Hello again friends.  I haven't had anything remarkable fall into my lap since Darvulia, and I haven't felt compelled to write about anything for a while.  I have been putting a lot of work into my site 319Dude.bandcamp.com which is a collection of local music from my area.  I thought I'd just drop in and post a playlist to sate you until the next time I write.

Albums I have been playing a lot lately:
Hypocrisy - End of Disclosure
Blaze Foley - Cold, Cold, World
Horn - Naturkraft
Progenie Terrestre Pura - U.M.A.
Seidr - Ginnungagap (this will blow your fucking mind)
Darkthrone - all the albums with commentary
Bethzaida - LXXVIII
Demigod - the Slumber of Sullen Eyes
Caladan Brood - Echoes of Battle
Virus - Oblivion Clock
Erasmus - Alpha demo 1998

Come to think of it, please check out the aforementioned Erasmus demo.  Its extremely rare and infinitely inventive.  Its YEARS ahead of its time.  You are welcome to download it for free here:  http://319dude.bandcamp.com/album/alpha-demo

Demonaz w/ Immortal 1994

To Download or Not to Download (MP3)

First of all, I wouldn't read this post if it were your on your stupid blog, so don't feel guilty for completely ignoring this post on mine.

Sometimes I feel like I can be pretty wishy-washy on this subject but I have a lot of experience and insight on the subject and therefore I have a lot of opinions on this "hot topic."  A friend of mine once said to me "I don't believe in MP3s, they hurt musicians."  I'm not ashamed to admit it: I download a SHITLOAD of mp3s illegally, and I have since the days of Napster in the late 90's.  I would estimate I download around 20 new (to me) releases a month, mostly metal.  A large portion of it is stuff that I will never in a million years find physical copies of.  Should that fact bar me from ever hearing it?  If I went by that logic, then I would have to pay $119 (currently on discogs) to hear Emperor's "As the Shadows Rise" seven inch.  While I think that is a decent price, not a single penny of that money will ever go to Emperor.

Last night I was really enjoying listening to a 7" by the Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud in my car (on my mp3 player of course).  This likely was limited to 267 copies and came out in 1996, years before the wonderful voice of Alzbeth ever graced thine stubborn ears in 1999.  This and other music is worth keeping available, and we have an inexpensive, simple and easy way to make sure that we, and other newcomers are able to enjoy this stuff for years to come.  Its name is "the internet".  The digital posterity of music is important to me because our generation is solely responsible for overseeing the inevitable progression of music technology from a tangible format to a virtual one.  This is arguably the hugest thing to happen in the history of music.  It affects every single musician on the face of the earth who wishes to compile a publicly available release.

Back before the internet, everything hung on an 8-14 word description in an obscure catalog or zine.  In 1998 I knew that Lunar Aurora were an up and coming band because I had seen their debut "Weltenganger" mentioned in a playlist in a magazine, and it was a brief description (whose verbiage eludes me now) but I imagine it was something like "Great atmospheric BM from Germany"  that was enough for me to spend $12 plus shipping on it back then.  We now have the luxury of hearing everything before we buy.  So I take full advantage of that opportunity, and consequently through the years, I have bought easily hundreds MORE CDs, LPs, shirts, etc from bands that I never would have known about were it not for the digital availability of so many releases.  Obviously I am somewhat of an exception to the norm here, but my point here is that just because you download MP3s doesn't mean you HAVE to be a douche bag and never support artists.  its certainly not one or the other.

I fully support bandcamp, soundcloud, and all these other services, they somewhat circumvent the need to illegally download albums.  Ultimately though the days of buying a CD or LP without having heard it first are long behind us and its time to rethink some ideals about MP3s and such.  Lastly I have said it before and it bears repeating.  Music is meant to be heard, enjoyed and shared with others.  The exploitation and objectification of music is what leads to even more terrible music, ALWAYS.  If illegally downloading MP3s means the collapse of businesses that operate to do this, then all hail the new dawn.

The Cold Beyond - Promo '99

So I bought this tape in 2003 or so on the suggestion of my good pal Wayne Sarantopoulos with the intent of ripping it to MP3.  Fast forward to December 2012, and I finally got it ripped!  This is a fun four track rager of deathened black metal of a band from Milwaukee Wisconsin.  I've searched for MP3s of it quite intensly so I'm sure this is its first foray onto the world wide web.  Turns out they have been dormant since 2003 but have a new EP out.

http://www.facebook.com/TheColdBeyond
http://www.facebook.com/NightWorldRecords

DOWNLOAD

Darvulia - Mysticisme Macabre

I am certain that there is no way I'm going to easily sell you on this album.  My goal here is to tell you why I love this band so much instead.  If you can find some intrigue in my attempt, then I wholly invite you to dive into this mind bending and sometimes hypnotic album.

