Rolling Metal Thread 2007

thanks for the link to that jesu live stuff, kerr; meant to say before. i'm psyched as fuck about new jesu. roll on february.

That is, if you're as into their turn for the bluesy as I am. It's really a tremendous transformation by the band.

As for the new Jesu, it's really good, but I find myself liking Silver mroe.

2007:
Phazm – Antebellum Death ‘N Roll (Osmose Productions)
Altered State – Get Real (Altered State)
Melechesh – Emissaries (Osmose Productions)
The Boils – The Orange And The Black: Hockey Anthems (TKO EP)
Die Berbannten Kinder Evas – Dusk Und Boid Became Alive (Napalm)

2006: "Real" Metal
1. Fentanyl – Feeble Existence (www.fentanyl.nl)
2. Tyr – Eric The Red (Napalm reissue)
3. Korpiklaani – Tales Along This Road (Napalm)
4. Crucified Barbara – In Distortion We Trust (Liquor and Poker)
5. Ahab – The Call Of The Wretched Sea (Napalm)
6. Warpig – Warpig (Relapse reissue)
7. Voivod – Katorz (The End)
8. Summoning – Oath Bound (Napalm)
9. Pentagram – First Daze Here Too: The Vintage Collection (Relapse reissue)
10. Place Of Skulls – The Black Is Never Far (Exile On Mainstream)

2006: "Fake" Metal
1. Damone – Out Here All Night (Island)
2. Huck Johns – Huck (Hideout)
3. Leane Kingwell – Show Ya What (Krill)
4. The Left – Jesus Loves The Left: The Complete Studio Recordings (Bona Fide reissue)
5. The Spunks – Yellow Fever Blues (Gearhead)
6. Variant Cause – Excavating Variant Cause: 1980s Pacific Northwest Volume 1 (variantcause.com reissue)
7. Atomic Bitch – Bodyshop (Top & Bottom EP)
8. (Various) – American Hardcore: The History Of American Punk Rock 1980-1986 (Rhino reissue)
9. Killola – Louder, Louder! (Our EP)
10. Def Leppard – Yeah! (Mercury)

Unless Crash Kelly or Rhino Bucket should have counted as real, or Crucified Barbara or Montgomery Gentry as fake, in which case never mind.

11. Warmachine – The Beginning Of The End (Nightmare)
12. Falkenbach – Heralding The Fireblade (Napalm)
13. Solar Anus - Skull Alcoholic: The Complete Solar Anus (Tumult reissue)
14. Spi Ritual – Pulse (Sensory Dark)
15. Brain Surgeons NYC – Denial Of Death (Cellsum)
16. Tyr – Ragnarok (Napalm)
17. Ludicra – Fex Urbis Lex Orbis (Alternative Tentacles EP)
18. The Lizards – Against All Odds (Hyperspace)
19. Madder Mortem – Desiderata (Peaceville)
20. Rage – Speak Of The Dead (Nuclear Blast)

The great mailing of Korpiklaani/The Summoning/Falkenbach didn't stick even though, in theory, I thought the Summoning was cool. Didn't take 'em to the store for trade-in points, though.

Vains of Jenna came in too late to merit consideration. Maybe in the New Year, since I like at least half of it.

And the great end-o-beginning-of-year hard rock extravaganza at the famous DD blog:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/12/big-end-of-year-hard-rock-extravaganza.html

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2007/01/more-end-ofbeginning-of-year-hard-rock.html

Many things that were old and in boxes became new again.

Good little album, that one.

Great album! Proscriptor McGovern rocks!

all the math wizards should seriously think about going the Electro Quarterstaff route, and just ditch the singer. or grunter. cuz the music is usually pretty cool. unless, you know, you have an AWESOME grunter.

Last year was a surprisingly good one for Nuclear Blast. There were a couple notable failures (okay, mostly just that disappointing Hammerfall album), but a surprising amount of their CDs made my year-end top 25 for Metal Eater.com.

I think Car Bomb sent me a really strong cinnamon air freshener with their last record when I worked in college radio. That thing made my box of promo junk smell for a couple years until I threw it out. Band isn't really my thing, either.

Personally, i still wanna hear the new Deathspell Omega album. There is a new one, right? Talk about disturbing!

!

thanks, man, but i never got that. both my display e-mail and the webmail link should work perfectly; must have been spam-trapped somewhere. bah.

care to try again? just use the BT one, it should be cool; let me know here when i should check my inbox for glorious goodies :)

http://www.magikart.ru/images/covers/sundial_heart_400x400.jpg

goth/doom from russia. very cool.

like Joe Lynn Turner's Sunstorm!

