71.19
Deicide · 18.007 · 74.15
Deathspell Omega · 17.925 · 83.93
Metallica · 17.863 · 69.16
Virgin Steele · 17.747 · 74.5
Six Feet Under (US) · 17.601 · 55.15
Dissection (Swe) · 17.275 · 70.67
Sentenced · 16.626 · 66.79
Moonspell · 16.312 · 78.28
Nuclear Assault · 16.234 · 72.04
Mayhem (Nor) · 15.754 · 67.69
Machine Head (US) · 15.453 · 55.06
Within Temptation · 15.379 · 61.25
Slayer (US) · 14.537 · 73.97
Children of Bodom · 13.943 · 77.63
Black Label Society · 13.937 · 75.05
Pantera · 13.921 · 69.97
Celtic Frost · 13.717 · 73.4
Cannibal Corpse · 13.476 · 74.89
Motörhead · 13.319 · 78.23
Danzig · 13.037 · 80.0
Pain of Salvation · 12.934 · 87.77

Most of these follow the "great once, crap now" pattern (I think we can now officially call this "Sepulturding"), which makes one wonder whether developing a fan-base is really worth the bother in the end. Deathspell Omega deserve a special note, as if they'd had the sense to release Infernal Battles under a different name, their other 4 albums would give them a standard deviation of 1.66 on an average of 92.86, and we could have a very obscure statistical argument over whether that means they are in fact even greater than Fates Warning.

On a personal note, I state for the record that earlier today, before doing any of this analysis, I was actually listening to Infernal Battles, and while it's obviously no Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, it's still pretty damn good. Way better than 48%, anyway.

― glenn mcdonald, Friday, 21 September 2007 21:26 (seventeen years ago)

Lamb Of God are not so much consistently mediocre as they are consistently slagged by morons.

― unperson, Saturday, 22 September 2007 00:30 (seventeen years ago)

That, and the mediocrity.

New High On Fire sounds like... High On Fire. It's good in the same way everything else they've done is, but the last one impressed me more right off the bat. I like the warmth of the production, and the cool Eastern-sounding instrumental (Phil, what sort of music is that anyway?), and most of the songs are pretty rocking, but nothing as instantly mind blowing as the leadoff track from Blessed Black Wings. I'll have to listen to it some more, obviously, but right now I think I like Baroness more. Considering how I've eaten my words in the past, though, that might change.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 22 September 2007 00:56 (seventeen years ago)

i haven't bought the new high on fire yet. they have the vinyl at the record store. i always think i should like the albums more than i do. i've bought them all - well, the last one was sent to me - and i never ever listen to them. i even sold my vinyl of the first album. i think it's just me. i'd probably really dig them live. except for jerusalem/dopesmoker, i was never a big sleep fan. still haven't heard the new om album. i really liked the last one.

but, yeah, the intro to blessed black wings is my favorite thing on it! and then it's all a blur. i dunno, it's probably just me. but it's weird that i don't worship a band that was invented for me to worship.

― scott seward, Saturday, 22 September 2007 01:17 (seventeen years ago)

Baroness definitely gets the edge, but man, am I still ever enjoying the High on Fire. I sort of agree with Scott, if the otherwise very good Blessed Black Wings had a fault, it was that it got a bit samey during the latter half , but I'm not getting that from the new disc at all. Strong, front to back.

I've really warmed up to the Symphony X. It peters out at the end, but for the most part, very strong.

And the new Ulver, is that ever a good one. Not the jaw-dropper that Blood Inside was, but in the long run, I bet I'll wind up preferring this one. "Funebrae" and the "Solitude" cover just sound immaculate.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:06 (seventeen years ago)

New High On Fire is definitely their strongest album yet.

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:15 (seventeen years ago)

i want to hear a great high on fire album. i'll definitely buy it. the baroness album is the hottness. no doubt about that.

― scott seward, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:17 (seventeen years ago)

High On Fire are a fantastic live band. You have to stand up front, near the speakers, and just feel the bass rumbling through your body. It's pretty awesome. Big problem is, too damn many hipsters at the shows. I never quite understood why they glommed onto High on Fire as much as they did. Relapse proximity effect? Matt Pike & Co. certainly don't have the look, and their music is pretty pure metal. I mean, it's obviously good that lots of people are listening to them, but I never quite understood why High on Fire are the metal band that people that don't listen to metal listen to.

I agree that the new album is pretty consistent all the way through. It was grabbing my attention on some of the tracks on the second half (D II in particular). However, the highs weren't as high as on previous work, and a lot of it had the "been there, heard that" feeling for me. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, and it will probably grow on me, but I am not as of yet in the "it's their best album yet" contingent.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:42 (seventeen years ago)

(And I am a huge High On Fire fan, so I never thought I would be the one arguing this. Well, I love their last two albums. First one is a little bit too nebulous, although I only really listened to it once. Anyway, I should probably go listen to it again.)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:44 (seventeen years ago)

1st one has some of their greatest ever songs on it!! 2nd album is their weakest(and it's still pretty good!)

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 22 September 2007 03:01 (seventeen years ago)

High on Fire sound okay, I guess. I have nothing against them, sort of like I have nothing against Mastodon, but they have also never once killed me. (Neither band.) Promo of new (HoF) album is a bitch to listen to thanks the 99-snippet disease, but I have tried. (Might try with Coliseum someday, too.)

Didn't mind Krohm (pleasantly monochromatic and fleetingly ambient black metal on Moribund) or the Foreshadowing (occasionally pretty gloom-dirge metal with Andrew Eldritch type stentorian vocals on Candlelight), but I got the gist of them pretty quick, and seriously doubt I'll putt them on again.

Mouthus CD on Load sounds cool so far in metal- machine-music kinda way in the background; I haven't pulled it out of the player yet, at least. Cheater Pint CD on Kinger (whatever Kinger is) is catchy girl-sung hard rock masquerading as "alternative". Probably shouldn't mention it here, but I just did.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=49147680

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 13:08 (seventeen years ago)

(Actually, I probably like High on Fire more than I just implied. "Turk" and "Headhunter" and "DII" for sure jumped out at me when I tried to put their new one on last week. So maybe the rest will eventually grow on me, if I ever get the energy to play it all the way through. That worked with Baroness, when I finally got around to it, but I just hate Relapse's promo-protection tactics so much it makes me cranky. Probably shouldn't take it out on the bands, though.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 13:40 (seventeen years ago)

Got the new Blut Aus Nord yesterday. It sounds more like The Work... than Mort, but still very definitely them.

― unperson, Saturday, 22 September 2007 13:48 (seventeen years ago)

Eh, so now I'm thinking Mouthus's random radiator buzz might conceivably be somewhat useful as a hangover-type relaxant if I didn't have any Bruce Anderson or Karl Precoda (w/ Last Days of May) CDs in the house, but now it's kinda redundant actually.

And the more I listen to Cheater Pint, I can see why they'd be considered college rock rather than hard rock -- they're at least as close to, say, Looker or Ultrababyfat or Wide Right as to Killola or Damone or the Flairs. If you catch my drift. So okay, it was probably wrong to bring them up on this thread, I admit. Still like them, though. Best titles: "Self-Medication," "Three Sizes Too Small," "Visiting Hours (at the Federal Penitentiary)." Also they assure me that my drinking days are not over yet (whew!) and end with a fun hidden electronica track.

Back in metal land, I don't get the Sodom or Dodsferd albums (something to do with the singers, probably), but the second track on the Zoroaster album sounds kind of okay after all. Also, I realized this morning that I don't understand when new metal bands get compared to Motorhead anymore. (Probably people are comparing them to Motorhead after I stopped paying atttention to Motorhead, or something. Because they -- whoever "they" are -- ultimately never sound like old Motorhead.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 15:39 (seventeen years ago)

>I realized this morning that I don't understand when new metal bands get compared to Motorhead anymore. (Probably people are comparing them to Motorhead after I stopped paying atttention to Motorhead, or something. Because they -- whoever "they" are -- ultimately never sound like old Motorhead.)

Motörhead hasn't sounded like what you think Motörhead sounds like since about 1985, Chuck. It's kinda troubling that it took 22 years for you to come to this realization.

― unperson, Saturday, 22 September 2007 15:56 (seventeen years ago)

But it didn't! That's why I stopped listening to Motorhead in the first place, duh! Hell, I probably wrote about that 22 years ago, for crissakes. (But I still think of Motorhead -- in, like, my head -- as what they sounded like when I still loved them.) (And that's really not so weird, is it? When people say somebody sounds like the Rolling Stones or Elton John, it's often shorthand for "what they sounded like before they sucked".)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 17:05 (seventeen years ago)

(Not saying Motorhead suck. The odds are pretty good that Motorhead will never suck. But the odds are also pretty good that they'll never make any music again that I'll get very excited about, either.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 17:07 (seventeen years ago)

Or think of it this way: If somebody told a Ride the Lightning fan that a band sounded exactly like Metallica, and when the fan heard the band's record it turned out they sounded like St. Anger, the fan might be a little disapppointed, right?

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 17:15 (seventeen years ago)

And anyway, for whatever it's worth, Zoroaster are sounding rather awesome in general right now, not just track #2. Track # 3 kills! (My advance has no song titles, for some reason.) (Not sure if anybody ever compared Zoroaster to Motorhead or not. I sure wouldn't. But the review in Decibel did convince me to the give the album another chance. The Motorhead-comparison thing is just a phenomenon I've noticed in general in these past few weeks.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 22 September 2007 17:39 (seventeen years ago)

new motorhead double-live set sounds like motorhead.

― scott seward, Saturday, 22 September 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago)

I suppose it had to happen but now after post-rock, post-metal,doom-drone-shoegazer etc now Alcest, Ulver, Blut Aus Nord are being tagged as Post-BM.
Soon it will only be the sweatpant wearing death metal cookie monster crew who don't have this influence, (unless chuck knows of such a band)

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 22 September 2007 19:30 (seventeen years ago)

High On Fire have always kind of sounded like motorhead, it's nothing new.

Circus Maximus are pretty competent Dream Theater clones, if a bit gloomy, but there is one track on their new CD, Isolate, that absolutely blew me away. It's like, four tracks of gloominess, and then track five is this glorious slice of 80s soundtrack rock called "Arrival of Love." Still has the stolen Dream Theater riffs, but it's really synth-heavy and has this triumphant, soaring chorus. I don't know if it stands out more because it's surrounded by downbeat tracks, but I wish there was more on the CD that sounded like it. After the song ended, I just wanted more like it, which the band doesn't give me. Anyway, absolutely worth seeking that song out. I can't get enough of it.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 22 September 2007 21:53 (seventeen years ago)

Knowing how many good metal records I've missed in the last few months since I've checked in here kinda depresses me. But there's too much I want to listen to in general! Can someone lend me their brain for an immediate memory dump?

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 22 September 2007 21:58 (seventeen years ago)

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 22 September 2007 21:58 (seventeen years ago)

Tsk.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 22 September 2007 22:08 (seventeen years ago)

^ xxpost

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 22 September 2007 22:16 (seventeen years ago)

You don't have bluetooth capabilities
x-post

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 22 September 2007 22:21 (seventeen years ago)

haha

― roxymuzak, Saturday, 22 September 2007 23:14 (seventeen years ago)

So, who Decibel (Kory Grow to be precise) actually did compare Zoroaster to was Saint Vitus and "everything Wino." And yeah, I can hear that, though (as Kory also acknowledges) they seem to go way beyond that too. Track #6, especially, is this insane psych thing that starts out with a killer swinging riff and eventually there's this weird talkover part. Opening of track #3 actually kind of reminds me of the Stooges' "We Will Fall" (an art-dirge which, okay, I've always sort of thought was bullshit, but the similarity here doesn't bug me.)

Also, fwiw, haters of non-metal will be thrilled to hear I got burned out on that college-not-quite-hard-rock album by that co-ed Boston band Cheater Pint I was hyping yesterday. Really wanted to like them (they seem to have a healthy respect for beer, for one thing), but Lauran O'Neal's vocals are always in the same shouty mode, every song, and the guitars and drums never quite kick in. A shame; they seem like cool people (who, yeah, probably didn't really belong here in the first place, but once I bring them up I gotta achieve closure somehow. So sue me.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 23 September 2007 13:14 (seventeen years ago)

after reading adrien's review, i don't know if i even want to break open the plastic wrap on the iced earth album i got. i will be listening to the new moribund stuff though: krohm, dodsferd, satan's host. and maybe the new atreyu. i don't think i like atreyu though. we shall see.

― scott seward, Sunday, 23 September 2007 13:34 (seventeen years ago)

Even people who like Atreyu don't like the new album. I wouldn't bother if I was you.

I know there's a copy of that Zoroaster album around here somewhere; I gotta find it.

The best band on the Machine Head/Arch Enemy bill last night was Sanctity. They play a kind of power thrash with occasionally slightly stoner-ish grooves, and the vocalist has this great gutsy roar. Plus, they do lots of back-to-back guitar soloing and hair-spinning. They kinda sound like what Fireball Ministry's rhetoric implied they would sound like, which is why Fireball Ministry were such a huge disappointment to me when I actually heard them. Anyway, I bought Sanctity's CD on the way out the door, even though I could have waited till Monday and had Roadrunner send me one.

― unperson, Sunday, 23 September 2007 14:03 (seventeen years ago)

since i'm always late on everything:

new sigh: sounds like they're trying to do imaginary sonicscape again but the production doesn't work as well. keyboards sound like they're just shoved in there. or like the kid downstairs is playing along. alright.

shining - V: boring... epically boring. i'll never get why people like these dudes. tweedly and melodic and not 'depressing' or 'suicidal' or whatever.

abigail demo compilation: pre-'street metal', pre-motorhead/venom/NME obsession. sodom and bathory covers, surprise! pretty much only essential if you're the kind of idiot that buys everything they put out, which i am. except the live stuff.

nadja - touched: dude, dynamics. change, dude. some variation. some different sounds. something that isn't just the same lycia-vs.-doom-metal fuzz riff shit over and over. i'd really, really like to hear nadja just go full-on projekt goth at this point and hang the try-hard heaviness.

lethal aggression - some long, obscene title: new jersey retarded crossover! pretty good, actually, wisely sticks to the more hardcore side of things overall. dumb song titles without dumb songs to accompany them! not a classic for the ages but fodder for the car stereo.

horna - aainia yossa (with a lot of umlauts): hey, these songs are long!

dodsferd - cursing your will to live: kind of disappointing after the inexplicable punk-black metal + long, miserable songs thing he did on the last album. pretty orthodox, kinda dull. nice drum sound. someone told me the kampf side project he did is really good.

circle - panic: oh, i get it! kosmische music and metal-punk, neither very interesting. good one!

korperschwache - a monument of skulls for the clueless cowboy: if you like godflesh and skullflower, this guy does too and you should probably get high together. one really long song that erases the memory of how tinkly and shiny the last jesu was. i know this guy and i'm pretty sure he would happily fill any kind of media with hideous, droning noise and thumping beats, so this being a 3" cdr it's actually fairly concise.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 23 September 2007 14:59 (seventeen years ago)

also, i wish i had known zoroaster didn't suck back when tower had their album on clearance for $1. oops.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 23 September 2007 14:59 (seventeen years ago)

i like the shining album!

― scott seward, Sunday, 23 September 2007 15:16 (seventeen years ago)

Iced Earth totally phoned it in on the new one. Or Schaffer to be specific...people really get on Ripper's case, but I think he does a good job with the material he's given. The songs themselves are just so lazy. That said, though, "The Clouding" and "Ten Thousand Strong" are pretty cool.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 23 September 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago)

New Darkthrone album is kinda awesome - these guys have been taking the piss for several albums now (if not longer), but it's more complicated than that

"Canadian Metal" = song title of the year

― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 03:52 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, that Canadian Metal song is so bizarre. Have they even been to Canada? Are they taking the piss? Doesn't really sound Canadian. Anvil sounds Canadian.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 24 September 2007 04:10 (seventeen years ago)

it is response to this, of that i am sure. fenriz may think he is jester making hihi but will he be laughing when he tastes the blade. i may spare him yet if he finally releases the split ep Darkthrone recorded with Byzantum, "Stinkers of the Apocalypse" (stinkers referring to stench of the dead you must understand).

― Vas Djifrens, Monday, 24 September 2007 04:23 (seventeen years ago)

Am I mad, or is this new Dillinger Escape Plan really friggin' good? Heh, I can see so many people hating this, it's so audacious and MOR at the same time. "Black Bubblegum" is my new favourite song. Falsetto! Groove! Unbelievable. I must be losing my mind.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 24 September 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago)

>Am I mad, or is this new Dillinger Escape Plan really friggin' good?

Dude, it's ridiculously awesome. Potential Album of the Year.

In other news, I got another assload of Metal Mind/Roadrunner reissues today, including four CDs by Ratos de Porão, two by The Great Kat, three by Gang Green, three or four (I forget) by Bulldozer, and a 4CD box by Cerebral Fix. Oh, and I got the new Jesu EP, which I promptly gave away to a co-worker.

― unperson, Monday, 24 September 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago)

four CDs by Ratos de Porão, two by The Great Kat,

This combination makes me so happy.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 September 2007 23:59 (seventeen years ago)

hey unperson (i forget who you actually are, sorry), which bulldozer cds? EARLY bulldozer? cause i need that stuff bad. maxell UR90s can't hold up forever...

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago)

I like Whiskey Time.

And I am durnk.

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 04:31 (seventeen years ago)

Former CARCASS guitarist Mike Amott (currently in ARCH ENEMY) has revealed that the legendary U.K. death metal band may reunite for a tour.
In an exclusive interview with Sweden's Close-Up magazine (web site), Amott said that he and guitarist/vocalist Bill Steer secretly met in Halmstad, Sweden last year to rehearse old CARCASS material. A couple of months later, they were joined by vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker for another practice session. ARCH ENEMY's Daniel Erlandsson was handling the drum duties at these rehearsals.
"It sounded really good and it was a lot of fun," said Amott. "We rehearsed pretty much the entire 'Heartwork' album [1993]."
The original plan was for CARCASS to play several festival shows this summer, but that fell through.
"I hope we can do some reunion shows at a later date," explained Amott. "It would be a lot of fun and I'd love to play the songs live again. Unfortunately, it can't happen until 18 months from now, at the earliest, because ARCH ENEMY has a totally full schedule. It's different for the other guys who don't work as actively on their music careers."
Have you discussed writing new songs?
"To write something new seems unnecessary. People still only want to hear the old stuff," said Amott.
After the "Heartwork" tour, Mike Amott left CARCASS. The band then released the appropriately titled album "Swansong" (1996).
What did you think of "Swansong" when it came out?
"I wasn't a fan of it," Mike replied. "But we actually rehearsed a couple of songs from it last year and they sounded pretty good. I think the production partly ruined it. It sounded sparse and basically all the extreme stuff that characterized CARCASS was gone. It felt boring."
Have the other members of CARCASS heard ARCH ENEMY?
"Jeff has flat-out said that he thinks we suck," Amott stated. "Bill is not into that kind of music. I think the guys left the metal world as it was in the middle of the '90s and haven't thought about it since. It seems they think it's a little bizarre that I'm still doing the metal thing full-on."
Original CARCASS drummer Ken Owen suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1999 and was hospitalized for ten months, slowly emerging from a coma.
"Ken is doing fine today, but he's not a metal drummer," Amott explained. "He's not capable of playing entire concerts with an extreme band like CARCASS. I still hope that he, if we do a tour, will travel with us and play a couple of songs each night."
Earache Records will re-release the CARCASS back catalogue with bonus material, including extra DVDs with brand new interviews and other footage.
"Jeff has negotiated with Earache and been able to make the label pay us a lot of old royalties," Amott revealed. "Of course money means something, but it would be great fun to go around and play songs that truly are classics in a genre. I've never played stuff like that to people before. I mean, songs that somehow have been soundtracks to people's lives. It would be fun to dig up the old corpse again."
Close-Up's new issue with ARCH ENEMY on the cover is out now.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 14:28 (seventeen years ago)

ORAKLE Signs With HOLY RECORDS
http://tinyurl.com/296fge

French progressive-black metal band

Orakle
http://www.myspace.com/orakleband

they sound very inspired by Arcturus !

― djmartian, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 15:25 (seventeen years ago)

Listening to the new Jesu EP. It's not bad, actually. Guest female vocals on one song, but I already lost the press release so I have no idea who she is or if her presence should impress me.

― unperson, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 15:57 (seventeen years ago)

Jarboe?

― rockapads, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 23:16 (seventeen years ago)

tina yothers

― latebloomer, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 23:24 (seventeen years ago)

jarboe is the correct answer,though yothers is funnier.

― drone/a/sore, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 05:06 (seventeen years ago)

so i made my top 20 list for Decibel's year-end thing. i did not vote for Decibel's number one album of the year by Pig Destroyer (just a guess!). i am still reeling from putting together a year-end list in september! but what are you gonna do. they have schedules to keep. i haven't heard the new high on fire or witchcraft either. and all my CDs are in the old school bus next to our new house, so i know i forgot lots of stuff. and apparently i sent my list in two days late so i had to make it fast. in any case, i think it's fairly representative of where i was this year. what i was digging. i listened to a TON of new black metal and retro-thrash this year, but hardly any of what i listened to made my list in the end. go figure. after my first ten, list placement is completely arbitrary. i could very easily make a top 50 list of stuff i enjoyed this year. there was no end to the great music out there.

1 – Caina – Mourner (Profound Lore)

2 – Grave In The Sky – Cutlery Hits China: English For The Hearing Impaired (Heart & Crossbone)

3 – Dodheimsgard – Supervillain Outcast (The End)

4 – Moonsorrow – Viides Luku: Havitetty (Unruly Sounds/The End)

5 – Necrodemon – Ice Fields of Hyperion (Open Grave)

6 – Sun Of Nothing - …in the weak and the wounded (Venerate Industries)

7 – Ulver – Shadows Of The Sun (The End)

8 – Procer Veneficus – A Summerhaze Array For August Nights (God Is Myth/Ars Magna)

9 – Amok – Necrospiritual Deathcore (Planet Satan Revolution)

10 – Novembers Doom – The Novella Reservoir (The End)

11 – Blood of the Black Owl – S/T (Bindrune)

12 – Virgin Black – Requiem – Mezzo Forte (The End)

13 – Alcest – souvenirs d’un autre monde (Profound Lore)

14 – Portal – Outre (Profound Lore)

15 – Deathspell Omega – Fas-Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum (Norma Evangelium Diaboli)

16 – Tharaphita – Iidsetel Sunkjatel Radadel (Nailboard)

17 – Metsatoll – Terast Mis Hangund Me Hinge 10218 (Nailboard)

18 – Earthless – Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (Tee Pee)

19 – Baroness – The Red Album (Relapse)

20 – Ensiferum – Victory Songs (Spinefarm)

― scott seward, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 14:33 (seventeen years ago)

Only three of those (Deathspell, Baroness, Ulver) would have made my Top Twenty, but I've only heard three or four of the others. And only Baroness would make my Top Ten. But that's why your list is for Decibel and mine will be for Metal Edge.

― unperson, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 14:37 (seventeen years ago)

"project Trist is melancholic musick about sadness, negativity, dark spheres in my mind, solitude, emptiness feeling, reveries, self-destruction and pain"

These guys from the Czech Republic have released four (!) full-length CDs in 2007. Stiny was recorded last year, though. It has four songs which sound the same: variations on Burzum chord progressions to an upbeat motorik tempo. Not really depressive, more like zone-out, endless music.

(Official web)

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 16:36 (seventeen years ago)

Fricking David Fricke gave the new Down album four stars in Rolling Stone. I'm pretty surprised... not that the album is good, but that it even got reviewed in that magazine. I'm a little skeptical about his claims that it's the hard rock album of 2007, since I'm not sure that he listens to all that much hard rock, but it's still pretty cool.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 19:14 (seventeen years ago)

He gave Blessed Black Wings a really good review back in '05.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 19:30 (seventeen years ago)

That's because it's a really good album! Yeah, occasionally he will review something surprising, so maybe he has an appreciation of hard rock/metal that he can't often indulge in the pages of the magazine he writes for. He did give that Amplified Heat EP a positive notice earlier this year as well.

I think I understood the High on Fire better the second time through... it seems like it's their weird art record. I mean, they aren't veering too far off in that direction, but all the little instrumental interludes give it a weird vibe, like they're trying to make it about the overall experience rather than about the individual songs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the thing that I like about High on Fire is their individual songs. Which maybe feeds into my skepticism about the consistency of the album. It's a good listen all the way through, but only a few songs stand out. I still love the production, though. It makes me feel warmer just listening to it. I wonder which grunge producer they're going to get to produce their next album. Butch Vig?

New Slough Feg rocks in the same way that all their albums do. I like the bluesy path they take on a few tracks, especially on the Black Sabbathy "The Spoils."

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 19:40 (seventeen years ago)

I like how HOF mixed it up a little bit. It does sound fuckin awesome, and the DVD that came with my copy about the "making of" is pretty good. Pike comes across as some sort of idiot savant metal genius (I'm being complimentary).

Their next producer will be the rythym guitarist from Candlebox.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 20:17 (seventeen years ago)

I think "Cyclopean Scape" makes the album essential, all by itself. And while the Down record is good, it's not great.

― unperson, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 20:25 (seventeen years ago)

Here's the list I submitted to Decibel. Not as esoteric as Scott's, but that's me, I tend to drift toward the more obvious stuff. Off Scott's list, near-misses were Moonsorrow, Ulver, Portal, and Earthless. This year has been way too good to encapsulate it all in 20 titles!

1. Alcest – Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde
2. Pig Destroyer – Phantom Limb
3. Baroness – The Red Album
4. Jesu – Conqueror
5. Neurosis – Given to the Rising
6. Between the Buried and Me – Colors
7. Machine Head – The Blackening
8. High on Fire – Death is This Communion
9. Clutch – From Beale Street to Oblivion
10. Caina – Mourner
11. Witchcraft – The Alchemist
12. Akercocke - Antichrist
13. Watain – Sworn to the Dark
14. The Angelic Process – Weighing Souls With Sand
15. The Howling Wind – Pestilence and Peril
16. Cephalic Carnage – Xenosapien
17. Hacride – Amoeba
18. Rwake – Voices of Omens
19. Municipal Waste – The Art of Partying
20. 3 Inches of Blood – Fire Up the Blades

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 21:40 (seventeen years ago)

Is this Clutch as good as the last one (Robot Hive)? I haven't heard this, but there last couple have been great.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 21:50 (seventeen years ago)

The new Clutch has better production than Robot Hive, and the blues thing is even more consistent in the band's sound...on Robot Hive, it was sort of off and on.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 21:52 (seventeen years ago)

Just listening to a new Novembre track (Deorbit) from their upcoming album (Blue) on totalrock radio.

Very impressive Progressive Dark Metal, more of an Opeth influence

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s1037355.jpg

― djmartian, Friday, 28 September 2007 18:48 (seventeen years ago)

My prog-tech geek bone is throbbing big time today...got the new Behold...The Arctopus in the mail, which features guest guitar from Mick Barr on one track, and guest keyboards from Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater on another track. As if that wasn't enough, I also got the debut CD by Blotted Science, The Machinations Of Dementia, which is an instrumental prog/tech/death metal trio of guitarist Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Spastic Ink, Gordian Knot), bassist Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) and drummer Charlie Zeleny of, yes, Behold...The Arctopus. (Apparently, he was the third drummer to join this group, after Chris Adler and Derek Roddy both bailed.

― unperson, Monday, 1 October 2007 19:48 (seventeen years ago)

That new Rosetta is terrific, a big step up from The Galilean Satellites. And Krohm, wow...love it when a CD I know next to nothnig about comes along and impresses me as much as this one did.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:09 (seventeen years ago)

I'll add my voice to the chorus of "New Ulver is awesome." Got it last Friday, haven't stopped listening to it yet.

― John Justen, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:26 (seventeen years ago)

Rosetta album is brilliant.

