WARNING: The following year end rant contains numerous piss poor attempts at humor and a healthy dose of cynicism. Reader discretion and a grain of salt are advised. THKD cannot be held responsible for anyone suffering from a severe case of butt-hurt as a result of exposure to this rant. Thank you for your support.
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Category Archives: doom
Mournful Congregation – The Book of Kings (20 Buck Spin, 2011)
As a metal journalist and critic, I occasionally run into albums that are so fucking good that they’re confounding. No amount of hyperbole will suffice with which to convey the brilliance of their myriad layers and intricacies. Such is the case with The Book of Kings, the fourth full length from Australian funeral doom practitioners Mournful Congregation. In listening to it, I feel as if my meager skills as a wordsmith are completely incapable of describing such a masterful recording, and yet I’m still compelled to spill the digital ink in service of this great work.
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New music from The Ash Eaters.
The Ash Eaters have released a new two track digital EP, The Cruel Side via their bandcamp page. For those not familiar, the band is the new project of former Brown Jenkins mastermind, Umesh Amtey. Amtey is probably one of the most underrated guitarists in metal, his playing a schizophrenic locust swarm that attacks from all sides and encompasses elements of black metal, doom, gothic rock and beyond. But as abrasive as this material may appear on the surface, it is also strangely catchy, the sheets of insectoid distortion burrowing deep into the inner recesses of your mind. I’m listening to the EP for the first time as I type this; I’m already eager to listen further. Amtey doesn’t just write songs, he creates musical labyrinths for the ears to explore.
Those of you familiar with The Ash Eaters’ Cold Hearts demo (also available via bandcamp), will instantly notice a distinct progression in playing and composition (as well as the return of Amtey’s Cthulu-esque vocal assault); indeed, the beautiful thing about this music is that it is constantly progressing, changing, morphing into something beyond the confines of extreme music.
I could say a lot more, but I’d rather let the music do the talking. Go grab this now!
http://theasheaters.bandcamp.com/album/the-cruel-side-ep
I’d also highly recommend stopping by The Ash Eaters’ blog to download their cover versions of the Misfits’s “Angelfuck” and “Death Comes Ripping.”
Acid Witch – Stoned (Hells Headbangers, 2011)
Acid Witch is a band that appeals to me on so many levels that it’s virtually impossible not to like them. On sophomore album Stoned, the Michigan monster squad’s use of horror soundtrack synths, down-tuned doom riffage, battery acid gargling vocals and Halloween decorations gone hallucinogenic artwork is irresistible, as if someone combined all of my obsessions to create one killer recording. It’s also the perfect antidote to a metal scene that’s become a little too serious for my liking of late. I mean, how many po’ faced transcendental post-black fruit-bot-core bands do we really need?
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Blitzkrieg #7: Metal vs. Religion
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, metal gave me the strength to accept my budding Atheism during my youth. I wish I could say there was some epiphanic moment that came late one night while listening to Reign in Blood, but the truth is that metal’s part in the formation of my beliefs was much more subtle. Reflecting back on those times, I’ve come to realize that my Atheism manifested itself long before my love of metal did, and that metal only helped to cement those beliefs.
I went to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way up through my senior year of high school. A lot of people still have some interesting ideas of what Catholic school is like, but I can assure you there were no draconian nuns in black lording over us with yardsticks and paddles, nor were we forced to go to church every day. That doesn’t mean that the presence of the almighty didn’t loom over us on a daily basis. We did have an extra period for religion class, and although we didn’t go to church every day, there were still multiple opportunities to kneel before the saviour, any excuse to have a mass in the gymnasium or set up confessionals in the auditorium.
I tried my damnedest to believe. I folded my hands, closed my eyes, drank the grape juice, ate the stale crackers (why does the body of Christ taste like cardboard and glue?), and none of it worked. I participated willingly in the three c’s, communion, confirmation and confession, but felt no closer to any “God”. For the longest time, I felt like there was something wrong with me, like I was the only one in the world that didn’t believe. There was nothing I could do about it, no one I was comfortable talking to. If there were others like me, they were keeping it well hidden.
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Loss – Despond (Profound Lore, 2011)
In my mid-twenties, I would occasionally fall into deep bouts of depression. There were days in college where I felt so miserable that I wouldn’t even get out of bed. It felt like an immense buildup of pressure inside my skull, like someone had tied cinderblocks to my legs and dropped me into the ocean. Although I never once contemplated suicide during those days when the dark waters of despair lapped at my feet, I did often think about what it would be like to just curl up and die, and whether or not anyone would give a shit if I did.