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000JBXON0.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V36882124_.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000E8NQD6.01._SS400_SCLZZZZZZZ_V56973928_.jpg

The Car Bomb album has its charms. Some neat soundz on it.

http://www.ancestrallegacy.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/03_of_magic.jpg

dark/goth/doom/death. from norway, i think. terrible cover. cheap-o, er, "raw" production, that actually sounds cool.

http://mh09.multihost.ru/~magikart/ambivalence/Images/cover-the_splinters.jpg

http://mh09.multihost.ru/~magikart/ambivalence/Images/cdcovers/cover-pornomechanoid-front.jpg

http://www.magikart.ru/images/covers/phantasmagory-phantasmagoria_400x400.jpg

weird spacey sluggish prog/death that just goes all over the place. sounds like improv death.

http://www.magikart.ru/images/covers/phantasmagory-odd_sounds_400x400.jpg

Speaking of Joe Lynn Turner, during the Tower implosion I picked up the first album from a band called Fandango from 1977 with, you guessed it, Mr. Turner on vocals. Not really metal, per se, but very easy listening AOR. The photo on the inside has some of the most hair I've ever seen on a band, and I'm including Poison and Motley Crue in that statement.

Also, I don't quite get why everyone is so infatuated with Julie Christmas. I picked up the Triad compilation at the Tower implosion, and while the Red Sparowes are pretty great (although I honestly couldn't tell that they were live tracks until I looked on the back of the CD), the other two bands didn't really do anything for me. Battle of Mice are okay, but the shrieking on Made Out Of Babies was pretty unbearable. Ms. Christmas certainly has a unique vocal style, but to me she just sounds like a high school art chick who's totally psyched about this poem she just carved into her arm.

What's with the clock motif today, Scott?

Two French bands I thought I'd hate, but wound up enjoying recently: Fairyland, Anthropia.

Anthropia, especially, it's a one-man band that does the fantasy metal thing, but tosses in really fun snippets of jazz, folk, and 70s prog rock while sounding rooted in mid-80s proto power metal instead of mid-90s frilly power metal. Surprisingly robust, and quite a blast to listen to.

i don't come on this thread much, but my friends's band, Total Fucking Blood, might be something y'all would dig. Their album, Blaze the Lord is really good...

http://www.myspace.com/totalfuckingblood

here's something geoff who posts on ilm wrote abt it in the city pages local year end list:
Total Fucking Blood
Blaze the Lord
Freedom From Records

The midterms meant it was a bad year for extremity, so the story goes. Maybe so, but let's not have a return to normalcy in our music, thank you. St. Paul's Total Fucking Blood gave us the comforts of implacable, abstract ferocity, and for that they deserve a grateful nation's thanks. Blaze the Lord's 11 tracks are shorter than my commute and as mesmeric as Brazilian children's television. This is distilled music, everything superfluous blasted away, the exposed remnants blown out to absurd proportion. It sounds like it was recorded in your bathroom. There's a teasingly bleak sense of humor at work (the title track, "You Got Serbed"), perfect for another precarious year in a world adrift. —Geoff Cannon

i need some new black metal inspiration though, have you guys heard of Ettrick? Supposed to be some murky blackmetal/freejazz hybrid.

any other recent black metal tips?

http://www.myspace.com/blessedbyabrokenheart

Personally, I think they've got some serious potential. Crap production, but Century will probably just toss Zeuss or Andy Sneap at them.

i keep passing on the striborg double vinyl on southern lord for some reason. if i don't buy it, who will?

such a lovely looking boy too:

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

Personally, I think they've got some serious potential. Crap production, but Century will probably just toss Zeuss or Andy Sneap at them.

Heh, I like this...part metalcore, part power metal, part mid-80s pop metal. Not as wildly uneven as Avenged Sevenfold, and yeah, the production is lacking (those synths sound straight out of Honeymoon Suite circa 1984), but with some bucks and a good producer, this could go over huge with the young crowd.

Album by Glenn Stewart in the mail today. His cdbaby page indicates that he used to be in an '80s band (rock, I assume) (actually, hair metal I assume even more) that had some success, but he doesn't name what the band was, and a quick google search didn't help, so maybe he's embarrassed. Nowadays he wears a cowboy hat. So far I heard one love ballad I didn't like on the album (not sure its name), one Southern rocker ("Dance Little Donna") I liked a lot, and one Bon Jovi solo style power ballad ("Love Comes Knockin'") that convinces me I was right about the hair metal part. (Also he has one track intriguingly titled "My So Called Life," but I've yet to hear it.)

Lots of species of hard rock in the changer now, most of which can be called metal if you want to call them that, all of them sounding pretty good to me at the moment: Girl (Phil Collen's pre-Def Lep NWOBHM-era glam band, live in Tokyo '80 bootleg by "original lineup" which may or may not have included Collen, I haven't checked yet); DC Snipers/Imaginary Icons (split CD-R of four unmastered tracks for upcoming album by former/singles by latter); Trigger Renegade (high-register cdbaby Cali sleaze-metal, reminds maybe like if Wildstyle or Kik Tracee or one of those bands hired the singer from the Reds); Black Angel (cdbaby Stones-rock, sufficently DFX2-like so far though the song now "American Wedding" is nicely drawled late '70s Stones-country quoting "crimson and clover over and over" in its lyrics).

And that V.E.G.A. CD has some very beautiful parts, it turns out.

