I first discovered Corrosion of Conformity during the mid-’90s Pepper Keenan (guitar/vocals) era; by then, they had fully traded in the crossover thrash of 1985′s Animosity album in favor of the swaggering, metallic southern rock of Deliverance and Wiseblood. That’s the COC I had come to know and love over the years, so I was admittedly apprehensive upon hearing that the band had reconvened without Keenan at the helm to record their first new material since 2005′s underrated In the Arms of God. Would they abandon the smoked-out stoner-isms that had made COC so near and dear to my heart in favor of revisiting the crossover days of yore? Would Keenan’s absense leave an unfillable hole in their sound?
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Category Archives: heavy metal
Aksumite – The Gleam of Wetted Lips (Colloquial Sound Recordings, 2011)
Michigan’s Aksumite are named after the Aksumite Empire, an African nation which existed from 100 – 940 AD. They were among the first major empires to convert to Christianity and the land it once occupied (now Ethiopia) is allegedly the final resting place of the biblical Ark of the Covenant. Too bad then that there’s nothing pious whatsoever about the blood-curdling racket the duo (comprised of drummer/bassist Blood and guitarist/vocalist Cult, according to Metal Archives) whip up on The Gleam of Wetted Lips, their debut effort for up-and-coming cassette label Colloquial Sound Recordings.
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Leviathan – True Traitor, True Whore (Profound Lore, 2011)
Utterly embarrassed as I am to admit it, I’m no stranger to bouts of misogyny. Prior to meeting my phenomenal wife, my romantic dealings with the opposite sex were, to put it mildly, less than stellar (I’m sure this surprises no one). From my first “real” girlfriend breaking my heart over a decade ago, to the woman I let repeatedly grind my soul to dust my senior year of college, to countless instances of rejection and other assorted shittiness that would take ages to properly recount, I had been left with a bad taste in my mouth and a fuckload of bitterness before a raven-haired goddess rescued me from the rut I was in. As a result, I treated the few women that dared to try to get close to me like complete shit (this was totally undeserved and my petty way of getting back at the fairer sex as a whole, I reckon) and was generally distrustful and disrespectful towards any woman who wasn’t a blood relative or counted among my inner circle.
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THKD World Premier: Manipulator – “Passing the River”
Crawling out of the darkest depths of the underground, France’s Manipulator is a one man death metal entity that will appeal to fans of ugly and atmospheric DM practitioners such as Teitanblood, Void Meditation Cult and Antediluvian. Multi-instrumentalist M. creates a musical landscape mired in morbid filth, all blackened, buzzing distortion and howls of unholy agony.
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All Tomorrow’s Funerals: Autopsy’s maggot-ridden motherload unleashed.
I don’t typically do “news bit” type posts, but you guys know how much I fucking love Autopsy. So, when the kind blokes at Fresno Media contacted me regarding the band’s latest release, I just couldn’t resist letting THKD readers know about it right away.
The legendary California death metallers have been pretty much unstoppable since rising from the grave in 2009, releasing an EP, a full length album and a demos collection, in addition to playing just about every metal fest known to man. Now, with the help of longtime label Peaceville Records, the band has gathered all of their hard to find and out-of-print EP material on one convenient piece of gore-drenched plastic (or two slabs of wax) with All Tomorrow’s Funerals. Loaded with twenty-two cuts of the quartet’s patented brand of filthy, smoked-out death metal, the disc/DLP contains Retribution for the Dead, Fiend for Blood and The Tomb Within, as well as the Horrific Obsession single. You’re probably already thinking that’s a whole lotta Autopsy, but the band sweetens the fetid pot with four brand new songs, giving fans an additional EP’s worth of material on top of everything else. The new tunes are exactly what you’d expect from Autopsy, and just might be the ugliest, most morbidly heavy music they’ve recorded since reuniting. Here’s the title track below, just in case you need further convincing.
All Tomorrow’s Funerals is out now (officially released on 02/28/12), and is available directly from Peaceville or down your local shoppe. Check out my brother from another mother Dave Schalek’s review of the compilation for all the pertinent info.
Additionally, our pals over at Invisible Oranges are giving away two copies of the album, one on vinyl and one on CD. The contest ends on 03/07/12, so get your worthless ass over there and enter to win.
After you’ve entered to win a copy of the album (or gone out and bought the damn thing), swing back over to THKD and check out the two interviews I’ve conducted w/ Autopsy drummer/vocalist Chris Reifert here and here. I also reviewed The Tomb Within, which is included in this release, here.
I fucking love Motörhead and so should you.
I’m pretty sure I first heard Motörhead via Headbanger’s Ball, around the time of the March or Die and Bastards albums. I distinctly remember the video for “Hellraiser” from March or Die making quite an impression on me; Lemmy Kilmister had to be pretty badass to be playing cards with Pinhead. I already loved horror movies when I started getting into heavy metal in the early nineties, so making a connection between my two obsessions made perfect sense, even if Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth didn’t exactly turn out to be cinematic gold. Also, being already familiar with Ozzy Osbourne’s version of “Hellraiser,” I thought Lemmy must be doubly badass if The Prince of F’n Darkness is stealing his tunes. The Bastards album spawned “Burner,” which is a great song and had a pretty cool accompanying clip in spite of it being a glorified performance video, as well as ”Born to Raise Hell,” which appeared on the soundtrack to Airheads, a horrifically dumb movie (which I absolutely love) about a metal band holding a radio station hostage.