First lets get a few things out of the way to make this easier for both of us.  This isn't epic, melodic, retro, goat-y, necro, and doesn't sound much like any other black metal band I've ever heard..  Musically, this is quite original and scratches an itch that only Lugubrum, and maaaaaaybe Vediog Svaor have even begun to scratch in the past.  Not to toot my own horn much either but the riffing is also reminiscent of my old band "Satan's Almighty Penis."  Of course there are some familiar tenets of black metal found here: varied but frequently blasting drums, fairly typical but notably well performed vocals and a typical overall production value that does the music justice by being somewhat dry and pallid with a bit of snarl to it.  You should be able to dive right into if you've listened to ten or more black metal albums before.

Ok so now that I have cleared all of that out of the way: THE RIFFS!  The guitar work of Darvulia's Kobal is out of this world.  The riffing is HIGHLY imaginative, often grinding, completely disharmonious and dissonant as all fuck.  If you are looking for riffs that make you think about mountains, trees, lakes, pirates, castles, vikings or pretzels, DON'T ENTRY!!  All I can say is that musically this stuff is very obnoxious and therefore insanely hellish and challenging.  Half of what makes "Mysticisme Macabre" so enjoyable and refreshing for me is that it is what it isn't.  The other half is that there is some highly challenging and obtuse music composition found here, and Darvulia have become highly productive within this style.  The composition is about as untraditional as you can get.  The varied ebb and flow of their 5-7 minute long songs keep me enthralled more than a lot of records of this ilk ever do.  Its disgustingly awkward enough to keep me interested and yet not so unrelenting that it gets boring.  I often find myself listening to it three or four times in row.

I haven't been able to peel myself away from this album for a long enough time to check out the rest of Darvulia's catalog, but I really look forward to seeing where else they can take this band.

My Favorite Metal Albums of 2012
1. Panopticon - Kentucky
2. Germ - Loss
3. Demoncy - Enthroned is the Night
4. the Kill - Make 'em Suffer
5. Nekromantheon - Rise Vulcan Spectre
6. MGLA - With Hearts Towards None
7. Blood of the Black Owl - Light the Fires!
8. Licht Erlischt - ...and Below, the Retrograde Disciples
9. Wodensthrone - Curse
10. Blut Aus Nord - Cosmophy

Honorable Mentions:
Alcest - Les Voyages de l'ame
Antediluvian / Adversarial - Split
Ash Borer - Cold of Ages
Asphyx - Deathhammer
Autolatry - Of the Land
Avenger - Bohemian Dark Metal
Bestial Holocaust - Into the Goat Vulva
Borknagar - Urd
Bound by Entrails - the Stars Bode you Farewell
Brulvahnatu - Descending Divine Worth
Cattle Decapitation - Monolith of Inhumanity
Christian Mistress - Possession
Coffins - March of Despair
Deathspell Omega - Drought
Desecresy- the Doom Skeptron
Drapsnatt - Skelepht
Ebonylake - In Swathes of Brooding Light
Elysian Blaze - Blood Geometry
Evoken - Atra Mors
False / Barghest - Heavy as a Church Tower
Genocide Shrines - Devanation Monumentemples
Hell - III
Katatonia - Dead End Kings
Love Sex Machine - s/t
Lunar Aurora - Hoagascht
Morbus Chron - A Saunter through the Shroud
Master's Hammer - Vracejte konve na místo
Moss of Moonlight - Seed
Muknal - Muknal
Mutilation Rites - Empyrean
My Dying Bride - A Map of All Our Failures
Napalm Death - Utilitarian
Nefarious - The Universal Wrath
Revenge - Scum.Collapse.Eradication
Sanguinary Misanthropia - Loathe Over Will
Sear Bliss - Eternal Recurrence
Weapon - Embers and Revelations
Worship - Terranean Wake
Yakuza - Beyul