In hindsight, maybe I should've kept some more of the black metal stuff we got in at my college radio station. Oh well, nothing to be done now except go to Amoeba and spend a bunch of money on artists with illegible band logos.

Anyway, their cdbaby page; decide for yourself already:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/triggerrenegade

not black metal, I know, but what can you do?

Do the Reds have anything on CD, what would you recommend, and where can I get it? Only one person has it on audio cassette on Amazon.

And yeah, Phil Collen is in this Girl lineup. Track on now, "Wasted Youth" sounds very proto-early-Lep (whose debut was '80 too.)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/girl

Wow, Black Angel's "One Beer" on now, even better Stones-country Some Girls style; dude's singing about being a country boy down at the 7-11 on Desolation Row drinking a beer for the devil and in love with the queen of hip-hop soul. (Guess I should be posting this on the country thread instead; sorry folx.)

Anyway:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bangel

(All three of those cdbaby CDs recommended to Hanoi Rocks fans, too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrvaYJ7r9no

Very surreal to see a band that brutal on a legitimate television program. Not a big fan, but I always appreciate a group that can wake up sleepy, stoned viewers at 1 a.m. I especially like when Randall climbs the amplifier stacks.

Ha ha, "A.N.T." by Trigger Renegade could totally fit on Bang Tango's Dancin' On Coals.

When I was in the audience for the Leno show, the musical performer was Train. I feel gypped.

Influences 1- Part JoDee Messina, for all the inspiration she has given me through her music and her being. To the fact she made me think out side the box when it came to my song writing. Part Cinderella, for if you stripped the "hair band" title and the gargling with razorblade vocals, they provided, raw, meaning full southern rock influence with a great feel ( especially Long Cold Winter.

His album is so far seeming too ballady for its own good, but "Brand New Day" is powerchorded hair-metal for sure.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/glennstewart

http://cdbaby.com/cd/panzerballett

Speaking of metaljazz, I haven't decided yet whether this blog's any good:

http://www.metaljazz.com/

Bay City Rollers quote in Glenn Stewart's otherwise Heartbreak Station-worthy "Freight Train--Here I Go": "Yes, no, maybe so, Oh no, I gotta go." Thanks to the new Sirens album for reminding me.

http://eil.com/newgallery/Flaming-Youth-Ark-2---Sealed-365492.jpg

i still might like brand x's moroccan roll better.

still he can eat shit for those eighties Genesis albums

there i did that for you. cuz i know you would be back to do it.

(And I actually like those three megahit early '80s Genesis LPs fine, myself. Maybe even more than their '70s LPs, though don't quote me on that. Favorite tracks: "Land of Confusion," "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," "That's All," "Illegal Alien," "Just A Job To Do," "Abacab," "No Reply At All," probably not in that order.)

if you mean the album then let's get drunk & fight out on the porch

I haven't ever bought a copy of Metal Edge, it looks like a posters-n-pix mag for teens and doesn't look like it's covering stuff I care about.

2007 is so far such an awesome metal year, I hope we need a new thread every month

Well, that is poor writing. There is a lot of name dropping - we are expected to admire the sheer colume of the reviewer's musical knowledge. We get a lot of unsubstantiated opinions. There are spelling errors, but we miss them because we're propelled forward by the fast-food punctuation. There are some fatuous sideways musical lists that exist solely to impress us that the author is erudite and well-rounded. There is some conspicuous macho posturing. Why, necessarily, is 'sinewy' or 'punchy' a good quality?

There is no deep analysis of the music. Depth is actively avoided - for example, the idea of trying to come to terms with dying is cutely dismissed by the phrase "(or something like that)". There is a skimming, rushing quality to the writing, as if the author has many records to review that day and has no time for any depth reflection. Though this flailingly irrelevant review is flatulent with pumped up opinions of various kinds, at the end, one has to read it twice to realise that two records are being reviewed, because one is forced to speed through by the egged-on punctuation.

This writing is symptomatic of record reviewing in 2007, but especially in metal. Smug, superficial, inarticulate and self-satisfied. Pah.

Thanks, Moley! You should read my metal book, too! (It's even worse!)

Did you give his(?) band* a bad review or somethin', Chuck?

*Click on moley.

There is a skimming, rushing quality to the writing, as if the author has many records to review that day and has no time for any depth reflection.

For some reason I've always kind of liked this approach. I can't stand over-long wordy reviews that get all introspective.

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.

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.

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.

prior to this post there was a "skipping 777 messages...click here if you want to read them all." Jesus is trying to usurp the metal thread!

woke thread up to say that the Trelldom album is terrific.

man I slept on the illogicist record even though I had a feeling it was cool, but then this morning I was listening to carcass and that led me to finally give <i>the insight eye</i> a listen...super-tech slightly proggy death from Italy. Fucking great. Viva Italia, you have given me so much good metal, you are undersung among the metal-producing nations

Yeah, that Illogicist is my favourite release from Willowtip this year. It's not your usual tech-death metal.

Need to get me one of those. Was cranking the Malignancy album just the other day. Is there any other label as consistently awesome (within its own niche) as Willowtip?