I’m always a little apprehensive when the word “folk” gets thrown around with the word “metal.” When I think folk metal, I can’t help but think of a bunch of hobbits running around swinging ale horns and singing Korpiklaani songs or some shit. No fucking thank you. However, knowing that Thrawsunblat drummer Rae Amitay has pretty darn good taste and is both a talented musician and an all-around swell human being to boot, I couldn’t help but be intrigued when she contacted me regarding Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings, the band’s second album overall and the first to feature Amitay behind the kit. This my friends is not your typical Monty Python-esque beer hall folk metal shenanigans, but rather a heartfelt blend of real folk music the way our ancestors intended it and utterly scathing yet majestic black metal. Continue reading →
Panopticon’s Kentucky is one of the finest black metal albums you’ll hear this year. But it’s more than just a black metal album. It is one man’s ode to his home state, a downright joyous fusion of ripping USBM and Appalachian folk/bluegrass traditions, resulting in something that has to be heard to be believed. I contacted Panopticon mastermind and sole member Austin Lunn via e-mail to learn more about the concepts behind Kentucky and the following interrogation ensued… Continue reading →
I find it odd that several prominent (I use the term loosely) metal websites decided to ban coverage of Burzum in response to a recent online rant by Varg Vikernes regarding the shootings and bombing carried out by Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik. Isn’t this ban coming about seventeen years too late? A self-righteous denouncement of Vikernes this point in the game is basically the same as saying “Murder and arson are okay, but hey, we draw the line at hateful remarks!” Of course, I realize that these sites weren’t around back when Vikernes was actually committing crimes, but if they truly found him to be so deplorable, shouldn’t they have banned coverage from the outset based on his actions and not some ineffectual hate-mongering that no one would have paid attention to in the first place had they not drawn attention to it with their sanctimonious grandstanding?
But I digress. I do not wallow in the cesspool of imagined ethical superiority, and therefore have no problem discussing Varg Vikernes’ music. Contrary to what the metal morality police attempt to shove down our throats, it is entirely possible to separate Burzum from its creator’s dodgy politics/beliefs. With that out of the way, it pleases me to say that Varg Vikernes the musician has solidified his “comeback” and proven once and for all that his trailblazing brand of black metal is indeed timeless with Fallen, his second album since being released from prison in 2009.
But what is it that makes Burzum timeless? For me, it’s Vikernes’ guitar playing. His note choices and sense of composition have a hypnotic effect, the very definition of the infamous black metal “trance-out”, a web of spindly, treble-soaked riffage that’s all too easy to get hopelessly lost in. Whenever I listen to Fallen I think of enormous trees, with gnarled, twisted, tangled roots burrowing deep into the soil; it probably has something to do with the earthy, slightly raw guitar tone Vikernes employs here. It gives the album a naturalistic quality that makes the compositions feel as much like folk music as black metal, but without ever degenerating into the silliness that “folk metal” typically implies (perhaps more akin to neofolk?). Of course, black metal at its core has always been a form of folk music, and there are few better suited to uphold that tradition than an outlaw/pariah such as Vikernes, who also happens to be one of the genre’s architects (okay, so maybe you can’t separate the man from the music 100%, oh well).
Speaking of tradition, Fallen was recorded at Grieghallen with production and mixing assistance from Pytten. This studio/producer combination has been responsible for nearly every landmark album in the Norwegian black metal canon (De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, In the Nightside Eclipse, etc) and although only time will tell if Fallen will ever reach the same level of acclaim as those classic recordings, the album does manage to capture a similar vibe without sounding forced or self-consciously retro. This is how black metal is supposed to sound; uninhibited, mesmerizing and totally free from the trappings of modernity.
In addition to showcasing Vikernes’s six-string mastery and benefitting from a strong production scheme, Fallen also represents Burzum at its most compelling from a compositional perspective. If anything, the album comes off as a refinement of the ideas that Vikernes began to explore on Filosofem; the spellbinding repetition, hazy, quasi-psychedelic atmospheres and unique vocal approach have been honed to a fine point. Whereas Filosofem sounded like a collection of experiments (albeit very successful and interesting ones), Fallen sounds like a collection of songs. In this respect, Fallen brings the more experimental qualities of Filosofem together with the sharp yet expansive songwriting style Vikernes brought to the fore on Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. Indeed, the more I listen to Fallen, the more I tend to view 2010′s Belus as a “warm-up” album.
Regardless of what you think of Varg Vikernes the person, it is difficult to deny the significance of Varg Vikernes the musician, especially when he continues to craft such intriguing, vital and relevant work. Fallen just might be the most fully realized Burzum album to date, an elegy for what once was, and a glimmer of hope for the future of the black metal tradition.
I’m not exactly sure when metal stopped being fun. I’m guessing it probably occurred around the time thrash and speed metal gave way to death metal, black metal and grindcore. Unlike thrash and speed metal, the more extreme genres didn’t have nearly as much of a basis (if any at all) in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (Venom notwithstanding). The NWOBHM and thrash/speed were arguably the last phases of metal to have a sense of humor (sorry, but that glam shit doesn’t count). In spite of being serious musicians, bands from Diamond Head to Iron Maiden to Anthrax had a certain charming playfulness to them; it was understood that their music was going to inspire excessive headbanging, even more excessive drinking, raised fists and a chorus of “fuck yeah”s.