Things I still need to listen to:
Aluk Todolo - Occult Rock - Didnt excite me, formulaic and uneventful
Angantyr - Forvist - Very good!
Anglagard - Viljans Oga
Árstíðir Lífsins - Vápna lækjar eldr
Azaghal - Nemesis - Pretty fun if you think all black metal sounds the same.
Black Magician - Nature is the Devil's Church - Not bad, kinda trendy and the vocals really get old
Chapel - Satan's Rock n Roll - Weak production and a very tired, worn out style. ZZZzzz
Coffin Texts - the Tomb of Infinite Ritual - Pretty fun, though not much to hold my interest.
Corsair - Corsair
Dammerfarben - Herbstpfad
Dire Omen - Severing Soul from Flesh - Pretty typical br00tle death metal.  pass
Dordeduh - Dar de Duh - More floaty new age post-Negura Bunget metal.  I'm not often in the right mood for this, but its tolerable.
Drawn & Quartered - Feeding Hell's Furnace - Sorta fun but nothing really special here.
Drudkh - Eternal Turn of the Wheel - Yeah more Drudkh, If its not Autumn Aurora or Forgotten Legends, forget about it.
Dysrhythmia - Test of Submission - This band is great, really interesting in a "look what we can do" sort of way which I'm never in the mood for, but I really admire these guys and they are probably the best prog band in the US.
Elffor -Heriotz Sustraiak
Eternum - Veil of Ancient Darkness - I really like this, its somewhere between Fullmoon and Vargsang
Hellvetron - Death Scroll of Seven Hells and Its Infernal Majesties - REALLY eerie and twisted, this is great, though not up my alley
Ignivomous - Contragenesis - Another brick of evidence that the bar for brutal death metal was raised significantly this year.  This is great, but again, I just don't really care.
Into Oblivion / Cromlech / Shoor - "Under the banner of the Serpent Sun"
Ketzer - Eindzeit Metropolis - This is awesome.  A tad too ecclectic, but at times it reminds me of Aura Noir
Knelt Rote - Trespass - Super fun unrelenting grind madness.  Love these guys
Les Discrets - Ariettes Oubliées
Maveth - Coils of the Black Earth
Manticore - Behold the Ascension of the Execrated - God, this is weird as fuck and I dont like it at all
Naglfar - Teras - Exactly what I was expecting, there is nothing cool about this.
Necrovation - s/t - This was surprisingly fun.  Lots of variety and innovation here.  I might buy this.
Occultation - Three & Seven - RULES!  This is really intriguing stuff!
Profetus - ...to Open the passages in Dusk - This would be far better if it had anything that wasnt completely boring in it.
Rahu - The Quest for the Vajra of Shadows
Svartidaudi - Flesh Cathedral
Testament - Dark Roots of Earth - Killer line-up on this, but this is exactly what I expected.  Fucking party thrash.  Death to the entire bay area and its failure metal.
Urkaos - I
Vemod - Venter pa Stormene - This is really good.  I'll probably be listening to this some more in the future. reminds me of Darkspace / Paysage d'Hiver
Venus Star - ep / full length
Verge / Charnel Winds - Two Serpents
Vomitor - the Escalation
Winterfylleth - the Threnody of Triumph
Vaura - Selenelion - Listening to this album was like holding a great looking sandwich, never being able to figure out which side to take the first bite on, then giving up.

Anticipated in 2013 (somewhat speculative):
Swallowed debut full length
Hunter's Moon full length?!?!?
Nocturnal Graves
Horna (confirmed!)
Inquisition (confirmed !)
Incursus (confirmed !)
Sadomator (This band is currently on hold, but Seventh is working on a debut full length for his other band Odgru Jahad)
Paysage d'Hiver - Das Tor (AMAZING!)
Cultes des Ghoules (RULES!)
Darvulia
Empyrium
Pensees Nocturnes (confirmed!)
Watain
Grave Miasma
Front Beast
Manzer "Light of the Wreckers"
Hatespawn "Abyssic conquerors"
Dead Congregation
Gorguts (confirmed!)
Portal (rules!)
Darkthrone (sucks!)
Panopticon / Vestiges split (confirmed!)
Drowned - debut LP (confirmed !)

Big time let downs:
Burzum
Baptism
Swans
Ofermod
Enslaved
Aura Noir

Panopticon - Kentucky

Whenever I have the pleasure of waking up in Kentucky, I stretch my arms out to greet the day. Invariably I hear the opening banjo licks of Panopticon's album of the same name. When I climbed the beautiful winding hills of Bernheim Forest beneath gigantic trees last summer with Austin Lunn, I heard the familiar penny whistle melodies and Chuck Schuldiner-esque guitar leads heard throughout "Bodies Under the Falls." When I spent time among the people of Louisville I heard the soaring melody of "Black Soot and Red Blood." When I hear my friends Austin, Adam, and Crow lament upon frustrations concerning how mining corporations have permanently destroyed miles upon miles of their beautiful home's mountain tops, I of course hear the plodding blast beats and somber middle section of "Killing the Giants as They Sleep." I even find myself singing the catchy riffs throughout the album in my head when I'm at work or driving. When I play the album I sing along to the riffs and air drum to the preposterously skilled percussion. This album has stuck with me more than any in the last few years for so many reasons. I find it jarringly apparent that the album's subject matter has given Austin the motivation to weave his most musically effective and memorable album yet.