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Taake – Noregs Vaapen (Candlelight, 2011)
The scene: A small auditorium, somewhere on the East Coast. A “black metal symposium” event has brought the self-styled indie intelligentsia out in droves, packing the auditorium nearly to capacity. A scrawny, effeminate man with long hair approaches the podium. The man clears his throat and begins reading from his “manifesto,” proclaiming black metal as dead and stating that his own band is the savior of the genre. Suddenly, the double doors at the back of the auditorium fly open. A corpse-painted figure strides into the room from out of the shadows, cold winter air swirling about him. The figure is Hoest, multi-instrumentalist/mastermind of Norwegian black metallers Taake. Before anyone in the room can react, Hoest is on stage, stalking the scrawny man. Hoest grabs the man by the hair, pulls a large knife out of his belt and slits the man’s throat without so much as a pause. Blood spurts and pours everywhere, covering the podium, forming a massive plasma-slick on the stage. Another man, this one a so-called journalist that’s made a career out of dabbling in heavy metal for the amusement of the indie crowd, rushes on stage to the aid of his friend. As he kneels over the convulsing body, Hoest unsheathes a spiked club that was strapped to his back, bringing it down on the journalist’s head in one fluid motion, splitting his skull nearly in half. The crowd is in shock, unsure whether this is actually happening or merely part of the show. Without a word, Hoest jumps off stage and walks out the back of the auditorium from whence he came, taking care to shut the double doors behind him. He takes a padlock and chains from his belt, effectively shackling the doors together, trapping the audience inside. He then kicks over a large drum of gasoline, allowing it to seep through the cracks underneath the auditorium doors. Hoest lights a match, watching it flicker for a second before tossing it into the pool of petrol. The screams of those trapped inside lick at the frigid night sky along with the rising flames.
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THKD First Listen: Wylve / The Rain in Endless Fall
Last month, I covered a demo tape from an excellent raw black metal band known as Blut Der Nacht. Not long after, I was contacted by Mike, the owner of BDN’s label, Fallen Empire Records. Mike told me that BDN also had a couple of side projects up their sleeves that he was planning on releasing. Needless to say, I was eager to hear what else these musicians were capable of, so I waited patiently for any scrap of information regarding these projects.
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Pallbearer – Sorrow and Extinction (Profound Lore, 2012)
I first became aware of Pallbearer after hearing singer/guitarist Brett Campbell’s stunning guest vocal turn on Loss’ Despond. I quickly discovered that there was quite a buzz surrounding the Arkansas-bred quartet, based on the strength of a three song demo (which is available as a free download on the band’s bandcamp page), not to mention the fact that they too had signed with the mighty Profound Lore. But as fond as I was of Mr. Campbell’s contribution to Despond, I decided to steer clear of said buzz, purposefully not listening to the demo or any preview tracks prior to hearing Sorrow and Extinction in full. You see, in this day and age, bands rarely live up to their hype, and I feared that if I gave in to the buzz, I’d only be setting myself up for disappointment when I finally had the album in hand. Continue reading
Worship Black Metal Cassettes: Scratching the surface of Crepusculo Negro and Rhinocervs.
In my review of Blut Der Nacht’s excellent Demo MMXI, I talked a little about the rise of cassette culture within the American black metal underground over the last few years. Some see it as nostalgia, others see it as pure gimmickry. I see it as a way to bring black metal back to its roots, a return to the DIY ethos, primitivism and shadowy mystique the genre was built upon.
The cassette is a cheap way of reproducing and distributing music. I haven’t gone to the trouble of actually pricing tape production and duplication (maybe some readers can shed light on that in the comments?), but I can guarantee that it is much more cost-effective than having CDs and especially vinyl pressed. In this respect, it is the perfect format for bands that have no interest in dealing with Heavy Metal Inc, and although black metal has long since been absorbed into the establishment, there’s no time like the present to take it back underground. With that said, it should be noted that some cassette-based labels, specifically Crepusulo Negro and Rhinocervs (probably the two most infamous), have begun working with larger, more established labels such as Profound Lore and The Ajna Offensive to get some of their releases (Dolorvotre, Tukaaria, Odz Manouk) on CD, but this is surely due more to outside interest and demand. These cassette releases are cheap to purchase (typically $5 – $8) and are often extremely limited, selling out in a matter of days or even hours, and therefore not always readily available. Also, no matter how much metal fans might want to hear this stuff, many are unwilling to embrace the cassette due to its supposed limitations. This need for wider distribution and other formats is a consequence of releasing great music that people want to hear, and it’s much better than forcing fans to go scouring the internet for often janky downloads of these sold out releases. Of course, the fact that the music is being released on a format which many find unacceptable only adds to the clandestine nature of these bands and the music they create, and in my mind a little of that mystique dies every time I hear about this stuff coming out on CD or even vinyl. Nonetheless, what these bands are creating is some of the most compelling modern black metal I’ve heard in years (much more on this later), and deserves to be heard and made widely available.
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