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THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #2: Type O Negative – October Rust (Roadrunner, 1996)
Autumn in the Midwest is typically dark and chilly, a time of introspection. The sweltering heat and humidity of Summer dissipates, September’s cool, wet mornings and brown leaf vertigo eventually ushering in October, and with it Halloween, all cardboard skeletons and freshly carved jack-o-lanterns. Over the years, Type O Negative’s October Rust has more often than not served as my soundtrack to this drearily beautiful, eerily haunting season, and what a soundtrack it is.
I seem to remember reading interviews with dearly departed Type O frontman Peter Steele in which he proclaimed October Rust as his masterpiece, and it’s damn hard to argue with him. This is a truly excellent album, conceived by a musician who wrote as if he held The Beatles and Black Sabbath (and possibly Bauhaus) in equal regard. In actuality, the lushly layered pop sensibilities of October Rust recall the work of Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson moreso than The Beatles. If Wilson had been obsessed with death, lost love, substance abuse and folklore, this might have been the album he made instead of Pet Sounds. Indeed, there is an atmosphere of dark psychedelia lurking below October Rust‘s surface, adding yet another shade of grey haze to its funereal gloom.
From a song standpoint, the album’s highlights are many. Opening epic dirge “Love You to Death” and electro/pop/goth/metal lead-off single “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” are probably the two most well known tracks here, and while they’re certainly worthy of their infamy, October Rust is a veritable treasure trove of deep cuts. “Green Man” is an otherworldly ode to nature, touching upon pagan and Wiccan themes. ”Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” is a drunken carol of lost loved ones that even manages to quote “Carol of the Bells”. ”Wolf Moon” is my favorite track on October Rust, the very definition of a perfect song; it’s heavy, catchy, melodic and totally original in both concept and execution. I’m pretty sure it’s about a werewolf (or perhaps a man who thinks he’s a werewolf) performing cunnilingus on a menstruating woman (“Don’t spill a drop, dear / let me kiss the curse away / yourself in my mouth / will you leave me with your taste?”); it serves as the culmination of the morose, surreal sexuality that permeates the album. On an earlier track, the lusty “Be My Druidess”, Steele declares “I’ll do anything / to make you come” and I’ve often wondered if the two songs are related, with the “anything” in question being the bloody, lupine muff diving session detailed on “Wolf Moon”. Then again, maybe I’m just a weird pervert.
The component parts of the songs on October Rust are just as interesting as the songs themselves. The down-tuned, electric ultra-fuzz of Kenny Hickey’s guitar tone is total Tony Iommi worship, but the myriad influences at work within October Rust‘s aural confines keep it from being a mere Sabbath rip-off; it’s more like Hickey studied Iommi closely and then applied what he learned in support of Steele’s eclectic writing style, creating something totally unique in the process. Steele’s affinity for crafting great songs peaked with October Rust, and his vampiric baritone vocals are also at the height of their powers throughout the recording, securing the late frontman an eternal place among metal’s greatest and most recognizable singers and songwriters. Josh Silver’s nuanced keyboards and production work completes the album’s rich sonic tapestry, which seamlessly encompasses doom metal, gothic and psychedelic rock. If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention the drums, well… according to an interview Silver gave in 2007, the drums on October Rust are canned.
October Rust is many things. It’s Summer dying fast. It’s November coming fire. It’s the Green Man, the Wolfman and Bacchus. It’s love, death and depression. It’s booze and drugs and cigarettes and fucking. In case it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, I’ll just come right out and say it: October Rust is a perfect metal album.
THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums
1. Celestial Season – Solar Lovers
2. Type O Negative – October Rust
Blitzkrieg #6: Metal’s Cult of Regression
I’m tired of metal nostalgia. I’m tired of new bands trying so hard (and often failing miserably) to sound and look like old bands. I’m especially tired of seeing two of my favorite bands, Mercyful Fate and Entombed, being shamelessly ripped off by new bands that seemingly come up out of the woodwork on a daily basis. I’ve most definitely had it up to here with metalheads going on and on about the fucking eighties and early nineties, especially the ones that were children or worse yet not even alive at the time. As I’ve previously documented, I’m too young to have been a part of the “glory days” of tape trading and fanzines or the dawn of death and black metal, so I have to take other people’s word for it that it was such a great time for metal. I was only ten years old when the eighties ended, which means I discovered this music in the mid-to-late nineties. I come from a time of cassette singles, CDs in cardboard longboxes, RIP Magazine, Riki Rachtman, and MTV playing Metallica and Megadeth videos during the day. I thought it was great at the time, and I still love many albums from that period (as well as the eighties), but I have no interest in fetishizing it. I also have no interest in this culture of regression that is currently so prominent in the metal underground, or in listening to a bunch of bands whose music serves no other purpose than to emulate a bygone era.