Two years ago I hadn't been to Kentucky, and I hadn't heard Panopticon's album of the same name. Today, the state and the album represent each other boldly in my eyes, and they both have become some very dear things to me. Such has the friendship Austin and I have found this year. I wanted to finally offer my take on this album because I think I offer a unique and closer perspective on the album than most, and maybe what I have to say will help some folks understand it better if they care to listen to it and learn from it.

Panopticon is a very different band than a lot of people are used to. The ever-trodden path of black metal since 1982 has been to portray a guise that you are not. To use emotions and urges to give a theatrical and exaggerated voice to thoughts. To step outside of the human shell and personify metaphorically certain emotions and ideals that seem somehow larger than life. In stark contrast, Austin lets absolutely nothing stand between his music and who he is. When you listen to Panopticon, you are experiencing the pure unadulterated heart and soul that he is offering you. you can take it or leave it. Austin plays black metal and blue grass because that is who he is, and this is how he speaks to you. Austin and others argue that this fact invalidates the label of "black metal" from Panopticon, but I make this comparison sonically, and not politically. Some reviewers have had the gaul to say that the blue grass isn't to their liking and that it should be different or not present at all. Some have even gone as far as saying that the blue grass should sound more like European folk. Or that the metal sections aren't "folky enough", etc. As fucking outlandish as this is, I won't address it specifically. Asking that of any artist is preposterous. Lets be honest folks, we are all grown ups and you wouldn't know about this album if you didn't have the capacity to fully understand Panopticon's effective language of metal and blue grass.

I am proud of my friend Austin for so many reasons but here I should note that Kentucky is an album Austin should be proud of. It speaks vastly of a place he loves and does so in such a heartfelt way that it evades criticism by standing above it in a place where this type of dialogue contains no dishonesty, or insipid cruel humanity.

Kentucky the album successfully acts as a conduit between you and the topics that Austin holds dear enough to write about. Instead of acting as an end all authority upon the topic, it verily tells a story and then asks you confrontingly "Which Side are You On?"

"HIPSTER"

The other day a coworker looked at my last.fm page and called me a hipster. I seriously dont mind, but a true definition of this term has always eluded me. It seems like people throw it around only for the effect that they know that comes with it, without the term having a meaning that anyone can specifically enumerate. My belief is that term would describe someone who only likes stuff because nobody else likes it. But the fact that people use it to describe people who look and act like other "hipsters" really defies the sentiment of the term. So either I'm wrong or everyone who uses it that way is wrong.

Without regard to the term's definition I had some poignant thoughts in reaction to its use to label me. If I seek out music that isnt popular, that would mean that I would have to know what is popular, to be able to avoid it. Therefore I would be paying the same attention to popular music as most people are, if not more. So in a way the term accuses me of doing what everyone else does only to portray that I am in fact only interested in everything but that which is popular.

Am I wrong here or what?

Altarnihil - "Terminal"

While some band's demos can wind up being their best recording (Cromlech), the intent of a demo is to lay forth a simple framework upon which a band operates. I try to keep this in mind when receiving a demo from a band. Altarnihil's "Terminal" demonstrates that they have accomplished well what they set out to do and have a formidable amount of momentum to achieve greater things within the trappings of this guise.
As expected the Iowa two piece utilize a murky, indistinct overall tone and production quality to paint the veil between their performance and your imagination. As a black metal listener I appreciate when this is understood and I often require this quality of a band for me to be drawn into a recording (due to my fervent A.D.D. and tendency to listen to black metal bands that I already know are good.) Producing an unfavorable, "necro", or murky black metal sound hard is enough to even achieve, let alone harness and have it enhance everything about the craft of black metal song. This is Altarnihil's strongest element yet. While all too many bands today have taken a reliance upon this much too far, I still believe that teetering upon this balance is where much of the magic of black metal lies.
I do not feel that Altarnihil rely all too heavily on this quality, but I do see great potential for a more musical direction for the band, mostly in the guitars, but I think some synth would work nicely here as well. There is a staunch and unwavering style to the music, and I think some more evocative riffing is where I look for the band to head. The riffing is simplistic and unmelodic but nothing I could draw comparisons to.
Overall I give this a 7 out of 10. The band was gracious enough to give me a copy of the demo, and gracious enough to offer it to you on their bandcamp page http://altarnihil.bandcamp.com as a pay what you want download. Look for a tape release soon, and I will look forward to future output from one of Iowa's rare black metal bands.

