Rolling Metal Thread 2009

Ha, that'll happen, especially considering how great one album is and how awful the other is. Gotta say, I think front to back, the Darkthrone issue is the best Decibel to come out in quite a while.

Meanwhile, I'm still obsessing over the incredible new Cobalt album. Along with the Neurosis, Swans, and crust influences, I kept hearing siliarities to Tool popping up every so often, but I wasn't too sure what an underground black metal band would think if I started mentioning Tool in the interview, but whaddya know, if Erik doesn't start bringing up Tool in our conversation. Gotta love any band that's willing to piss off the USBM scenesters.

Similarities, I mean.

i skimmed the darkthrone article while killin time in the record store yesterday; looked liked a really good read.

Just got a Play MPE link for the new Mastodon. Apparently I can stream it five times before it self-destructs or whatever.

I got my shipment from Seventh Rule recently, too. Good thing I like the Wetnurse album so much, as thing other stuff I sprung for isn't faring so well. Light Yourself on Fire and Plague Bringer both make the classic judgment-error of putting long dialog samples in their songs, ensuring that I get sick of them almost instantly. Still pondering Akimbo and Indian...

Let us know how the Mastodon is! Metal labels are getting pretty good at the cloak-and-dagger advances...early leaks of the big albums are really decreasing.

I enjoyed Plague Bringer and the Indian. Still wondering what the big deal is about Akimbo, however.

listening to the new Buried Inside. what a fucking great band. kinda hate the vocal style but it doesn't really matter, the music is so wondeful.

still, would 100% buy an instrumental version of this album and/or a version with a non-boring vocal approach

Yeah, they really improved on this one, it's like Ballou forced the drummer to calm the hell down. The lyrics are so pompous it's almost comical, but they obviously mean well.

Real-time notes on the new Mastodon:

Oblivion – Slow ominous start, not the usual roar out of the gate like the last three records. Gets heavy pretty quick, but it’s more of a High on Fire vibe (“To Cross The Bridge”) than earlier Mastodon stuff. Tempo doubles before vocals come in. Vocals very clean, reminiscent of stoner rock bands I can’t remember exactly. Lots of twang in second vocalist’s voice. Guitar solos slow, lots of sustain – this is an arty hard rock song a la Baroness, not a metal song. It doesn’t get Mastodon-y until after the guitar solo, when a big deep crunching riff comes in very briefly. Then there’s another chorus. This is not the kind of adrenaline rush you wanna open your album with, on first listen. It kinda lurches along like second-tier Neil Young & Crazy Horse, but obviously played with tons more skill and technique.

Divinations – Starts with banjo of all things, but gets fast right away and Brann Dailor is whipping the shit out of his kit like we expect. Vocals nasal and piercing, kinda sounds like David Thomas of Pere Ubu. Clean chorus, which is weird. Then back into David Thomas-ism for the verses. Lots of nice guitar interplay on this one, and some very cool bass action. Over too soon at 3 ½ minutes.

Quintessence – Again, more Mastodon-ish than the first track. Don’t know why they opened with that one. Vocals super-nasal. Rhythmically tricky. So far, not a single song as instantly awesome as “Blood & Thunder,” but also nothing as boring as some of the lowlights of Blood Mountain.

The Czar – This song is 11 minutes long. There’s some cool distorted organ at the beginning, which is replaced by a super-repetitive guitar figure of the type they’ve done a zillion times before. Vocals almost Ozzy-esque, very keening. Song keeps shifting, but never slows down or gets ponderous or pretentious. It’s just variations on an intricate, fast-paced rockin’ theme. Guitar solo preceded by more Ozzy-style vocalizin’ over piano and electric guitar. Man, this really sounds like late period solo Ozzy. What the fuck?

Ghost of Karelia – Another half-familiar riff quickly replaced by high-speed Mastodon intricacy. The core riff of this song sounds copped from early 80s Metallica – I think it’s something from Ride the Lightning. This song has no chorus. It does have really cool analog synth drones, though.

Crack the Skye – Anthemic in a very 70s AOR way. Starts out sounding like Bad Company – acoustic guitar shadowed by electric and Dailor comes in with a big thumpeta-thumpeta-thumpeta tom roll sure to get arenas pumpin’. When it gets heavy, though, it gets really heavy. This is the best song so far – too bad it’s number six of seven. Slows down for a very classic rock solo, and Mellotron and treated vocals. Wow, this is the Sound of the Seventies, for real – none of that imaginary 70s of the mind that lesser stoner bands do. This is some wayback machine shit.

The Last Baron – This song is 13 minutes long. Second half is all crazy dual guitar action. No solos per se, just prog-meets-the-Allman-Brothers riff frenzy. Vocalist sounds like Pat Todd from the Lazy Cowgirls. Go, Dailor, go! Okay, the end slows down into drones and sustained guitar notes and…now it’s over.