Of course it isn’t just new bands sounding and looking like old bands. Various labels have been digging up and reissuing albums from seemingly every forgotten, mediocre death metal, thrash and NWOBHM band in existence in order to capitalize on the retro fever that’s sweeping the scene. Some of these reissues, such as Uncanny’s excellent MCMXCI – MCMXCIV compilation (released by Dark Descent in 2010) and Hell’s Human Remains (technically re-recordings of old demo tracks, rather than a full-on reissue) shed light on the discographies of bands that were unjustly buried by time and dust. The majority of them however, make it pretty apparent as to why these groups never ascended to greater heights and were subsequently brushed aside. They also serve as a reminder that the legendary bands of their respective eras are legendary for a reason. For whatever reason, these retro-fetishist metalheads lap this shit up, no matter how crappy the band in question might be. In their eyes, “old = good”, end of discussion. At this point, you could probably put out a limited edition, triple splatter vinyl box set of boombox recordings of the bowel movements of some teenage Swedish death metal band from 1991 that never made it out of the garage (do they even have garages in Sweden?) and make a fucking fortune (of course this also ties into the “Antiques Roadshow/Comic Book Guy” mentality of metal, but that’s a whole other post).
The question we need to ask ourselves is, why is this happening? Part of it can surely be attributed to the good ol’ “music is cyclical” argument. metal is just now getting to the stage where it is old enough to experience this, and we first saw it with the re-thrash movement that started (and quickly petered out, save a few bands) a few years back. Now it’s death metal and traditional/NWOBHM metal’s turn. How long these two will last is anybody’s guess, but it seems like we are already reaching our saturation point of bands shamelessly aping the sounds of yesteryear, but largely lacking the songwriting panache to get the job done. Not only are bands like Entombed, Mercyful Fate, Killers-era Iron Maiden and early Judas Priest legendary, they are completely untouchable. Your band will never be as great as their band. Then again, I’m not even sure that retro copycat bands aspire to greatness. If they aspired to something greater, they’d be blazing their own trails the way the aforementioned elder bands did, instead of riding coattails.
The other likely reason for retro metal mania is that metalheads aren’t happy with the direction so-called “modern metal” is taking. They prefer the old classics, but the old classics are finite (you can only listen to Left Hand Path on repeat so many times), so they gravitate towards bands who sound like the old classics. I can hardly say I blame them, being that a good portion of modern metal is nauseatingly saccharine. Many labels have thrown their remaining weight behind bands plying a combination of subpar At The Gates-worship and boy band vocals that calls itself metalcore these days (remember when there was such a thing as good metalcore? I do). Death metal has become bloated, overly technical and overly produced. Shit like deathcore, crabcore, slam death and assorted other types of bro-mosh friendly bullshit is parading around as the future of metal, being perpetrated by kids that look like some bizarre combination of wigger, circus clown and Hot Topic employee of the month and behave like they have the mental capacity of toddlers. I still don’t know what the fuck “djent” is, and I hope I never find out (I didn’t read it, I just linked it). Even nu metal is still alive and well on your local hard rock radio stations. There’s a lot to be disgusted with, so it’s no wonder that fans of “real” metal are adopting a culture of regression, when everything that’s happening now is telling them that it “was better back then”.
Regardless of what “the kids” are doing, or how little we may think of metal’s latest bastard subgenres and their practitioners, regression is not the answer to the genre’s woes. We must push forward, we must carry on. Bands such as Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Thorns, DHG, Godflesh, Death, Opeth, Voivod (to name just a few) and a slew of others have successfully proven throughout the years that compelling, worthwhile progression within metal is possible. The envelope is continually being pushed, and in some cases, ripped to shreds. Of course, not every band can be expected to blaze their own trail, but I would respect a band that at least tried to do something original a hell of a lot more than the self-consciously retro shenanigans that are currently flooding the market.
I’m interested to hear reader opinions on this stuff. Is metal hopelessly slipping into regression and as a result, self parody, or is this merely another flavor of the week trend that will die out in a year? Is the “music is cyclical” argument complete bullshit?Are the Blut Aus Nord’s and Deathspell Omega’s of the world enough to keep pushing metal forward, or is some kind of paradigm shift needed? Tell me.
Morne – Asylum (Profound Lore, 2011)
It’s taken me quite a while to wrap my head around Morne’s Asylum. I’ve been listening to it off and on for a little over a month now and I’m still not sure I fully comprehend the band’s intent. But I’d like to think that I come a little closer every time I put the album on. I recently found a quote by Victor Hugo that makes me think I might be on the right track.