Alternately I thought I'd mention that this entire demo reminds me fondly of the last song "Einsamkeit" from Zorn's 2002 demo "Terror Black Metal" which is just absolutely stunning. Tell you what, heres a download link for that entire demo: DOWNLOAD

Sorry for the absence. Ive been making my own music again. If you care to listen to it, its all free for download here: www.fallutin.com There's also an interview for your perusal. I plan on posting a review of the new Mgla album here shortly. Toodles, Ben

Darkthrone - Transylvanian Hunger

Darkthrone achieved so much in the early 90's with no motivation but to make purely satanic black metal. First they helped germinate the sound known merely by their circle of like-minded Norwegian teenagers with "Goatlord" and "A Blaze in the Northern Sky." "Under a Funeral Moon" was a raw exploration of the catharsis of this new sound and song craft. Having arrived upon "Transylvanian Hunger" and reaching what I believe to be their pinnacle in this journey in just three years is remarkable. This band was gravely inspired and flourishing with productivity, much to the satisfaction of nearly every black metal fan to ever lend the genre their attention since 1994.
The personality of the songs on these albums is so refined and honed that to try to find comparable musical influences has always proven difficult for me. Of course a heavy Bathory and Venom element is there in the forcibly driven pace of everything, but the riffing seems to call upon very noodly and cantankerous buzzing kraut rock. At age 22 Nocturno Culto's style of playing repetitive dissonant chords and harmonizing with lead guitars to achieve a memorable, vivid melody is remarkable in its own right.
The production value on this album mirrors the song writing in this sense. At first listen I'm always forced to take a step back to remember how to listen to this album. Its got an obscure, glossed over and murky hiss to it all. At the end of some of the songs you can hear the instruments all brought to silence, and all that is left is the extreme tape hiss that lends so much to the atmosphere. The lack of clarity beckons you to focus your ears upon the droning subtle melody. The more you tune your attention to its permanent barrage of darkness, the more you enter its despicable realm of utter satanic majesty. One of my favorite characteristics of black metal is the interplay of rhythm and lead guitar to achieve complex harmony and melody.
To think that frantic, buzzing, clashing, racket can be so evocative, enigmatic, ethereal and beautiful is a challenging notion. The fervor that these 19 year old Norwegians found use for over the course of three years will never be equaled again. The greatest black metal albums of all time have already been written, fortunately one of them is Transylvanian Hunger.

Illegal

So today I was doing some browsing and I happened upon an MP3 blog and I saw that it offered the new album from Amorphis. I've never really been a fan of this band but I keep reading great things about their albums, and I haven't heard anything current since "My Kantele." So I decided, "Meh, I'll give Amorphis another shot and give this a listen." When I went to download it, I got a message that it had been removed due to a reported violation. I've been seeing this more and more lately as I 'm aware labels are cracking down on blogs of this nature, and some sites follow through with removal requests. Without getting into a whole debate about the whole mp3 argument, I just felt a tad miffed. I wanted to hear Amorphis, and their label Nuclear Blast, was making it so that I couldn't listen to Amorphis. Isn't that a little backwards?

Bad Music

I was listening to Death Grips' "Exmilitary" album the other day. This is an album I'm still struggling to decide if I even like, but I keep coming back to it from time to time. If you haven't heard it, let me just say that its really weird and you're probably not gonna like it. Anyway it did manage to get me thinking about how I'm having a hard time describing reasons that I don't like it, and I think its mainly because of how original it is. Thats not to say that I've decided yet that I dislike it, but I can more easily say positive things about it than negative things. If you played me some top 40 country I'd most likely hate it and it would be easy to say how bad it is because I've heard what they're doing a thousand times before. I easily have a frame of reference and I know straight away that I hate it. So its much easier for me personally to say that something sucks because it sucks exactly like something else that sucks. I would guess most people would be the opposite and say "oh I like this, it reminds me of Lady Antebellum." Or at least they would say that its not bad because it sounds like something that they think is good or have heard before. They say people are always afraid of things they don't understand. I think over the years of being a huge music nerd I've grown accustomed to seeking out the absurd, the original, artists that defy boundaries. Artists that do that are the only real catalyst to progression within the art. So I defy you next time you say something is bad. I dare you to ask yourself why you think it is bad. If you had no frame of reference for what bad was, would it still be bad?

So here is Death Grips. I'm impressed by it and I applaud it for it's ingenuity, but I'm still on the fence about the album as a whole.

Playlist

Havent posted a playlist in a long time. Been really busy with a new job and new house and such. Been discovering lots of new great music.