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:45 (seventeen years ago)

Sticking to albums (non-reissues) that actually seem to have been released in 2007, and to albums that I can actually imagine being reviewed in Decibel, and to albums I actually got around to listening to, if I had (theoretically) been asked by said magazine to submit a Top 20 this year, as of today, it probably would have looked something like this, more or less:

1. Trigger Renegade – Destroy Your Mind (Black Top Fade)
2. Necrodemon – Ice Fields Of Hyperion (Open Grave)
3. George Brigman – Rags In Skull (Bona Fide)
4. American Dog – Hard (Colonial Canine)
5. Witchcraft – The Alchemist (Rise Above)
6. Kosmos – Kosmos (The End)
7. Hardingrock - Grimen (Candlelight)
8. Mustasch – Latest Version Of The Truth (Regain)
9. Baroness – The Red Album (Relapse)
10. Kekal – The Habit Of Fire (Open Grave)
11. Korpiklaani – Tervaskanto (Napalm)
12. Moonsorrow – V: Havitetty (Unruly Sounds)
13. Lengsel – The Kiss The Hope (Whirlwind)
14. Cruachan – The Morrigan’s Call (Candlelight)
15. DHG/Dodheimsgard – Supervillain Oulast (Moonfog/The End)
16. Manes – How The World Came To An End (Candlelight)
17. The Hidden Hand – The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote (Southern Lord)
18. Minsk – The Ritual Fires Of Abandonment (Relapse)
19. Litmus – Planetfall (Candlelight)
20. Zoroaster - Dog Magic (Terminal Doom)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 02:28 (seventeen years ago)

I almost forgot about those albums by Kosmos and Litmus, both of which are excellent.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 04:07 (seventeen years ago)

sooooooooooooo, evile are just slayer for people who don't think that slayer sound enough like slayer anymore? okay, i can hang with that.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 14:12 (seventeen years ago)

I really, really like that Evile disc. Not only a well-done thrash homage, but extremely catchy as well.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 16:03 (seventeen years ago)

I don't make top 20s of anything, and I certianly don't make them in September, but here's 10 2007 metal albums as of 3 October:

1. Rotting Christ: Theogonia
2. Deathspell Omega: Fas...
3. In This Moment: Beautiful Tragedy
4. Blut Aus Nord: Odinist
5. Orthodox: Gran Poder
6. Candlemass: King of the Grey Islands
7. Dark Tranquility: Fiction
8. Dimmu Borgir: In Sorte Diaboli
9. Secrets of the Moon: Antithesis
10. Samael: Solar Soul

But that's not counting these, which I've listened to twice or less, but which are pretty likely to displace something:

HIM: Venus Doom
Nightwish: Dark Passion Play

and I have some other new ones I haven't listened to at all yet (Nemesea, Wolves in the Throne Room, Xasthur...).

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 21:39 (seventeen years ago)

i haven't given the xasthur a good listen, but i like what i've heard. i need to play that tomorrow. and the new blut aus nord! which i only received today. looking forward to that. i liked that rotting christ album quite a bit. it didn't make my top 20, but it would have made my top 25 or 30. if i can get my act together, maybe i will make a top 50 list and start another thread for year-end metal lists.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 22:25 (seventeen years ago)

that way glenn and martian will have room to work their darke majik.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 22:26 (seventeen years ago)

hey guys i got the new high on fire! i know you're all already bored of it by now, but it's fucking exciting to me. i do think endino's production feels a little flat compared to blessed black wings, at least in the guitars. but the drums sound good, and the little instrumental bits are a new wrinkle. i can't wait to listen to it at unhealthy volumes in the car.

also, new om. good. on the one hand you kind of think, "oh, this again?" but then, if you just approach them as playing doom ragas - improvisations around a handful of notes in a certain key - it works.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 4 October 2007 09:31 (seventeen years ago)

2 new streaming tracks from Alchemist on the Relapse site requires Windows Media Player

Six albums in and Australia's Alchemist proves to still be on the cutting edge of metallic experimentation. The band incorporates psychedelic flourishes, Gothic melodrama, industrial-strength electronics and worldly mysticism but still remains as progressive as ever.

Killing Joke influenced progressive tribal experi-metal

from this album titled tripsis:

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s943298.jpg

― djmartian, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:19 (seventeen years ago)

5. Orthodox: Gran Poder

Was out a few years ago. Perhaps you mean the new album?

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:21 (seventeen years ago)

regarding om:

if you just approach them as playing doom ragas - improvisations around a handful of notes in a certain key - it works.

i like this idea, "doom ragas"

― Mark Clemente, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago)

spot on in regards to them

― Mark Clemente, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:24 (seventeen years ago)

i loved that alchemist album astralasia(??). i can't remember the title. i think i was the only one who loved it.

― scott seward, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:26 (seventeen years ago)

i was gonna buy the high on fire vinyl today, but someone already bought it. if they get another copy in at the record store i'll get it.

― scott seward, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:26 (seventeen years ago)

"Organasm" is the Alchemist album I own and it's great. It's funny because I randomly put a track in a compilation I made for the car, and when it plays at first I can't usually tell who's that amazing song by. Then I realize and wonder why I don't play that album more often.

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:54 (seventeen years ago)

Well, I meant Gran Poder. I reserve the right to use US domestic release-dates for eligibility when I hadn't heard of the band before that, and the "reissue" is still the band's latest album at the time.

But thanks for alerting me to the new Orthodox album, out next week!

― glenn mcdonald, Thursday, 4 October 2007 19:15 (seventeen years ago)

That new Alchemist is pretty good. Really, really obvious with the Killing Joke imitation (more than ever, I think), but I like KJ, so it works for me.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 4 October 2007 19:41 (seventeen years ago)

I liked an Alchemist from a few years ago, but not enough to seek out the new one. Good to know Orthodox have another one coming out, too, though their band name still makes me laugh, given what they sound like. I mean, is there a single rule of How To Be A Proper Doom Band they've ever even considered bending, let alone breaking?

― unperson, Thursday, 4 October 2007 19:55 (seventeen years ago)

I thought it was more a Prong imitation (who may be a .... etc)

Good to know Orthodox have another one coming out, too, though their band name still makes me laugh, given what they sound like. I mean, is there a single rule of How To Be A Proper Doom Band they've ever even considered bending, let alone breaking?

You haven't heard the new album then I see.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, 4 October 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago)

is the new dillinger available online?

― bstep, Thursday, 4 October 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago)

Not seen it.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, 4 October 2007 20:21 (seventeen years ago)

Wolves in the Throne Room

I kinda like these guys. Sort of Sisters of Mercy thespian goth, but with wackier and more melodic Yurropean accents and more hard-rockish guitar riffs.

I like the Alchemist album cover and am intrigued by all the Killing Joke comparisons, but haven't gotten around to playing it due to the snippet conundrum.

Can anybody explain October File to me? I'm getting the idea they might have some Killing Joke in them, too. (Is Killing Joke suddenly a big metal influence or something? Does anybody else remember when Sisters of Mercy came out, and people compared them to Killing Joke? Didn't think so.) Also wondering if October File's name might signal an actual Die Kreuzen bent, or just a coincidence.

― xhuxk, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:15 (seventeen years ago)

Wait!!! Stop presses! I was totally wrong. I do not like Wolves in the Throne Room (assuming I ever got around to listening to their CD, which is...around here somewhere, I think. I'm pretty sure I got it in the mail.) The album I do like, which I keep thinking is Wolves in the Throne Room thanks to the wolves on its cover, and which sounds like Sisters of Mercy but a lot better as I described in the previous post, is The Wolves Go Hunt Their Pray by Vision Bleak (on Napalm.) That one is good! And I really like the Little Red Riding Hood medieval Advent calendar nightmare feel of its CD cover (reminds me a little of the cover of the first Die Kreuzen album. Just a little, though,)

― xhuxk, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:25 (seventeen years ago)

Also, said wolves hunt "Prey", not "Pray." Duh.

― xhuxk, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:28 (seventeen years ago)

>Can anybody explain October File to me? I'm getting the idea they might have some Killing Joke in them, too.

I haven't listened to the record yet, but I believe the publicist told me Jaz Coleman actually guests on the record.

― unperson, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:29 (seventeen years ago)

I really like the new Wolves in the Throne Room. Ordered it the other day after one listen. The first one didn't do much for me, except for the female vocals in the one song.

― rockapads, Friday, 5 October 2007 16:47 (seventeen years ago)

new Mos Generator album on Small Stone is good stoner stuff. if you like that sort of thing.

― scott seward, Friday, 5 October 2007 22:52 (seventeen years ago)

can i just take the time to say that arclight, tee pee, and small stone have been rocking me quite nicely the last couple of years after what seemed like a drought of ho-hum kyuss rip-offs and failed "boogie" acts that made me snore for years.

― scott seward, Friday, 5 October 2007 23:00 (seventeen years ago)

In the mailbag today: Alchemist, Steve Moore, The Warlocks, Amplified Heat, and Agua de Annique.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 5 October 2007 23:11 (seventeen years ago)

i think i was always one of the few warlocks fans on ilm. they were always better live than on album though. three guitars and two drummers playing wall of feedback spacemen three jamz. really loudly. i dig that action.

― scott seward, Friday, 5 October 2007 23:19 (seventeen years ago)

1st album was great, never cared for what came after. I'd like to hear the Steve Moore, that's one of the guys from Zombi.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 5 October 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago)

I knew I'd like the Agua de Annique, but I didn't think I'd like it as much as I do. Much of it really feels like a continuation of the last Gathering album. "Witnesses" is my fave.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 6 October 2007 00:03 (seventeen years ago)

Oh, man, the new Nightwish is fantastic. "Amaranth" just took over from Dark Tranquillity's "Misery's Crown" as my favorite metal song of the year. I was really worried about Tarja's absence, vocally, because I'm incredibly sensitive to individual voices, but Anette sounds great, and I think her marginally less-mannered delivery maybe even gives the music a little extra energy rather than compromising its drama. Or else they just compensate in music and arrangement so abundantly for any dropoff in vocal drama that I just don't care.

And just for the record, the label "orchestral versions" on the bonus disc is not well worded. As far as I can tell, they are exactly the album versions minus the vocals. "Karaoke versions", in other words. For a universe in which karaoke clubs have Nightwish songs. And, presumbly, in which I would have a prayer of singing any of them...

― glenn mcdonald, Saturday, 6 October 2007 01:06 (seventeen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ydEYaMQVM&mode=related&search=without%20god%20murder%20circo%20volador%20mexico

― drone/a/sore, Saturday, 6 October 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago)

I saw The Warlocks open for Sisters of Mercy, and was very impressed, which is why I requested the album. I popped it in earlier today, and didn't get very far, but I think I just wasn't in the mood. The Amplified Heat was pretty decent, lots of fuzz but no memorable songs as of the first listen. I was much more impressed with the Alchemist album, 99 tracks and all. I got a little Fear Factory, some Killing Joke, and a LOT of Bloodstar. But hey, I like all three of those bands a lot, so I'm happy. Great music to clean my bathroom too! And yes, Relapse can use that quote in their press material if they want.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 6 October 2007 01:19 (seventeen years ago)

not quite sure what happened w/this.

― Pashmina, Saturday, 6 October 2007 10:02 (seventeen years ago)

aha! it's fixed.

― Pashmina, Saturday, 6 October 2007 10:03 (seventeen years ago)

oops, meant to post this here, not on rolling metal 2007 thread #1 (which some dork revived this week):

October File turn out to be really ridiculous in their shticky obsession with torture and setting people on fire and "I hate you so much!" and "There! Is! No! Religion!", but on the other hand their songs may well be as comprehensible (voicewise and wordwise) as any "real metal" I've heard all year, and yeah, the sound is Killing Joke all the way. But even within that KJ frame, they work in plenty of variety sonics-wise and tempo-wise, everything from fast oi! street-punk Killing Joke (the first couple cuts) to depressed morose space-rock Bloodstar Killing Joke (the beautiful last cut -- and I actually really like how they stretch out and let the guitars etc. build up in both that last one ["So Poor"] and "Friendly Fire." They're surprisingly catchy, too, and have some really cool rumbling drum parts, e.g., at the start of "Hallowed Be Thy Army." And seeing how Jaz Coleman's on board (though it's not clear to me how often), it all actually makes me wonder whether I've maybe been missing the boat by ignoring pretty much everything Killing Joke themsekves have done since their third album a quarter-century ago or so. Doubt I'll go back and check, though (sorry Alex in NYC).(I've got a greatest hits-ish CD by them around here somewhere, and I swear there's a big dropoff after the early stuff. Can't imagine they've made an album as good as this October File CD since I stopped listening.)

Meanwhile, lots of very neat proto-metal psych stuff on this compilation Blow Your Cool: 20 Prog/Psych Assaults From the UK and Europe on UK label Psychic Circle. At least two cuts (the ones by The Foundations and Bedlam -- hey, didn't me and Scott talk about them upthread somewhere?) have"Children of the Grave"-type heavy rhythm underpinnings. The Rattles' "Devils' On the Loose" and Cosmic Dealer's The Scene" also count as prehistoric metal, as far as my ears can tell (and probably some other cuts I didn't notice yet.) Some of it's too twee, though.

-- xhuxk, Saturday, October 6, 2007 8:05 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

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let the guitars etc. build up in both that last one ["So Poor"] and "Friendly Fire."

Actually I meant cut # 8, "A Sun That Never Sets" here, not "Friendly Fire." The latter is fine, but the former's where they stretch to almost 8 minutes.

-- xhuxk, Saturday, October 6, 2007 8:08 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last KJ album, Hosannas From The Basement Of Hell, was pretty good. The one before that, the one with Dave Grohl on drums, was massively overrated (because Dave Grohl was on drums) but also decent. And apparently Coleman performs on a song or two on that October File disc, and produced the whole thing.

-- unperson, Saturday, October 6, 2007 8:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

― xhuxk, Saturday, 6 October 2007 20:51 (seventeen years ago)

I feel like The Warlocks would really benefit from ditching the singer. The music is nice, but the vocalist has a thin, annoying voice. Really takes away from getting into it.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 6 October 2007 23:40 (seventeen years ago)

The Steve Moore CD is pretty cool. Very 80s synth movie soundtrack, Goblin/John Carpenter/Vangelis/Tangerine Dream-style (and yes, I know they differ somewhat in their individual styles, but you know what I mean). Brigadier Herman would probably like it. Chuck might find it OK background music, and that's pretty much what it is. Nothing to really hold your attention enough to sit down and listen to it actively, but it's good to listen to while doing something else.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 7 October 2007 03:58 (seventeen years ago)

I am really loving the new Arch Enemy. I've only listened to it once, but I think it might make my top 10 this year. They really nailed the balance between the brutality and the melody on this one, and it's definitely Angela's best vocal performance. The one thing holding it back is that there wasn't any song as immediate as "Nemesis" or "Dead Eyes See No Future," although "Blood on Your Hands" comes close. Still, it's a fantastic and consistent listen all the way through. It's kind of funny. Out of the Gothenburg bands, I started off loving In Flames the most, since they were the first that I heard, and then when they started to suck I started to like Soilwork more. Then Soilwork lost the path. Now, Arch Enemy are my favorites, since they've yet to disappoint me. Hopefully this won't mean that their next album is crap, but at least it's going to be a few years before that one comes out.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 8 October 2007 03:55 (seventeen years ago)

And yes, I'm fickle, but man -- I was really looking forward to Reroute to Remain, and that thing just blew. Then Soundtrack to Your Escape came out, and it was even worse. They just damaged my enthusiasm for the band. As for Soilwork, Killing the Drama wasn't bad, it just wasn't nearly as good as Figure Number Five.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 8 October 2007 03:57 (seventeen years ago)

Call me nuts, but I still like Reroute to Remain a lot.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 8 October 2007 08:18 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I like Reroute, too.

When I saw Arch Enemy a couple of weeks ago, they only played one new song, and I can't remember which one it was, but it fit seamlessly with the rest of their set. The new album is definite Top Ten material for me.

― unperson, Monday, 8 October 2007 14:26 (seventeen years ago)

haha just picked up new DHG and DAMN

― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 8 October 2007 15:09 (seventeen years ago)

But I actually really like the idea of the new Between the Buried and Me record, Colors: metal jam-band jazz!

― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 8 October 2007 15:10 (seventeen years ago)

Hey, D5: did you get the package I sent?

― unperson, Monday, 8 October 2007 15:26 (seventeen years ago)

yes, as remarked above. will get secret stuff back to you by end of week.

― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 8 October 2007 16:34 (seventeen years ago)

Reroute has three really good songs on it, but the rest of it is thoroughly underwhelming. All you really need is the Trigger EP. I mean, it's still In Flames, so it has its charm, but I was just really disappointed when it came out.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 8 October 2007 20:10 (seventeen years ago)

yea soilwork's figure number five was soo good. it was actually one of the first metal albums i ever got into.....i wasn't sure if i was biased just because of that...glad to hear someone else liked it too. the song 'light the torch' or something like that was so epic.

― bstep, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 02:49 (seventeen years ago)

I didn't really pay much attention to Natural Born Chaos when it came out, but I was metal director at my college radio station when Figure Number Five came out. I remember popping it into my stereo, and just getting blown away -- melodic and catchy, but with serious balls. I'd say it's about as close as I've ever heard to my ideal metal sound.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 03:10 (seventeen years ago)

New albums not really doing it for me:

Agua De Annique (I think track #8 or so rocked. But then I haven't been a big fan of recent Gathering albums, either.)
Alchemist (really wanted to like this. But to my ears October File do Killing Joke==and Bloodstar--a lot more memorably.)
Arch Enemy
Bring Me The Horizon (really hated this one a lot)
Neurosis (I think I've reached the saturation point.)

New albums I'm more likely to wind up liking:

Burning Saviours
Limbonic Art (sound like Voivod sometimes)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 03:16 (seventeen years ago)

And oh yeah, Sear Bliss sounded at least tolerable, I guess, but I'm pretty sure I didn't have their CD on for very long.

And like the Magic Markers album a lot more than I expected -- at least in their less wallflowery moments; i.e., basically when they are doing mid '80s Sonic Youth tributes (and I figured out that's what they were doing before I noticed that Lee Renaldo produced the album.) No suprise that they sound like horseshit noise shlock; very surprised by how often I actually like their horseshit noise schlock. Favorite songs so far are "Body Rot," "Taste," "Circle," and especially the nicely clanky "Four/The Ballad of Harry Angstrom."

Favorite Limbonic Art songs so far (= their most Voivodish ones I've noticed) are "Lyncanthropic Tales" and "Unleashed From Hell." Usually they are only Voivodish for parts of the songs though, sadly.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 03:33 (seventeen years ago)

Eh, the more I listen, never mind: The Magic Markers' horseschlock quotient (and indie introversion quotient) and Limbonic Art's death-metal ugliness quotient overshadow what I like about them, so they're not going to cut it. (And the Magic Markers girl's PJ Harvey imitations aren't as good as Kelly Clarkson's PJ Harvey imitations, either.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 12:26 (seventeen years ago)

Now playing: Treponem Pal's s/t debut. I got a Metal Mind box by these guys (their three studio albums, a previously unreleased live album from 1992, and a DVD of all their videos plus some live footage) and decided today was the day to investigate them. So far, they rule. Had I heard them at the same time I first heard Godflesh, I would have chosen these guys in a heartbeat.

― unperson, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:03 (seventeen years ago)

Newsflash: Blut Aus Nord is actually kind of dull.

― Dimension 5ive, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:06 (seventeen years ago)

I had a treponem pal cd in the early 90s. It was quite good.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago)

Treponem Pal were awesome indeed. Chuck and I have always loved that band. They never really made a dent over hear though. They were also smart enough to have Franz from Young Gods and Roli Mosimann produce their albums.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:11 (seventeen years ago)

Excess & Overdrive was the album.
xpost
I bought it because I was into The Young Gods actually.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:13 (seventeen years ago)

i just went to their wiki and saw this:

"Treponem Pal is returning with a new album, due in late 2007. The new album will feature Paul Raven (famous from Ministry and Prong) on bass, and Ted Parsons (famous from Swans and Prong) on drums."

i can't say that i was much of a Prong fan, but Ted was/is my fave Swans drummer.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:13 (seventeen years ago)

Has Raven been written out of KJ history? hehe

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:21 (seventeen years ago)

i liked when ted was doing godflesh stuff too. forgot about that. made sense.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:22 (seventeen years ago)

i can't listen to this new helloween album right now. it's hurting my head.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:22 (seventeen years ago)

Had a Treponem Pal original tape, it's been years since I last played it. I recall the excellent cover of Kraftwerk "Radioactivity".

― no-nonsense, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 18:33 (seventeen years ago)

Ha, that new Helloween sure is goofy.

And it's weird, I agree with everything Decibel's merciless review of the new Nightwish says, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the bombastic silliness of it all. "The Poet and the Pendulum" is some of the most self-absorbed, narcissistic claptrap I have ever heard. And yet on some trite level, I dig it. "Run away, run away..."

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 21:07 (seventeen years ago)

It's the same guy that wrote the In This Moment review! Does he just deliberately choose these CDs so he can rag on them? It's clear that he wasn't going to give them a chance from the start. Seems really unprofessional, if you ask me.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 21:41 (seventeen years ago)

>Seems really unprofessional, if you ask me.

At Decibel? You don't say.

― unperson, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 23:27 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, but sometimes being "professional" isn't as entertaining as ragging on bands who deserve to be ragged on (or even some bands that don't deserve it, actually). (I'm not saying that's necessarily a case with Nightwish, though, who I have nothing against.) Anyway, part of what makes Decibel a great magazine is that they don't place so much boring emphasis on profesionalism (even if sometimes I wished they ragged on bands they like, instead).

Strangely, the only Treponem Pal CD on my shelf is Higher, from 1997, with an elephant on the cover. I must have the debut (which I always liked a lot) on a cassette, stashed in a box somewhere. Also surprised that they have not a single album in Stairway to Hell. But I have always been a fan.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 01:48 (seventeen years ago)

Look, I have nothing against trashing albums. I've certainly ripped on my fair share of CDs in reviews, but I always give them an honest chance first. And, when I have my choice of albums to review (as opposed to blind packages), I stay away from music I know I won't like. I haven't deliberately picked a CD for the sole purpose of bashing it since high school. And it is a very high school thing to do. I like Decibel a lot, that and Outburn are the only metal magazines I read, but that sort of thing is just pure amateur hour. And,as you point out, there is a certain "this sort of band is cool, this sort isn't" feel to it sometimes.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 02:43 (seventeen years ago)

Anyway, from my review of Aggravation in Creem (in which I paired them with Italian industrial metal-dance band Pankow's Omne Animal Triste Post Coitum, which I sadly also no longer own), circa 1990 or so, I guess:

"Where Treponem Pal come from is France, and they harrumph and grind not unlike their homefrogs the Young Gods, which is to say pretty great, though with less cabaret-funk samples and pulsations, which isn't. Aggravation, their second and most beastly plat of splat, boasts a raunchy remake of Kraftwerk's proto-nuke-disco 'Radioactivity,' plus much absurdist advice to 'bruzzers and seesters.' Pal oughta speed up sometimes, and they could really use more melange, or maybe half a wit. Still, when the body count gets me down, they do the job and then some."

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 02:46 (seventeen years ago)

(And maybe I'm wrong, maybe he did go into it wanting to like it, but it sure doesn't sound like it. It's also possible that I'm being particularly touchy about this one since Nightwish is one of my favorite bands, even though I haven't gotten the new album yet because it's 25 FREAKING DOLLARS at Best Buy. I don't know. I'm going to go listen to Anneke and chill out.)

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 02:48 (seventeen years ago)

You know what, after "Eva", this album becomes really, really solid. Too bad "Meadows of Heaven" has to take the ludicrousness that extra mile, because "7 Days to the Wolves" could have ended everything on such a strong note.

I really wanted the Nightwish assignment, but I was on the road the day the monthly list went out, and missed out on a lot of good stuff (hence the Iced Earth. Ugh). I don't know what rating the CD was given (haven't gotten the issue, I saw the piece online), but I probably would have given it a respectable 6.

It's funny how a lot of people tend to forget that bombast has always been a prominent characteristic of this genre, yet when a popular band goes completely OTT as Nightwish has, while remaining as catchy as ever, the knives come out.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 03:06 (seventeen years ago)

It's funny how a lot of people tend to forget that bombast has always been a prominent characteristic of this genre, ~~yet~~ and when a popular band goes completely OTT as Nightwish has, while remaining as catchy as ever, the knives come out.

I really should proofread.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 03:10 (seventeen years ago)

It got a 4. It was the text that bothered me, anyway. Just sounded so vicious about it.

Is it just me, or does Anneke look uncannily like Parker Posey on the cover of Air? I'm really enjoying this album. Chill for the first half, picks up for the second. It's totally nailing my mood tonight.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 03:37 (seventeen years ago)

Or is that even her? It's hard to tell. Weird angle, wig, and lots of makeup.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 03:40 (seventeen years ago)

I actually asked Anneke the same a couple weeks ago, and she just laughed and said yeah, it's her. Funny what a ton of makeup and a wig can do. That was a fun interview, she's a classy lady. And yeah, such a surprisingly strong album.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 03:54 (seventeen years ago)

Back to the Helloween for a sec..."Can Do It" is arguably the most WTF metal song I've heard all year. It sounds like it's sung by muppets.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 09:46 (seventeen years ago)

Just read Chris Dick's Nightwish review. I dunno; I don't want to defend it per se. There are some parts ("forced, contrived, and plated for the lowest common dominator") that I'm sure sound as cliche'd as anything Nightwish themselves are capable of. But he seems to know the band's history, and there are plenty of descriptive details, not all of them negative, as far as I can tell. (And some of them kind of funny, like where he calls them a cross between Lord of the Rings orchestrations and Chinese restaurant Muzak and Roxette, which doesn't sound that far-fetched, judging from previous Nightwish stuff I've heard. But then, I like Roxette.) And he says good things about their musicianship, the production, and Annete Olzon's voice. So I guess I'm not still sure what convinces Jeff he didn't give the band an "honest chance." He just doesn't like the album, is all. Which is hardly a crime. (And if he doesn't like the band, at least now, he at least seems to go out of his way to pinpoint some things they do okay regardless.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 10:30 (seventeen years ago)

To me the chorus of "Amaranth" is about as great as music gets. But I like Roxette, too.

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 14:46 (seventeen years ago)

i beat him to the whole "seriously panning a gothmetal album by a band that kicked out their singer AND mentioning roxette" review thing way back in 2006:

http://decibelmagazine.com/reviews/aug2006/theatreoftragedy.aspx?terms=theatre+of+tragedy&searchtype=2&fragment=True

― scott seward, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 15:11 (seventeen years ago)

Also, while I don't think Chris Dick's Nightwish review is worth its .aspx wait-time, it's not like there's some higher journalistic standard he isn't living up to. Pretty much all the reviews in this issue, at least, read like those blog-entries you write when you don't really care very much about the subject but you don't have anything else to post. I don't know if that's supposed to be a cultivated magazine style, or they just don't pay or edit enough to get anything else.

