Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

contenderizer OTM re "Steel That Sleeps the Eye"

Giving the Entombed a spin now. It's not really death metal now, is it? When I think death metal I think of the usual stuff, The Bleeding and whatnot. It's alright, though.

That Entombed disc is my second favorite by them. Clandestine is my absolute favorite; I never really loved Left Hand Path, canonical though it may be.

Contenderizer dont thank me, thank mordy, the listening club is his idea.

Kyuss: This is exactly why I generally steer away from anything labeled "Stoner". Dull, slow, dull, unfocused, dull. Come to think of it, I rarely like anything called "Blues for" anything, either. Stoner blues: not my genre. Hate the moany singing, hate the long-song/short-thing album structure. Basically, I like nothing about this. I started track-skipping after about track 4, and gave up completely with 3 or 4 songs still to go. Moving on.

First thought re: Kyuss -- barely even sounds like metal. Really just hard rock.

you guys are nuts

Well Mordy's not exactly wrong. And glenn just doesn't got for this type of thing, fair enough. Can't say I agree with him though.

Had never heard this Entombed album, although I'm familiar with them from later stuff. Never liked their singer at all, and never liked their music enough to be too sad about not liking their singer. Rarely like the whole strained-macho-yelling school of Death Metal vocals, although certainly there's nothing inherently worse about it than other extreme styles I do like. I like the faster bits of the music more than the lurching, grinding bits; perhaps this is the "blues" thing striking again. I'm perfectly willing to believe that this is an examplar of Death Metal, and I don't dislike the subgenre on principle, but I think it's one of the lower-yield subgenres of Metal for me, personally.

Btw, I'm not saying I dislike it. It's a lot of fun to listen to and has some great moments (I wanna listen to it a couple more times at least). It just doesn't scream metal at me -- at least not any more than like Queens of the Stone Age, Velvet Revolver, etc. (lol Velvet Revolver, I know.) The Mastodon so far is really interesting. I'm used to their more recent material. This is a lot less groovier and a lot more -- wild? uncontrolled? esp on a song like "Workhouse" where is sounds like the band is lit playing themselves to death. It's totally wild (which I love).

"Ol'e Nessie" is more the Mastodon I'm used to.

It never gets better than Crusher/Destroyer

and Kyuss - 60 Million Year Trip is one of my top 10 tracks ever. From an all time classic album. I LOVE KYUSS! Getting into Kyuss in the mid 90s was the best thing I ever did. I then worked my way into Vitus and doom metal from there (along with a whole load of fantastic stoner rock before the genre went stale)

Actually, I think I bought Blues For The Red Sun because it was #2 to Alice In Chains - Dirt (my fave album that year) in raw or kerrangs albums of the year (back when those lists were great)

50 Million Year Trip! My copy has 10 million less years than yours apparently???

Dirt! That's what I was thinking it reminded me a lot of.

haha typo

Dirt if it was written in a desert minus the heroin addiction with a singer who had never really been into metal whose fave band was EW&F.
I dont believe they had never heard Sabbath at the time though. Josh homme claimed all they listened to was SST bands and the local desert rock bands like Yawning Man.

lol, I guess it makes sense that Kyuss sounds like QOTSA.

5 songs into kyuss. it's basically just hard rock in a vein that doesn't really do it for me. too much classic-rock-derived riffing, and the singer is pretty uninspiring.

50 mil year trip was the first song that did anything for me on this--i like the woozy desert solo jam as it closes out.

apothecaries' weight is pretty good too. stop singing, stop recycling old riffs, just jam endlessly.

when you say stop recycling old riffs, do you mean from before that record was made? Because the fact that every stoner band has copied Kyuss since shouldn't take away from how awesome and unique Kyuss were at the time.

no i mean the 70s hard rock they were lifting from.

So I now have acquired all three of these, will probably start with the Entombed as that is the one I am least familiar with.

please tell me the songs they stole riffs from

::sigh:: you know when you hear something and it just kind of reminds you of a lot of other stuff, not in a specific way, but in a way that makes it feel like well-trod territory? that is what this sounds like to me.

i didnt mean to sound snarky btw

i mean if u wanna go early, vitus were actually more derivative but were so desperate and weird that it worked for them. if u wanna go contemporary, sleep's holy mountain came out in 92/93 and is also pretty derivative but in a way that i like.

I'm having trouble revisiting this Kyuss record. Haven't heard it in about fifteen years, and though I like some of the bands that they inspired I find this a slog. Feels much longer than 50 minutes or so. Looked up the credits to see who wrote what, and the Brant Bjork tracks (Green Machine, 50 Million Year Trip & Caterpillar March) I like much more than the rest, even the ones he co-wrote. I'm not surprised by my reaction; I don't like Garcia's vocals on anything, and, though I think Homme is a talented guitarist, I haven't liked any of his bands either.