Midlake - the Courage of Others [ Lush and extremely well written folk. Has a real 70's vibe to it, but far from boring and really really catchy ]

Lugubrum - De Ware Hond / Albino de Congo [ One of my favorite black metal bands, still as original, contorted and relevant as ever ]

Isengard - Høstmorke [ This is a huge classic, always worth singing along to]

Melechesh - Epigenesis [ Headbanging fun for all ]

Merkaba - Bones of the Sacred Forest [ Undeniably powerful and evocative modern black metal, i'll be listening to this for a long time ]

Horn - Naturkraft [ Traditional raw german black metal. Well written from start to finish ]

Yearning - Plaintive Scenes [ I've always liked this band, nothing too ground breaking but an album definitely worth owning ]

M83 - Hurry Up, Were Dreaming [ This give me a raging 80's hard-on. Wonderful album ]

Septic Flesh - Esoptron / Temple of the Lost Race [ I've always been kinda tepid with this band, but i found these releases to be a little more "gorey" than the other more greek romantic sounding stuff ]

Cry of Silence - Wandering Through pagan Times [ THIS is the new Xasthur. Xasthur who? ]

Cromlech (swe)

I discovered this band years ago when I was doing some research on the amazing Eucharist. Technically somewhat unrelated because the guitarist of Cromlech only played in Eucharist for a short bit after Mirrorworlds was released in 1997, but the two bands styles can be easily compared. They may not have made much of an impression having never released a single album, but Cromlech leaves behind a handful of absolutely blistering melodic death / black metal songs spread across 5 releases totalling 15 songs. I want you to download them below and listen to them all. If listened to properly they will cause blistering in your groinular region. The performance, creativity, and intensity are unmatched.

DOWNLOAD HERE PLEASE

Performance

The last time I was in Chicago, I was able to spend some time with my friend E from the band Njiqahdda. We got to talking about performing music live versus putting out albums. E has managed to release 46 albums in the last three years, and hasn't performed the music live once, so needless to say the man knows what he is talking about. For years I have personally enumerated reasons for not playing live, but the reason E offered was something I had never considered. His answer explained my sentiment better than I have ever been able to. He explained that performing music is not creating music, and he was only interested in creating music. Most people consider performance something that goes hand in hand with creating music and being a musician. The difference between creating it and performing it however, is night and day to me.

Performing music on stage for humans is an act. It is a portrayal, a visual and human interaction of the medium whose subject matter and demeanor can often be the exact opposite. It relies on many people and a lot of money to be able to fall into place. The relevance of the audience when creating music pales to that when speaking about performing music on stage.

Would you really want to see Deathspell Omega's "Paracletus" album performed on stage? I for one like the album so much that I would hate to subject the music to such potential scrutiny. Would you want to listen to early Mortiis or any of Arcana's discography on stage? If you can find a reason to say no, then so can any artist.

Insight

A really good friend of mine and I were talking about music the other day and he arrived upon a very compelling point that I had never considered until then. I thought I'd share it with you in the hopes that it intrigues you as well. This definitely wont apply to the average music listener so I hope this is able to resonate with you.

I was talking about how I wanted to achieve optimum audio quality with a music project I'm working on, and I presented my goals to him. I feel like my goals were somewhat rendered irrelevant by what he then said. The audial fidelity of any recording (actually EVERY recording) is entirely subject to representation that it is being given; ie listening to it on a burned CD on a small stereo, listening to it on vinyl with nice speakers, or streaming it online with a pair of ear buds. No matter what the recording sounded like when it was created, it will invariably sound very different with every other listener's listening configuration and setup. Therefore this lend a lot of validity to the idea of performing music live, and listening to it in person as the artist intended it to be heard.

So the idea that every person hears every album differently, and largely different from the artist has had me in a lot of ponderous moods this week.

Thanks for reading.

Liturgy - Renihilation

After reading Chris Grigg's open letter to Liturgy's Hunter Hendrix, I was compelled to give Liturgy's album an honest listen. All politics aside, there is probably some music here and I'm compelled to listen to it and reflect upon it, mostly because I'm really bored.

Though I encourage an open minded approach to black metal, several upheld traditions make the genre a very reliable and enjoyable style to many of us. When a less thrash oriented, more atmospheric type of band attempts to build some sort of tangible emotive atmosphere, production value lends a lot of credibility to the overall communication of said atmosphere. Regardless of whatever intentions this band has with their style of music, the recording quality and overall fidelity is shit. It sounds like a bad mastering job pressed to vinyl then played through my mother's "vintage looking" wooden record player that she got at K-Mart. The guitars are annoyingly hard panned and tinny, buzzing and unpleasant. Zero cymbals are heard and all Im getting out of the drummer is constant blastbeats that make me want to go to sleep. If you pay close attention there is a monotonous bass tone that isn't really offering anything musical to the album. Oh and the vocals, well I almost forgot about the vocals. I guess they sound ok. Take all of that and unnecessarily compress the hell out of it all out of habit and you have what this album sounds like. Its probably what our parents all think black metal sounds like only this really sucks to listen to. Its seriously taxing on the ears. Maybe that's what they were going for, who knows?