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 15:30 (seventeen years ago)

The Broken Hope reference is puzzling unless there's a band of that name other than the one I knew, which I remember being OK, if generic, US death metal.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 15:43 (seventeen years ago)

both my reviews in that issue kinda suck. i can't remember what my black label thing was in that issue. i think i liked that okay.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 15:43 (seventeen years ago)

Also, if there's going to be a prize for the earliest Roxette references in a Nightwish review, I submit these:

2 August 2001
14 August 2002

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 16:14 (seventeen years ago)

He seems familiar with the band's history, but then again, he could have just gone to all music or Wikipedia or blabbermouth. It's mostly the phrasing, and the little putdowns from "ornate overkill" to "the follow-up to Once you've not been waiting for" to "there's something absolutely false about Nightwish." It's that, in conjunction with his In This Moment review, that got me so annoyed. He might actually be right about the album. Like I said, I haven't listened to it yet. However, it just reads... snotty. Of course, maybe I'm being slightly hypocritical -- I could probably point to reviews that I've written that could have the exact same criticism.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago)

And if it was just some newsprint zine, it wouldn't really bother me, but the writing in Decibel is usually pretty sharp. Of course, there is a trend towards giving bad reviews in that magazine to bands that aren't cool or seem cheesy, like Blind Guardian last year.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 19:24 (seventeen years ago)

The only stuff I don't get in Decibel is the big love for stuff like A Life Once Lost and their ilk. But I'm old. Doesn't really bug me though. And it's not like I hate all those bands, but so many of those albums sound so generic to me. And not generic in a good way. Maybe it's just the production I hate.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 19:31 (seventeen years ago)

But, yeah, Decibel isn't big on power metal. I like power metal. And so does Adrien. Which is why it's always a good idea to buy Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles if you see it on the newsstand. If you are missing love for power metal and trad prog metal.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 19:33 (seventeen years ago)

I tell you, it felt really, really weird submitting my positive review of Fairyland to Decibel. But they printed it, and even bumped up the rating. The mag seems to be gradually more accepting of power metal...Iron Fire even got a glowing review a couple months back.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 19:55 (seventeen years ago)

Power metal is very welcome at Metal Edge.

I keep meaning to listen to that Nightwish album, but how do you open your semi-comeback album (not like they've been away or anything, but new vocalist = suspicious listeners) with a 15-minute song? Even Opeth wouldn't pull that shit.

― unperson, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 21:05 (seventeen years ago)

Ha, Maiden did the exact same thing on The X-Factor, kicking off the Blaze era with the 12+ minute "Sign of the Cross". Funnily enough, that would be the best song on the entire album.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 21:08 (seventeen years ago)

see, i thought i remembered priest doing that, but it's the last song that is the epic:

1. "Jugulator" – 5:50
2. "Blood Stained" – 5:26
3. "Dead Meat" – 4:44
4. "Death Row" – 5:04
5. "Decapitate" – 4:39
6. "Burn in Hell" – 6:42
7. "Brain Dead" – 5:24
8. "Abductors" – 5:49
9. "Bullet Train" – 5:11
10. "Cathedral Spires" – 9:12

― scott seward, Wednesday, 10 October 2007 21:42 (seventeen years ago)

can i just point out how funny a title 'stabbing the drama' is...okay thats all

― bstep, Thursday, 11 October 2007 01:46 (seventeen years ago)

I stopped buying Terrorizer when they put Nightwish on the cover. It had been getting progressively crapper (save for the metal histories series) for months, but that was the last straw for me.

― MacDara, Thursday, 11 October 2007 08:47 (seventeen years ago)

That's a similar attitude to the one we were discussing above. Look, bands like Nightwish, Blind Guardian, etc. are just as extreme as bands like Mayhem, Emperor, etc., just in a different way. They go for melodic bombast instead of eardrum-rending evil. Obviously, some people respond better to the one than the other, but both are just as legitimate. And yes, a lot of those power bands can be cheesy, but so can a lot of the black metal bands, just as there are bands that do both sounds very well.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 11 October 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago)

As I said, it was the last straw 'for me'. I'm not about to dis anyone for liking them or any other operatic/symphonic metal outfit, but it just turns me off completely, and I don't want to read about it. (And we can agree to differ on this, I guess, but 'melodic bombast' is not really 'extreme'. I simply don't buy that argument. Nightwish might be wonderful musicians, but to my ears they don't even fit in with power metal, let alone black/death/grind/whatever.)

But to clarify my original statement, when I said it was getting progressively crapper, I meant the quality more than anything -- the reviews got fucking terrible. There's better metal writing in The Wire.

I can appreciate that Terrorizer was trying to broaden its remit, as my tastes aren't dogmatically narrow (they ran the occasional short feature on bands like The Sick Lipstick that I wouldn't have expected). But it wasn't the same magazine that I'd started reading a few years before. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but in this case, for me, it wasn't.

― MacDara, Thursday, 11 October 2007 22:19 (seventeen years ago)

I just remembered another off-the-wall feature that Terrorizer once ran -- on the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, of all people! That was a nice surprise. But they didn't put them on the cover.

― MacDara, Thursday, 11 October 2007 22:25 (seventeen years ago)

Terrorizer's current issue is the final part of the prog issues (part 3) and has 2 pages on krautrock. No features or on individual bands, just 2 pages talking about some bands/albums.
1 page of Justin Broadrick talking about prog, those 2 pages of Lee Dorrian, a page on "evil" prog, a few pages on "essential prog albums" (inc some krautrock), and to end with, an interview with Rick Wakeman.

Front cover is still Arch Enemy and there's an Obituary poster though.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, 11 October 2007 22:45 (seventeen years ago)

I love Nightwish but refuse to listen to them with a new vocalist, it's Tarja or nothing for me - what I've heard of her solo stuff isn't promising either. Wishmaster will remain dear to me!

― J0hn D., Thursday, 11 October 2007 23:50 (seventeen years ago)

Alchemist (really wanted to like this. But to my ears October File do Killing Joke==and Bloodstar--a lot more memorably.)

Yeah, but Alchemist turn out to be more beautifully Bloodstarry about it. Wound up liking this after all.

Another good one just to let play in the background and go about one's business: Oresund Space Collective, The Black Tomato. improvisatory Scandinavian Hawkwind fans on the great Transubstans label:

http://www.myspace.com/oresundspacecollective

― xhuxk, Sunday, 14 October 2007 15:40 (seventeen years ago)

I'm still digging through Metal Mind reissues. Paradox, Kinetic Dissent, Ratos de Porao, Blessed Death, Defiance, Treponem Pal...all getting heavy iPod play. Bulldozer, Gang Green and the Great Kat, not so much.

― unperson, Sunday, 14 October 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago)

What an album this new Ulver is.
I'm amazed Louis hasn't started a In Rainbows Vs Shadows Of The Sun poll yet.

Maybe they should tour :)

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 14 October 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago)

I really like the new Ulver, but some of the singing,lyrics, and phrasing make me wince for some reason. Like, maybe too obvious or trite or something. Anyone else experiencing similar feelings? Musically the album is something special. I hope he continues down the path he's on and his lyricism matures a bit.

― rockapads, Monday, 15 October 2007 03:19 (seventeen years ago)

Well, I think the simplicity of the lyrics mirrors the sparseness of the music. I think it was his intent to be that direct this time around.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 15 October 2007 04:13 (seventeen years ago)

look who's back: Buried at Sea

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s1083138.jpg

― djmartian, Monday, 15 October 2007 20:26 (seventeen years ago)

Buried At Sea
http://www.southern.net/southern/catalog/BURIE

1 track 30 minutes. Like a bulldozer shovelling clods of earth down your ear-canal BAS take hypnotic drone riffs to epic proportions. For lovers heaviness and doooooooom.

― djmartian, Monday, 15 October 2007 20:28 (seventeen years ago)

Love, love the Buried at Sea album. Glad to see they're back!

― EZ Snappin, Monday, 15 October 2007 20:38 (seventeen years ago)

Got that track yesterday. Still to play it. Thanks for reminding me!

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 15 October 2007 20:47 (seventeen years ago)

Things I got today and will be checking out over the next couple of days: Demiricious, Dillinger Escape Plan (heard this streaming but am gonna dig deep into it now), Anaal Nathrakh.

― unperson, Monday, 15 October 2007 20:55 (seventeen years ago)

I can't wait to hear the DEP, hope it's good. Reactions on the track they previewed was mixed to say the least.

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 15 October 2007 21:05 (seventeen years ago)

Buried At Sea
http://www.southern.net/southern/catalog/BURIE

1 track 30 minutes. Like a bulldozer shovelling clods of earth down your ear-canal BAS take hypnotic drone riffs to epic proportions. For lovers heaviness and doooooooom.

cool! their earlier cd was great. wish people would stop with the "doooooom" crap, though, makes me feel like aquarius records updates are following me around the internet.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 01:56 (seventeen years ago)

Also really, really good: Gallhammer's Ill Innocence. I was really hoping this wouldn't be some kind of Shonen Knife-goes-black-metal novelty act, and it's not. These three lil' Japanese girls rip shit up.

also, this. i like the sort of gothy elements they added in, but gothy in a killing joke-via-amebix, antisect or rudimentary peni way.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 02:21 (seventeen years ago)

The lyrics to Entombed's 'Masters of Death' really need more examination here. How many bands etc. can you spot?

Mannequin mannequin
They're all the same
Deathstrike said so
Hallowed be thy name
Morbid Angel
Napalm Death
Filthy Christians
Hold your breath

Knights in Satan's Service
Masters of death

Deathlike silence
Head not found
Dark awakening
O...underground
Worldwide trading
Stormtroopers of Death
Sons of Satan
Godly Being
Black Breath

Knights in Satan's Service
Masters of Death
Knights in Satan's Service
Listen to the Seasons of the Dead
Necrophagia
Repulsion
Masters of death
Killjoy Go!

You can't kill
What's already dead
You can't
You can't kill
What's already dead...

...Slowly We Rot
Let the Darkness Descend

Darkness is living in me
Helping me see
Be all I can be
Whole, Hey! Ho!
We are Satan's people

I love it like you love Jesus
It does the same thing to my soul
Hey! Ho!
I got a life-long love for
The occult...tlucco ehT

All hell's still running through me
Permanently
Guiding me when the bell tolls
Hey! Ho!
We are Satan's people
We love it like you love Jesus
It does the same thing to our souls
Hey! Ho!
We got a life-long love for
The occult...tlucco ehT
The occult...tlucco ehT

Dynasties in blasphemies
The devil is smiling still
Through Symphonies Of Sickness
and Pleasure To Kill
Knights in Satan's Service
Masters of Death

Death and Sodom
Flag Of Hate
Mental Funeral
Vomit, Sindrome
The Truth, Beyond The Gates

Unseen Terror
Human Error
Angel of Death
Dethroned Emperor
Venom, Possessed, Motorbreath

Knights in Satan's Service
Masters of Death
Knights in Satan's Service
Listen to the Seasons of the Dead
Necrophagia
Repulsion
Masters of death
Knights in Satan's Service
Masters of Death

Xecutioner
R.A.V.A.G.E.

― mei, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 02:47 (seventeen years ago)

we didn't start the fiiiire...

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 03:45 (seventeen years ago)

Ugh, you just reminded me how much I hate that song.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 04:47 (seventeen years ago)

Another album whose lyrics contain every band name of its time is Sinister "Cross the Styx", I love it.

― no-nonsense, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 07:05 (seventeen years ago)

Adrien, did you ask Anneke why she left The Gathering? Because musically, the album sounds exactly the same as The Gathering...

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 19:15 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I did. She cited a lot of reasons, stress, time away from her family, the desire for more creative control. It was all really amicable. The interesting thing was that she told the band she was leaving back in March, and they did the tour in May knowing it would be her last. She said those last shows in Canada were some of the best they'd done in ages. Anyway, the whole piece is here.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 20:25 (seventeen years ago)

new Electric Wizard album is brilliant!

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 20:29 (seventeen years ago)

Gorefest live, tomorrow night. It'll be exciting as they were the first death metal band I saw, back in 1992.

― no-nonsense, Thursday, 18 October 2007 18:35 (seventeen years ago)

I second the vote for Witchcult Today's brilliance. I can't lie; I've only heard two other EW albums - the first thing I noticed about this one is how much cooler his voice sounds.

― rockapads, Thursday, 18 October 2007 18:39 (seventeen years ago)

Supposedly the EW promos are unmastered and some songs finish abruptly or are unfinished. If this is true, I can't wait to hear the proper version!!

Pre-ordered the Dillinger Escape Plan lp today.

― Herman G. Neuname, Thursday, 18 October 2007 19:05 (seventeen years ago)

I saw Boris the other night! It was awesome. And I saw Arch Enemy/Machine Head before that, which was also quite awesome. All killer, no filler. The tour is over now, but man, probably the best I've ever seen both of those bands play.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 18 October 2007 19:12 (seventeen years ago)

Did I miss the part where people raved over the new Every Time I Die record yclept The Big Dirty? Because it is raved-up hellfire and the songtitles alone make it one of the best comedy albums of the year: "We'rewolf," "INRIhab," "Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Battery," etc. Plus they are from Buffalo New York, and they sound like it. Buffalo is the new Milwaukee.

― Dimension 5ive, Friday, 19 October 2007 14:41 (seventeen years ago)

I'm liking the Serj Tankian album so far.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 19 October 2007 18:07 (seventeen years ago)

Gorefest were even better than expected. I was uncertain about Jan-Chris' vocals but he performed great, even the stage banter was delivered in a perfect growl. Lots of stuff from "False". They opened with "The Glorious Dead" and "State of Mind" and just before playing the title track he asked how many in the audience had been in the 1992 gig with Deicide. At 17 that show left an impression and yesterday they made me feel proud of having kept up with death metal for half my life.

― no-nonsense, Saturday, 20 October 2007 10:03 (seventeen years ago)

I was liking the Nightwish album a lot more than I thought I would; it's commendably epic and catchy (most "Live and Let Die"-starting song: "Bye Bye Beautiful"; most palatably gnu-metal-guy-a-la-Evanescence-counterpointed: "Cadence of Her Last Breath"; most Roxette-Eurpopped I've noticed so far: "For the Heart I Once Had"; most Use Your Illusion-ballad-as-a-sea-chantey-reminiscent: "The Islander"; and the last two cuts sound anthemic too), but it has been at least temporarily exhanged in my changer with the debut by Windup's next attept at the cute little bubblegoth Flyleaf/Evanescence (via Salt N Pepa in the great single "Tap That") dollar Megan McCauley's debut album. But Nightwish will return soon, I promise.

Meanwhile, other stuff I like (and if you have no tolerance for metal as defined 37 years ago, ignore):

Graveyard, self-titled album (Transubstans) Retro-psych doomsters proficient at muscular stomping with deep Danzig vocals and overcast post-Hendrix/Cream blooze sludge, most notably in "Blue Soul" perhaps:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=145077335

Blue Mountain, Eagle (Fallout reissue) West coast acid-rock, originally released 1970, choogles w/ Allmans-style jams (e.g. "Troubles") and terrific funky heavy hard rock boogie (e.g. "Sweet Mama"):

http://www.soundlinkmusic.com/catalog/fallout/blue-mountain-eagle/prod_143.html

Morning Glory, Two Suns Worth (Fallout reissue) West Coast acid-rock, originally released 1968, intermittently great Jeff Airplane wannabe stuff wherein the guitars get weird in the middle cuts, and turn into doomy space-rock with proto-goth witchy woman vocals in "Jelly Gas Flame" especially:

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/7504687/a/Two+Suns+Worth.htm

If you do not like these (or you feel they don't belong here) by all means feel free to lump them. I think they're all pretty good myself (but probably not worth spending $17.98 or even $15.55 on, though.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 20 October 2007 17:06 (seventeen years ago)

(Actually, though, both Blue Mountain and Morning Glory might not be heavy enough, or at least consistently heavy enough, to truly earn the category "acid rock." Now that I think of it, I'm not even really sure how widely that genre was defined at the time. Much less who did the defining.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 20 October 2007 17:18 (seventeen years ago)

i like that morning glory album, but it's more sunshine poppy than rocky. though it does have cool rockin' fuzz guitar moments. not peanut butter conspiracy great, but a pretty good album all around.

i need el sabor or someone to give me the answer once and for all about fallout. whether they are in fact just radioactive under another name. cuz i went along with the radioactive boycott and i'll boycott fallout if that's the case.

― scott seward, Saturday, 20 October 2007 18:42 (seventeen years ago)

Wait, why are people boycotting Radioactive? And how come nobody told me? (And what good records are on Radioactive to boycott in the first place, come to think of it? I am drawing a blank.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 20 October 2007 19:32 (seventeen years ago)

Info about Radioactive here

― Matt #2, Saturday, 20 October 2007 21:31 (seventeen years ago)

that's all i need to know. no fallout for me. i wasn't buying them for that reason anyway. and i keep meaning to talk to the dudes at the record store here about not buying them. they carry radioactive and fallout stuff. there is a whole sad george brigman story about radioactive too. it might be somewhere on george's website.

― scott seward, Saturday, 20 October 2007 22:52 (seventeen years ago)

Was it them who did the Flower Travellin' Band reissue a year or 2 back?

― Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 20 October 2007 22:56 (seventeen years ago)

Oh, I thought it was the Radioactive that released the Traci Lords album. Bullet dodged.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 21 October 2007 00:00 (seventeen years ago)

xp Yeah, sorry I recommended those Fallout albums. I honestly had no idea.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 21 October 2007 00:06 (seventeen years ago)

see, that's the thing. i don't think many people at all have any idea. including hundreds of record stores.

why does forced exposure still sell all of it:

http://www.forcedexposure.com/bin/search.pl?search_string=radioactive&searchfield=label

they are hip. they must know about the label.

― scott seward, Sunday, 21 October 2007 00:36 (seventeen years ago)

I am listening to the new Electric Wizard album, Witchcult Today, right now. It is unbelievably fucking great.

Hi, I don't know anything about this band but this album is fucking sick.

― 31g, Sunday, 21 October 2007 04:58 (seventeen years ago)

New High On Fire on now, again. Four cuts in, and though it's tolerable enough it's still not thrilling me. New Blut Aus Nord sounded better to me this morning, I think. But new Coliseum and new Ephal Duath (which may be a whole bunch of remixes, actually? -- hard to tell) sounded worse.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 21 October 2007 14:42 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, Ephel Duath says Pain Remixes The Known on the disc itself, now that I look at it closer. But all the cuts are called "Hole I," "Hole II, "Hole III," etc. So why isn't it called Hole Remixes, instead? Weird. Either way, I don't like it much. (Not sure I've ever liked anything by them much, come to think of it. Who are they again?)

High On Fire definitely has moments. I'm just having trouble caring about the (much more plentiful) non-moments, I think.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 21 October 2007 14:47 (seventeen years ago)

how does the new Blut Aus Nord compare to Mort? (I just got around to hearing Mort a week or two ago, it's really really good)

― Mark Clemente, Sunday, 21 October 2007 14:48 (seventeen years ago)

xpost

― Mark Clemente, Sunday, 21 October 2007 14:49 (seventeen years ago)

I don't think I ever heard Mort. Actually, I'm not even sure what that is, though I gather it's an earlier Blut Aus Nord album? I'm pretty sure I've never listened to anything by them before. (And I haven't remotely decided about the new one, either. All I know is that it made for an okay soundtrack while I was reading the City Section this morning. Maybe I just had the volume down low or something.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 21 October 2007 15:04 (seventeen years ago)

sorry, yea Mort is the album BAN came out with last year, it's the only BAN album I'm familiar with.

― Mark Clemente, Sunday, 21 October 2007 15:06 (seventeen years ago)

BAN just seems like a big ol' drone to me, and not even a good one, whereas the High on Fire has a lot more thrilling moments so far. (Then again, I wasn't reading the New York Times or anything.) Neither one is as good as DHG or Baroness, and certainly no patch on Every Time I Die, which was sounding like my favorite album of the year yesterday as I cranked it and drove through huge packs of Wisconsin Badger fans with my windows down.

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 21 October 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago)

"Big 'Ole Drone" sounds about right, actually. And it may well turn out (like most such drones do) to be dime-a-dozen droning as well. But we will see.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 21 October 2007 16:30 (seventeen years ago)

Chuck - drop me an email when you have a minute. pdfreeman at gmail dot com.

― unperson, Sunday, 21 October 2007 17:15 (seventeen years ago)

New High On Fire on now, again. Four cuts in, and though it's tolerable enough it's still not thrilling me.

I was really excited about this album when I first listened to it, but after several listens nothing stuck. Their music evokes no emotion in me at all. It's like... the texture is great, but I can't taste it.

― rockapads, Sunday, 21 October 2007 17:26 (seventeen years ago)

This thread alerted me to the existence of Agua de Annike, Anneke's new band, and it's pretty good - although not remotely metal on the whole.

It's basically a whole album of "You Learn About It"-style tracks, which is fine by me - her voice totally carries it, along with the nice lush production and her lovably awkward/poetic phrasings ("today is the day after yesterday / yesterday didn't go so well": "the room that we are in is filled with people from the past", etc.).

Also, two of the best song titles of the year (albeit in two totally different senses): "You Are Nice!" and "Sunken Soldiers' Ball". Come to think of it, maybe she had to leave the Gathering so she could get away with the former.

― Simon H., Sunday, 21 October 2007 18:14 (seventeen years ago)

The HOF still sounds great to me, I think it's even better than Blessed Black Wings for consistency though they will never top the 1st album for me, but they've moved on from that sound. And I have no complaints on that.

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 21 October 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago)

The Hendrix estate took notice of Radioactive a year or two ago and fell upon the guy. That ended Radioactive.

So, Fallout's the new Radioactive? What a card. I bought Moloch at Amoeba, on Fallout. Hmmm. Southern band produced by Don Nix who wrote all their material in 1970, including the first version of "I'm Going Down," covered by Jeff Beck, N. Young, Leslie West, etc...It's hard blues rock with some boogie, mostly interested in sounding very Furry Lewis or something similar. Good but not good enough for anyone not really absorbed by the genre.

― Gorge, Sunday, 21 October 2007 18:33 (seventeen years ago)

I was really excited about this album when I first listened to it, but after several listens nothing stuck.

yeah... when i'm listening to it, i'm like "OOH HIGH ON FIRE" and then it ends and i don't remember anything. there's definitely nothing on the level of "brother in the wind."

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 21 October 2007 21:04 (seventeen years ago)

hey guys i got the new high on fire! i know you're all already bored of it by now, but it's fucking exciting to me.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 21 October 2007 21:15 (seventeen years ago)

That's me saying I got the album and am excited about it, not an oblique zing.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 21 October 2007 21:15 (seventeen years ago)

yeah I also think the album is pretty great

annoyed by the 99-track promo though

― J0hn D., Sunday, 21 October 2007 21:42 (seventeen years ago)

haha you get promos

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 21 October 2007 21:55 (seventeen years ago)

Tomorrow I will be listening to Dark The Suns' In Darkness Comes Beauty, some new heavy-plus-piano-melodies thing. Track titles: "The Sleeping Beauty," "Black Sun," "A Darkness To Drown In"...yeah, yeah, we get it, guys - you're Finnish.

― unperson, Sunday, 21 October 2007 23:19 (seventeen years ago)

I'm pretty much new music-ed out. October burnout, lots of silence these days. But I can't see how anyone can't get a kick out of the High on Fire. So much better than the last one.

Looking forward to finally catching In This Moment opening for Ozzy in a few days...as far as I can tell they were able to make it across the border this time.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 21 October 2007 23:29 (seventeen years ago)

haha you get promos

yeah dude I write for Decibel, shocking that I'd get promos I know

― J0hn D., Sunday, 21 October 2007 23:33 (seventeen years ago)

I had to take my grubby pocket money all the way to Exclusive Company (three blocks) and pay all of $9.99 for that HoF record. YOU RICH BASTARDS JUST KEEP GETTING RICHER DONT YOU.

And yeah dude I write for Metal Edge. My awesome promo copies of Raging Speedhorn and October File have exactly the right number of tracks.

― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 22 October 2007 03:32 (seventeen years ago)

So what new metal album kicks so much ass I should go out and get it *RIGHT NOW* so I can blast it in these?

― Kerm, Monday, 22 October 2007 05:17 (seventeen years ago)

Sorry, but I have to mention these guys from L.A. (who Razor & Tie is billing as a "return to real rock" or some such baloney), because they are a weird case study whose specific attributes I don't remember encountering before; i.e., I love the guitars, especially at the beginnings of songs (speedy NWOBHM overdrives in "I Wanna Be Your Man" and "Poison"; excellent Van Halen rip in "From the Ashes of Sin") but I hate hate hate the whiney-assed Clear Channel screamo vocals. Just find them completely unbearable. Didn't make it through the whole thing, but of the songs I managed to sit through, "All Night"'s semi-.38 Special/Rick Springfield hard pop was the only one I actually liked the singing in. (Closer power ballad "Long Way Home" starts melodically okay but wears out its welcome way too quick.) Anyway, all I can say is, this makes me sad for an entire generation, but if somebody can convince me I'm wrong, I'm all for listening. I hate the top of their myspace page too:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=6045418

― xhuxk, Monday, 22 October 2007 10:47 (seventeen years ago)

Enslaved steal politician's sheep to protest music piracy (with video!):

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=83268

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 22 October 2007 20:46 (seventeen years ago)

Also:

http://idolator.com/assets/resources/2007/10/metallica.jpg

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 22 October 2007 22:36 (seventeen years ago)

I hate hate hate the whiney-assed Clear Channel screamo vocals.

Chuck I think this is one of those rare occasions when you and I are on exactly the same page

― J0hn D., Monday, 22 October 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago)

Hanoi Rocks Twelve Shots On the Rocks...a keeper.
-- xhuxk, Sunday, August 12, 2007 10:43 PM (2 months ago)
You should try to get your hands on the new one, Street Poetry. It's the first record since their comeback that I'd rate up there with those in their original run.

― Mike Dixn, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 04:14 (seventeen years ago)

The new edition of online culture journal (or whatever) The High Hat is up, and I have contributed a piece about Marduk.

― unperson, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 20:25 (seventeen years ago)

Guys the new Behold...the Arctopus record slays mah brains.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 28 October 2007 01:38 (seventeen years ago)

I have to say I wish that piece talked more about the music on Rom. 5:12!

― J0hn D., Sunday, 28 October 2007 02:05 (seventeen years ago)

Anybody else loving Svartsot's Danish "folk metal" Ravnenes Saga (Napalm) as much as I am? Sad trolls and ogres dancing jigs and hoising bier steins and giving each other manly piggyback rides around the campfire. Very very catchy. Favorite tracks are probably "Hedens Dotre" and "Bkovens Kaelling" and the totally oi!-speedy "Havets Plage."

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=47898391

Also thought the new Xasthur sounded relaxing in the background this weekend. Not sure what's supposed to make them/him/it unique, but I like it okay I guess.

― xhuxk, Monday, 29 October 2007 13:00 (seventeen years ago)

Not sure what's supposed to make them/him/it unique

i think it's the logo.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 29 October 2007 13:46 (seventeen years ago)

the new Xasthur sounds like music that might be piped in on cheap speakers in Hell's waiting room. or maybe just the soundtrack to a really bad dream. it's definitely not "heavy"; it's just dreary. i've always kind of liked Xasthur, but track 3 is the first Xasthur song i really love. more of that plz.

― rockapads, Monday, 29 October 2007 18:17 (seventeen years ago)

I don't really see the point of that Marduk piece - you could've substituted Marduk with thousands of bands. It's like writing a whole article about how amusing it is that Young Jeezy talks about guns, drugs and violence all the time.

That said, Rom 5:12 is probably the second best album they ever made after Live In Germania ten years ago. Underneath the fuzz and breakneck speeds, Morgan has always been one of the best guitarists in Metal.

― Siegbran, Monday, 29 October 2007 19:00 (seventeen years ago)

Xasthurpost: "it's definitely not "heavy"; it's just dreary."

Is this the first recorded instance of 'dreary' meaning 'good'? Awesome! You already had me at the 'Hell's waiting room' bit, though.

― Soukesian, Monday, 29 October 2007 19:15 (seventeen years ago)

Now playing: Bong-Ra, Full Metal Racket. He's a Dutch drum 'n' bass DJ who used to play in the bands Prejudice and Celestial Season (isn't that a salad dressing here in the US?) back in the 80s and early 90s. This is hard drum 'n' bass with grindcore samples; song titles include "Earache," "Slaytronic" (Slayer samples galore), "Jo Bench," "Necrogoat," "Grindkrush" and "Painkiller." On Ad Noiseam. Really good stuff.

