Like any good teenage metalhead, I hated rap music. In my early youth, I had enjoyed the pop rap antics of MC Hammer, The Fresh Prince and yes even Vanilla Ice, but once metal came along, that rather embarrassing part of my musical evolution was deliberately buried and left for dead. In high school, I found myself hitching rides on occasion with my friend Jon, an eclectic, down-to-earth dude with a taste for rap in addition to rock and metal. I distinctly remember him saying, “I know you don’t like this shit, but we’re gonna listen to it,” and throwing on some random 2Pac (or was it Too $hort?) album. Even in Iowa, rap music was everywhere in the 1990s; on TV, the radio, magazines, my friend’s cars and parties, there was no escaping it. At some point I finally caved, and although my appreciation of rap never grew to the obsessive levels that my appreciation for heavy metal did, I began to appreciate it nonetheless.
Tag Archives: USA
Muknal – s/t (Crepusculo Negro, 2012)
The Black Twilight Circle/Crepusculo Negro collective of musicians have made some serious waves in the black metal community over the last few years. But, one cannot live by black metal alone, as evidenced by this self-titled three track cassette from Muknal, a mysterious trio that one can only assume is comprised of the usual BTC suspects (although I have not been able to confirm this, perhaps some THKD readers can?).
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Occultation – Three & Seven (Profound Lore, 2012)
I don’t get the “female fronted occult rock” trend that has come out of the metal underground in the past few years. To these ears, there’s nothing even remotely evil, let alone “occult” about ripping off Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac and Heart. Okay, this is the part where someone brings up Coven and I roll my eyes. I’m not saying the music is particularly bad, it just isn’t my thing, and it definitely isn’t Satanic. I mean, isn’t it really just revisiting the hippie-dippy horseshit that early heavy metal set out to stomp to bits at the end of the ’60′s, only with a quasi-diabolic lyrical bent?
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Panopticon – Social Disservices (Flenser, 2011)
Most black metal is pure fantasy. The end of the world, kingdoms of snow and ice, fever dreams involving murder, suicide, Satanisim and extreme sexual behavior are the genre’s tried and true conceptual fodder. But not so for Louisville, Kentucky’s Panopticon, who uses black metal as a means to tackle some frighteningly real social issues on his third album, Social Disservices.
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Cannibal Corpse – Torture (Metal Blade, 2012)
I recently saw Cannibal Corpse live for the very first time after having listened to them since high school; like most metalheads my age, I discovered the band around the time of The Bleeding and their infamous cameo in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and was blown away by their ability to mix over-the-top lyrical and visual gore with utterly eviscerating riffage. Finally seeing them live took me back to that time, those first sticky fumblings with death metal, loving it and being repulsed by it at the same time and loving that bizarre mixed feeling, wondering what people would think if I told them I was heavily into a band that had songs called “Fucked with a Knife” and “Stripped, Raped and Strangled.” But seeing them live wasn’t all misty-eyed headbanging nostalgia, it re-affirmed that Cannibal Corpse are still a force to be reckoned with; titans of death metal who have made a career out of pumping out some of the most quality-consistent, full-on brutal music the genre has to offer.
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For Those About to Rot: Exhumed @ People’s Court 04/16/12
The last time Exhumed played in Des Moines, it was the middle of July. If you’ve never been to Iowa in mid-Summer, imagine being trapped in a giant pair of sweatpants and forced to walk through someone’s sweaty, overheated crotch; now you’ve got a pretty good idea of what humidity in the Midwest is like. It’s the kind of heat that causes old people and animals to spontaneously drop dead. Now, imagine a tiny venue with no air conditioning smack dab in the middle of that nasty-ass environment. These were the conditions Exhumed were forced to weather their first time playing our little one-horse town, so it’s something of a small miracle that they actually agreed to come back. Granted, they’re in the midst of a high-profile tour with death metal kingpins Cannibal Corpse (for more on them, wait for my upcoming review of their new album, Torture), but still, I can’t imagine that initial encounter made a very good impression.
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Obolus – Lament (Flenser, 2012)
California’s Flenser Records has become one of the go-to labels for infinitely interesting black metal and doom releases over the past few years, and Lament, the debut EP from the mysterious black metal entity known as Obolus is no exception. Information on the band is virtually non-existent; their Metal Archives page yields no answers and the Flenser is keeping things decidedly on the down-low when it comes to details. I prefer my black metal with a dose of mystique and it’s fun to speculate about Obolus’ origins; is this the the work of one twisted individual or a like-minded group of musicians? Who are they and where do they come from? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter as long as the music’s good, and lament is certainly one of the better black metal releases I’ve come across so far in 2012.
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Midnight – Satanic Royalty (Hells Headbangers, 2011)
The death of rock ‘n’ roll has been greatly exaggerated. In the mainstream sure, rock ‘n’ roll is as cold and lifeless as Kurt Cobain’s corpse (yeah, yeah, I know he was cremated, whatthefuckever), repeatedly shot in the face by the malformed and talentless post-grunge spawn of crumbling major labels. But in the underground, it’s a different story. Rock music is alive and well in seemingly endless permutations, from stoner to goth to death n’ roll, as raw and dangerous as ever.
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Blood for Blood – “Ain’t Like You (Wasted Youth II)”
I don’t listen to a lot of hardcore, but I fucking love Blood For Blood. While other hardcore bands are preaching unity, positivity, straight edge, blah blah blah, Blood For Blood are getting shit-faced, hating everything that breathes and generally fucking up your world. Their music is a bludgeoning, nihilistic fist in the face and their lyrical tough guy-isms aren’t mere posturing; Blood For Blood are tough because life as they know it is complete and utter shit.
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Metallicus Ex Mortis: Ghoul @ People’s Court, Des Moines, IA 03/27/2012
It was a not-so-dark-and-stormy night when the creepy Creepsylvanians known as Ghoul brought their patented brand of uh, ghoulish splatterthrash to Des Moines, IA, aka the asshole of the Midwest. I was excited to see them for the first time, and that excitement was only heightened by a lengthy wait outside the venue (at least I wasn’t standing next to the Juggalos), followed by what seemed like an eternity sitting through a rather abysmal opening band (the less said on that, the better). After a declaration by the Grand Basilisk stating that we were all in violation of Creepsylvanian law for harboring these four maniacal hooded fugitives, the band hit the stage, immediately launching into “Off With Their Heads” from their latest album, 2011′s Transmission Zero. From the very beginning it was clear that Ghoul had come to kill, and the musical evisceration didn’t let up for a moment over the course of their thirty-odd-minute set.
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