I'm going to give Liturgy a hell of a lot of credit here and go with the assumption that they have engineered an entirely new mode of chaotic black metal in that all musical idealism has been shed. Liturgy have said "Fuck melody, fuck composition, fuck any goal of making memorable music having character, personality, structure or originality. Lets just take all the sonic qualities of black metal and do whatever we can get away with." Renihilation is the musical equivalent of clicking on an internet advertisement promising you a 55" HD television only to come up with a trojan horse that infects your computer with shitty fucking music. So in that respect...sure, the album is really chaotic and has all sorts of "not good" floating around just meandering, stumbling, tumbling and crashing into a picnic table like a drunk bum.

You know how sometimes bands will play a really powerful song (usually in the live setting at the end of a set) and then outro with that syncopated slowing down type of thing? I could be wrong but I believe its called "trash cans." You'd know what I mean if you heard it. Anyways this whole album feels like that, only I guess it sorta sounds like black metal. I honestly hope not a single human being lets this album at all represent the black metal genre to them.

I want my 40 minutes back :-(

Red Fang - Murder the Mountains

Like showering at my moms house, stepping into a genre I don't normally pay attention to just feels really weird, but I really liked the new video from Red Fang. I liked it so much that I decided to check out the album. I didn't buy it, I downloaded it because Relapse owes my label a serious amount of money. Which is honestly too bad because if anyone in the underground deserves yours or my money, its this band. I put these hard working fellas up for the night a few years ago and we shot the shit and drank PBRs til 4 in the morning on my porch. I feel more inclined to send these champs a box of frozen hot pockets rather than giving money to a label that earns its way on the backs of smaller and less fortunate labels.

Hey, this is about how rad Red Fang is, so I'll do my laundry at my mom's instead of here. On "Murder the Mountains" these beards show a great stature of maturity and songs nailed to the fucking wall with 8 inch spikes. They sound like they're having a fucking blast playing these songs and it exhudes throughout the album. What I feel sets these guys apart from their counterparts of the genre is that they never quite let you get bored, which I easily do both with this genre (Indian, Electric Wizard, Reverend Bizarre) and even other genres. There are no token "tripped out" bong rip breakdowns, no silly witch intros, and not a bunch of generic Maiden riffs mucking about, basically this album contains zero bullshit. I'm really liking how playful and experimental they've gotten with some interesting and innovative second guitar work, use of piano, acoustic guitar and synth / atmospheric parts. Each member totally shines as an instrumentalist for the majority of the record. Their playing really drives these songs forth with a solid live sound and a familiar fervor.

Two strengths that Red Fang bring to the table: groove with more power than most metal bands are achieving today, and GOOD FUCKING RIFFS. If you don't believe me check out the song "Number Thirteen" at about 2:26. That riff is like an airplane full of coffee smooching your prostate right in the fucking brain stem. The riffs are not cheesy and rather memorable. I'm sure I'll be humming the riffs along with the record by my fourth listen. In fact what initially brought me the point of giving the whole album a listen was that after seeing the video for "Wires" only one time, I was singing the chorus to myself in the kitchen a few days later.

As always, a band jumping on with Relapse is a big step. With Murder the Mountains they have taken it in stride and shown that this was a wise move for all parties involved. I hope Relapse really pans out for Red Fang because I know they deserve everything they achieve.

Demonaz - March of the Norse

In 1999 I was literally pining for the new Immortal album "At the Heart of Winter" to come out on a daily basis. Demonaz was then and still remains my favorite guitarist based solely on what he did on the first four Immortal albums. I had spoken to Harald (Demonaz) on the telephone earlier that year after I had heard he had quit Immortal due to carpal tunnel. He assured me the he would be back playing guitar in no time and all would be fine for us die hard Immortal fans. What happened after hearing the album was nothing short of a breakdown. I hated it. I pretended that it didn't exist for 5 years or so. To this day it takes a bit of a memory jog to correct my notion that Immortal died in an ice storm in 1998. After Damned in Black and Sons of Northern Darkness came out...and I heard them, I was further proven that this band was unrecognizably disfigured. In recent times I have become a tad more forgiving, and I can listen to At the Heart of Winter once a year or so without puking. Though laughable I thought the "I" self-titled album was somewhat fun and the newest reformed Immortal album was the better of the "era 2" albums.