― unperson, Monday, 29 October 2007 20:46 (seventeen years ago)

When I picked up the Witchcraft and High On Fire at Metal Haven last week, these titles caught my eye while browsing:

Ulver - Shadows of the Sun
Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
Gallhammer - The Dawn Of
Grave in the Sky - Cutlery Hits China
Baroness - Red Album

Checked them out and Baroness is the only one I really liked a alot. Grave in the Sky is impressive but can't imagine wanting to hear it repeatedly. Gallhammer is just silly, while Nightwish evokes Evanescence too much for me. Ulver left no impression first time.

Anyone heard the new Dillinger Escape Plan?

― Fastnbulbous, Monday, 29 October 2007 21:14 (seventeen years ago)

Last year I helped a friend with a Bolt Thrower interview and asked Baz about Bong-Ra. I brought with me an Ad Noiseam CD sampler with the "Jo Bench" track in it, which is a nice breakcore tribute to the classic Earache years.

The band hadn't even heard about the guy or the Grindkrusher 12". They were surprised and would have liked to be contacted about it and sent a copy of the album, at least. I gave them the compilation for Jo to check out the tune, and maybe sue him or something (probably not, as they are not in good terms with Earache).

― no-nonsense, Monday, 29 October 2007 21:16 (seventeen years ago)

A friend loaned me the Witchcraft, and I wasn't super impressed. Sounded OK, but mostly it just reminded me a lot of Pentagram. None of it really stuck in my head, either. I don't quite get why it's been receiving all the love that it has.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 29 October 2007 21:22 (seventeen years ago)

"Grave in the Sky is impressive but can't imagine wanting to hear it repeatedly."

proof, if proof were needed, that you are not me!

― scott seward, Monday, 29 October 2007 22:00 (seventeen years ago)

"That said, Rom 5:12 is probably the second best album they ever made after Live In Germania ten years ago."

i still think *heaven shall burn...* is their best!

i reviewed the reissues not long ago, and i was reminded how killer that album is. i liked the new album okay. i gave it a good review. i think. hearing the dude from primordial on it just made me want to hear the new primordial album though.

― scott seward, Monday, 29 October 2007 22:10 (seventeen years ago)

I like the new Witchcraft so much more than their first two (which were also pretty darn good). Those bits of early-70s prog and late-60s psychedelic really elevates their sound. Plus the vocals are so much stronger, the proeduction less murky.

And I said it last month, the new Dillinger is amazing.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 29 October 2007 23:24 (seventeen years ago)

Celestial Season (isn't that a salad dressing here in the US?)

nope, HERBAL TEA.

Gallhammer is just silly

UP YRS

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 01:46 (seventeen years ago)

my mom has a ton of this stuff in her cupboard.

http://www.seasonedwithlove.com/celestial_seasonings.jpg

― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 02:17 (seventeen years ago)

sorry img not italics:
http://www.seasonedwithlove.com/celestial_seasonings.jpg

― Mark Clemente, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 02:17 (seventeen years ago)

I'll be damned, I actually have a Celestial Season album... decent Moonspell-type Gothic death metal, crap production though. Two guitarists, two female violinists, and a bassist named Olly.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 03:09 (seventeen years ago)

And Nightwish came WAY before Evanescence.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago)

Speaking of which, the new one from Asrai on Season of Mist, Pearls in Dirt, is very melodramatic and, well, Evanescent. Also, the cover looks like this:

http://www.asrai.net/files/Pearls_in_Dirtcover.jpg

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 03:59 (seventeen years ago)

Celestial Season's debut, "Forever Scarlet Passion" sounds like the English bands of the time, but the second, "Solar Lovers" is where it's at. It rocks and has a fantastic cover of "Vienna", one of my favorite non-metal covers by any metal band ever.

― no-nonsense, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 07:33 (seventeen years ago)

Solar Lovers is the one that I have. It is good, I just wish the production was a bit better.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago)

Coincidence - I've been listening to Solar Lovers a lot in the last two days and it's quite unlike any other doom album, mainly the heavy use of wahwah I guess. Too bad the sound is really muffled. (haha xpost)

Bit of trivia: their old violinist is now a professional musician in the renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

― Siegbran, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago)

Is this the first recorded instance of 'dreary' meaning 'good'? Awesome!

haha thanks (i think). "bleak" is another positive description i use a lot, and that will convince me check out an album.

― rockapads, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 00:20 (seventeen years ago)

Don't forget that some of the best music ever is bland!

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 00:49 (seventeen years ago)

skot's pick of the week:

new worship album. wow. i've been playing it a lot. epic funeral doom.

http://www.endzeitelegies.com/

― scott seward, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 01:13 (seventeen years ago)

man... no fucked up mad max, no credibility.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 04:57 (seventeen years ago)

okay, i promise that i will listen to this new christian death album today after work. i don't think i've heard a christian death album in well over 20 years. who the hell is even in christian death at this point? is rikk agnew in the band! cuz if he is i might like this album. he's one of my heroes.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:28 (seventeen years ago)

i think rikk agnew was gone after the first album, wasn't he? he was a large part of why only theatre of pain (and deathwish) is better than anything else they ever did.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:30 (seventeen years ago)

i thought i remembered that he did reunion tours or something in the 90's. but he probably wouldn't make any albums without that dead dude.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:43 (seventeen years ago)

jesus, it has the line-up on the back of the friggin' cd. he's not on it.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:45 (seventeen years ago)

i'm guessing this is the valor line-up?

(also forgot about the reunion of the better of the two versions and agnew.)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:50 (seventeen years ago)

amusingly the new one is their highest rated album on rate your music right now.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 09:56 (seventeen years ago)

So, uh, Avenged Sevenfold pretty much tanked it with the new one, eh? This thing pretty much sucks. Not that they were ever a favorite of mine, but City of Evil showed some promise.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 14:00 (seventeen years ago)

soctt, on your recommendation I tracked down "dooom"...jesus christ. equal parts beautiful and ghastly. based on the description from the site, it seems like a real labor of...pain?

also, new exodus: super awesome.

― Simon H., Wednesday, 31 October 2007 14:51 (seventeen years ago)

you can't post pictures of celestial seasonings teas and forget the ultimate power metal tea!

http://www.celestialseasonings.com/images/products/wellness-teas/tension-tamer-lg.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 18:49 (seventeen years ago)

According to Avenged Sevenfold's guitarist, the new album is flawless. So you obviously must be wrong. I mean, the man made the thing, he should know what he's talking about!

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 19:43 (seventeen years ago)

Haha. Yeah, their press for this album is ridiculous. This thing really sucks. It's like they attempted Use Your Illusion and failed miserably.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 19:59 (seventeen years ago)

My editor's note for the upcoming issue of Metal Edge is all about why the Black Dahlia Murder are on the cover and Avenged Sevenfold aren't. Basically, yeah, the album blows. That faux-Danny Elfman song at the end is what killed it for me; it's like they were trying to score the next Tim Burton claymation musical or something.

― unperson, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago)

That's too bad, I thought City of Evil had promise as well. Oh well.

I actually dig the new album from Ghost Brigade, also on Season of Mist. Its a weird sound -- a combination of Paradise Lost and Gojira. However, I like both those bands a lot, so I like this. Don't know if it's something I'm going to revisit often in the future, but first impressions were positive.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 20:06 (seventeen years ago)

quoting myself from the 2007 reissues thread:

exciting, exciting metal news: witchfinder general's "soviet invasion" and "burning a sinner" are being reissued (along with some live stuff) as "buried amongst the ruins" on nuclear war now. AWESOME.

this should excite someone. if you don't like witchfinder general, you don't like METAL! (and so on.)

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 1 November 2007 04:02 (seventeen years ago)

Guess people have heard already but Decapitated drummer Vitek died today. From Blabbermouth :

Vitek and DECAPITATED singer Covan (real name: Adrian Kowanek) were hurt in an accident earlier in the week involving DECAPITATED's tour bus and a truck carrying wood in Gomel, on the Russia/Belarus border. Both musicians reportedly sustained serious head injuries in the collision, which is believed to have been the fault of the band's driver (although this has not yet been officially confirmed).

According to the Polish Internet portal Onet.pl, Vitek underwent trepanation, a form of surgery in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull, and was due to be transported to a hospital in Krakow, Poland for further treatment.

Covan's family released a statement yesterday (Thursday, November 1) that the vocalist's condition had improved. At the time, the vocalist was still said to be at a hospital in Novozybkov, Russia, where he and Vitek were taken following the accident.

― Matt #2, Friday, 2 November 2007 22:38 (seventeen years ago)

I had heard about the accident, but not his death. That sucks. He was a great drummer, and they weren't the most exciting band live, but I always enjoyed seeing them just to hear that music performed.

― unperson, Friday, 2 November 2007 23:01 (seventeen years ago)

How come their's no discussion of one-time ILXor Ian Christe's Van Halen book on here? Anyone read it yet? Is it worth getting?

Here's the amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Wants-Some-Halen-Saga/dp/0470039108/ref=pd_sim_b_shvl_title_5/105-6543344-3444458

― JN$OT, Saturday, 3 November 2007 09:59 (seventeen years ago)

I've read it. I wrote this about it a month or so ago.

― unperson, Saturday, 3 November 2007 12:52 (seventeen years ago)

stygian shore reissue/unreleased comp is hot. manilla road pals from wichita. put out an ep on roadster records, home of the road. maybe gorge remembers them. anyway, awesome hard-rocking stuff.

http://www.truemetal.org/manillaroad/000astygian03.jpg

this bit from the liner-notes begs to be transcribed:

"In the spring of 1984 prior to the release of the Stygian Shore EP Greg Marshall was involved in a train accident where he lost his right hand. Mike and Pete cancelled all of the bands engagements in favor of sticking together with their friend. Stygian Shore continued to pursue their dream as a team with now Greg "Hook" Marshall relentlessly practicing on his bass guitar learning to pick with his new hook until they could perform again as a group."

so they were getting hot in 1984, Hit Parader gave them a good write-up, the EP is coming out, a U.S. tour in the works and...a train accident. Major bummer. They didn't record again until 1989.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 November 2007 00:23 (seventeen years ago)

http://www.myspace.com/theoriginalstygianshore

their mp3s don't kick my ass, and i was hoping they would.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 4 November 2007 08:48 (seventeen years ago)

Thanks for the link, Phil. I loved Ian's Sound of the Beast, so I'll no doubt be getting this one soon enough.

xxp

― JN$OT, Sunday, 4 November 2007 09:07 (seventeen years ago)

"their mp3s don't kick my ass, and i was hoping they would."

hahaha, you weren't feeling "Crygian Stew"? seriously, the cd has lots of good stuff on it. i dig the guitars. not like the greatest reissue of the year, but it's entertaining.

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 November 2007 10:42 (seventeen years ago)

Man, that was depressing... I saw Paradise Lost/Nightwish last night, and while Paradise Lost were awesome (even played two songs from One Second), my former favorite band was like watching Nightwish Idol. The new singer's voice sounded OK on the new songs, but do not work at all in the old songs, and worst of all, she kept doing this really goofy dance throughout the show. We ended up leaving early, because I couldn't take it anymore. Totally lame.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 November 2007 20:58 (seventeen years ago)

Took me several months, but I have now officially decided that most of the new Neurosis album bores the heck out of me. The two tracks I like a lot are #s 7 and 8, "Water Is Not Enough" and "Distill (Watching the Storm)," which have chunky enough riffs to qualify as decent doom-metal. Also sort of like the airy ringing guitars in #3, "To The Wind." Beyond that, though, this thing's mostly a real snooze and a chore to get through -- especially the last track, "Origin," which lasts for fucking ever. The more ambient they get, the more I lose patience.

Took me a while to realize how good the new Ted Nugent album is, too -- I was starting to listen to it when it came out, and then he said something typically asinine on stage about Obama and Hillary or whatever, and I had to take a breather for a month or so. Okay, I'm a wimp. Anyway, I finally put it back on, and "Still Raising Hell" is a great fast proto-punk-style-metal thing about Johnny looking for catfights in the street and G.I. Joe looking for firefrights in the war, but probably my favorite part is the four-song swuite in the middle about Indians: "Geronimo & Me"/"Eagle Brother" (beautiful wank in that one)/"Spirit of the Buffalo" (which may well be Ted's best bison song ever, and the true classic on this record -- also, it reminds me of J.D. Blackfoot's Yellowhand from a couple years ago and I doubt anybody has done a better ecologically conscious song all year in this year of Live Earth and I swear I'm not bullshitting about that)/"Aborigone" (watch out, Midnight Oil!) Also like "Girl Scout Cookies" (about how Ted purchases them from a child and enjoys them late at night with a glass of milk, especially the kind containing coconuts), "Stand" (about not liking Ted Kennedy or Rev Al-Not-So-Sharpton or "pimps and whores and welfare brats" and commies who'll take away his guns and Mao Tse Tung), "Broadside" (about dogs being man's best friend), and even "Bridge Over Troubled Daughters" is pretty darn catchy. Could probably live without "Funk U," which just isn't as good a joke as Ted thinks(would be better if it had a tune) or "Lay With Me" (sleazy blooze sluggishness), and I forget what "Love Grenade" sounds like already, but I'm pretty sure it's okay. And oh yeah, Ted re-does "Journey To the Center of Your Mind" real good. I wonder if he still thinks it's not about drugs.

I've also been listening a lot in the last few days to Robin Trower's Bridge of Sighs reissue (holy shit "The Rolling Stoned" and "Little Bit of Sympathy" are funky) and Cactus's double-disc Fully Unleashed: The Live Gigs Vol. II (holy shit "Walkin' Blues" and "Heebie Jeebies/What'd I Say" are funky. Also, "Token Chokin" counts as country! "Slow Blues" is too slow for me, though.)

Reissue of Indonesian psych band Shake Move's '70 Ghede Corra's on the (hopefully legit) Normal label out of Germany is about half good (i.e, the first half) and occasionally great ("Evil War," which is truly heavy and ends like Iron Butterfly; opner "My Life" sounds real cool too) but half not-so-good (i.e., the second half, which is too knee-deep in Asian folk-pop-in-the-Holiday-Inn-lounge-or-whatever twiddle, especially "Insan" which drives me crazy by its melody resembling "MacArthur Park".)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 November 2007 22:57 (seventeen years ago)

Oops, they're called SHARK Move, actually.

And it's of course "Journey To the Center Of THE Mind."

And so on.

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 November 2007 23:00 (seventeen years ago)

(Actually, "Funk U" would probably be better if it was funkier, too. And Ted can be plenty funky. This time, though, the heaviness and ugliness seems to clog up the funk. And "Lay With Me"'s main problem might just be that his vocal sounds weak.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 November 2007 23:09 (seventeen years ago)

I was kinda disappointed by that Shark Move album. Wasn't heavy enough. I was looking for something more in the realm of Bunalim. But yeah, the Nugent album really does hold up.

Holy shit the new Spektr EP is amazing. Recommended to fans of Blut Aus Nord and Main in more or less equal measure.

― unperson, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago)

new spektr? sold.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:50 (seventeen years ago)

The Cactus live thing smokes. The last song, "Evil", is worth the price of admission alone.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:59 (seventeen years ago)

Another reissue of Bridge of Sighs? How many have their been? There was one just a couple years back. Classic album for the fact that it charted strongly without a single and with title cut being an apotheosis of fuzz-tone/univibed depression blooz.

Funk U didn't work for me. Too arch, even for Ted. Lay With Me ate it. I think it was stuck on Love Grenade as filler and because Jack Blades played bass. It reminded me of the wedding blues he played on the Full Bluntal Nugity DVD, which was awful. Everything else on Love Grenade was fair to great, mostly toward the great side. Girl Scout Cookies has a great riff, particularly in the turn arounds, but the lyrics toward the end make me squirm. And Chuck's right. If you're one of the five people who have a copy of JD Blackfoot's Yellowhand, Ted's Spirit of the Buffalo is exactly in the same vein, except JD's totem was the horse.

― Gorge, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 17:34 (seventeen years ago)

Did anybody hereabouts besides me hear the Rhino Handmade 2CD reissue of Black Oak Arkansas' Raunch 'n' Roll Live? Apparently, the original album featured one side recorded in Seattle and the other side in Portland; the reissue includes both complete sets. I've been enjoying BOA recently, and this is a pretty hot set, though I don't recommend listening to more than one disc at a time as the set lists don't differ very much at all.

― unperson, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 18:31 (seventeen years ago)

Sorry to hear that. I caught some decent YouTube clips when the US tour started, and yeah, on a track like "Wishmaster", Anette sounded way, way out of her league.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 19:05 (seventeen years ago)

In the "eight months late to the party" department: hey, this Jesu album is pretty good!

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 01:37 (seventeen years ago)

There's been about 3 eps since the last album!! ;)

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 01:44 (seventeen years ago)

I just heard this pretty awesome album by some band called "Metallica," Master of Puppets or something... anyone else familiar with this?

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 01:50 (seventeen years ago)

Aren't they a soft rock band?

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 01:57 (seventeen years ago)

Oh man, now I'm going to get yelled off the thread for talking about not-metal...

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 02:02 (seventeen years ago)

Did anybody hereabouts besides me hear the Rhino Handmade 2CD reissue of Black Oak Arkansas' Raunch 'n' Roll Live?

dude. i'm still so angry i didn't buy the sealed "used" copy i saw for $14 - not knowing at the time that rhino handmade's prices are SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS - and then i went back a week later and it was gone. i'm going to have to find mp3s or something.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 04:21 (seventeen years ago)

Re: Jesu, check out the Lifeline and Sun Down/Sun Rise EPs, they're nice complements to Conqueror.

That other Jesu EP, the one with the strange Frank N Furter homage, is less consistent.

Sticking with the subject of catching up with the rest of the world, I can't stop playing the Dethklok album. They've done a terrific job fleshing the songs out from the original excerpts on the show. I only wish "Sewn Back Together Wrong" was on there...

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 04:22 (seventeen years ago)

The intern I sent to the Nightwish/Paradise Lost show thought the singer did fine, and the crowd seemed to dig her, but he hated Paradise Lost - said the offstage/sampled keyboard parts really stiffened them up.

― unperson, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 13:24 (seventeen years ago)

haha http://www.metal-dating.com/

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 14:09 (seventeen years ago)

anyone heard this "Grind Your Mind - A History of Grindcore" comp? kinda surprised anyone bothered to put it together, really, but i kinda want to hear it.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 15:40 (seventeen years ago)

cool line-up. i'd like one. it's u.k. only release, no? a sanctuary subsidiary that i don't think i've ever even heard of.

Disc 1 -

* Discharge - Society's Victims
* Napalm Death - Victims Of A Bomb Raid
* Chaos UK - Kill Your Baby
* SIEGE - Cold War
* Repulsion - Pestilent Decay
* Repulsion - The Stench Of Burning Death
* Repulsion - Horrified
* Napalm Death - Master
* Terrorizer - Blind Army
* Terrorizer - Dead Shall Rise V.06
* Potential Threat - Miserable Bastards
* Ripcord - Single Ticket To Hell
* Cryptic Slaughter - Low Life
* Concrete Sox - Senile Fools
* Vicious Circle - Coconut Song
* Cheetah Chrome Mutherf**kers - Ultracore
* Electro Hippies - Life
* Generic - Oldest Trick In The Book
* The Stupids - Slumber Party
* Depraved - Firing Line
* Spermbirds - Americans Are Cool
* Doctor And The Crippens - Mr. Parkinson
* Civilised Society? - Blotting Paper For Breakfast
* Disorder - Overproduction
* Cryptic Slaughter - Song X
* Killercrust - Random Intimidation (exclusive demo)
* Anal Blast - Suck Your S**t Off My Dick
* Sore Throat - E.P.I.A.F.T.B. (Unreleased Studio track 1988)
* Adversity - Fight Back
* Transgression - Death To All
* Cripple Bastards - Useful/Useless/The Last Shipwrecked/My Knife When You Less Expect It/Sick Of Pleasure/Deoxidized Brain/No Serenity/Prisons/Misunderstanding Of 'Equality'
* Sore Throat - BIO HAZARD (live Demo version 1989)
* Extreme Noise Terror - Bulls**t Propaganda
* Filthy Christians - Zombie Holocaust (Live in Orebro 1990)
* Repulsion - Face Of Decay (Final Demo)
* General Surgery - Ominous Lamentation
* General Surgery - Slithering Maceration Of Ulcerous Facial Tissue
* General Surgery - Severe Catatonia In Pathology

Disc 2 -

* Cripple Bastards - Guilty Ignorance/Illusion In Concrete/Tiredness’ Hemicranization/Call Me C**t-Addicted (Unreleased tracks from the Head Ache Session 1991)
* Mortician - Barbaric Cruelties
* Mortician - Embalmed Alive
* Disrupt - Religion Is A Fraud
* Agathocles - Big One
* Agathocles - Mutilated Regurgitater
* Agathocles - Christianity Regurgitator
* Christianity Regurgitator
* Agathocles - Another Needs To Be Fed
* Brutal Truth - F**ktoy
* Brutal Truth - Dementia
* Cephalic Carnage - Observer To The Obliteration Of Planet Earth
* Cephalic Carnage - Dying Will Be The Death Of Me
* Cephalic Carnage - Lucid Interval
* Soilent Green - Walk A Year In My Mind
* Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Information Superlost Highway
* Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Die And Get The F**k Out Of The Way
* Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Dead Battery
* Anaal Nathrakh - The Codex Necro
* Nasum - I Hate People
* Nasum - Time To Act!
* Pig Distroyer - Scarlet Hourglass
* Pig Distroyer - Cheerleader Corpses
* Napalm Death - Fatalist
* Exhumed - Slaughtercult
* Exhumed - Death Walks Behind You
* Defective Brain - Immortal Remains
* Skinless - Trample The Weak, Hurdle The Dead
* Skinless - Foreshadowing Our Demise
* Skinless - Deathwork
* Regurgitate - Eurphoric State Of Butchery
* Cretin - The Yawning God
* Cretin - Creepy Crawlies
* Insect Warfare - Hydrophobia
* Mistress - Kunt

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 19:40 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, don't think I need that.

― unperson, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 19:42 (seventeen years ago)

i think you do. i think we all do.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 19:48 (seventeen years ago)

got new horna and spektr in the mail. will report back. eventually. probably. i dunno, maybe i'll report back. who am i reporting to again?

― scott seward, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 19:52 (seventeen years ago)

The crowd dug her because she was wearing a really short skirt and kept kneeling. I saw them with Tarja, and it was about a million times better. Annette just doesn't have the stage presence out of metal singer requires. Maybe she would have been fine as a pop singer, but man -- that goofy dance really just killed any enjoyment I could possibly get out of the show. Even the band didn't really seem that fired up, at least not compared to, again, when I saw them perform with Tarja. Of course, they might've been more intense than because they all hated each other. And yes, Paradise Lost did have the offstage samples, but I still thought they were really good. I'm glad your intern enjoyed it and all, but he's WRONG.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 20:22 (seventeen years ago)

Zepparella's A Pleasing Pounding -- SF all girl LZ tribute, as opposed to the NYC all girl LZ tribute, Lez Zeppelin. So both coasts are covered by two bands that undoubtedly sound better than what Plant/Page reunion will spit upon an audience for the sake of Ahmet Artegun and Atlantic.

Or you can get Franki Banali and Friends tribute to Led Zeppelin.

Anyhoo, A Pleasing Pounding is live in a small club and one thing you notice right away is that these bands play mostly to guys who appreciate is as a more elaborate equiv of pole-dancing. So the bands seem to be as much if not more for leering than listening. Zepparella do Sick Again, Custard Pie and Trampled Underfoot -- all with the requisite funk. That makes them very good. There's an extended harmonica break in Custard Pie. With the woman shouting "I'll chew on a piece of your custard pie" and "going down," while blowing a mouth harp in between will make even the most strongly unselfconscious among us squirm a bit.

Most of the band used to be in Bottom and I had a CD by them but don't remember what it sounded like. Nothing like this, obviously.

― Gorge, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 20:58 (seventeen years ago)

Wound up liking the Hearse album (on Candlelight) a lot -- They are hereby my favorite "black'n'roll" band, I think, if that's what they count as. I especially like tracks # 1, 3, and 9, whatever they are called. You can really hear the early Motorhead in their rhythm (and in #3 early Voivod); also, they make me think that bands like Carnivore and (the metal not the UK) Primal Scream (neither of whom I've actually heard in 20 years, so I could be way wrong) may have actually invented black'n'roll way back in the '80s. Also, they have actually songs about you'll remember my name and there's nowhere to run, and stuff. The words are not hard to make out. In fact, I'd almost call them punk rock, in a way.

Just checked said Swedish meatballs' myspace page, which calls them "death metal/goth/experimental"; no idea whether some of that's meant as a joke or not:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=5044610

Also decided that I don't like the Spektr or Syrach albums much. New Supagroup is good, though, but that's to be expected. Will try Horna next, I guess.

Excellent on-stage rap in "Oleo," off that live Cactus CD, about a girl with whom the singer is apparently acquainted: "She got greased back hair and long armpits, she got long hair on her head, and big tits." I also like when he dedicates one of the songs to some tall girl in the crowd. "Parchman Farm" is on right now, as we speak. Sounds amazing.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 November 2007 01:30 (seventeen years ago)

Actually, "Long Tall Sally" (slowed and heavified) is appropriately the one they dedicate: "I'd like to dedicate this to that big tall girl out there."

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 November 2007 01:32 (seventeen years ago)

(Trying Vried again now too. Track 4 sounds catchy, and more goth than Hearse are if you ask me, plus the guy just grunted kind of like Tom G. Warrior.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 8 November 2007 01:35 (seventeen years ago)

The guitar interplay on Parchman Farm on the Cactus Live is awesome. Like the Allmans if they played proto-metal.

Thanks to all who recommended the Baronness. I finally got it and love it.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 8 November 2007 15:07 (seventeen years ago)

That Grind Your Mind comp looks great, I have quite a lot of it already. No idea WTF the Spermbirds are doing on it though. Just straight up USHC via Germany that song.

― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 8 November 2007 15:11 (seventeen years ago)

no Deep Wound?

― latebloomer, Thursday, 8 November 2007 15:20 (seventeen years ago)

kinda curious about this spektr ep. picked up near death experience a few weeks ago and it's pretty awesome.

― Mark Clemente, Thursday, 8 November 2007 15:42 (seventeen years ago)

Nightwish is in a tough position. Getting a new singer with her own personality is almost certainly the best thing for them, band-, composition- and career-wise, but this forces somebody other than Tarja to try to "reproduce" Tarja's voice when performing old Nightwish material live, which is pretty much doomed to be unsatisfying.

Luckily for me, I have a six-month-old baby and thus never go to concerts anymore, so whatever problems they have live don't affect me! I just get to play "Amaranth" over and over for my daughter. She and I agree that this is as good an album as Nightwish has ever made. But then she wasn't even born yet when Tarja was fired, so maybe she just doesn't have as much vested interest in what they used to sound like...

― glenn mcdonald, Thursday, 8 November 2007 20:15 (seventeen years ago)

congrats on the little one, glenn!

i used to play the gathering for my first kid when he was little.

― scott seward, Thursday, 8 November 2007 23:08 (seventeen years ago)

Yes, my displeasure may have something to do with the fact that I'm a raging fan boy. And I agree, it's theoretically the best thing for them to do. However, that dancing... so goofy! Even my friend, who isn't as big a Nightwish fan as I am, was bored, and the industry section of the balcony was clearing out pretty quickly as the set went on. It was basically like watching Ripper Priest -- yeah, it's OK, but not particularly edifying.

I am quite enjoying the Ghost Brigade album. Really solid fusion of post-metal and Gothic metal. I think a lot of people on here would dig it.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 9 November 2007 03:45 (seventeen years ago)

Still catching up with stuff that sat on my shelf a long time:

Supagroup Fire For Hire These Louisianans' third really good album, and they're still best when trying to be '70s AC/DC, which they do better than AC/DC has for the past quarter-century. Best songs: "What's Your Problem Now" (references "I Got a Man" by Positive K!), "Born in Exile" (includes great spoken Bon-like part), "Lonely at the Bottom" (see also: Rancid Vat, Goddo) "Jailbait" ("I was on my way up/she was on her way down/And I didn't know I crossed the line"), "Long Live Rock" (references "Paradise City"). Most NWOBHM song: "Bow Down." Most Kiss song: "Hey Kiddies."