OK, just to demonstrate that I'm actually into this Listening Club idea, I made it through the whole Mastodon album, even the pointless gap-and-static at the end. I didn't like Mastodon before, and I don't like them any better after this. It's an apt triad, I think, as even when Mastodon is sprinting through their spazz-metal bits, there's a kind of leathery braying tone to their riffs that sounds of a piece, to me, with Kyuss and Entombed. To vastly oversimplify, I feel like there are kind of three major temperamental wellsprings of metal: overthought alienation, underthought aggression and pretensions to divinity. It's possible to combine these in various balances, but alienation gave us Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost and today gives us black metal, aggression gave us AC/DC and Motorhead and various -cores and now what's left of death metal, pretension gave us Kiss and Iron Maiden power/progressive/gothic metal. Me, I'm into alienation and ambition, particularly when they can be combined. Not so much into aggression for its own sake. I'm as dedicated a metal fan as you'll find, but I'm also a 43-year-old software designer with a 3-year-old daughter and a Scrabble obsession, and even as a 17-year-old I was the kind of 17-year-old who was bound to grow up to be a software designer with a daughter and a head full of anagrams for RETINAS. So there we are. The week I pick the three albums, some of you will hate them all, too!

About halfway through the Entombed so far and this is really not at all what I expected to hear, given the date of release and the general description of Entombed as a death metal band. Of course further research shows me this was during their "death n' roll" phase, which I guess seems like a better description. I hear a little bit of bands like Pantera in this, in that I feel a sort of similar "groove" (for lack of a better word) in some of these songs. Normally hearing Pantera as a comparison would turn me off, but I'm finding myself enjoying it so far.

And yeah, this is my first ever exposure to Entombed. I know!

i listened to remission on the way to work today as it's the only one of these i own on cd. stone-cold classic imo--it's so funny that they're consistently noted as/accused of getting "proggier" when there's plenty of that to be found on remission. the songs are very parts-y but they're played with such grace and flow so well. dailor was on fire here, obviously--i think the dumbing-down of his drumming is the worst thing that happened to this band. tracks 1-4 in particular are unbelievable, and "workhorse" is just jaw-droppingly good.

glenn, i don't think i understand your three wellsprings at all, but i nominate you to pick next week.

I second that, I'm curious to see what three glenn would pick.

The Entombed is working much better for me than Kyuss did. I've never really cared for Death metal, but this doesn't really hold to what I understood as death metal. Death n' Roll does make more sense, as Jon said. Vocals like this usually rub me the wrong way, though this guys spittle-laced tirades aren't really putting me off. Not adding anything, but I'm not gritting my teeth. Some great chugging guitars, but as I type the solo on "Full Of Hell" made me laugh. Not a strong point. Intrigued, and much better groove than the Kyuss.

I am not looking forward to the Mastodon, even though I like it more than the rest of their catalog.

Just wrapped up the Entombed, liked it a lot more than I expected and will be digging deeper into their catalog when I get a chance. As opposed to EZ, I really liked the vocals on this record, this is the type of growl I can really go for.

snap, thats why i love entombed yet never cared for most DM

I'm approaching the end of the Entombed as well; would have loved to see these guys back in the day. Growlers annoy me less in person than on record. When they up the tempo and thrash out for a few moments now and again I could love these guys. Thanks for picking this!

Okay, no way am I making it through this Mastodon. Herman, you know my dislike - who am I kidding? loathing - and it isn't going to change. Sorry.

Remission is pretty great, but its a slog to get through, by the end of it you feel like you've been pummelled or something. I like their later stuff, especially the one from last year

but feeling like you've been pummeled is why it's such a good record!

Bill's a softie , you know that.

hahah

I like to be menaced and emotionally abused more than beaten.

The first bit of "March of the Fire Ants" is the greatest Mastodon riff ever. When they do that live, the crowd just explodes.

I'm a bit of a lurker on the Metal thread. Can I still join in on this?

of course, everyone can join in at anytime

cool, thanks. I love Mastodon, but I don't think I've ever heard Remission, so this is good for me to give it a listen. Never really heard of the other two, but I'm looking forward to them.

awesome, would be great if lots of non metal thread regulars joined in, im sure mordy will be glad of that.

I think you will really like MSK. You got anything else to recommend in this vein?
Do you like Monkey 3 or any of those bands?

I think everything else I've heard like that i got from Rolling Metal threads (like Monkey 3). I really loved the Ancestors record last year that is a kissing cousin of this stuff, and Sula Bassana's The Night is more proggy spacerock stuff but I think it was overlooked.

Have you heard the Hawkwind Triad record from this past summer? Minsk, US Christmas and Harvestman doing Hawkwind tunes. Pretty amazing.

Yeah, they were out as 7" singles previously.

ez you listen to the MSK?