Seven tracks, 50 minutes, no long stretches of silence followed by dumb jokes, no guest spots that I noticed. I didn’t love it right away, but I like it a lot and it’s definitely better than Blood Mountain (have I mentioned lately how much I hate Blood Mountain?).

The title track looks interesting.

I got my shipment from Seventh Rule recently, too. Good thing I like the Wetnurse album so much, as thing other stuff I sprung for isn't faring so well. Light Yourself on Fire and Plague Bringer both make the classic judgment-error of putting long dialog samples in their songs, ensuring that I get sick of them almost instantly. Still pondering Akimbo and Indian...

I've only listened to the Wetnurse and Akimbo albums from my shipment. I really liked the Akimbo. Liked the Indian too, but I got that a few months back on a whim. Still have the Plague Bringer, Sweet Cobra, and The Makai to hear.

New Cobalt is pretty badass like Abe says. Time will tell if I like it more than 'Eater of Birds'. I think BM dorks will probably get annoyed. Like the first thing I put on this morning was the new Tombs album 'Winter Hours', which is also pretty badass, and between the two there's very few signifiers which definitively say 'this one is the leftfield BM album' and 'this one is the epic crusty HC album'. Which is cool, to me

If an album by a BM band makes BM geeks mad, chances are I'm going to like it a lot...

Lazy blastbeat zing crew http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/16/popandrock

(this is quite readable actually thanks mainly to being chiefly made up of quotes from people who actually have an interest in the subject. I thought Atilla, as in Billy Joel's band, were widely repped for by enthusiasts of proto-metallers, rather than being considered "famously dreadful", though.)

jon/via/chicago, do you ever go in metal haven at damen and montrose? i live pretty near it and every six months i go in there and wander around for 15 minutes and never buy anything

I've listened to that Atilla album and do not remember it having blastbeats on it!

Don't get this bit either:

Scandinavian bands point towards a Swedish anarchopunk band called Asocial
I've got the Asocial discog CD and it's your standard Discharge influenced hardcore, don't get why they'd pick that band over Anti-Cimex or Mob 47 etc.

xpost

jon/via/chicago, do you ever go in metal haven at damen and montrose? i live pretty near it and every six months i go in there and wander around for 15 minutes and never buy anything

Not as often as I'd like. Which is probably for the best,as I usually end up overwhelmed and wanting to buy 100 different things when I go there. But the selection is fantastic and the owner guy is super friendly once he sees you are likely to buy stuff from him.

According to some sources, the blastbeat was invented not by a hardcore band in the 80s, but by either free jazz drummer Sunny Murray on a 1965 recording with Albert Ayler or Attila, a famously dreadful late 60s psychedelic band who dressed as Attila the Hun and were later dismissed as "bullshit" by their keyboard player, Billy Joel.

uhh, what?

i mean, not really psychedelic, who cares what billy joel thinks, and no blastbeats.

cool ... i mainly just have no idea what i'm looking for when i go in there, though i think i went in there looking for the wetnurse album pretty soon after it came out and couldn't find it

I've got the Asocial discog CD and it's your standard Discharge influenced hardcore, don't get why they'd pick that band over Anti-Cimex or Mob 47 etc.

Yeah this isn't something I'm well versed in but these Asocial guys would be fairly second tier in this context amirite? Maybe this is as specific as one part of one song. The idea of it being 'invented' by Sunny Murray, presumably just by virtue of him being good and crazy enough to play at that speed, when no-one has ever made a link between him and fast HC/proto-grind bands, is sort of problematic but I think that's a question of semantics

Well, if nothing else, that article inspired me to download the Attila album. I don't hear any blast beats yet. Lots of ELP/Edgar Winter keyboard fuckery, though.

Everybody knows that the blastbeat was invented by cavemen! There are no recordings of it, only cave paintings!

Voting has ended on the metal poll. Last call for those that wish to do blurbs. If you do please send them to ilxmetalalbums2008 at googlemail.com

Hope to start posting results on monday.

wait is the darkthrone decibel the current issue?

Yep. Just picked mine up on the newsstand yesterday.

god my town is so behind

Okay, I just spent two hours poring over True Norwegian Black Metal...I knew it would be coffee table book size, but I still didn't expect it to be so huge. The sheer size of the book makes it all the more absorbing, you're just swimming in the images. The text is very well written, plus the archived material in the back is amazing.

Saw Septic Flesh, Satyricon and Cradle of Filth last night in Worcester. My first time seeing any of them.

Septic Flesh was outmanned by themselves. The stuff from Communion requires so many elements they didn't have with them (orchestra, guest vocalists, etc.) that they were reduced to playing along to backing tracks. Combined with the standard first-of-three-bands' predicament of being basically perched on the front of the stage with everybody else's gear behind you, and the standard bad first-of-three-bands sound quality, this left the performance feeling somewhere between a concert and a belligerent press conference. Love the band, bought the shirt, but I don't know what I would have made of them if I didn't already know what their records actually sound like.