VRIED I Krieg good winding guitar, fun Yurropeein' accents (sometimes talked), weird incidental stuff, some good repaititive riffs, actual songs with hooks. So in otherwise, not nearly as black metal as their myspace says they are:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=129327571

WARFARE Metal Anarchy Along with Bitches Sin, probably the NWOBHM reissue of the year. Just great early Motorhead wannabee stuff, since that's the only Motorhead that was around to imitate back then (with some Anti-Nowhere League tossed in, maybe).

GENTLEMENS PISTOLS Gentlemens Pistols As far as I can tell, a good speedy hard rock band, with a good tough plainspoken hard rock singer. Unless I'm confusing their songs with somebody else's in my changer, but I don't think I am. It's another one of those Candlelight advances without song titles on the sleeve, but I recommend cuts #2 and 4 for sure.

AXEL RUDI PELL Diamonds Unlocked Repertoire record by the noted German guitar guy. Favorites so far are the covers of songs by Riot ("Warrior"), Chris Rea/the Law ("Stone" -- sounds like Bad Company; did Rea do much hard rock stuff? I've always been curious about him beyond is one great '78 U.S. soft rock hit "Fool If You Think It's Over" -- isn't he huge in Wales or somewhere?), Michael Bolton ("Fools Game" -- excellent hard pop, is this from Bolton's Blackjack days? Another topic for further research), Montrose ("Rock The Nation," guess I'd forgotten how much it sort of sounds like the MC5), Free ("Heartbreaker", seven real nice minutes of it), Phil Collins ("In the Air Tonight.") I could probably live without the "Love Gun," "Won't Get Fooled Again" (competent) and, "Like A Child Again" by the Mission (who I've never listened to -- kinda thought they were early Cult style Goth, was I wrong) and "Beautiful Day" by U2 covers. Still, there's more good to great than boring stuff here.

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 November 2007 18:48 (seventeen years ago)

weird incidental stuff, some good repaititive riffs

I meant weird incidental electronic stuff, to be precise. Also meant to spell "repetitive" right.

― xhuxk, Friday, 9 November 2007 18:51 (seventeen years ago)

>>("Fools Game" -- excellent hard pop, is this from Bolton's Blackjack >>days

Probably not. I could check since I have the Blackjack stuff. The two records certainly had their moments but 'excellent' doesn't ever enter it. One was produced by Tom Dowd to give it a southern rock/country/roots rock feel -- which was a mistake. The second by Eddie Offord to give it a big Billy Squier/Yes/80's etc type of sound which is what they should have had on the debut, which was the only record the label was interested in pushing.

― Gorge, Friday, 9 November 2007 20:13 (seventeen years ago)

Got the new Neuraxis live album yesterday...it sounds really, really good, they did a better job capturing the live atmosphere a lot better than the Opeth live disc does. Still trying to decide whether the new vocalist is better than the previous guy, who was quite a presence onstage, but musically, this stuff is as tight as ever, and makes me want to see these guys again. Great band.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 9 November 2007 20:27 (seventeen years ago)

What label is that on? For some reason, Willowtip doesn't send me anything.

― unperson, Friday, 9 November 2007 21:15 (seventeen years ago)

It's on Galy, out of Montreal.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 9 November 2007 21:20 (seventeen years ago)

Ouch. But he's right you know.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Friday, 9 November 2007 21:23 (seventeen years ago)

That is a truly brutal dissection of an album. Kudos to him!

So looks like I have Eyes of Eden, ASG, and the Bongzilla and Exit-13 reissues coming my way. I will report on them.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 9 November 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago)

That Eyes of Eden is a bit of a dissapointment, at least upon first listen. Plenty of atmosphere, but the hooks just aren't there.

And yeah, the merciless shredding of that A7X disc was very pleasing, and warranted.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 9 November 2007 22:35 (seventeen years ago)

The only one of those that I don't already have is Eyes Of Eden. Haven't listened to the ASG yet though it's promising, and I hate everything by Bongzilla except Gateway (I think), which is tolerable. Exit-13 is a time capsule, nothing more.

― unperson, Saturday, 10 November 2007 02:47 (seventeen years ago)

WARFARE Metal Anarchy Along with Bitches Sin, probably the NWOBHM reissue of the year.

yessss! these guys are so great, venom plus punk. i hope they reissue mayhem fuckin' mayhem at some point.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Saturday, 10 November 2007 03:36 (seventeen years ago)

I have absolutely no expectations for that package other than that it will contain music and hopefully I might like some of it. End of year pickings are pretty slim.

Also, I met J. Bennett tonight at the Jesu show. He is quite tall. And seemed like a very nice guy.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 10 November 2007 10:03 (seventeen years ago)

Really, really liking the ASG CD. Awesome fuzzed-out stoner rock, pretty much what I was hoping that Amplified Heat CD would be. A definite improvement over their last album. Recommended for anyone who likes tasty stoner rock.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 11 November 2007 00:18 (seventeen years ago)

>>("Fools Game" -- excellent hard pop, is this from Bolton's Blackjack >>days...Probably not.

Off Bolton's '83 self-titled debut (an album I've never heard) says AMG, which adds "songs like 'Fools Game,' the lead-off track and chart single, were satisfying pop efforts that suggested he might offer some competition to emerging mainstream rockers like Bryan Adams." And yeah, Axel Rudi Pell's version sounds very "Cuts Like A Knife"-era Bryan. Cool song.

― xhuxk, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:00 (seventeen years ago)

Exit-13 is... best appreciated in small doses. I've discovered it makes an excellent soundtrack to Fun with Milk and Cheese, though.

I'm enjoying Eyes of Eden. Nothing spectacular, but pleasant enough background music. "Sleeping Minds" has a good show tune quality to it, and some nice twists and turns.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:11 (seventeen years ago)

who is j bennett?

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:13 (seventeen years ago)

A very funny music writer. He contributes to a bunch of stuff, including the same publication as Mr. Seward and Mr. Begrand.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:27 (seventeen years ago)

Man, Exit-13 and Bongzilla are into marijuana like my friend's roommates are into World of Warcraft...

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:39 (seventeen years ago)

I honestly didn't realize that there was such a wealth of lyrical material to be written about one subject as seemingly limited as smoking pot... I mean, it's pretty impressive.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:45 (seventeen years ago)

especially when smoking pot

― latebloomer, Monday, 12 November 2007 01:49 (seventeen years ago)

>A very funny music writer.

Not as funny as he thinks he is. (Begrand and Seward are also contributors to Metal Edge these days, btw. So's Haikunym/Dimension 5ive.)

― unperson, Monday, 12 November 2007 02:59 (seventeen years ago)

Is every writer here a contributor to Metal Edge except me?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 03:34 (seventeen years ago)

Apparently there is a Queensryche covers album coming out tomorrow. Anybody heard this thing?

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:18 (seventeen years ago)

Haven't read either regularly in years, but Metal Edge is garbage--basically an ode to 80's hair rock that masqueraded as metal. The only fun bit was where they asked a bunch of rock stars questions and posted quotes from about thirty of them--forget whta they called that segment.

Metal Maniacs was a good mag--I actually discovered a lot of bands thanks to them, plus I didn't find that they stooped to the idiocy of some of the people they interviewed.

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:39 (seventeen years ago)

>Haven't read either regularly in years, but Metal Edge is garbage

Ah, informed criticism...it's what I live for.

― unperson, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago)

Perhaps I didn't word it very well, but I think it was pretty clear I was indicating that when I did read the magazine (which was frequently when I was in high school), it was garbage.

Metal Maniacs I have read recently.

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 00:02 (seventeen years ago)

I think what Unperson is trying to say is that he edits Metal Edge now, so the most recent incarnation is, hopefully, no longer garbage.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 00:04 (seventeen years ago)

Well, I certainly hope it's no longer garbage--and again, to all readers here, I'll preface that I haven't read an issue of Metal Edge in years, so I'm only commenting on what it used to look like.

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 00:06 (seventeen years ago)

(So's Haikunym/Dimension 5ive.)

I didn't know that.

I'm really liking the revamped Metal Edge, it's a huge improvement over what it was even a couple issues ago. Hopefully folks will catch on.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 01:04 (seventeen years ago)

HAI ADRIENZ>, I kicked myself off of PopMatters and am happy, you will get an email soon

― Dimension 5ive, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 01:19 (seventeen years ago)

hey metal writing dudes? do any of you remember a full color mag - i want to say it might've been a thrash metal special put out by some other mag - that had a two-page "HAY YOU THINK METAL'S EXTREME CHECK THIS SHIT OUT DUDEZ" feature with bands like red resistor, borbetomagus, swans, sonic youth, maybe chrome, etc? i think i bring this up like once a year but i'd really like to know where that was published, who wrote it...

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 03:45 (seventeen years ago)

this would've been like early 90s, maybe even late 80s.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 03:45 (seventeen years ago)

Rip?

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 03:51 (seventeen years ago)

HAY YOU THINK METAL'S EXTREME CHECK THIS SHIT OUT DUDEZ by Chuck Eddy

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 04:32 (seventeen years ago)

hahaha--did xhuxk really write such a thing for Creem Metal???

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:07 (seventeen years ago)

is there xhhuxkography we can check?

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:18 (seventeen years ago)

we wish!

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:24 (seventeen years ago)

Nah, that wasn't me. I did write a "Black Metal Roundup" for Creem Metal in about '88 or so that was all metal bands with black guys in them, though. (And I reviewed plenty of "extremer than extreme" noisiness in my "Selectric Funeral" column in that mag, too. But by the early '90s, I'd given up on most of that kinda music, and Creem Metal was long gone. Also, I have no idea who Red Resistor are.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 11:43 (seventeen years ago)

red resistor = von lmo. might've been red transistor, though, i can't remember.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 13:18 (seventeen years ago)

Hey Phil, remember i said Metal Edge was available even in my town in Scotland(and in every branch of WH Smiths across the uk)?
Since you took-over they stopped selling it. I'm sure they didn't mean it personally ;) So I can't get to check it in the shop now.
They did stop getting The Wire for a while as well but I noticed they get that back in now.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 18:46 (seventeen years ago)

Hey Chuck, that should totally be your next book, except instead of the noisiness stuff it should be The Monks and Miranda Lambert. That would really screw with people's heads.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago)

Apparently, Tarja Turunen's solo debut, My Winter Storm, comes out on Monday (11/19) in Europe, on Spinefarm. No U.S. release date has been announced, so I've emailed some label dude in Berlin to get a copy sent my way.

― unperson, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 02:07 (seventeen years ago)

It leaked today...her "Poison" cover stunk something awful, and I'm dreading/sorta-curious about the rest.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 02:16 (seventeen years ago)

You people are just trying to make me cry.

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 03:08 (seventeen years ago)

I'm too preoccupied with the brilliance of Ire Works to bother with Tarja tonight. After two months of that friggin' stream, I'm so glad to have a CD playing full blast...this album just keeps getting better and better. It just might be the best metal album of the year.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 03:36 (seventeen years ago)

Glad to hear you are still digging Ire Works Adrien, I just picked that up with my 40% off Borders coupon today. Can't wait to dig in.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 04:10 (seventeen years ago)

you dudes are awfully into chick metal.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 04:59 (seventeen years ago)

This is just dawning on you?

― scott seward, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 05:10 (seventeen years ago)

hey, how come i never heard Obliveon before? the cybertechthrashdeath band from Montreal. i dig the reissues i got. although i think i like the earlier thrashier stuff more than the industrial stuff. but even that stuff sounds pretty cool. their myspace only has their heavy industrial stuff on there. the Nemesis album is the one i like the best out of the three i got.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 05:23 (seventeen years ago)

I'm liking Eyes of Eden more than I really expected. It's no Nightwish, but if you like this sort of thing, Epica, Eyes of Eden, Sirenia and Tristania all get my within-genre endorsements, at least, this year. (And I haven't heard the new Asrai yet.)

― glenn mcdonald, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 17:38 (seventeen years ago)

I just got the Dillinger Escape Plan vinyl in today.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 18:44 (seventeen years ago)

Speaking of Spanish-language prog-metal bombast (oh, we weren't? well, anyway), I just got the latest 2CD live album by Mägo De Oz in the mail. It's called A Costa Da Morte, and it comes out on 11/20 on Locomotive.

Got my finished (that is, without annoying beeping sound every 60 seconds) copy of Opeth's The Roundhouse Tapes yesterday, too. Great to hear Akerfeldt making fun of himself when introducing songs; he says the lyrics to "Under The Weeping Moon" are "total black metal nonsense," and talks about how they were "very pretentious" around the time of Moonrise, so they brought a lute into the studio to record "The Night And The Silent Water." Even though they wound up not using it, he advises the audience to imagine the guitar lines on a lute as they play the song.

― unperson, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 18:45 (seventeen years ago)

you dudes are awfully into chick metal.

Banish the vile varlet that ain't, I say!

Valhalla awaits, heathens!

― JN$OT, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago)

Funny thing about that Opeth disc, the production is so good, you can hear the chatters during the mellow bits, which I found to be a little annoying. But otherwise, it's definitely a strong live album. Hope the DVD looks as good as the CD sounds.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 19:16 (seventeen years ago)

I finally got the new Soilwork album today. Wasn't expecting much, as their last one was only okay, but I'm very pleasantly surprised. They've finally come up with vocal melodies strong enough to go with that In Flames-style direction they've been heading in lately. And I like Reroute to Remain, so I find this disc, while not original in the least, still quite appealing.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 23:04 (seventeen years ago)

Dude, chick metal rules! Don't knock it until you've tried it.

That Asrai CD is total crap. Boring songs, and the instruments are mixed in such a way to be physically painful to listen to. Don't waste your time.

I like the new Soilwork as well. I wish there was less of the aggro stuff and more of the melodic stuff, but it sounded good to me. Have to listen to it again before I can really get into any details.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 15 November 2007 20:17 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, the Soilwork is strong, pretty much from start to finish. "The Pittsburgh Syndrome" is the one really silly track, but damn, Dev Townsend really got some good singing out of whatshisname. Speed.

I played the new Nights Like These CD and couldn't believe this was the same band I heard a year ago. Good, solid sludge, with a little crust and prog tossed in, disciplined songwriting, and the odd hook or two. I then dug out their 2006 album, and I'm amazed at how awful it is compared to the new one, a total Mastodon/Red Chord circle jerk, a complete waste of time. It's nice to see a young band show this kind of growth.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 15 November 2007 21:21 (seventeen years ago)

Might have missed a link or discussion but did anyone catch Erik Davis's Slate piece from yesterday?

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 15 November 2007 21:39 (seventeen years ago)

erik rulez. i was supposed to send him a mix cd and i still haven't. i am a laaaaaazy bonez.

― scott seward, Thursday, 15 November 2007 21:58 (seventeen years ago)

What a great article. Thanks for the link.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 15 November 2007 22:00 (seventeen years ago)

Yer welcome! Found it quite by accident.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 15 November 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, good piece. Rare, in general but especially in metal, to see anybody try to explain some outsider thing's internal transcendance without a big fart of protective condescension first.

And I'm really liking Two Hunters, too, in maybe something like the way I liked Sunn O)))) & Boris's Altar.

― glenn mcdonald, Thursday, 15 November 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago)

erik is kind of a mystical genius. that helps.

http://www.techgnosis.com/

we were on the same panel at that emp conference thing and he blew my little mind. ned can back me up on that.

― scott seward, Thursday, 15 November 2007 23:39 (seventeen years ago)

i dig that october file album a bunch. so cool. but i might like the october falls ep even more. it's a toss up. they both rule.

― scott seward, Thursday, 15 November 2007 23:56 (seventeen years ago)

we were on the same panel at that emp conference thing and he blew my little mind. ned can back me up on that.

Agreed, and very friendly guy too!

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 15 November 2007 23:58 (seventeen years ago)

It's nice to see metal not treated with derision in a mainstream-ish publication. I'm not entirely on board with the whole "US ambient black metal" sound, but now I'm curious about this band.

Listened to Soilwork in the car this afternoon again. I think my big disappointment with the band post-Figure Number Five is that they've divorced the aggression and the melody from each other. This album especially feels like "aggro part, melodic part, aggro part, melodic part" with the two rarely meeting. It's too bad, because I really thought they had perfected the synthesis of those two things on Figure.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 00:22 (seventeen years ago)

i really liked stabbing the drama. despite the title. even when they aren't great, soilwork make most u.s. metalcore/melodeath bands look like poo. they are just good at that stuff. even if it's hardly my favorite stuff. production is usually nice and tight and chunky and shiny too.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago)

I agree, Scott, I've never disliked anything they've done -- but I think I mentioned up thread how much I love Figure Number Five, so I just wish that they had continued in that direction.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 00:37 (seventeen years ago)

So I've decided that I really like "Sleeping Minds" on the Eyes of Eden because it sounds like a Gothic Kate Bush song, not a show tune.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 02:09 (seventeen years ago)

I got to spend about two hours hanging around with Rob Halford today. He's as nice as everyone says he is, and a terrific interview.

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 02:21 (seventeen years ago)

Lucky bastard.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 02:21 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I was gonna say. Any quotes of note?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 02:22 (seventeen years ago)

Dude, chick metal rules! Don't knock it until you've tried it.

well, i like madder mortem. but most of the chick metal i like isn't coated with euro-metal gunk...

interesting that everyone liked that erik davis slate thing, i thought it was kind of crap, as did everyone else i've talked to about it. the nicest remark was something along the lines of "well, at least it gets the music out there." just had a kind of pitchforky/stylus-y "hey, let's write about metal now" vibe to me.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 16 November 2007 05:31 (seventeen years ago)

Dude, euro-metal gunk rules! Don't knock it until you've tried it.

I think what I like about ASG is that they totally, unabashedly rock. They actually sound like they're excited to be playing rock 'n roll music, unlike, say, Wolfmother, who soullessly emulate stuff from the 70s that they heard their parents play on their record players. This would definitely make my 2007 top 10, if it wasn't for the fact that it's being released in 2008.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 05:55 (seventeen years ago)

I'm an unabashed sucker for Euro-metal gunk, especially when sung by the ladies. Which makes it all the more surprising that I can't get into Eyes of Eden, a female-fronted band featuring Waldemar Sorychta, the master of Euro-metal gunk.

The more the year has gone on, the more that Within Temptation album has grown on me...it's definitely my favorite chick metal disc this year.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 16 November 2007 06:57 (seventeen years ago)

"interesting that everyone liked that erik davis slate thing, i thought it was kind of crap"

i didn't actually read it. i just think he's cool.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 14:43 (seventeen years ago)

new(ish)stuff i still need to listen to or that i've only skipped through: annihilator, gamma ray, ava inferni, protest the hero, rob rock, elvenking, svartsot, syrach, bestial mockery, christian death, dodsferd, the old dead tree, ghost brigade, sinamore, vesania, asrai, cosa nostra klub.

i'll get to it all sooner or later. i still like that album by The Foreshadowing. even though it's basically a note-perfect tribute to all my fave 90's doom bands. my dying bride, anathema, katatonia, etc. they do it really well! and i actually like how shameless it is.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:02 (seventeen years ago)

christian death

Dare I ask the lineup these days.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:06 (seventeen years ago)

i have it right here:

valor
maitri
nate hassan

guest musicians:

tiia
coyote
juan punchy gonzales

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:12 (seventeen years ago)

Oh vertiginous abyss, where is thy vomit?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:15 (seventeen years ago)

I was planning on listening to that Protest the Hero album today, but I just got the Crucial Blast reissue of Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper in the mail, and I can already tell I'm gonna be listening to that over and over all day. Until this morning, I only knew Skullflower from the boring-ass recent stuff like Orange Canyon Mind, but this totally kicks ass. In a very slow, staring-at-the-cracked-sidewalk-under-gray-and-overcast-skies kind of way, of course.

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:28 (seventeen years ago)

Of course. And that is a great album and a half, so enjoy -- still have my old copy around somewhere.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:29 (seventeen years ago)

THE END RECORDS has signed the new project entitled: J2, featuring
enigmatic singer/songwriter/performer JARBOE and JUSTIN K BROADRICK,
frontman for ambient/progressive noise project Jesu.

j2 is the symbol for current density
The symbol is also short for Joule which means:
Pronunciation Key: joule (jôôl, joul)
The International System unit of electrical,
mechanical and thermal energy

Jarboe is known for her 14 years work with the legendary NYC East Village ArtRock band Swans,
as well as her recent musical collaborations with such bands as Jesu, Neurosis and A Perfect Circle. Broadrick,
who joined pioneering U.K. grind band Napalm Death at the age of 15, formed the influential
metal/industrial act Godlflesh in the late-80s and in 2003 started up his current band Jesu.

"..When I met Justin, he commented upon the impact and influence of Swans upon his music.
We did a concert together in London in 2005 and began discussing working together.
I had also been drawn to the unique energy of Jesu and so this was exciting to explore."

The J2 album will be released in the spring of 2008 on THE END RECORDS.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:30 (seventeen years ago)

you know, the christian death album isn't half bad. old deathrockers would like it. like, ancient ones. i'm pretty ancient, so i can dig it.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:31 (seventeen years ago)

if i see the new christian death i might actually buy it. been listening to them for some reason. a seasonal thing, maybe.

Oh vertiginous abyss, where is thy vomit?

heh. i should dig that one out and play it.

i am super curious about "cd1334" or whatever they're calling themselves this week - the only theatre of pain lineup with eva o singing.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:50 (seventeen years ago)

...apparently reunited to tour and promote the reissue of OTOP.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago)

Didn't realize it had been reissued. Anything new not on the older CD version?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 15:54 (seventeen years ago)

i think it's just remastered, not out yet either... looking at the myspace page apparently there is/will be a vinyl reissue with the original french version's cover and then the cd will be a digipak with the original frontier records cover. only tracks are gonna be the original album + deathwish (just like the frontier cd version). kind of a drag.

http://www.cd1334.com/

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:07 (seventeen years ago)

"That Asrai CD is total crap."

i don't mind this! it's not bad at all. to me. i've heard worse girly goth rock, that's for sure.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:36 (seventeen years ago)

the sinamore album is really bad though. boring dude goth rock.

i like the ava inferni album too. more girly goth rock.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:38 (seventeen years ago)

nothing beats the cosa nostra klub album for over the top goth action though. what a hoot.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:46 (seventeen years ago)

This new Annihilator CD with all the guests (Jeff Loomis, Danko Jones, Angela Gossow, Anders Bjorler, Corey Beaulieu of Trivium, Alexi Laiho, Michael Amott, Willie Adler of Lamb of God, Jesper Stromblad and others) is pretty damn good.

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:52 (seventeen years ago)

the production is pretty horrible though. maybe i shouldn't have played it after the shiny new gamma ray album.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 16:54 (seventeen years ago)

the bestial mockery album is cool. i dig. and the song title "return of the god with napalm eyes" is almost as cool as the song title on their christcrushing hammerchainsaw demo: "chainsaw fucking down the church".

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 17:20 (seventeen years ago)

that ghost brigade album is okay. that old dead tree album is not.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 17:21 (seventeen years ago)

http://bp0.blogger.com/_ZiM8GFhGDOM/Rz4QsHcEm7I/AAAAAAAAAMk/AHupYjiCAnM/s1600-h/mikephilrob.jpg

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 21:53 (seventeen years ago)

Image link didn't work, I guess; viewable here.

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 21:53 (seventeen years ago)

Okay, so Phil looks nothing like what I expected!

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 21:54 (seventeen years ago)

What were you expecting?

― unperson, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:06 (seventeen years ago)

Cool pic. To reiterate, you're one lucky dude.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:34 (seventeen years ago)

by far, the late in the year stuff i like the most is the doom i've been getting. that worship album. now the new sol album which is awesome:

http://www.van-gbr.de/van_base/images/Cover/Sol%20-%20Let%20There%20Be%20A%20Massacre.JPG

and the funeralium album from france:

http://www.totalrust-music.com/Releases/Trust006-Funeralium.jpg

all great albums.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:41 (seventeen years ago)

What were you expecting?

I'm honestly not sure! I had this random image in my head from when I heard the radio chat on _Marooned_. For whatever reason I hadn't pictured you with glasses, god knows why...

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:44 (seventeen years ago)

slough feg is playing at a bar in st. paul tonight i'm kicking around going out to it. i don't really know them but i liked the stuff on their myspace and i'm sort of in the mood for metal.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:46 (seventeen years ago)

Go!! I'd love to see them live. I think Jeff told me before he's seen them a number of times.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:52 (seventeen years ago)

Yes! You totally have to go see them! Their live show is what sold me on them.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 22:56 (seventeen years ago)

OK you guys are making me want to go to this...

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:00 (seventeen years ago)

Is the new album out on vinyl yet?

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:01 (seventeen years ago)

The second (and most recent) time I saw them was at this crappy little place called the Relax Bar in Hollywood where the stage was literally a 6' x 6' Square of wood on the floor and there was no sound guy and the speakers had an electrical buzz to them and the (small) crowd consisted entirely of Century Media/Relapse employees and the singer/guitarist had hurt his left foot -- and they totally smoked. The dude with the hurt foot would even run into the crowd during the guitar solos! Do yourself a favor and go see them, and buy their albums to support them (you can't go wrong with Traveler, Atavism, or Hardworlder).

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:06 (seventeen years ago)

Point these out to me tomorrow at Amoeba (or just anything good, actually -- but preferably used of course).

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:12 (seventeen years ago)

Get them all!

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:14 (seventeen years ago)

I don't have THAT much spare cash. But I might have a lot of credit...

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago)

If they have them -- my usual experience with metal at Amoeba is that they don't have anything I want, or if they do it's like $16. Occasionally I come across a good deal. I picked up Whoracle and draconian Times for six dollars each there. You never know.

If my enthusiastic puppy dog description above doesn't sell you on it, I would like to point out that Traveler is a concept album based on a 70s sci-fi role-playing game about a space pirate who gets turned into a man-dog hybrid and has to take down an evil scientist. And Atavism has a song where the chorus is "I will kill you -- you will die!"

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:16 (seventeen years ago)

He's def buying Traveler

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:19 (seventeen years ago)

If they have them -- my usual experience with metal at Amoeba is that they don't have anything I want, or if they do it's like $16.

Exactly! This is why I shop used when I can.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:19 (seventeen years ago)

And Re: Eyes of Eden -- if the whole album sounded like "Winter Night," "Star," and "Sleeping Minds," I would be enthusing over it like I am over Slough Feg. It's too bad that most of the other songs sound pretty generic. Hopefully they'll go in that direction on the second album.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 16 November 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago)

--CAINA--

HOLY SHITTING CHRIST THIS GUY IS MY AGE

Listening to this on a long car-journey at dusk the other day gave me the most incredible waking dream. Cross-eyed at the lights of the traffic, it all fell into place. Fantastic music, sparse and subliminal. Unpredictable. Unforced. Desolate. Beautiful.

― Just got offed, Sunday, 18 November 2007 13:16 (seventeen years ago)

http://www.myspace.com/ryokuchi

japanese EXPERIMENTAL DOOM TRIBAL HARD CORE (so they say), bassist/vocalist and drummer. the samples sound kinda alright. nothing like OM.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 18 November 2007 16:23 (seventeen years ago)

Moonspell Under Satane (re-recorded versions of their real early songs apparently) sounded good to me in the background yesterday morning.

Wound up really loving Gentleman's Pistols this week too. Their myspace says their influences are 1968-1973, but I hear at least as much early punk and NWOBHM in their songs as '70s-style stoner metal. Favorite cut is probably "Vivid Wonder," track 9, just really speedy and catchy and over-the-top. Singer frequently reminds me of MC5's Rob Tyner, especially in track #1. Track #7 sounds like the Chili Peppers might if they were actually any good (i.e., if they had an actual singer for starters.) Overall, nothing drags, and tons of good riffs and choruses. One of the best loud rock albums of 2007 I think (and it has to count as "metal" since it's on Candlelight, right? Otherwise, maybe some people could quibble, but now they really have no choice.)

