"metal is the new japanese psychedelia"

what i've been listening to lately:

- atomsmasher
- khanate
- botch
- linkin park
- high on fire
- mastodon
- discordance axis
- eyehategod

any further suggestions along these lines would be appreciated...

Reek of Putrefaction ahoy. Hurrah for still being a fan!

also - if you're looking for the heavy, get your ass on soulseek and download some stuff by corrupted; massive, crushing, grunting, pavement-cracking japanese doom (with ex-boredoms member, i think?) outfit who did an amazing double cd called "llenandose de gusanos." did i mention they sing entirely in mexican spanish and that their albums are impossible to find?

one more: halo "guattari" on relapse. sick, sick, sick - like the two guys involved were listening to "streetcleaner" one day and said, "i don't know... is this really bleak enough?"

as for my metallic tastes this week:
meads of asphodel "the excommunication of christ" (ridiculous!)
mayhem/meads of asphodel split 10" (mayhem+dead in a studio-vicious)
thergothn "blah blah yog-sothoth"
ildjarn "forest poetry" (vicious black metal qua punk)
nokturnal mortum "nechrist" (folk-black metal hybrid, doesn't suck)
gontyna kry demo compilation
nargaroth "herbstleyd"
esoteric "metamorphogenesis"
havohej (everything)
the new unholy album
saint fucking vitus
french black metal in general (MUTIILATION!!!)

Drummer is Chew, who used to be Omoide Hatoba, but that's the only Bore connection afaik.

I second the recommendations for Thergothon ("Stream From The Heavens"!), Ildjarn, Havohej, Esoteric, . Nargaroth is flooding the market with material of varying quality, although "Herbstleyd" is pretty good. And for the lovers of messy black/grind in the Beherit tradition, I just heard that Bestial Summoning has re-released a "full discography" CD with the album (yay!), the demo and some livetracks.

And how is that Gontyna Kry album? "Welowie" was excellent, but I was told that the rest of the demos were pretty bad...

i endorse the following for your metal needs:

today is the day
high rise
nile

For death metal the new Hate Eternal album is absolutely ESSENTIAL.

as for meads of asphodel - their stated influences are venom, bulldozer, hawkwind, motorhead and you can hear it. there is something about them that reminds me of sigh (kind of cheesy synth, 'sampling' other forms of music, euro-melodicism - and yes, i know, sigh is japanese), i suppose. good, but a bit silly overall.

i REALLY like the gontyna kry demo cd, but it's pretty crapulent in sound quality, and it has some tracks from welowie on it (it's 40 minutes long and it could've easily been 80 minutes and just contained the first 3 demos). it just has a lovely, mysterious atmosphere about it but it is very raw and unrefined compared to welowie. there are a couple of almost acid-folk moments on the 3rd demo.

kris - soulseek! check it out, you'll find most of that stuff.

mark s - deep purple "in rock" is the shit - "hard lovin' man"...jesus!! to think i avoided buying a deep purple album for YEARS because i was overexposed to "smoke on the water" as a kid.

in the realms of 70s hard rock/protometal, i heartily recommend suck's "time to suck" - south african hard rock with covers of grand funk's "sin's a good man's brother" and sabbath's "war pigs". great!

Along with Jesus Lizard, I've been giving "Houdini", "Bullhead" and "Stoner Witch" quite a few listens over the past couple of weeks for the first time in a few years.

Yeah, I've just been reading 'Fargo Rock City' and the above passage reminded me of this thread (esp. "lose your hangups", which made me lol)

Doorag's list is supercool - I'd also put in a gd word for the UFO dbl live, and 'UFO' by Guru Guru, even.

That shit rocks!!

The horrible singing on AFD gets my sacrificial goat, and the lyrics are almost all bad. The guitarist sounds gd, but mostly he's buried in the mix, and too many of the songs are going-nowhere-at-medium-speed generic bluescock 'rockers' - I mean just abt OK, but nothing exceptionally exceptional either, and any early period Mountain alb rocks as 'hard'. Sometimes G'N'R have that apparently much sought-after funk-metal rhythm section thing going on - some of the drum fills do seem to really pop out at you, but they also sound utterly bogus and plastic - and even the pop tunes - 'Sweet Child O' Mine', 'Paradise City' - feel really plodding now. 3/10

Were Aerosmith ever really metal? Or ever really any gd AT ALL? 'Toys In The Attic' sounds like a moderately enjoyable early 70s Stones pastiche w/ a few Led Zep trimmings and a bit more 'disco' - sort've like if Primal Scream had 'chops'. 'Sweet Emotions' is a total steal from 'We Love You'; the 'gag' track abt big the singer's big ten inch record gives cock rock a bad name. It's never really 'heavy' and it only really rocks on the two hits. 4/10

So I swapped 'em for 'Universal Consciousness' by Alice Coltrane and 'Heavy Axe' by David Axelrod (8/10 and 6/10 respectively, a total plus of seven!!)

xcellent choice andrew.

and of course... cephalic carnage, today is the day, and candiria, converge, and the dillinger escape plan

BATHORY REIGNS SUPREME...

Drummer is Chew, who used to be Omoide Hatoba, but that's the only Bore connection afaik.

Chu was also the Boredoms drummer in the late 1980s, and now he's also in Destroy 2 with Eye.

The Dying Light is the new Squarepusher!

Read SOUND OF THE BEAST!

Meanwhile, a bunch of people who actually like metal have never stopped playing metal, and a bunch of hipsters who play it not as well keep trying to play it with a sense of blank irony.