As metal becomes more extreme, it also becomes increasingly po-faced. Luckily for us, San Francisco’s (The Lord Weird) Slough Feg are back to turn those ridiculous frowns upside down with The Animal Spirits. How can a band who named themselves after a British comic book character and once wrote a concept album based on an obscure 1970s role-playing game (2003′s Traveller) not be one of the most enjoyable things on the planet? How can you not love a band that writes songs about Martin Luther (“The 95 Thesis”) and Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (“Kon-Tiki”)?
Mastermind Mike Scalzi’s lyrical themes tend toward the cerebral, yet he also writes the occasional silly line such as “What unholy boister goes on in the cloister / While we’re disturbing the priest?” (from “Trick the Vicar”). Regardless of what weird and wonderful paths the lyrics wind down, Slough Feg is serious about its musical approach. Scalzi continues to prove himself to be one of the last great guitarists in American heavy metal, cramming more memorable riffage into one four-minute song than most six-stringers can manage to scrape together over the course of an entire album. The rest of the band are no slouches either. The interplay between Scalzi and second guitarist Angelo Tringali provides the ammunition for the aforementioned chorus of “fuck yeah”s, while bassist Adrian Maestas and drummer Harry Cantwell lay down the rock-solid rhythmic foundation for the excessive headbanging. This is the real shit, played the way the gods (Priest, Maiden, et al.) intended it.
Slough Feg is traditional heavy metal through and through. However, the band possesses a folky, earthy quality that sets them apart. If you stripped the songs on The Animal Spirits down to just acoustic guitars and vocals and played them around a blazing campfire, they would be just as compelling. It is the same feeling one gets from listening to vintage Thin Lizzy; in fact it’s much easier to imagine them covering “Whiskey in the Jar” than Metallica. The band’s music taps into that same primal energy that folk music does and amplifies it, without ever degenerating into the “let’s all get drunk and do a jig” nonsense that typifies modern folk metal. Slough Feg write actual songs, which is a lot more than can be said for the legions of self-serious black/death metal bands out there wielding regurgitated limp-dick riffs and lyrics reeking of poverty-level Satanism, let alone the soulless, anti-musical androids calling themselves “technical death metal bands”.
The Animal Spirits is Slough Feg doing what they do best, presenting us with music that is firmly rooted in the familiar, yet at the same time doesn’t sound quite like any other band out there. From a songwriting standpoint, the album sees the band operating at their most infectious, but it doesn’t exist solely to entertain. It is also a re-statement of purpose. Slough Feg are flying the flag for metal with feeling, metal with heart, metal that’s fun to listen to. Corpse-painted parade-pissers and inverted cross-wearing wet blankets need not apply.
Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson had gotten together over a few stiff drinks, said “screw this writing bullshit” and started a band together?
I can’t help but think that’s what Cobalt multi-instrumentalist Erik Wunder had in mind when creating Smiling Dogs, the debut album from Man’s Gin. Whereas Cobalt is extreme metal inspired by Hemingway and Thompson, Man’s Gin, with its dark, boozy take on American roots music, sounds like something the two authors might have actually listened to or played themselves had they traded in their typewriters for acoustic guitars and upright bass.
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, let me make it perfectly clear one more time. Smiling Dogs is NOT metal. Although it has nothing to do with what Wunder does in Cobalt musically, thematically it can be seen as a companion album to that band’s excellent Gin release from last year. But whereas Gin was the soundtrack to civilization’s unravelling in an avalanche of war, hatred, greed, lust, drugs and excess, Smiling Dogs is an account of those same events told from a very different perspective (it is telling that the two albums were largely written at the same time according to this interview).
Wunder weaves together elements of folk, country, blues and gothic rock to uncover yet another facet of America’s diseased underbelly, creating what sounds like post-apocalyptic Americana. It’s the type of music I imagine the survivors of the nuclear holocaust drunkenly playing around a campfire, spinning musical yarns about life before the bomb. There is an aura of death and despair that permeates the album, but also one of freedom. Freedom from the wretched, suffocating mire of modern society that all of us have become hopelessly stuck in. Freedom to give this mind-numbing existence the finger and drop off the grid forever. It makes me want to drive out to the middle of nowhere and run around naked with a pistol in one hand, a bottle of Tanqueray in the other and a mouth full of hallucinogens.
In much the same way that Hemingway and Thompson chronicled the yearnings, excesses, shortcomings and ultimately the disillusionment of their respective generations, Wunder does for ours through the haunting music of Man’s Gin. Smiling Dogs is a sonic distillation of these hard times we find ourselves living in, fearfully looking over our shoulders at all times for any sign of the four horsemen’s inevitable approach. It’s pure outlaw music for all of us that wish we could live on society’s fringes, but are too irrevocably addicted to this cesspool that was once known as the American Dream.
I’m always a little apprehensive when the word “folk” gets thrown around with the word “metal.” When I think folk metal, I can’t help but think of a bunch of hobbits running around swinging ale horns and singing Korpiklaani songs or some shit. No fucking thank you. However, knowing that Thrawsunblat drummer Rae Amitay has pretty darn good taste and is both a talented musician and an all-around swell human being to boot, I couldn’t help but be intrigued when she contacted me regarding Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings, the band’s second album overall and the first to feature Amitay behind the kit. This my friends is not your typical Monty Python-esque beer hall folk metal shenanigans, but rather a heartfelt blend of real folk music the way our ancestors intended it and utterly scathing yet majestic black metal.