Also decided I definitely approve of the Nightwish CD (even the parts that sound like a Star Wars soundtrack) and that Warfare reissue, if there was any doubt.

And Terje, Jesper & Joachim reissue on Normal/ Shadoks is really good obscure hard hippie pysch (recorded in 1980 in Denmark, apparently) -- Scott, have you heard this one? Guitar in "Between the Shields" always reminds me of "Blowin' Smoke" by George Brigman and Split. Lots of good expansive psych stuff, too; "Free" is a beaut with a great chorus about some girl is in love with all the singer's friends. "If I Needed Someone" a good fusion jam. "All Through the Day" has good sax. Etc.

http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?r=1&ean=801670009221

And I mentioned a more recent album by these AC/DC-style Swiss biker boogie rockers Sideburn before, but this one from 2002 is excellent too, so here:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/sideburn

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago)

chuck, have you heard the clockcleaner album on Load. Maybe you already mentioned it somewhere. or the Psychedelic Horseshit album on Siltbreeze? They are totally worth getting on new vinyl if you know of any good stores near you that sell that kinda stuff. i love both albums. not metal, but i just thought i'd bring them up.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 19:28 (seventeen years ago)

i haven't heard the shadoks thing. i WISH shadoks sent me stuff. i'd be in heaven.

i am doing a label thing in decibel on shifty records - a label that is the coolest of the cool - and they sent me 17 CDs, a 3 inch cd, and 3 vinyl singles (!!) so, i'm not complaining about free stuff. i love the shifty thang. just crush kill and destroy all the way.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 19:32 (seventeen years ago)

I didn't make it all the way through that new Clockcleaner album even once, Scott, and I'm not sure I made a note of why anywhere. (Maybe the guy's singing?) I had hopes, since people had told me they'd improved since their earlier albums (which I didn't like very much, and which I wrote about somewhere on some pigfuck revival thread I think), but no dice; I got annoyed and/or bored really quick.

What I wrote about their older stuff is here:

the nu-pigfuck

By the way, the new Nightwish album is the by far the most entertaining one I've heard by them, on the basis of mere spectacular stuff going on and variety of different songs alone. But then, I'd never really established any kind of emotional connection to their earlier singer, in the first place; I always thought of them as like Gathering or Lacuna Coil but not as good (and not all that much better than, say, Evanescence or Lois Lane or whoever). The new one is kind of wacky, though, in ways I'd never noticed the earlier ones being (the only one of which I still own is Once from 2004, which is fine, don't get me wrong.) That they changed singers seems more or less immaterial to me, but then I'm no expert.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 19:51 (seventeen years ago)

Never heard Psychedelic Horseshit, though; what do they sound like? (And Scott, do you like the new Cockcleaner I mean Clockcleaner better than their earlier stuff? How is it different, if at all?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 19:53 (seventeen years ago)

And by "earlier (Clockcleaner) albums" I clearly mean "earlier Clockcleaner EP plus whatever Clockcleaner stuff somebody sent me on a CD-R in mid 2006 (could've been stray singles, an advance of the 2007 album that later came out, I have no idea)."

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 20:39 (seventeen years ago)

Also, Terje, Jesper & Joachim recorded in 1970, not 1980, my bad.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 20:41 (seventeen years ago)

I just listened to said Terje album an hour back, oddly enough! Yeah, good stuff, not as completely taken with it as xhuxk is but I liked it and their story in the liner notes. The cover of "If I Needed Someone" definitely is one of the more inspired Beatles remakes I've heard in a bit.

I gotta admit I'm also with xhuxk as opposed to Scott about Clockcleaner. I've heard the Load album and just thought it was middling.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 November 2007 20:51 (seventeen years ago)

Chuck I would encourage you to revisit Nightwish's Wishmaster. Tarja Turunen : the singers of those other bands you named :: Sinatra : me.

― J0hn D., Sunday, 18 November 2007 20:52 (seventeen years ago)

the only clockcleaner i know is the new one. i love it! i love their sound. i love the guitars. i love the drums. the dude just reminds me of peter murphy + david yow a little . i think his voice is pretty good actually.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 21:16 (seventeen years ago)

psychedelic horseshit are similar to times new viking and other lo-fi rock stuff. i don't know if it's because i know they are from ohio, but sometimes they remind me of great ohioans of the past. their "new wave hippies" song could have been a ron house song.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 21:18 (seventeen years ago)

peter murphy + david yow

So yeah, it probably was his singing that bugged me! (I mean, I liked Yow on the first Scratch Acid EP and "Damned For All Time," but after that I never cared much. Even about Jesus Lizard. Honest! And the less I opine about Bauhaus, the better.)

Anneke from the Gathering is an awesome singer; I'm more iffy about all those sorceress-metal bands. Someday I'll go back and check out earlier Nightwish stuff maybe, but I gotta say they've never killed me.

"If I Needed Someone" definitely is one of the more inspired Beatles remakes I've heard in a bit.

And therefore, probably up there with Flynnville Train's "Baby's In Black" and Tesla's "I've Got a Feeling" in the category of "Beatles covers from 2007 that I liked but ignorantly didn't identify as Beatles covers when I first heard them." I clearly need to buy a few Beatles albums one of these days. Or listen to my wife's copies, at least.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 21:33 (seventeen years ago)

Ha, well, there is that. (My active Beatles fandom was twenty years back but I always liked that song in particular and was pleased to hear it this way.)

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 November 2007 21:37 (seventeen years ago)

I love Bauhaus! I think the Clockcleaner album is very goth. In a goth via noiserock way. Though Scratch Acid stole their gothness from The Birthday Party, not Bauhaus. Guitars on the Clockcleaner sound Daniel Ash-inspired. Daniel Ash is one of my fave guitarists, so I'm all for it.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:13 (seventeen years ago)

but they rock too and they have cool beats, so i thought you might like it. the new one that is.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:14 (seventeen years ago)

hey chuck, you wouldn't have an extra copy of the dim bulbs album *trip hammers* would you? pre-terminal lovers dave cintron. i'll trade ya something for it. although, come to think of it, i haven't looked online. maybe it's a dollar on amazon.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:21 (seventeen years ago)

Nah, I don't have that. And I just put my Terminal Lovers EP into the storage pile today; maybe I should keep it on my active shelf, if people still care. (Also, Pyschedelic Horseshit sound intriguing, by your description. I never did get to hear that Times New Viking album this year, though. I really liked a 7-inch single they did a couple years ago.)

Today I have been loudly playing the Hot Rod sounndtrack, which has three songs by Europe on it ("Danger on the Track," "Rock the Night," "Time Has Come"), and they are great and catchy and super anthemic in a Prism or Night Ranger pomp-pop sort of way -- I never expected to like Europe so much. Also really like "Head Honcho" by Gown and "Never" by Moving Pictures, neither of whom I know anything about. AOR album of the year! And I still know nothing about the movie, which by the looks of the CD cover is some kind of Evel Knievel parody thing ripping off Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which I've never actually seen, but I'm pretty sure I get the idea from the advertisements.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:30 (seventeen years ago)

(Said soundtrack also has "Two of Hearts" by Stacey Q, "Chase" by Giorgio Morodor, "I Just Died In Your Arms" by Cutting Crew which I am amazed to find I don't hate anymore, and the "Telstar"-like instrumental "Skulls" by the Misfits meets Nutley Brass. And I left my favorite Europe song off the post above -- there are actually four, the best-riffed and most ridiculously worded of them being "Cherokee," which concerns Native Americans!)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:33 (seventeen years ago)

All four of those Europe songs are on The Final Countdown, which was totally worth the dollar I paid for it. Don't bother watching Hot Rod, though. And John is totally right about Wish master. Although I am one of those people who has an emotional attachment to the former singer, mostly because Nightwish were one of the first European non-classic metal bands I found, and really loved. Her voice is just really powerful.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:44 (seventeen years ago)

I think Hey Colossus are my new favorite band. I am loving their last album.

― scott seward, Sunday, 18 November 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago)

Might be of interest to some here -- Lesbian, Souvenirs Young America, Conifer, all in one room...jam session!

http://www.myspace.com/machupicchumotherfuture

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 November 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago)

Listening to the Sebastian Bach album right now, and kinda liking it. If Bach's shrieking isn't to your taste, don't bother, but if you have fond memories of Slave To The Grind, you'll dig this. Yes, Axl sings on three songs - background vocals on two and a duet with Bach on a cover of Aerosmith's "Back In The Saddle." So I won't be surprised at all to see this do decent numbers - it comes out tomorrow.

― unperson, Monday, 19 November 2007 19:22 (seventeen years ago)

Also, I spent some time with the Hammerfall best-of this weekend, and heartily recommend it; in the "all-you'll-ever-need" category, it's right up there with The Ultimate Ted Nugent, a 2CD set I got a few years ago that sums up his 1975-81 output (it begins with most of his self-titled album, and closes with two unnecessary cuts from Intensities In 10 Cities).

― unperson, Monday, 19 November 2007 19:25 (seventeen years ago)

Hey Colossus are awesome. 1st album is still the best though scott!

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 19 November 2007 19:25 (seventeen years ago)

I quite like the new albums by Sear Bliss (extremely something-or-other Viking-metallers from Hungary with some jiggy parts and lots of otherwise epic whatsis going on), Burning Saviours (Swedish folk-psych-doomsters with plenty of Thin Lizzy parts and sufficient Black Sabbath and Cream parts) and Horna (commendably riffy seemingly legendary lo-fi Finnish black-metal murkers who lots of people probably know more about than I do), I have (more or less) decided.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=46216660

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=49780207

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=87950066

― xhuxk, Friday, 23 November 2007 19:26 (seventeen years ago)

oops, I guess this is the "official" Horna mice pace:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=123140620

I ultimately could not get into that re-recorded album of early Moonspell songs, though, despite some mildly intriguing Middle Eastern-ish moments in "Tenebrarum Oratorim." And I sort of wanted to like No Redeeming Social Value's Still Drinking (the cover of which features a wide-infant suckling on a well-tattooed and buxom boob), since I really want there to still be good funny hardcore bands out there, but no dice, despite some titles concerning beer. (The fact that they are "N.Y.C. Brand Hardcore," and the singer is accordingly an unlistenable lummox, was a big factor. So, here's my question: Are there any funny hardcore bands around these days who actually don't suck, which would first require a couple actual punchlines, and secondly would require a few hooks and riffs? 'Cause the few I've tried this year were total letdowns.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 23 November 2007 19:36 (seventeen years ago)

Surprising me re numbers -- LZ "Mothership" 20 buck CD/DVD did 136,000 units last week. Not much a buy since the LZ DVD box from a few years back has all the same stuff.

The Who in Chicago in 79 (even with Kenny Jones) as a live show is better than excerpts from Zeppelin at Knebworth the same year. Played 'em back to back since Amazing Journey out recently included the Chicago show. Maybe its because I liked Daltrey and Townshend better than Plant and Pagey.

Skullflower reissue was more than fair. However, Chrome filled that spot for me before the latter came along. If Chrome's Chronicles recordings filled you with joy, Skullflower would do the same. I figure most people with that many Chrome records already know about Skullflower, anyway.

WildildLife came with Skullflower, said to be SF heavy psyche metal rock. Truth in advertising. If you like what Crucial Blast puts out, most would be pleased with this until the next in the micrgenre comes along. Listened to it once, thought it was better than average but won't ever get back to it.

― Gorge, Friday, 23 November 2007 20:50 (seventeen years ago)

wide-infant suckling

wide-EYED infant I meant to say

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 November 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago)

Decided I'm bored by Blut Aus Nord; remembered I tried Gamma Ray a couple weeks ago and didn't get very far into it before giving up; got a little further into Annihilator today and decied the songs with the Danko Jones guy (and Arch Enemy gal) and Anvil guy were easier to take than the ones with the Haunted guy and the Children of Bodom guy. (I don't get what Annihilator is -- just a guitar player or something? Never heard him/it before; never will again. Might check out Anvil someday though. Were they any good? I don't have a good idea who they were, but I've seen their albums around.)

Albums I like in Decibel's year end Top 40: Baroness, Witchcraft, Moonsorrow, Bergraven, Rwake.

Albums in that Top 40 that, judging from their descriptions, I might like if I actually heard them: Electric Wizard (who I always like -- just haven't gotten a copy of their new record), Portal, Caina, Dax Riggs (which I also might hate -- how blues-rock are they, exactly?), Evoken, Torche (extra potential since it's an EP), Alcest (which might also bore my head off), Grave in the Sky. If people think any of these would be up my alley, feel free to say so.

(I'd say Rosetta, but their last one, which sounded okay at first, made me snooze a couple listens in. Pissed Jeans and High on Fire and Neurosis and Pig Destroyer and Jesu were disappointing, I thought.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 November 2007 17:15 (seventeen years ago)

so, I'm one of the few who finds Exodus's Pleasures of the Flesh to be superior to Bonded by Blood. anybody agree?

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Saturday, 24 November 2007 17:38 (seventeen years ago)

xp And I've never been able to tolerate (apparent hipster-metal hype) Saviours for the length of an album (i.e., their imminent early 2008 one) or even an EP (i.e., the one I vaguely remember them putting out last year), and this probably will just mean I'm a vinyl fetishist (which I sort of am), but I kind of like the very audible riffs and distanced (sort of Bloodstar-like) vocal grumbling on their etched sea green translucent "Cavern of Mind"/"Raging Embers" 12-inch (called Cavern of Mind EP on the spine, but as far as I can tell there are only two songs [both on one side], so it's not an EP.)

― xhuxk, Saturday, 24 November 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago)

I like the new Saviours album. It might be a while before they shed the hipster tag, but they've made significant strides on this one. I enjoyed their first album, but the new disc's a big improvement...nothing very original, but at least it sounds credible, the vocals have improved, and the production is good.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 24 November 2007 21:19 (seventeen years ago)

I quite enjoy Anvil. Really all you need is the Anthology record, but they have some great Motorhead-style rockers like "Metal on Metal" and "Smoking Green." Also, they have a song called "Mothra" that I used to play paired up with "Godzilla" on my radio show. You should give them a shot, you might like them. Lots of hooks.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 November 2007 21:30 (seventeen years ago)

Ha, "Metal on Metal" is a Canadian classic. Great tune.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 24 November 2007 21:31 (seventeen years ago)

I don't think it was discussed on here when it came out, but I finally got around to listening to the new Paradise Lost last night, and man that thing is good. Definitely harkens back to the Draconian Times sound. Nice and heavy, with the keyboards relegated to the background once more. "The Enemy" ranks up there with "Hallowed Land," which is saying a lot since "Hallowed Land" is phenomenal. Definitely recommended to people who gave up on the band after "Icon."

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 24 November 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago)

so, I'm one of the few who finds Exodus's Pleasures of the Flesh to be superior to Bonded by Blood. anybody agree?

me in 1988 would've agreed wholeheartedly. i mean, shit, technically it's probably better but bonded by blood is just idiotic brilliance, a fair amount of nostalgia attached to it too. so it's hard to really say.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Sunday, 25 November 2007 09:14 (seventeen years ago)

I actually preferred Fabulous Disaster way back when. I really wasn't a big fan of Bonded, and still think it's a bit overrated.

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 25 November 2007 10:27 (seventeen years ago)

i saw Saviours with Skeleton Witch and they ruled

― chaki, Sunday, 25 November 2007 10:35 (seventeen years ago)

Agreed Begrand. I mean....I like that type of thrash/speed metal typically, but Bonded just really never did a lot for me. I don't even know if I still have it or sold it to be honest.

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Sunday, 25 November 2007 14:28 (seventeen years ago)

I am having no problem with Gamma Ray so far, it's hair metal with growlies, v.adorable. I am loving some of the stuff I just got sent, especially the "symphonic metal" of Vesania.

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 25 November 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago)

Gamma Ray has growlies now?

― J0hn D., Sunday, 25 November 2007 15:57 (seventeen years ago)

well, on further review, only if you define "growlies" as "high-pitched harmonic chord structures". but i think gamma ray with growlies would be...well, black dahlia murder maybe?

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 25 November 2007 18:04 (seventeen years ago)

Pulled back out George Brigman's Rags In Skull to doublecheck whether it might belong in my year-end Top 10. It doesn't (there's something subdued about his vocals that hold it back, somehow, I think), but I still like it plenty. I was surprised, though, of the extent to which certain tracks made me think of J. Mascis/Dinosaur Jr. (track #1, "Drivin' On") and Steve Howe/Yes (track #7 I think, "No More Humans," though I was in the other room for that one so I'm not 100% positive.)

Really like track #6, apparently the band's theme song "Necronoclast," on Necronoclast's appropriately titled The Plague album on Moribund. Just really tuneful sad atmospheric centuries-old pagan black-metal gloom growling; an absolute beaut. Beyond that, though, the album's been boring me so far, though #5 "From Below" seemed passable enough.

― xhuxk, Monday, 26 November 2007 13:31 (seventeen years ago)

i'm kinda surprised that pig destroyer did so well in decibel's year end thingy. when i first heard it and was interviewing them for ptw i was so meh that i never finished the damn review.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Monday, 26 November 2007 13:44 (seventeen years ago)

i thought i was a waldemar sorychta fan! i mean, i love the stuff he has done with tiamet and moonspell. and i like the music on the enemy of the sun album but the sound makes me want to tear my ears off! ahhhhhhh! i had to take it off.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 November 2007 20:30 (seventeen years ago)

What's the Sorychta reference that I'm missing here? I love his work with Unleashed and Samaeal and I even like the first three Grip Inc records...

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 27 November 2007 23:11 (seventeen years ago)

he's in enemy of the sun and he produced the new enemy of the sun. and i usually dig his stuff. i gave him a shout-out in my review of the last moonspell album. but this just sounds terrible. in the red nu-metal screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee prosuction that i really hate.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 27 November 2007 23:18 (seventeen years ago)

Ah that clears it up. I couldn't figure out why Enemy of the Sun came up when that was a Billy Anderson production. Now I get it. I will steer clear.

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 27 November 2007 23:27 (seventeen years ago)

um Pig Destroyer rules.

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 00:07 (seventeen years ago)

i thought terrifyer absolutely ruled, but all this coverage [and the piece with matthew barney in decibel] reeks of the sunn treatment.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 17:37 (seventeen years ago)

>reeks of the sunn treatment

Definitely. When Terrifyer was out, John D. had this great LPTJ entry about how all the critics were fawning all over Mastodon while snubbing PD...well, now it's J.R. Hayes' moment in the sun, and the critics are off by one album. Oh, well.

Who's gonna get the spotlight next year, I wonder?

Got the Burning Witch 2CD reissue in today's mail, but I also got a McCoy Tyner 3CD box and a new 2CD set by Ayreon, which is apparently some mad multi-instrumentalist and several dozen friends 'n' acquaintances helping him achieve his vision of rock/metal-opera glory, including Anneke van Giersbergen, Floor Jansen and Simone Simons all on the same record.

― unperson, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 17:45 (seventeen years ago)

I am so glad that Burning Witch is back in print. So essential it's not funny.

I will hate myself forever for not seeing them live when I had the chance.

― Nate Carson, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 18:07 (seventeen years ago)

I'm pretty sure that Vulture Industries' The Dystopia Journals would be on any top ten list I make, including maybe the overall top ten. Oh my god so good and cool.

― Dimension 5ive, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago)

@ unperson: yeah i kinda wonder myself. my choice is baroness.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 20:19 (seventeen years ago)

full disclosure: i'm wearing a black one hoodie as i write this. did you guys see this at P4K? it gives some credence to the idea that if Baroness put out a new record next year that it will get over-the-top press.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 20:24 (seventeen years ago)

re the Burning Witch. Greg posted this on the SL board last week

all Burning Witch -CL re-issue cds have been recalled for re-packaging. Were hoping to get them back out in Jan.
any cds that are available are defective and should have been recalled by the distributors,/or sent back by the stores.

Some have made it into shops though so my guess is they will be on ebay as ultra rare cds and will sell for shitloads.
Wonder if the cd is defective or the artwork.

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 20:26 (seventeen years ago)

I know what the defect is - they have to reprint the booklet on lighter stock so it'll fit in a jewel case. Right now, it's too thick for the little nubs that hold the booklet in place; it'll tear if you try and push it in there.

― unperson, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 21:37 (seventeen years ago)

Definitely. When Terrifyer was out, John D. had this great LPTJ entry about how all the critics were fawning all over Mastodon while snubbing PD...well, now it's J.R. Hayes' moment in the sun, and the critics are off by one album. Oh, well.

I think Phantom Limb is a big improvement over the excellent Terrifyer, and deserves all the praise, including the Decibel nod. Hull's riffs are better, the tone is warmer (which I like), and Hayes' lyrics are much stronger.

The Pitchfork list is pretty good, though I'm still trying to digest that Deathspell Omega.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:24 (seventeen years ago)

I still can't believe what a good column Stosuy managed to foist on P4K.

― Nate Carson, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:49 (seventeen years ago)

I'm genuinely surprised to see the Machine Head album on there. Doesn't really go with all the hipster-friendly bands that comprise the rest of the list (which isn't to say that they're bad).

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:52 (seventeen years ago)

And the column, whatever its quality, fits right in at pitchfork. Not sure why you can't believe it...

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:53 (seventeen years ago)

It's a very Pitchfork-y column! Not a bad thing, mind you. I like stuff on Pitchfork sometimes. Or I like some of their writers anyway. Most of whom I know from here. In any case, the metal column is fine. I like reading the other people's lists more than the dude's list though. That's probably only natural. I love reading musician lists.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:58 (seventeen years ago)

I should say I do prefer Phantom Limb to Terrifyer - that old column was complaining that people were sleeping on the latter, but Phantom Limb deserves all the praise it's gotten in my opinion

― J0hn D., Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:21 (seventeen years ago)

So did Pig D have to slow down to crossover? That's my complaint about it.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Thursday, 29 November 2007 03:03 (seventeen years ago)

btw the decibel post over at idolator is like a microcosm of this, with some of the same players!

― fukasaku tollbooth, Thursday, 29 November 2007 03:05 (seventeen years ago)

Best part about my job here @ C0mc4st? Free Rh4ps0dy account allows me to listen to all these albums to refresh my memory, and prep for the Baroness show tonight.

BTW, whatever happened to Arsis? I expected huge things from them last year.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Thursday, 29 November 2007 12:06 (seventeen years ago)

After reading through the latest Decibel last night (finally available at a local store!), I admit I'm mildly curious in Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza. Shoud I be? I'm leaning more towards them being total crap, but Casey Boland's review makes it sound like they've got some chops.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Thursday, 29 November 2007 13:36 (seventeen years ago)

Wow I know you guys 100% don't care but the Ocean's Precambrian is pretty damned intriguing so far.

― Dimension 5ive, Friday, 30 November 2007 03:34 (seventeen years ago)

I don't know, man, I feel like the Ocean aren't doing anything Mastodon, Neurosis and Meshuggah haven't done a dozen times each already. There's a song on Precambrian that's a straight-up clone of a track from Nothing.

― unperson, Friday, 30 November 2007 03:35 (seventeen years ago)

Luckily, I haven't heard shit from any of those bands. My Satan-come-lately ignorance saves the day again!

― Dimension 5ive, Friday, 30 November 2007 04:17 (seventeen years ago)

And did Mastodon/Neurosis/Meshuggah ever do a double album with lyrics stolen from Comte de Lautremont, and where every track is named for a different prehistoric era? No? Okay then!

― Dimension 5ive, Friday, 30 November 2007 04:19 (seventeen years ago)

You've got me there.

― unperson, Friday, 30 November 2007 04:34 (seventeen years ago)

I'm really looking forward to hearing that Ocean album. Just a matter of finding enough time! Same goes for Primordial as well...

― A. Begrand, Friday, 30 November 2007 04:55 (seventeen years ago)

i really friggin' need that primordial album. i gotta buy one.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 November 2007 04:58 (seventeen years ago)

EARTH - The Bee Made Honey in the Lion's Skull - February 2008
Earth's latest incarnation has arrived. After re faceting some old gems for greater illumination on Hibernaculum, the band returns one again to it's continuing evolution. Where Hex... reveled in dark Satanic twang and austere American beauty, The Bee Made Honey in the Lion's Skull finds Dylan Carlson and the band growing into a harder, more rock and American Gospel-oriented and improvisational direction framed by truly psychedelic production and blazing guitar sounds. Earth show's it's affinity with a nod to the best elements of the more adventurous San Francisco bands of the late 60's and 70's, and the more spiritually aware and exciting forms of Jazz-Rock from the same era. This is no nostalgia trip but a thoroughly inspired and original metamorphosis. Earth is honored to be joined on this record for three songs by legendary virtuoso guitarist Bill Frisell (John Zorn, Elvis Costello, Ginger Baker, etc.) showcasing some of his most fuzzed out playing in years! Frisell adds a brilliant texture and counterpoint to the scintillating and inspired riffs of Dylan Carlson and the band. Adrienne Davies joins again on drums, lending a classic and steady feel to the proceedings. Steve Moore also returns adding heavy Hammond organ and his intense jazz inspired piano playing. Live bassist Don McGreevy also makes his full-length Earth debut on this record. Earth will begin touring throughout the world when the album is released, Australia, Europe and a full US campaign and on from there. The new songs are equally compelling live where Earth takes the vehicles and expand and explore them for further musical and meditative exploration.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 November 2007 06:31 (seventeen years ago)

Just in case someone needed new Earth news. Or new Bill Frisell news.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 November 2007 06:32 (seventeen years ago)

Listening to Opeth's The Roundhouse Tapes this morning, I don't know... kinda disappointed. I mean, its good and all, the variety of songs is nice and they are all excellently played. But they just don't seem to be a whole lot different from the album versions. Charming banter though.

And I decided that last night, I really fucking need to get ahold of the new Witchcraft and Electric Wizard albums after hearing some online samples.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Friday, 30 November 2007 13:41 (seventeen years ago)

so... quicksilver messenger earth? mahavishnu earthchestra? i guess i'm interested.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 November 2007 13:57 (seventeen years ago)

i asked someone to send me the new witchcraft album and they sent me the new electric wizard album and a witchcraft poster. they must have been confused. i do like the electric wizard album though. i always like them.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 November 2007 14:52 (seventeen years ago)

oh hey everybody! kyrck productions just did a cd of the THORNS demos. the dude who drove with varg to kill euronymous? that guy. called stigma diabolicum, apparently, which was thorns old name - and there's some demo stuff by SD, too. i'm pretty thrilled because i love the guy's brilliantly odd guitar lines and think if it weren't for that whole murder business he probably would've been a pretty big deal. the first eight tracks were released as a bonus disc to the thorns vs. emperor thing, on which the thorns tracks just DESTROYED emperor's stuff.

kyrck also did the manes demo comp, highly recommended if you like super-murky, occult black metal with cheap keyboards.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 November 2007 15:08 (seventeen years ago)

oh hey everybody, i don't know how to use BBCode, either.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 November 2007 15:08 (seventeen years ago)

and six of the thorns tracks have no vocals or drums. just for the record.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 30 November 2007 15:13 (seventeen years ago)

Just got 2CD reissues of the first two Candlemass albums in the mail. Woo-hoo!

― unperson, Friday, 30 November 2007 17:56 (seventeen years ago)

New EW is maybe their best. I Can't wait for the new Earth album.

― Herman G. Neuname, Friday, 30 November 2007 18:00 (seventeen years ago)

Those first two Candlemass records are the best, followed by the totally amazing and unsung Swedish-only Dactylis Glomerata (also now available in 2xcd format).

"Listening to Opeth's The Roundhouse Tapes this morning, I don't know... kinda disappointed..

Agreed. They have never been an amazing live act (I've seen them 5 times now--best by far was the Damnation tour which was all clean/acoustic). But the main problem with this live set is that they'd already lost their drummer by this time.