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.
Metal is often grotesque. So many metal subgenres revel in ghoulish imagery, content to wallow in their own filth, espousing the virtues of death and decay. But heavy metal can also be sublime. Nowhere is this more evident than on Asylum, a recording that can best be described as a search for the sublime through heaviness. It’s the kind of album I want to get lost in, to totally immerse myself in its mesmerizing sonic realm.
It’s something about the guitar tone. Milosz Gassan and Jeff Hayward somehow channel ghosts through their amplifiers, pushing air that crackles with spectral electricity. The unearthly distortion comes in waves, crashing against the rhythms before crumbling into the aether ever so slowly, leaving phantom trails in its wake. The effect is haunting. I find myself thinking about it long after the album is finished, like faded memories of past lives.
As hypnotic as those guitars might be, they aren’t the only key component of Morne’s audial alchemy. A layer of keyboards lingers just below the surface, an oh-so-subtle embellishment to Asylum‘s wraithlike atmosphere. There’s more than a bit of the Peaceville Three in those keys, lending the music a stately, gothic quality. Gassan’s hoarse, bellowing vocals recall both post metal and the crustier side of hardcore, adding a touch of grit and aggression to Morne’s otherwise heavy-yet-ethereal approach. Simple, propulsive drumming keeps the rest of the band anchored to the Earth, while the bass guitar rumbles away like thunder muffled by thick windowpanes.
Ultimately, Asylum is like a flower, slowly coming into bloom to reveal untold beauty, only to wither away and die, its wilted petals scattered to the four winds. Over the course of the album’s hour long duration, Morne proves that heaviness can be a means for achieving an end other than the grotesque. Whether or not they have truly achieved the sublime is up to the individual listener.
Passive Aggressive – Untired (self released, 2011)
“This is really fucking good! How is this band not signed?!” These were the first thoughts that came to mind while listening to Untired, the latest self-released EP from San Francisco thrashers Passive Aggressive. Although the band has been kicking around the underground since 2003, this is my first exposure to them and it leaves me craving more.
Referring to Passive Aggressive as “thrashers” doesn’t really do their sound justice though. On Untired, the band conjures up a strange old brew of thrash, black metal, doom, traditional heavy metal and even a dash of hardcore punk over the course of four tracks and nineteen minutes. Basically, it’s a crash course in ass-kicking and a great overview of what the band is capable of on both a musical and conceptual level.
The EP kicks things off with “Privately Distraught”, which is probably the most traditionally thrash-sounding of the four tracks here. But Passive Aggressive aren’t content to simply churn out thrash-by-numbers (unlike so many other bands I could name), adding some eerie slow sections, blackened tremolo riffs and a breakdown halfway through the song that’s pure punk rock. Then comes “Strength of a Thousand Fucks”, which really brings the band’s punk/hardcore influences to the fore. According to the band’s blog, they were going for a Discharge-meets-metal type song here and they very much succeeded, sounding a thousand times more authentic than any of the supposedly crust/d-beat-influenced bands currently clogging up the metal scene in the process. Up next is “Personal Terror”, a track that lives up to its name by going through a lot of unorthodox twists and turns. The song’s frantic structure and pacing perfectly suits the hallucinatory lyrics, coming off a bit like German thrash on psychedelics. Last but not least, Passive Aggressive slows things down for “Untired”, a swaggering, atmospheric doom work-out, that sees burly riffage flowing out of the band like hot magma. ”Untired” is simply an outstanding track that closes out the EP on a ridiculously high note and makes me want to push “play” again as soon as it’s over.
To top things off, Untired as a whole sounds killer. The production is clear enough to allow each instrument plenty of space in the mix, but dark and filthy enough to suit the band’s gnarly mixture of styles. The recording quality, along with the obvious attention paid to songwriting, helps Untired flow together as a cohesive work in spite of the myriad influences on display.
If you’re a fan of any or all of the genres mentioned in this review, do yourself a favor and check out Passive Aggressive’s Untired. Over the course of a four song EP, these guys have managed to blow 99% of the metal I’ve heard this year out of the fucking water. I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.
http://www.reverbnation.com/passiveaggressive
http://passiveaggressivesf.blogspot.com/
http://www.shaxulrecords.com/
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On a related note, the band has informed me that they’re looking for a drummer. If interested, get in touch via the links above.
Also, Passive Aggressive vocalist/guitarist Stone Wolfgang runs the extremely rad Shaxul Records in San Francisco, on Haight across the street from Amoeba. If you’re in the area, stop in and buy something and if not you can order from them online via their website (see above).
