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. Read more »
Archive for Reviews
Behold! The Monolith – Defender, Redeemist (self-released, 2012)
Posted in death metal, doom, hard rock, heavy metal, Metal, Music, Reviews, rock, sludge, stoner rock with tags Behold! The Monolith, California, death metal, doom, hard rock, heavy metal, Los Angeles, Metal, Music, Reviews, rock, sludge, stoner rock, USA on 01/25/2012 by THKD
I’ve always been fascinated by power trios. It surely has something to do with my love of all things raw and stripped down, since it doesn’t get any more stripped down than tres hombres against the world, brandishing only electric instruments and bad attitudes. The power trio is the bare minimum of musicians needed to produce a full and complete sound within a rock or metal format (although I’m sure there are plenty of duos who would beg to differ… eh, fuck ‘em); it’s all about maximizing the minimal, and I’ve often found that power trios are inherently heavier and more powerful-sounding than these bands that feel the need to have three guitarists, two vocalists, four drummers, a percussionist, a keyboardist, a DJ, an acrobat, a lion tamer, etc… just listen to Motorhead, Venom, High on Fire or Hellhammer and you’ll catch my drift.
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DVD Review: Eyehategod – Live (2011)
Posted in blues, hardcore, heavy metal, live, Metal, Music, Punk, Reviews, rock, sludge with tags blues, DVD, Eyehategod, hardcore, live, Louisiana, Metal, Music, New Orleans, punk, Reviews, sludge, USA on 01/21/2012 by THKD
Eyehategod has long been one of my absolute favorite bands, yet thanks to living in the asshole of the Midwest for all of my natural life (six months in California doesn’t count), I’ve never had the chance to experience their down-tuned Sabbath-ian scuzz-sludge live. Luckily, the band released their first ever live DVD (simply titled Live) late last year, and I think I can safely say it’s the next best thing witnessing the crawling chaos that is Eyehategod in person.
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Throne of Katarsis – Ved Graven (Candlelight, 2011)
Posted in black metal, heavy metal, Metal, Music, Norwegian Black Metal, Reviews with tags black metal, Darkthrone, Emperor, Enslaved, Metal, norway, norwegian black metal, Reviews, Throne of Katarsis, Ulver on 01/19/2012 by THKD
In spite of being the birthplace of the genre as we know it today (so-called “1st wave” bands notwithstanding), Norway’s icy grip on black metal has loosened considerably over the course of the last several decades. Many of the scene’s godfathers either called it a day (Emperor) or shifted their musical stylings away from black metal to varying degrees (see: Ulver’s fruit-bot trip hop, Darkthrone’s journey down the ol’ Manilla Road, Enslaved’s psychedelic Viking-prog, etc), leaving Norwegian black metal fragmented. With the next generation of Norse BM practitioners either not yet ready or perhaps not willing to step up and take their places at the dark lord’s left hand, the focus of black metal has centered on other countries such as France and the US in recent years.
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Black Pyramid – II (Meteor City, 2012)
Posted in doom, hard rock, heavy metal, Metal, Music, sludge, stoner rock with tags Black Pyramid, hard rock, heavy metal, II, Metal, Meteor City, Music, Reviews, rock, rock 'n' roll, stoner rock, USA on 01/14/2012 by THKD
The world needs real rock ‘n’ roll more than ever. Have you listened to the radio lately? Go on then, have a listen to some of the limp-wristed, candy-assed, sub-Nickelback horseshit that passes for mainstream rock music lately and you’ll hear what I’m talking about, a bunch of preening jackasses who look like they stepped out of the pages of the Abercrombie & Fuckface catalogue, playing songs about having sex with sluts, drinking, doing drugs and having sex with more sluts. And I don’t mean that in a filthy/sleazy/awesome Venom or Motorhead way either. I mean it in a soulless, sac-less, nauseating, pristinely produced and utterly contrived faux-grunge frat-rock way, replete with vocals that sound like a cross between Eddie Vedder and a goat with a cob up its ass. Yes folks, we need real rock ‘n’ roll more than ever.