When Opeth was a Swedish death metal band with a Brazilian rhythm section, they could do no wrong. But without Martin's amazing percussive sense, the band is just doing a live demonstration of well written studio pieces.

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 02:49 (seventeen years ago)

New EW is maybe their best.

seems like i hear this every time they release an album...

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 03:03 (seventeen years ago)

EW--lousiest jerks who ever slept on my floor. I do love Dopethrone and always wish Liz all the best.

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 03:09 (seventeen years ago)

I don't think anyone has ever said We Live is their best. Hardly anyone seemed to like that album.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 11:02 (seventeen years ago)

Saw Baroness last week. Wow. Rarely does seeing a band live improve my opinion of them, but they are the exception to the rule. Really outstanding.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 4 December 2007 14:02 (seventeen years ago)

So apparently Stephen King is a big Ozzy fan. He ranked Black Rain in his top 10 and said:

"It's amazing that Ozzy can do this sort of thing at all anymore, let alone so well. Finest heavy metal record of the year; a true speaker-buster. Best track is the amazing ''I Don't Wanna Stop.'' Slipknot, eat your filthy little heart out."

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 6 December 2007 20:26 (seventeen years ago)

Strange,becuase it's horrible. I like King's articles in EW generally though. For some reason I get the mag every week even though I don't subscribe. At least I think I don't.

I'd love to see Baronness live.

― Bill Magill, Thursday, 6 December 2007 20:40 (seventeen years ago)

You know, as awful as Ozzy's new album is, I had an absolute blast at his show with Rob Zombie last month.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 6 December 2007 20:44 (seventeen years ago)

My friend saw that show, he was not a fan of the 15 minute Zakk Wylde guitar solo -- and he likes Black Label Society. Rob zombie is always great, though.

Grammy nominations are bizarre as usual. I'm rooting for Machine Head to win, but they won't. I'm just very confused that King Diamond was nominated, especially for the song he was nominated for... whatever.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 6 December 2007 20:54 (seventeen years ago)

Meanwhile, I attended the Death Angel listening party last night. New album sounds pretty killer. Can't really get into specifics, since I didn't have the record itself to sit down with, but there were definitely some great songs and performances. Probably going to be on my top 10 next year.

I'm also enjoying the Monster Magnet album. It's a bit overstuffed, and it doesn't quite cohere as an album, but there are some very awesome songs. I like the Rolling Stones cover, and "No Vacation"'s giant Doktor Avalanche drumbeats and catchy chorus, and the classy kiss off of "Slap in the Face." it just doesn't really flow like their best work. Whatever, it's Monster Magnet, I'll probably listen to it a zillion times anyway.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 6 December 2007 20:58 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I have very high expectations for the Death Angel album. Their singer Mark was just beaming about the new material and working with Nick whatshisname. That was a fun chat.

I actually thought Moster Magnet's Stones cover was a bit on the pedestrian side. Maybe it's because I thought they'd crank up the intensity a little bit.

― A. Begrand, Thursday, 6 December 2007 21:09 (seventeen years ago)

He should be proud, there are some impressive screams on that album. It's really along the lines of the last one, which I loved, so I don't think you'll be disappointed.

To be fair, I haven't heard the original Stones version. I just like the song.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 6 December 2007 21:13 (seventeen years ago)

MM peaked with Superjudge for me, so the overt '60s garage vibe of the new one isn't really winning my heart. I'm hoping to get a copy of the new Death Angel next week, and looking forward to it.

Heard the split Sword/Witchcraft EP yesterday. The new Sword original song, which will be on their next album in March, is very solid; the cover of "Immigrant Song," not so much, mostly because the vocals are weak. Two of the three Witchcraft songs are re-recordings of tracks from their 2005 CD, so they're good but unnecessary.

― unperson, Thursday, 6 December 2007 21:37 (seventeen years ago)

Hey, you have to hand it to Wyndorf -- he's never made the same album twice.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 7 December 2007 00:15 (seventeen years ago)

overt 60s garage vibe...? i've got to hear this.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 7 December 2007 05:07 (seventeen years ago)

was just subjecting my wife to spine of god in the car, btw.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 7 December 2007 05:07 (seventeen years ago)

the monster magnet has cool moments. lots of filler though. like i said somewhere here or elsewhere, if you took the 3 or 4 best songs on the last 3 monster magnet albums and made one LP out of them you would have something great.

― scott seward, Friday, 7 December 2007 10:21 (seventeen years ago)

for me, it's always worthwhile to hear ed mundell though.

― scott seward, Friday, 7 December 2007 10:23 (seventeen years ago)

Way upthread Jeff dismissed the new Asrai (Pearls in Dirt, and scott stuck up for it at least a little bit. I finally ran across a copy, and succumbed to curiosity, a sale-price, or maybe the velvet packaging.

Hey! This is great! Jeff said the songs were boring and the production sounded bad, but I feel the opposite way on both counts. They're not an extreme-metal band, by any means, but for what they are (imagine In Tua Nua reincarnated as a metal band, maybe), I think they're doing a fine job, and sound significantly more confident and directed than on their last album.

I don't get the Evanescence comparison, really, either. For me Evanescence has always been unsatisfying because it sounds too much to me like the music and vocals are juxtaposed, rather than viscerally linked, and I don't get any propulsive energy out of the combination. I feel the same way about a few of the early, embryonic Nightwish songs, and for me it's usually what defines the second division in this subgenre. And Asrai are no Nightwish, with or without Tarja, but Margriet sings with the band, not just near them, and that's worth more than a lot of operatic technique.

And I think "Sour Ground" is about as great a rock/metal/pop anthem as anything, even (or maybe because) it basically reminds me of Scandal.

― glenn mcdonald, Friday, 7 December 2007 14:51 (seventeen years ago)

Oh Norwegian black metal bands
Screaming in your fascist pain
Intelligent and unintelligible growlies
Blasting both your big bass drums
Keeping your solos under ten seconds

Thank you for keeping it real
And by real I mean real bleak
As I shovel a foot of snow at 5 a.m.
Your suffering warms me like an iron fist
Every squeal another coffee enema

― Dimension 5ive, Friday, 7 December 2007 15:16 (seventeen years ago)

I still stand by my judgment, but everybody's ears are different. I do, however, think the exact opposite -- it felt to me like the music and vocals were juxtaposed. And it doesn't have to be extreme, and she doesn't even have to have a lot of operatic technique, but I had an intense physical revulsion to the sound of that album.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 7 December 2007 20:32 (seventeen years ago)

One of my friends loaned me a stack of CDs from this year that I haven't heard, and so far I've really enjoyed Rush, Cauldron, and Municipal Waste. Really interested to hear the full length from Cauldron. Goat Horn (which a few of the guys in that band used to be in) were pretty awesome. I did not get far into the Pig Destroyer. I'm going to give it another shot, but I don't think it's going to be making my year-end list.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 7 December 2007 20:39 (seventeen years ago)

That Rush album still pleases me immensely. It's the first new Rush album I've loved since, what, Presto I guess.

I have to hear that Asrai, I totally missed out on that one.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 7 December 2007 21:09 (seventeen years ago)

do you not count their covers thing (i'm talking about Rush)?

― Bill Magill, Friday, 7 December 2007 21:23 (seventeen years ago)

hey you guys should check out my friend jon, he's been working on some epic death/doom/folk/thing for by himself for the last three years...he used to be in a bunch of bands, he's a great drummer, and also a good guitar player.

but anyway i think he's geniunely talented, the project is called Mortality, he likes a lot of the bands youse guys talk about:

i guess he just make a 40 minute doom metal holiday record he's going to send me, i'm excited.

http://www.myspace.com/whichwitchone

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 7 December 2007 21:26 (seventeen years ago)

(the first song is more just all acoustic folk, the second song is metal)

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 7 December 2007 21:30 (seventeen years ago)

do you not count their covers thing (i'm talking about Rush)?

That was a decent EP, but yeah, I was basically referring to original material. I've been such a fan of their last three DVD releases, that it's been easy to forget it'd been such a long time since they put out a strong album.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 7 December 2007 22:26 (seventeen years ago)

This Rush CD got even better on the second listen. I need to buy this. I love all the little instrumental interludes, and usually I hate those things.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 8 December 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago)

There's some filler later on the record, but there are some real barnstormers on Snakes and Arrows. "Far Cry" and "Spindrift" are the ones that really jump out at me... but it's nice to hear them do some instrumentals too!

The live show was just fucking epic. I'll never miss a Rush tour ever again. The only active classic rock band that matters.

― Nate Carson, Sunday, 9 December 2007 03:09 (seventeen years ago)

Jeff: OK, I'm the world's 37th leading believer in the subjectivity of musical tastes, but I'm intrigued at your specific reaction. Can you isolate what aspect of the production on that Asrai album bothers you? I've listened to it several times over the last few days, and the only production detail that seems at all unusual to me is that on two songs there's a little synth sound that that kind of resembles a tuned table-saw, which I bet degrades unpleasantly in low-bandwidth MP3s.

― glenn mcdonald, Monday, 10 December 2007 02:48 (seventeen years ago)

I always forget how much I like stuff on the Sensory label...the new Pathosray album is pretty awesome. I've really been bored by prog/power metal this year, but these guys nail it from start to finish, strong riffs, catchy melodies, and killer vocals. I think it's better than the Symphony X.

― A. Begrand, Monday, 10 December 2007 03:08 (seventeen years ago)

I like that Pathosray album. Really solid, if well tread, prog metal.

Glenn: I actually have a CD copy, but you put your finger on one of the things that bugs me -- maybe my ears are more attuned to higher frequencies, but that table saw synthesizer really bugs the hell out of me. I mean, I guess the production itself is pretty clean, but a lot of the instrument sounds just rub me the wrong way, and I just sort of lump that under production. I'm not a big fan of the nu metal guitar sound on some of the songs, either, or the vocal effects on her voice (I could be wrong about it being processed, but something about the vocals sounds off to me). That's on top of just not being a big fan of the songs, some of which may have to have with the aforementioned nu metal riffing, or the fact that I just feel like the voice doesn't quite match the music. I usually love Euro chick metal, too, and I like their last album, but all those just kind of combined to make it a very unpleasant listening experience for me.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 10 December 2007 03:40 (seventeen years ago)

Currently listening to pretty much the direct polar opposite of Euro chick metal: the debut EP by Arson Anthem, a new band featuring Phil Anselmo on guitar, Eyehategod's Michael Williams on vocals (sounding more comprehensible than ever before), Hank Williams III on bass and some nobody drummer whose name I can't recall. Eight songs, 11 minutes. Sounds pretty much like you think it does. I like it.

― unperson, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 20:44 (seventeen years ago)

On guitar???I guess the further he's kept away from the mic the better!

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 20:53 (seventeen years ago)

I'm boycotting any Anselmo project. I just hate the motherfucker.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 21:12 (seventeen years ago)

My mistake; Hank III is the drummer on this one - it's the bassist who's a nobody.

― unperson, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 21:13 (seventeen years ago)

I've been looking forward to the Arson Anthem disc for ages. Can't wait to hear it. Though I'd really like to see a new EHG album someday...

For all its Patton/Devin Townsend weirdness, the Enemy of the Sun album has grown on me over the last couple weeks enough to warrant a mild recommendation.

And sorry to invoke more chick metal, but the new Gathering DVD is as incredible as I'd expected.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 21:17 (seventeen years ago)

Barlow is back in iced Earth! Hooray!

Evile album is fun. Nothing I haven't heard before, but enjoyable and well done thrash. I think Adrien was raving about them up thread.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 11 December 2007 23:41 (seventeen years ago)

Heh, yeah, that Evile is loads of fun. Produced by Flemming Rasmussen!

Feel bad for Ripper...he was stuck trying to sell those crap songs that Schaffer wrote for the new album, and I thought he did a strong job with the material he had.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 00:41 (seventeen years ago)

I just got back from the Pelican/High on Fire double bill here in Dublin. Man, are my legs killing me! Both bands played for over an hour; my friends and I had to leave before HoF played their encore, as it was already past midnight and some of us have to work in the morning.

HoF were better than I'd expected, but I'd had enough after about four songs (caveat: I was already pretty tired by the time they came on so my judgement of them is undeniably tainted).

Pelican were excellent, though, even if their set did drag a bit in the second half. And I managed to pick up the new Tusk album from the merch table, too. So it was a good night, all things considered.

― MacDara, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 01:16 (seventeen years ago)

I hope to see High on Fire again in early 08...word has it they're crossing Canada in the spring. Probably the most massive-sounding trio I've ever heard.

― A. Begrand, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 01:25 (seventeen years ago)

I agree about the massiveness -- I was wearing plugs, but they sounded like I wasn't.

I do have to add that even though it was too much for me last night, Matt Pike certainly looked like he enjoys what he's doing, which is something you don't see very often. So A+ for enthusiasm.

Also, he had a magic nine-string guitar that seemed to be playing itself. So they get marks for that too.

― MacDara, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 08:57 (seventeen years ago)

kyrck productions just did a cd of the THORNS demos.

wow, I had missed this and purchased it asap, thanks for the tip. These Thorns early tracks are essential Norwegian BM.

I have also bought the Strid/Malfeitor compilation, more good stuff.

― no-nonsense, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 13:01 (seventeen years ago)

i'm really the only person going nuts over the new Virgin Black album? fucking killer!

― scott seward, Saturday, 15 December 2007 00:53 (seventeen years ago)

I have that Virgin Black album sitting here, but haven't had the chance to play it yet. But yeah, the last one was really good, so if this one's even better, I'll definitely be giving it a listen soon.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 15 December 2007 01:06 (seventeen years ago)

new one is much heavier. i liked the last one a bunch too though. they are completely different things. now i am already anticipating the 3rd part of the trilogy.

― scott seward, Saturday, 15 December 2007 01:08 (seventeen years ago)

ok i'm listening to the dodheimsgard record at this very moment, and it is awesome. one of the reasons it is awesome is that it is FUNKY and even DANCEABLE in parts. these guys seem to have a better understanding of camp than most in their genre. the electronic/synth touches are very nice indeed. superb, diverse album.

― Just got offed, Saturday, 15 December 2007 17:14 (seventeen years ago)

Hey Chuck, there's a pretty good article by Rob Sheffield in the latest issue of Rolling Stone about hair metal. I thought it was going to be dismissive and ironic, but it was actually respectful. I think you'd like it.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 15 December 2007 21:13 (seventeen years ago)

Just got a Pelican live DVD in the mail the other day - have a feeling that one's gonna plumb previously unimagined depths of tedium.

― unperson, Saturday, 15 December 2007 21:45 (seventeen years ago)

Well you can send it to me if you don't want it.

― MacDara, Saturday, 15 December 2007 21:51 (seventeen years ago)

Favorite metal album of 2008 so far: Tiles, on SPV/Inside Out. Well, okay, maybe they are more prog. Or prog-metal, at least. And (especially in my favorite track "Back & Forth") they rock and roll pretty well for a prog-metal band; that one has an almost Southern blues-rock guitar-jam solo in it, and there's more blues-rock guitar in "Hide in My Shadow". Good swinging Rush-like rhythm in "Markers" and "Sacred & Mundane," too; good dramatic Rush-like time changes in "Daring Deeds" and "Crowded Emptiness," and the album is better than the Rush album from last year, and also it has Alex Lifeson on it, and I think Tiles are probably Canadians because it also has Alannah Myles and Kim Mitchell on it, but I didn't check the press bio. (Oops, myspace page says Trenton, Michigan instead! Which is possibly north of Windsor at least.) "Dragons, Dreams & Daring Deeds," strangely enough given its title, is disconcertingly emo, but also has lots of Who in it, sort of like if the Who had revived and pomped-out the guitar chords from "Substitite" on Who's Next, but they didn't, I don't think.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=53534600

Second favorite metal album of 2008 so far is Running Wild by Aussie AC/DC-fan kids Airbourne, on Roadrunner. But sadly they are better players than singers or songwriters (or maybe the singing and songwriting gets lost amid the dynamics), and (though they claim to be influenced by Rose Tattoo etc. as well), I think they maybe listened to too much Brian-era and not enough Bon-era AC/DC, but I am still on their side. Favorite track (still not super great) is probably "Blackjack," for its fast tempo and gang yells. "Diamond in the Rough" seems to have a promising poor guy meets rich girl class motif, but somehow doesn't quite pull it off. "Girls In Black" and "Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women" are standouts as well, or at least their titles are.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=33640897

Thought the Dimension album on Nightmare had some gravity to it in a decent-Queensryche type way (more prog metal; I was kind of on a kick last week), but decided its boring parts exceed its non-boring parts. Okay power-metal rhythm, though, in "Ancient Song," for instance, and the first few mintues (out of 20) of "Ego". Wanted to like them more than I did. Didn't know til now that they're from Denver:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=25922290

Also, I won't dwell on it because most people here wouldn't agree, but there are plenty of parts I'd call "metal" on the great new Drive-By Truckers album (first one I've liked by them in years) and the upcoming album Breakfast Special by often-Count-Bishops-like upstate New York hard rockabilly greasers Finn and the Sharks (who cover Zep's "Black Dog" for instance), but I will limit discussion of both to the country thread from hereon regardless.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 16 December 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago)

Oh yeah, also been spending lots of time with TKO Records 2007 Free Sampler. Favorite tracks so far, which usually means the most tough but tuneful ones, come from Lower Class Brats (anthemic statement of purpose called "New Seditionaries" going out to dykes and prostitutes and punks), the Stitches (high-pitched kids' voices getting gang shouty and having a drunk party), Smut Puddlers (great--really more hard rock than punk), the unfortunately and I hope ironically named but still really good (at least here) Nazi Dogs (who sound like they could beat peoples' faces in), the Templars (sort of Irish sounding like say Big Country gone punk -- is that what the Skids sounded like?), Reducers SF (totally rousing boys night out song), Shock Nagasaki (rock'n'roll rhythm, actually swings), Antiseen (legitmately exuberant Bishops-like bulldozed hard pub-rock cover of Dave Dudley's oft-pub-rock-covered {see also '70s Brits Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers and I believe '80s Aussies Celibate Rifles} "Six Days On the Road," and at album's end but not annotated on the cover there's also an oafish cover of David Allan Coe's "Longhaired Redneck" done GG Allin-style, i.e., words changed to "Scumbag," not sure who's doing that but I suspect it might be Antiseen too but the Dudley cover is better at least partly because in that one they don't toss out the tune or try to turn it into a joke that's not really funny), Cock Sparrer (white riot of their own complete with police sirens), and the Stiches (more sloppy but skilled kid-sounding apparent drunks). That's most of the album, and I didn't even mention Frenchies Les Hatepinks whose song I already know from their cool EP last year! Some bands I don't like on here: Krum Bums (generic moshcore bullshit), 46 Short, Broken Bottles (whiney in a Green Day wannabe way). And the Slaughter and the Dogs track is an uncatchy disappointment, though I've heard a couple songs by them this decade that sounded okay at the time.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 16 December 2007 20:24 (seventeen years ago)

the Stitches (high-pitched kids' voices getting gang shouty and having a drunk party... and the Stiches (more sloppy but skilled kid-sounding apparent drunks).

Maybe "more" because they're the same band with two different songs, duh! Anyway, they sound totally snotty and juvenile, but seem to know how to pull it off. Maybe I should get a whole album by them.

― xhuxk, Sunday, 16 December 2007 20:35 (seventeen years ago)

And actually, I just realized who they kinda sound like -- Red Cross. (Before they became Redd Kross.)

― xhuxk, Sunday, 16 December 2007 21:39 (seventeen years ago)

I wanted to like that Airbourne disc more than I did. They're okay, I guess, but nothing special. And I'm trying really hard to hold onto my warm feelings for Black Tide's music after interviewing two of the members, who were so mentally vacant it was like they were parodying empty-headed Florida teenagers, but they probably weren't, since that's what they are - the singer and lead guitarist is 15, the other guitarist is 17, and the bassist and drummer (who I didn't talk to) are both 19. The five songs I've heard on the album preview sampler are pretty good, though, including an unnecessary but enjoyable cover of Metallica's "Hit The Lights."

― unperson, Sunday, 16 December 2007 21:45 (seventeen years ago)

some unfortunate news from the post-Yob band Middian, I guess this is the place to post this:

Date: Dec 16, 2007 6:47 PM
Subject: Middian is fucking dead.
Body: So, we had a hell of a time finding a name. When
Middian was suggested, we did a search and found
nothing out there. So we went ahead and called ourselves
Middian.
However, in October, we received a cease and desist demand from
Midian of Milwaukee, LLC. After checking our options,
we have found ourselves with no choice but to comply
with the demand.
So, Middian no longer exists. We have also been
dropped from the Metal Blade roster as a result of
this litigation, being unable to sell our album Age Eternal
ever again as well.
The three of us are still going to be playing music
together. It just isn't going to be Middian anymore.
We do not know what it is going to be called at this
point. But we are still really into
playing music with each other.
Lots of folks were really good to us during the course
of our existence and we really appreciate it.
Please keep an eye out for us. Hopefully, you'll be
hearing from us very soon.
We are too overwhelmed with the situation to respond
to e-mails regarding this, so don’t take offense if we don’t reply.
Trust that we are grateful for people’s love and support
and ours is with you.

DOOM,

Mike, Will, and Scott

― sleeve, Monday, 17 December 2007 05:40 (seventeen years ago)

the milwaukee midian sucks, too. oh well.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Monday, 17 December 2007 08:31 (seventeen years ago)

it seems pretty harsh of Metal Blade to drop them over this. In fact, I'd guess there's a bit more to the story. Bold call I know.

Their album was cool though!

― J0hn D., Monday, 17 December 2007 10:54 (seventeen years ago)

It's tragic. And the guitarist of Midian of Milwaukee is a pro wrestler. Fucking awful.

― Nate Carson, Monday, 17 December 2007 11:12 (seventeen years ago)

Fuck midian of milwaukee

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 17 December 2007 12:23 (seventeen years ago)

I know Adrien wrote a decent review on it for Decibel, but anyone else heard the Born of Osiris? I just found out this weekend that my little brother went to high school with the guitarist. My brother says he's a great guitarist but since my brother hates metal, it was kinda hard to get a decent opinion on the band from him.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 17 December 2007 13:45 (seventeen years ago)

something tells me chuck is really gonna like the new Alestorm album on Napalm. True Scottish Pirate Metal!

― scott seward, Monday, 17 December 2007 18:45 (seventeen years ago)

what will pfunkboy do now!

"The Southern Lord forum has been officially removed. It has become a beast far different and negatively opposed to its original intent. Thanks to all those who supported the forum with positive and constructive words. In the future please refer to the following resources for former Forum related "issues"

― scott seward, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 01:27 (seventeen years ago)

Man, I liked Yob so much, I had no idea what they were up to. So, now I know... that's a major bummer.

― Andi Mags, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 01:55 (seventeen years ago)

Sad to see the SL forum go. Heh, but it always had an air of negativity and elitism over there. The anti-Decibel posts were always fun to read.

Anyway, the 2008 album I'm liking right now: Warbringer. LA thrash revival stuff, nothing new, but I like the thrash revival. Mix-wise, it really feels like an old Metal Blade release from the mid-80s.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 02:00 (seventeen years ago)

As a deep insider, I predict a phoenix-like rise from the ashes of YOB/Middian.

I'll keep you posted.

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 03:32 (seventeen years ago)

That's what I like about this board -- no elitism!

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 04:16 (seventeen years ago)

Well, I have booked pretty much every show they've ever played, and I was a member of the final (unrecorded) YOB lineup...

Is it elitist to call myself an insider?

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 04:27 (seventeen years ago)

Oh, I was responding to Adrien. That's pretty rad, Nate. Big fan of the band. Gave the Middian a very positive write up in Outburn. I hope everything works out for them!

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 04:29 (seventeen years ago)

As I posted in the Year-End Critic's Poll thread: no metal in p4k's top ten. Should that be taken as a sign?

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 13:46 (seventeen years ago)

Thanks Jeff. Me too.

― Nate Carson, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 13:50 (seventeen years ago)

As I posted in the Year-End Critic's Poll thread: no metal in p4k's top ten. Should that be taken as a sign?

there's no rap in the top ten either, so probably not

― J0hn D., Tuesday, 18 December 2007 13:57 (seventeen years ago)

let a man dream. maybe the horror is finally over.

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 13:58 (seventeen years ago)

what will pfunkboy do now!
"The Southern Lord forum has been officially removed. It has become a beast far different and negatively opposed to its original intent. Thanks to all those who supported the forum with positive and constructive words. In the future please refer to the following resources for former Forum related "issues"
-- scott seward,

I now go to http://www.foreverdoomed.com/ it's where Toby set up the new forum. Same log-in/password details as before. Hurrah!!
Sadly old threads are lost but hey it's great it's back at all.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:01 (seventeen years ago)

ah i meant top 50.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:11 (seventeen years ago)

Any metal albums this year crossed over into non-metal critics land and the public too?

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:13 (seventeen years ago)

Like Mastodon last year

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:14 (seventeen years ago)

I think Baroness is the album that probably came closest. Lots of Jesu love from indie fans as well, but I'm not sure if that counts.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:16 (seventeen years ago)

I honestly thought High On Fire would've but I can't see them winning Kerrang album of the year for instance. Will find out about who did win tomorrow I suppose unless DJ Martian gets the info somewhere (if you do please post here)

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:18 (seventeen years ago)

Pig D got Best New Music if I'm not mistaken.

― fukasaku tollbooth, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:18 (seventeen years ago)

All the cool kids love Deathspell Omega.

― Just got offed, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:18 (seventeen years ago)

If there were I'd probably own them--I don't--for I am the "token" metal fan of your worst nightmares.

xxxp

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:19 (seventeen years ago)

I have no nightmares about token metal fans, I've always been accused of not being a real metaller.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:30 (seventeen years ago)

I, however, do have nightmares about Tolkien metal fans.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:33 (seventeen years ago)

real schmeal...

hahah

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 14:34 (seventeen years ago)

hahaha

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 15:00 (seventeen years ago)

I'm liking that Warbringer album, too. Century Media's gonna start '08 strong - the new Sworn Enemy is their best to date. Still lunkheaded hardcore at heart, but lots of cool thrashin'.

― unperson, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 16:20 (seventeen years ago)

Hey, did I tip the prog-death fans hereabouts that Atrocity's Todessehnsucht is the latest album to get the Metal Mind reissue treatment? Got my copy in the mail a week or two back.

― unperson, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 16:20 (seventeen years ago)

I think Baroness is the album that probably came closest. Lots of Jesu love from indie fans as well, but I'm not sure if that counts.

Yeah, I was really hoping it would be Baroness...and it still could be in 2008. I'm just pleased Alcest made PopMatters' top 50.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 16:39 (seventeen years ago)

Baronness seems like it would be the perfect candidate for crossover, more than HOF or Mastodon or whoever the mainstream press flouts when it goes slumming in metal quarters.They seem to be good at light and shade, it's not all just lobbing ordnance from the fantail. Then again, judging from some of the godawful crap on lists like Pitchfork, they can all go fuck themselves.

― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 16:44 (seventeen years ago)

Haha A.B, you know you're probably 100% responsible for Alcest's placing, right?

― Dimension 5ive, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:04 (seventeen years ago)

I, however, do have nightmares about Tolkien metal fans.

Summoning

― J0hn D., Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:28 (seventeen years ago)

Hahaha, awesome.

I'm wondering if I should bother tossing up my '07 metal list, since I'm still a "token" metal fan. Seriously though, I'm still trying to get back into serious metal appreciation after falling away during the nu metal years.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:33 (seventeen years ago)

I ended up with a top 50 when i did mine for my last fm journal. I kept forgetting stuff so I added it and so on til it became a top 50.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 18:11 (seventeen years ago)

Jeez, why do I even bother hanging out here with you kids? Hell, I fell away from paying serious attention to new metal back in 1980 or so. Why back in my day...

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 18:28 (seventeen years ago)

Just for the hell of it, I'm listening to Blessed Black Wings now. Hey! This is pretty fuggin' awesome!! Maybe there's hope for me yet.

― JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 18:47 (seventeen years ago)

Xpost: "However, Protector prefers a new full-cd, but that depends on Silenius' inspiration, for it is his duty to start a new song." - I like this style of press release.

― Soukesian, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 20:06 (seventeen years ago)

The new Genghis Tron tracks have me really excited about the new album now. Dead Mountain Mouth was incredible, but it looks like Board Up the House will obliterate it.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 21:03 (seventeen years ago)

I'm so happy to see Wolves in the Throneroom on so many year end lists.

― Nate Carson, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 02:18 (seventeen years ago)

Were you in that band, too? =P

― Jeff Treppel, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 02:20 (seventeen years ago)

Haha, no. Maybe someday!

― Nate Carson, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 07:30 (seventeen years ago)

It will not surprise anyone to hear that the Regain remasters of Gorgoroth's Pentagram, Antichrist and Under The Sign Of Hell still sound like shitty basement black metal, albeit maybe pushed one extra time through the Louderizer. No bonus tracks, either. But hey, you do get fold-out posters of the cover art with each one - and given Gorgoroth's awesome early album covers, that's a definite bonus, right? Right?

― unperson, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 15:21 (seventeen years ago)

KERRANG Album Of The Year 2007 (BIFFY CLYRO WTF???)

― Herman G. Neuname, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 15:22 (seventeen years ago)

Dear Dodheimsgard,

Why did you not release "Apocalypticism" as a single?

It would have been an underground dancefloor smash and would have pissed off SO MANY metal snobs.

Yrs

JGO

― Just got offed, Wednesday, 19 December 2007 23:45 (seventeen years ago)

That's probably my favorite track on the DHG album. So much fun.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 20 December 2007 02:14 (seventeen years ago)

And, it felt like a spiritual successor to Celtic Frost's "I Won't Dance," which I also love, in that "we're an extreme metal band but fuck you, we can tear up the dance floor too" sort of way.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 20 December 2007 02:23 (seventeen years ago)

This will be more appropriate in 2008 but--my friends TREES (a newer cult doom/drone/noise act from dismal, rainy Portland, OR) just posted an excerpt from their upcoming Crucial Blast debut on Myspace.

http://www.myspace.com/trees00

Please add them and give their tune a spin (if you like that sort of thing).

― Nate Carson, Thursday, 20 December 2007 04:18 (seventeen years ago)

That's probably my favorite track on the DHG album. So much fun.

Damn straight, although the whole album is super. Trawling the Internet for reviews, it would seem that they've succeeded in both delighting me and pissing off a whole raft of others, which is of course awesome.

― Just got offed, Thursday, 20 December 2007 09:03 (seventeen years ago)

Under The Sign Of Hell definitely did not have shitty production originally! One of Pyttens best jobs, that.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 20 December 2007 17:58 (seventeen years ago)

My listening was so bifurcated between metal and "non-metal" this year that I decided to file a metal-only ballot in one poll and a no-metal ballot in the other one. Here's the metal one:

Albums

1. Nightwish: Dark Passion Play
2. Deathspell Omega: Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum
3. Rotting Christ: Theogonia
4. In This Moment: Beautiful Tragedy
5. Dir en grey: THE MARROW OF A BONE
6. Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters
7. Jesu: Conqueror / Lifeline
8. Asrai: Pearls in Dirt
9. Secrets of the Moon: Antithesis
10. Dark Tranquillity: Fiction

Songs

1. Nightwish: Amaranth
2. Asrai: Sour Ground
3. Epica: Fools of Damnation (The Embrace That Smothers, Part IX)
4. Eyes of Eden: Sleeping Minds
5. Candlemass: Clearsight
6. Dimmu Borgir: The Conspiracy Unfolds
7. Samael: Suspended Time
8. Sirenia: Sundown
9. Tarja: Die Alive
10. Helloween: As Long As I Fall

― glenn mcdonald, Friday, 21 December 2007 18:34 (seventeen years ago)

Some of the older readers of this thread may enjoy this
Best AOR Albums Of All Time POLL
it's from a Kerrang 1988 readers list.

― The Ghost Of Dave Ling, Friday, 21 December 2007 20:58 (seventeen years ago)

Interesting. The Brits always went for second and third tier American AOR records lots more than Americans did.

Some I don't even know.

Others still get the occasional listen. Angel's Sinful was virtually a bubblegum record.

Giuffria stuff. Play that funky keytar, white boy.

Touch had been American Tears/Tear Gas, and I liked the former slightly better. Might've run out of songs by Touch, I dunno.

Get down with Paul Sabu, David Hasselhoff rock before David Hasselhoff was rockin'.

And who can forget Night of the Crime by Icon. Uhhhh...

― Gorge, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:16 (seventeen years ago)

No Precious Metal, no cred.

― Gorge, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:16 (seventeen years ago)

While in the same vein, there's this. Anthology by The Other Side. Local to me growing up in Pennsyltucky. About half of it hits Styx/REO Speedwagon land, the other half Grand Funk ca. American Band. By 1980, they were over and done although had managed to do a major label album distributed by Polygram under Kool & the Gang's imprint, De-Lite. Unsurprisingly, is one of my top listens for the year, coming in late.

― Gorge, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:29 (seventeen years ago)

Dear Dodheimsgard,

Why did you not release "Apocalypticism" as a single?

It would have been an underground dancefloor smash and would have pissed off SO MANY metal snobs.

i hope i don't come off as a snob, but that song gives me serious Machines of Loving Grace flashbacks. it's just too soon... too soon...

― rockapads, Saturday, 22 December 2007 06:05 (seventeen years ago)

And I eat my words once more -- this Pig Destroyer album is pretty rad, on second listen. Some really interesting musical stuff going on, and I like how it totally screws with your vibe.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 23 December 2007 01:06 (seventeen years ago)

Scott, you guessed right, I am totally liking Alestorm's "Scottish pirate metal" on Captain Morgan's Revenge. Mutiny on the bounty's what they're all about; they're gonna board your ship and turn it on out! They sing about the starboard bough and buried treasure, and the best two song titles ("Nancy the Tavern Wench," "Wenches and Mead") feature wenches. I can also see them appealing to Dropkick Murphys fans as much or more than extreme metal fans, which is not something I'll complain about. Only thing that pisses me off is that Napalm folks are apparently now both (1) carving their promos up into countless snippets so shuffle play is impossible and (2) adding subliminal "you're listening to the new album by so and so" messages. Fuck it. I hope somebody leaks the record anyway.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 27 December 2007 13:17 (seventeen years ago)

Wait, those methods are to battle PIRACY, right?? Hypocrites!!

― xhuxk, Thursday, 27 December 2007 13:19 (seventeen years ago)

I've also been liking some songs on the imminent new Death Angel album on Nuclear Blast, Killing Season. I've listened to nothing by that band in almost two decades; didn't they all start out as Filipino-American teen Metallica fans way back then? Guess they're not teens anymore. But I remember liking their debut album; I should find another copy someday. Anyway, the tracks I like on the new one are the speedy catchy ones that have as much NWOBHM and power-metal in their sound as thrash (but still plenty of thrash) -- namely, tracks three and four (and to a lesser extent, two), if you're keeping score. And I like how track nine keeps going into the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" riff. And there are some okay time changes, switching into early Metallica style drama, here and there elsewwhere-- but not enough; most of the album strikes me as clunky and forced, for some reason. Still: nice try!

― xhuxk, Thursday, 27 December 2007 14:02 (seventeen years ago)

Probably the last person on this thread to hear Paradise Lost "In Requiem", but I seem to have missed the point where they turned into Amorphis? WTF?

― Siegbran, Thursday, 27 December 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago)

I don't even know what Amorphis sound like anymore. I never heard the last two albums. or maybe even the last three albums.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:21 (seventeen years ago)

I think at some point all those classic Goth metal bands turned into each other. Although I really like the new Paradise Lost, and the Amorphis record from last year was great.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:28 (seventeen years ago)

My Dying Bride still sound like My Dying Bride. I never bought an Anathema album after A Fine Day To Exit, but I love that album and its Pink Floydisms. I was never a big Amorphis fan, though I like the really old stuff. Their art metal always kinda bored me.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:33 (seventeen years ago)

OK, yes, if you break it down into specific bands, it falls apart, but it's a darned pithy generalization! I would still check out Eclipse, though. Best thing they've done since Elegy.

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:40 (seventeen years ago)

There is enough new stuff that sounds like the old stuff to keep me happy. Like this new Isole album I'm listening to. The old timers can do what they want. I mean, I wouldn't want to make Gothic part 5 and 6 and 7 if I were Paradise Lost. They have to keep things interesting for themselves. Some people are better at making those kinds of transitions though. I thought Anathema's transition from a to b to c to d was almost seamless.
I never heard Host, the album that Paradise Lost fans love to hate.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:42 (seventeen years ago)

That new album by The Foreshadowing is such a great 90's doom metal album. I recommend that one if the old heroes aren't doing it for you. and as long as you don't mind nostalgia.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:46 (seventeen years ago)

I've liked most everything I've heard by Paradise Lost, with a few exceptions here and there. Now that I think about it, though, I don't think I really agree with the Amorphis comparison. I mean, there are the obvious genre similarities, but that comparison didn't jump out at me. What era Amorphis are you referring to?

― Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 27 December 2007 20:56 (seventeen years ago)

Elegy-era. It's a pretty good album though, kind of what you'd expect from a band that's been going for almost 20 years, very powerful, solid songwriting. Of course, no Lost Paradise. Come to think of it, that album is quite unique - has anyone ever done something similar to that?

― Siegbran, Thursday, 27 December 2007 21:48 (seventeen years ago)

The biggest similarities are in the vocal lines - if you image a bit of a finnish accent it's uncanny.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 27 December 2007 21:51 (seventeen years ago)

btw it always puzzles me that all those bands very much had their own sound and got more generic/faceless later on. You would expect the inverse, but that never happens. I guess that's what years of touring with other bands does to you.

― Siegbran, Thursday, 27 December 2007 22:02 (seventeen years ago)

honestly, i think they just get tired of being poor.

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago)

The Gorod album I'm listening to now is from '05 I think, but I'm bringin' it up anyway. I saw these dudes @ MDF and they were among my favorites - really weird technical breakdown parts amidst the brutality, and the album plays up that aspect. Fuckin' Willowtip puts out quality DM, that's what I know.

― J0hn D., Thursday, 27 December 2007 23:32 (seventeen years ago)

honestly, i think they just get tired of being poor.

that and the no-win situation of staying poor and getting called stagnant by your fanbase or getting some money and getting called a sellout right

― J0hn D., Thursday, 27 December 2007 23:33 (seventeen years ago)

Gorod will never sell out!

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 23:52 (seventeen years ago)

I love that band. They bring out the best in me:

When we last left supreme French tech-death masters Gorod, they had been sent through the ethereal universe to fight the five creatures of anger, known as the Neurotripsicks, in the city of all perversions. The evil Neurotripsicks struck first by chewing up earth’s asshole and spitting it out in the form of liquid manure. Various cranial impalements ensued. Then Gorod got really pissed and proceeded to mince and mash the bloated pig-faced Neurotripsicks behind the stone door with pitiless savagery. Oh, it was awful. There was a whole lot of crushed flesh, perversion, torture, and the sucking of neurotripsick fluid in order to absorb the beasts’ evil souls. But then, the Neurotripsicks’ rats appeared in Gorod and the head of a pig was smashed until the earth oozed pus, and supposedly there were stab wounds from cunt to stomach and many lost souls practicing the harmony of torture and artistic violence in the city of sex and death while Gorod descended into madness, got lost with ghosts, became stuck in between two worlds, and traveled the dark seas of shredded organs while ultimately becoming the slaves of nightmares in a bloody place of tears. All of which was simple enough to follow. On their new album, however, they go on and on about global warming and how mean politicians are or some shit, and I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.

Which is fine, actually, because it enables me to sit back and enjoy the dizzying six-string solos that are the aural equivalent of a little kid spinning around and around as fast as he can until he falls down puking. Gorod create “songs” in much the same way that a meth-head dismantles a television set. It’s all very controlled and meticulous, and it probably makes sense at the time they’re doing it, but when all is said and done, there’s all this shit all over the floor and all you can really think to say is: What the hell just happened here? Gorod are the kind of band that can make Dillinger Escape Plan sound like navel-gazing slowpokes. You can’t get sick of their songs either, because there’s no way you will ever remember the order of riffs, parts, and changes that appear and disappear every four seconds. There is something distinctly unpleasant about Gorod—and I mean that as a compliment. They make truly unpleasant music for truly unpleasant people. While listening, I ask myself, “Wait, is this ‘Obsequiem Minaris’ or ‘Hidden Genocide’?” In the end, it really doesn’t matter. It’s just one big blast of bewildering noise. I dig it, and I don’t have a clue as to why. —Scott Seward

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 December 2007 23:53 (seventeen years ago)

Decibel or someone should really do an in-depth money article. what bands make. what they take home. how many metal "legends" live paycheck to paycheck. i'll bet it would be eye-opening. is it the only genre where you can sell a couple thousand records and be considered a "big" name?

― scott seward, Friday, 28 December 2007 00:01 (seventeen years ago)

Neurosis have jobs. The rhythm players in High on Fire have jobs. It is a really tough business.

― Nate Carson, Friday, 28 December 2007 02:17 (seventeen years ago)

BTW, I wrote off Amorphis when Elegy came out. You really like it?

― Nate Carson, Friday, 28 December 2007 02:18 (seventeen years ago)

Scott - I think the "couple thousand records big name" thing happens with most niche genres. Dance music, indie hip-hop, and jazz probably have a similar situation at this point. I do think some of the European bands probably have it better, financially, since they can always play the giant festivals, and I believe metal sells better over there. I mean, Nightwish are huge in Finland with record sales that wouldn't even make the Billboard top 100. I could be entirely wrong, though.

Nate - I assume you're talking to me? Yes, I really like it. I much prefer the folk-infused progressive death sound or whatever you want to call it to the more straight up evil death sound of their earlier work. But as I've made evident elsewhere in this thread, I don't actually like straight up death metal all that much. I much prefer melody to brutality (which isn't to say that I don't like the latter, but I'll always take the former first).

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 28 December 2007 03:11 (seventeen years ago)

I guess they lost me when they added the Hetfield-wannabe vocals on that 3rd album. Is he still with the band?

The music was always alright by me (once I'd acclimated to the huge step they made with ...Thousand Lakes).

― Nate Carson, Friday, 28 December 2007 04:02 (seventeen years ago)

I love good doom and death metal, but the gothic metal has always been a big gap in my vocabulary. I have the first two Paradise Lost, Anathema Pentecost III and I used to own Dreadful Hours by MDB. I think I've done a remarkable job of avoiding anything that reminded me of Tiamat or Peter Murphy or Peter Steele.

But I'm willing to open my mind a bit now. Hoping Turn Loose the Swans is the one that will change my life...

― Nate Carson, Friday, 28 December 2007 04:06 (seventeen years ago)

-- scott seward

YES, SOMEONE SHOULD (SCOTT).

― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 28 December 2007 05:09 (seventeen years ago)

Okay, so after spending the last seven days with it, I've come to the conclusion the new Hate Eternal album is really, really, good. In fact I'm leaning towards saying it's better than I, Monarch. The first track "Hell Envenom" just leaves me awestruck every time I hear it.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 28 December 2007 10:58 (seventeen years ago)

I've also been liking some songs on the imminent new Death Angel album on Nuclear Blast, Killing Season. I've listened to nothing by that band in almost two decades; didn't they all start out as Filipino-American teen Metallica fans way back then? Guess they're not teens anymore. But I remember liking their debut album; I should find another copy someday. Anyway, the tracks I like on the new one are the speedy catchy ones that have as much NWOBHM and power-metal in their sound as thrash (but still plenty of thrash) -- namely, tracks three and four (and to a lesser extent, two), if you're keeping score. And I like how track nine keeps going into the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" riff. And there are some okay time changes, switching into early Metallica style drama, here and there elsewwhere-- but not enough; most of the album strikes me as clunky and forced, for some reason. Still: nice try!

Got this album on right now, and I'm impressed. The thrash element does seem to be downplayed more than I'd expected, and I really like those mid-paced tracks as well. Track 5 is awesome. Surprised how you say it feels forced, Chuck...compared to The Art of Dying (their reunion album from 04), they sound a lot more comfortable where they are musically. The last album felt like they were still feeling their way around a bit. Raskulinecz's production is interesting as well...sounds more cozy than epic, but it's still pretty massive. I had high hopes for this album, and yeah, it sure doesn't disappoint.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 28 December 2007 23:08 (seventeen years ago)

Has anyone else heard and enjoyed the new King Diamond?

― Nate Carson, Saturday, 29 December 2007 00:26 (seventeen years ago)

not yet but I listened to mass amounts of Mercyful Fate in '07

― J0hn D., Saturday, 29 December 2007 03:18 (seventeen years ago)

Appending the decent title "Give Me Your Soul" with "...Please" was a truly bizarre thing to do. But very King Diamondian. Still haven't heard it, though. I'm not a huge fan of his recent solo stuff...hate to sound rigidly old school, but I'd rather stick with Fate.

― A. Begrand, Saturday, 29 December 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago)

I honestly only know the first to MF albums well (ultra-classic faves). But this new KD sounds pretty choice on the one absent-minded listen I gave it. Will check it more closely and get back to you.

One thing I will say--it's not "terrifying" like the sticker says... LOL

― Nate Carson, Saturday, 29 December 2007 03:33 (seventeen years ago)

So! I had a great big package in the mail when I returned from my parents': Airbourne, Graveyard, Warbringer, Saviours (what's with the Anglo spelling by American bands?), Sculptured, The Knives, and the not-metal Flogging Molly.

I like the Airbourne record, although it is very derivative -- it really reminds me of a mid-80s AC/DC knockoff band, and if the album didn't have the date and label on it, I might very well have thought that it was. Also digging Graveyard (OK, bad joke), which should appeal to the psychedelic fans out there. Will report on the others when I listen to them.

― Jeff Treppel, Sunday, 30 December 2007 00:26 (seventeen years ago)

hate to sound rigidly old school, but I'd rather stick with Fate.

that's the thing - Melissa and Don't Break the Oath accomplish two things: they set the bar pretty high, and they sorta obviate the need for much further explication. Not that I don't listen to other KD stuff, I just don't feel compelled to jump right on it.

― J0hn D., Sunday, 30 December 2007 00:30 (seventeen years ago)

ATTENTION CHUCK

I threw this thing into the changer that I thought was an album by a band called Landmine Marathon. First three songs sorta neo-thrash/HC that didn't interest me much and wouldn't interest you. Turns out three songs in that it's a split CD with a band called Scarecrow, not an album called "Scarecrow." And Scarecrow sounds kinda like Hotter Than Hell-era Kiss and I think you would dig them. Love!

― J0hn D., Sunday, 30 December 2007 00:56 (seventeen years ago)

sounds kinda early Megadeth-y too I guess

I'm loving this

― J0hn D., Sunday, 30 December 2007 00:57 (seventeen years ago)

i don't listen to king diamond records. i'm not afraid to admit that. mercyful fate were definitely jammin' though. and nuns have no fun, melissa, and don't break the oath have three of the greatest album covers of all time. so, you know, i ain't hating.

― scott seward, Sunday, 30 December 2007 01:02 (seventeen years ago)

Those early KD albums (Them and Abigail) are actually really really strong, pretty much a streamlined version of Fate, but yikes, the production is so tinny, it's almost distracting.

And re: Jeff's comment, being a Canadian, I'm all for the proper English spelling of Saviours. Brings a touch of class to the metal!

― A. Begrand, Sunday, 30 December 2007 02:52 (seventeen years ago)

Reminder, that the ILM 2007 music poll nominations need to be in before it's 2008

Make sure metal is adequately represented:

<a href="http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&;threadid=60655">ILX 2007 ALBUMS & TRAX POLL ::::::::::::::::nominations due by 01/01/08:::::::::::::::::</a> - you can nominate upto 15 albums

2007 Albums that have NOT been be nominated YET include these:

Abigor - Fractal Possession
Aeon - Rise to Dominate
Akerkocke - Antichrist
Alchemist - Tripsis
Amorphis - Silent Waters
Bergraven - Dodsvisioner
Between the Buried and Me - Colors
Candlemass - King of the Grey Islands
Cobalt - Eater of Birds
Dark Tranquillity - Fiction
Deadlock - Wolves
Demiurg - Breath of the Demiurg
Detonation - Emission Phase
Dimmu Borgir - In Sorte Diaboli
Dødheimsgard - Supervillain Outcast
Ghost Brigade - Guided by Fire
Hacride - Amoeba
In Lingua Mortua - Bellowing Sea - Racked by Tempest
Lifelover - Erotik
Minsk - The Ritual Fires of Abandonment
Mithras - Behind the Shadows Lie Madness
Moonsorrow - Viides luku - Hävitetty
Novembers Doom - The Novella Reservoir
The Ocean - Precambrian
Odious Mortem - Cryptic Implosion
Officium Triste - Giving Yourself Away
Paradise Lost - In Requiem
Portal - Outre
Red Harvest - A Greater Darkness
Rotting Christ - Theogonia
Sadist - Sadist
Sear Bliss - The Arcane Odyssey
Shining - V - Halmstad
Swallow the Sun - Hope
Vehementer Nos - Vehementer Nos
Virgin Black - Requiem - Mezzo Forte
The Vision Bleak - The Wolves Go Hunt Their Prey
Vreid - I Krig
V:28 - VioLution
Watain - Sworn to the Dark

On a side note, this coming Thursday Terrorizer will be publishing their 2007 Albums of the year.

― djmartian, Sunday, 30 December 2007 22:44 (seventeen years ago)

correct code: ILX 2007 ALBUMS & TRAX POLL ::::::::::::::::nominations due by 01/01/08:::::::::::::::::

― djmartian, Sunday, 30 December 2007 22:45 (seventeen years ago)

I nominated my 15 albums already

― Herman G. Neuname, Sunday, 30 December 2007 22:47 (seventeen years ago)

I think this is what yer goin' for, djmartian:

ILX 2007 ALBUMS & TRAX POLL ::::::::::::::::nominations due by 01/01/08:::::::::::::::::

― Ioannis, Sunday, 30 December 2007 22:48 (seventeen years ago)

thanks, it was much easier when ILM was just HTML

― djmartian, Sunday, 30 December 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago)

I took care of Dark Tranquillity and Rotting Christ.

― glenn mcdonald, Monday, 31 December 2007 03:19 (seventeen years ago)

The Guardian music blog: Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Why is metal still ignored by the mainstream?

It's been an outstanding year for metal with critics falling over themselves to embrace the genre. So why don't any of 2007's excellent releases feature in the end-of-year lists?

― djmartian, Monday, 31 December 2007 16:54 (seventeen years ago)

the answer is easy: the national and arcade fire were just THAT good this year. i dunno. i look at all those indie rock year-end lists and there is very little i am curious about or want to hear. i liked the battles album. mainly cuz i have always worshipped helmet's drummer! hahahaha!

― scott seward, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:04 (seventeen years ago)

this is still my fave year-end list:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/babarm87/top_50_post_rock_albums_of_2007

just cuz i hadn't heard of most of the stuff on it and i like the unknown. found a bunch of the bands on youtube. some of it was very cool and some was okay and some was tiresome godspeed/mogwai type music. but it was fun to look for it all! plus, without a doubt, some of the greatest album covers of the year.

― scott seward, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:09 (seventeen years ago)

out of the 50 bands on that list, i hadn't heard of 41 of them.

― scott seward, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago)

re: that ILX end-of-term list, I did my bit with Caina, Chrome Hoof (although they're more dance than metal) and Deathspell Omega, and indeed I've picked quite a few albums already nominated, so I could chuck a couple more on the pile.

― Just got offed, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:12 (seventeen years ago)

Re. i look at all those indie rock year-end lists and there is very little i am curious about or want to hear.

Scott, count yourself lucky I had the misfortune of scanning HUNDREDS of 2007 lists that I didn't bookmark / blog that were nothing more than Victims of Group Think cribbed from Pitchfork / Paste / Magnet etc.

― djmartian, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago)

DJ Martian very much OTM. There was so much more exciting stuff out there than all the mannered indie hypegrist.

― Just got offed, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:22 (seventeen years ago)

Portal and Dodheimsgard now added to ILM albums&trax poll.

― Just got offed, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:30 (seventeen years ago)

out of the 50 bands on that list, i hadn't heard of 41 of them

Me too! Probably the same 41! Which ones were good?

― Matt #2, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:39 (seventeen years ago)

Scott, have you seen this list yet?

The Silent Ballet | The Top 50 Releases of 2007

― djmartian, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:56 (seventeen years ago)

see, i already can't remember. maybe i'll start a youtube thread just for that list.

x-post

― scott seward, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago)

wow, no, haven't seen that list either. more great album covers!

i will start a thread a little later on these groups.

― scott seward, Monday, 31 December 2007 17:59 (seventeen years ago)

Have you seen My Louis Approved List, scott?

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 31 December 2007 18:05 (seventeen years ago)

It's a good list from what I've heard on it, which isn't that much to be honest. I'm lucky to have a brother who is to metal as I am to experimental indie; I get to crib all his best stuff! :D

― Just got offed, Monday, 31 December 2007 18:08 (seventeen years ago)

RE: that Guardian blog, I think Geir has posted in the replies

"Given that other perceived niche genres such as dance or hip-hop are well represented, if tokenistically, you have to wonder why there is still such a stigma and snobbery around the canonisation of metal."
The answer is simple. Metal is unique among musical genres in having no redeeming features whatsoever. Taken from a strictly musicological point of view, it exhibits a total lack of creativity, inspiration and intelligence. There's no such thing as a good Metal album.

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 31 December 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago)

That Guardian blog comments thread is well worth a constant revisit over the next 48 hours or so. Just to watch the ignorance and lack of knowledge of some folks.

― djmartian, Monday, 31 December 2007 18:13 (seventeen years ago)

Have you replied?

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 31 December 2007 23:32 (seventeen years ago)

"There is very little talent in metal music. AC DC is one the most popular bands in the world and their vocalist screams instead of sings. Their guitarist, Angus Young, saves the band from being really bad.
Hard rock is preferable to metal"

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 31 December 2007 23:35 (seventeen years ago)

So the verdict on 2007, was it a good year for metal?

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 01:49 (seventeen years ago)

I believe this picture sums it up:

http://www.jasonrileyhoss.com/sitebuilder/images/Devil_Horns-600x453.jpg

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:03 (seventeen years ago)

So the verdict on 2007, was it a good year for metal?

Best this decade, in my opinion. Phenomenal, really.

― A. Begrand, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:07 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, what Adrien said.

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:10 (seventeen years ago)

Better year for metal than indie (again)

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:13 (seventeen years ago)

2007 was a great year for metal. For my final post in this thread, I offer this, taken in New York on 12/22:

http://bp3.blogger.com/_ZiM8GFhGDOM/R27ycMUfgqI/AAAAAAAAAMs/SzBzStckJqU/s1600-h/ozzynme.jpg

― unperson, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:25 (seventeen years ago)

Damn, photo didn't load. Well, it's me with Ozzy.

― unperson, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:25 (seventeen years ago)

Shame it didnt load. I have no idea what you look like, phil.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:31 (seventeen years ago)

It's visible on my blog:

http://runningthevoodoodown.blogspot.com

― unperson, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:39 (seventeen years ago)

ahh cool.
lets see if it will show now
http://bp3.blogger.com/_ZiM8GFhGDOM/R27ycMUfgqI/AAAAAAAAAMs/SzBzStckJqU/s1600-h/ozzynme.jpg
How was your 1st year in charge of Metal Edge? Wh Smiths have stopped getting it here after all these years.

Oh and Borders in Glasgow doesnt even stock Decibel so there's no way to buy it here.

― Herman G. Neuname, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 02:49 (seventeen years ago)

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