Satyricon were great. Again, nothing much to look at (Satyr's short and slicked haircut kind of makes him look like a younger Harry Dean Stanton, and the rest of the band look like the victims of a Muppets layoff), but their sparer sound met the slightly better second-of-three sound-mix halfway, and Satyr stalked around with his trident mic-stand, grimmacing during songs and thanking everybody with great earnestness in between them.

But it was Cradle of Filth's show. The sound was amazing, the musical performances were manic, and Dani walked (in enormous boots) his distinctive line between cartoon and chaos. Spectacle overblown enough to laugh at happily, but stirring enough to also appreciate as ceremony. About halfway through I realized what I've been doing wrong with their new album: I've been playing it WAY WAY TOO QUIETLY.

Nearly froze solid while walking one block back to my car. Which has, thankfully, heated seats. How metal is that?

Meanwhile, I'm still obsessing over the incredible new Cobalt album. Along with the Neurosis, Swans, and crust influences, I kept hearing siliarities to Tool popping up every so often

^^^so OTM - track two has this really great piercing wash of guitar that Tool do really well. In fact the whole song sounds like something off 'Aenima' but gnarlier.

New Stinking Lizaveta sounds good so far, seems to be more psychedelic and less doom riff-centric than past albums

I want to hear new Cobalt. When is it out?

Says Mar 17 here

there's an ad in the latest decibel for a symphonies of sickness deluxe reissue on earache, due out a week ago. the earache site and amazon don't seem to have it. anybody know the deal?

I got one in the mail a couple of months ago - it still sounded like shit.

Listening to the new Mastodon again this morning. It's still weird, but it's growing on me, which Blood Mountain never did. I think after two or three more listens I might really like it.

The Khanate album is crushing and so much better than Capture & Release. top 10 album of 2009 for sure.

Really liked the new Mastodon on first listen. I agree that the first track isn't the adrenaline rush that "Blood and Thunder" was, but it isn't nearly as adrenaline rush of an album as Leviathan. I really like chunks of "The Czar," something about the dreaminess is really appealing to me. "Crack the Skye" is totally awesome 70s prog, although I did get more of a 70s prog vibe from the whole thing. I feel like it's more focused then Blood Mountain. Not what I would call "mellow," but I suppose it is by Mastodon's standards... First impression: not as good as Leviathan, better than Blood Mountain.

The unedited Fenriz interview on the Deciblog is GRREAT.

http://decibelmagazine.com/index.php/2009/01/16/fenriz-a-transcript-in-full/

So we've moved from retro thrash to retro NWOBHM: I just downloaded the new Earache compilation Heavy Metal Killers, which is 10 tracks by bands trying to sound like Di'Anno-era Iron Maiden. The only band I know of already is Enforcer, whose Into the Night album on Heavy Artillery last year was pretty great.

Cauldron used to be the very awesome Goat Horn.

http://www.comicvsaudience.net/images/flow_heavymetal.jpg

I would paste the image, but it's huge. Funny stuff. Flow chart of metal band names.

I just want to share this poster, since it warmed my heart
http://img.skitch.com/20081121-c6nq32xbkkkhtjcibr1i8sqrt2.jpg

Not new, but I've been listening to Enslaved's Mardraum again, since it just got reissued and I realized I'd mostly only heard it in the middle of long Enslaved-catalog listening. I'm not getting on that Vertebrae-sucks-the-old-stuff-is-great bandwagon, but if anybody saws off the old-stuff-is-great half and, I guess, makes it into some kind of wheelbarrow, then I'm up for being carted around in it. This thing is awesome. Fierce, sudden, rousing. Had it on while my 1.5-year-old daughter and I were having breakfast the other morning, and she was doing some serious spoon-waving, which is what you do instead of head-banging if you're belted into a booster seat. So: cross-generational appeal!

To borrow a page from Chuck, here's what I've been enjoying in 2009 so far (that I can think of):

Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Ross the Boss - New Metal Leader
Kreator - Hordes of Chaos
Destroy Destroy Destroy - Battle Sluts
Bible of the Devil - Freedom Metal
Wino - Punctuated Equilibrium
God Forbid - Earthsblood

Wino's disc had me about three tracks in ("Release Me" is awesome), and then lost me. But Ross the Boss rules, of course.

I'm still all about Cobalt, Cannibal Corpse, and Saros these days. But the new Cattle Decapitation is a huge surprise...I didn't think they had something like this in them.

Just got Viking Skull's Doom, Gloom, Whiskey & Heartarche

it is seriously awesome btw

I just heard the Leathermouth leak (it's a side project from My Chemical Romance apparently), and I think it's metal. It really just made me cry and gave me a huge headache. But I thought I'd share cause there's so little I get to contribute to this group over the year. Oh, I liked the track "This Song Is About Being Attacked By Monsters," mostly cause it - like - really sounds like a song about being attacked by monsters.