To me the new style that Immortal (and this album) dons is cruel and criminal due to the overwhelming amount of creativity, ingenuity and character that the earlier days had. March of the Norse sounds like something straight out of 1986 only with far worse and more flaccid, underwhelming production than bands were achieving those days. March of the Norse could pass as an embarrassing Bathory album on any day of the week. The arena rock solos and leads are just about enough to give me the runs. The only redeeming quality found on March of the Norse is decent song-craft. Two riffs per song played in two different alternating keys for dramatic effect, acoustic interludes, alternating between chugging electric guitar riffs and ring out type riffs, then choruses about mountains and trees repeated until the song fades out. If that sounds like a good time to you nine times over, then you're in for a party, man!

I like other stuff too!

I LOVE OLD IMMORTAL

Clean Mountain

I'm proud to announce that you can now download the entire discography of my project Clean Mountain here: http://www.last.fm/music/Clean+Mountain

Brulvahnatu

I demand that you lend me your ears for a moment. About two weeks ago I took on the task of working for Pagan Flames as a real actual job that pays me and stuff. So far its been nothing but pleasure. It doesnt even feel like a job and when I get paid real actual dollarbucks I'm all like WOAH. One of my goals going into this employment was to take on a new artist, and already I am enamored with delight to announce that we'll be releasing the newest onslaught from Canada's Brulvahnatu this summer. Its called "Menstrual Extraction Ceremony" and you can experience a good portion of it by going here: http://eternalobscurityrecords.blogspot.com Its not exactly our standard fare of black metal, its not traditional by any means, but its eerie, original, entertaining, and strikingly challenging. We want to maintain a diverse but focused hordes so this couldnt be more perfect. Brulvahnatu's sole creator Kib Sreng is also a prolific painter and his works can be seen here: http://kibsreng.blogspot.com/. On top of that we have a new incredible full length from Njiqahdda, Panopticon's newest split with Wheels Within Wheels and another embattled opus from War Plague.

Hellwitch - Syzygial Miscreancy

Look up "over the top" in any metal dictionary and this album is featured right there. This album is so chock full of all different types of metal that categorizing it can be treacherous. The playing on this is phenomenal, the song writing is unique and mind blowing. Luckily too is that Scott Burns did a wonderful job of producing this mighty slab. I would say that Syzygial Miscreancy is something like taking Death, Nu-Gorguts, Atheist and 5 handfuls of Discordance Axis and splatting them at a wall. Its a low down shame that this band didn't get a Nobel peace prize for their efforts but hey at least they have this sweet album to listen to, and so do we:

DOWNLOAD

"Revelry"

In the late 90's several European metal bands took a left hand turn and it was all of a sudden well suited for many bands to be avante-garde, "jazzy", or neo-whatever. Its hard to say what Beyond Dawn's ambitions were around this time but Revelry came at a perfect time for people interested in this movement. The uber-dreary pace and rejection of excited tempos and repetitious melody have been shed, and its clear here that Beyond Dawn are steady on a different direction, even if the direction they were on before was quite different.

Less claustrophobic production, less reliance on heavily distorted guitars, more rock oriented drumming and singing are what lend to Revelry being a more in this vein than Pity Love was. I have to cringe whenever I use this term "avante-garde". I understand the intent in its relevance, but I feel like its more of a genre unto itself rather than a genre referencing anything prior...as stated in its moniker. Just because a band uses horns, or unconventional instrumentation or song structure, certainly doesn't make them avante-garde. However, the term punk used to mean that which was different from regular music, and then once that became regular, alternative sprung up, then all these post-____'s came about. So I take issue with this proverbial "chasing of the tail" that we music nerds do. I find it as if people will use a rejection of a certain genre to sell music and I usually prefer to stay away from labels and genre's anyways because more often than not it robs the art of its identity. I do wholeheartedly feel like a lot of these bands were seeking their own new grounds at this period in time but I cant explain how so many of them ended up sounding so similar. Anyways I should talk about this album huh?

After a pretty accessible start the album takes off at track two. The song consists of a strong upbeat tempo and catchy horn riffs that give the song a unique blend of ideas. The reliance of electronic instrumentation becomes more prevalent here. Beyond Dawn consistently achieves their dirgey slowed down mirth of gleaming depression and I respect them immensely for that. They have a knack of going about it in so many different ways. In the middle section of the album it tends to drag on a bit I have to admit. Until "Breath the Jackal" which is probably the albums best tune, there isn't much to munch on after track two. Vocally here Espen is lazily carrying his patented tune, not unlike a more spoken and whimsical version of Michael Gira, only "real" singing more during the more urgent choruses.

As a whole this album suffers from being kind of same-y, as in after a few good tracks it tapers off into a handful of songs that all sort of clump into one ball with few memorable highlights. These songs only serve to fulfill the demeanor of the album and all in all I'd say this is the turning point for the band as we'll see with Electric Sulking Machines, which is an even greater leap into the unknown.