No chance yet. It'll be a few days before I have enough time to get straight through the album. I hate having to stop and start the first time I hear something.

until i got to listen more closely to that black bombain record, i didn't realize how insane the bass parts were on the one song. for like five minutes there's just this incessant thumping, i couldn't quite tell sometimes if it was the bass or the kick drum or both. by the end i felt a little sick, which is awesome.

the dawnbringer record seems quite good—especially the riffs, the song structures, and the mixture of nwobhm and black metal sounds (especially the playing that's usually there in black metal but obscured by the sound)—but the vocal performance is kind of disappointing, flat. i can see how it might make sense to people with some different tastes, though. also, this is just me, but i really dislike it when metal bands fall back on acoustic intro/outro/interludes. whatever the effect that seems intended, it usually comes off as completely unimaginative and uninspired. although the tuneless bit on the last song was actually effective, for once.

Started my day with the My Sleeping Karma record and it's pretty good. Started better than it ended, but when they were jamming I really enjoyed it. Would totally see them live if they came over to the States.

Will post picks in the morning...

3 more interesting and underdiscussed 2010 releases:

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d3/29452.jpg
Ea - Au Ellai
Elegiac atmospheric whisper doom

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d38/27587.jpg
Mandrake - Innocence Weakness
Goth prog death pop

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d3/26952.jpg
Negură Bunget - Vîrstele Pamîntului
Eldritch tangled-vine forest-folk metal

Never even heard fo these glenn. Should be interesting.

That Ea record is pretty great. Wonderful vibe, which I was I want from any atmospheric metal.

The Mandrake is actively not my thing; they seem to be a dash of this thing I dislike with a smidgen of that thing I dislike and then a big dollop of stuff I really, really don't like.

Negură Bunget is for after lunch.

I am going to be late next week btw, will be away from internets until Tuesday.

I love the Negură Bunget record! I'm playing it again this morning; it's keeping me from the Kylesa which is saying something. Just the right mix of elements to grab me, including what sounds like a raging high pipe in "Ochiul Inimii".

Thanks Glenn. I don't know whether you're on the weirdest promo list or what, but year after year there seems to be something you recommend out of left field that pushes my buttons.

I am on no promo lists. I come by all discoveries the old fashioned way: download everything I ever hear of, delete all but .1% after 1 minute of the second song and 10 seconds of the fifth.

Where are you hearing of stuff like Negură Bunget? I need to widen my metal 'net horizons.

Well, I would have told you I found about them on Rolling Metal 2008, but Google says that the person who mentioned them on Rolling Metal 2008 was me, so apparently it was somewhere else. But what I do in situations like this, where I happen across something I didn't know about that seems like it could be a vein of greatness, is search for blogs that review them or post their albums, subscribe to a bunch of them, and then weed them back out again if they turn out to mostly produce goregrind or deathcore or something else I don't need more of...

Although chances are decent that my discovery of Negura Bunget had something to do with either Rotting Christ or Estonia.

Love the idea that you introduced them to yourself; you rewrote the narrative in your mind and were surprised to learn otherwise.

I should do more review hunting and sourcing; when I have in the past I haven't enjoyed the results much, but that's on me as I'm not good at weeding things out - I still have tons of dead blogs in my regular reads folder.

What? Me? Do another week? OK.

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d1/26850.jpg
Kathaarsys: Intuition
Weirdo jazz-fission prog-out

http://www.hellbound.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Nechochwen_lowrescover.gif
Nechochwen: Azimuths to the Otherworld
Ambient tribal metal

http://www.metalkingdom.net/album/img/d1/27000.jpg
Xasthur: Portal of Sorrow
It's always darkest right before the sun gets sucked inside-out

That Xasthur album is his artistic peak. Shame it's his farewell gesture.

I've heard of two of these Glenn! You're losing your touch.

I was just going to come and do mine. I did say I was going to be late..

Kerr, what does the schedule going forward look like?

Just post yours. There's room for everyone

Okay.

Celeste - Morte(s) Nee(s)

http://denovali.com/celeste/mortes400.jpg

Free download here (but the packaging is lovely, so you should buy it): http://www.denovali.com/celeste/

Are they French? Who knows. There seems to be a suspicion this band are not exactly who they seem, but who cares. Blackened Doom of the highest quality.

Murmuure - Murmuure

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-2500715-1287427847.jpeg

http://www.myspace.com/murmuure

Damn if this isn't becoming my album of the year. Avant-Black, like if Zombi put a BM production on everything.

Titan - Sweet Dreams

http://shop.relapse.com/dbimages/sleeves/sweetdreams_362.jpg

http://www.myspace.com/titanaut

Previous releases have been Space/Kraut behemoths with heavy psych overtones, but the move to Relapse adds Steve Moore which pads ut the sound in maybe the ways you'd expect. Awesome.

3 really really good albums there.

I've tried twice to get into Celeste and failed, and Titan didn't appeal to me any more than I expected from the description, but I'm liking Murmuure quite a bit.