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Wolves in the Throne Room – Celestial Lineage (Southern Lord, 2011)
Posted in Music with tags black metal, Cascadian black metal, Celestial Lineage, Metal, Music, Olympia, Reviews, Southern Lord, Two Hunters, USA, USBM, Washington, Wolves in the Throne Room on 01/09/2012 by THKD
Last year, much was made of so-called “Cascadian black metal.” To me, this was nothing more than an attempt to label a regional sound that didn’t exist and in the process lump a bunch of bands together that had very little in common. Invisible Oranges declared it “bullshit,” while an article in the Guardian stated that “cascadian metal” was a good descriptor for Krallice, apparently not aware that the term refers to Washington’s Cascade Range; Krallice hails from Brooklyn, NY which is on the other side of the country (a rock “journalist not doing their homework?! Hard to believe, I know. Insert eye-roll). No one seemed to have a good grasp of what exactly Cascadian black metal was, but that didn’t stop them from invoking the term ad nauseam to serve their own needs. A harmless geographical descriptor got twisted into utter nonsense by the metal media, and even the non metal media got in on the act.
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Xibalba – Demo 2010 (Nuclear War Now!, 2010)
Posted in black metal, demos, Metal, Music, Reviews with tags black metal, Demo 2010, Metal, Mexico, Music, Nuclear War Now!, Reviews, Xibalba on 01/07/2012 by THKD
There’s something that’s flat-out wrong about Xibalba’s Demo 2010. It’s a queasy, warped atmosphere that sounds like the product of fried ‘n’ frazzled minds bending the black metal paradigm to their twisted collective will, whilst in the throes of a hallucinogen-fueled trip to Mictlan. The result is some very bizarre music, a metallic apocalypse that starts with a boombox playing a half-melted cassette copy of A Blaze in the Northern Sky at half speed while projectile vomiting peyote out of its speakers.
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Blut Der Nacht – Demo MMXI (Fallen Empire, 2011)
Posted in black metal, demos, Metal, Music, Reviews, USBM with tags black metal, Blut Der Nacht, cassette, Demo MMXI, demos, Fallen Empire, Metal, Music, Oregon, Portland, Reviews, USA on 01/03/2012 by THKD
The recent resurgence of cassette culture within the US black metal underground (and elsewhere) seems to be foreshadowing a paradigm shift within the scene; perhaps it is the beginning of the death knell of “heavy metal inc” and a return to the DIY ethics that underground metal was built on. Unfortunately it is impossible to go back to having to put real effort into discovering new music in “the age of blogspot”, but a slew of bands and labels appear genuinely committed to taking the underground back underground, out of the hands of industry slime-balls, self-absorbed mercenary “journalists” and sloganeering try-hards, putting it back in the hands of those that matter, the truly dedicated artists and fans themselves.
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Racebannon – Six Sik Sisters (Tizona Records, 2012)
Posted in hard rock, hardcore, heavy metal, Metal, Music, noise rock, Reviews, rock with tags Bloomington, Indiana, Metal, Music, noise rock, punk, Racebannon, Reviews, rock, sludge on 12/30/2011 by THKD
The music of Bloomington, Indiana’s Racebannon falls somewhere between the demented sludge metal of the Melvins and the lurching, discordant pig-fuck of the Jesus Lizard, as if those two bands got together to do a fuckload of coke and orchestrate the ultimate noise rock jam session, but ended up getting slaughtered in a standoff with DEA agents while their rehearsal space burned to the ground. Their latest album, Six Sik Sisters, is a truly unsettling listen, a chronicle of monumental musical depravity that sounds like it could come unglued at any given moment.
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Antediluvian – Through the Cervix of Hawwah (Profound Lore, 2011)
Posted in black metal, death metal, heavy metal, Metal, Music, Reviews with tags Adam, Antediluvian, bible, black metal, Canada, death metal, Eve, Genesis, God, Metal, Profound Lore, Reviews, Through the Cervix of Hawwah on 12/11/2011 by THKD
The word “hawwah” is the Hebrew name for Eve, from the biblical Adam and Eve of the book of Genesis. Roughly translated, it means “living one.” It might seem strange to see such a reference occurring in the context of a death metal album title, but after only a few listens to Antediluvian’s Through the Cervix of Hawwah, it became abundantly clear to me why they would choose to invoke the mythical first woman. Read more »
