Rolling Metal Thread 2009

yeah, I love the new wolves in the throne room ep. best thing they've done to date.

Picked it up on vinyl a few weeks ago when I was in Philadelphia.

where? who is selling metal now that the relapse store is closed?

Relapse's warehouse. I used to work in another life. I even met 'unperson' a few times in person during my time there (although I doubt he remembers).

Relapse's warehouse. I used to work there in another life. I even met 'unperson' a few times in person during my time there (although I doubt he remembers).

so i was streaming the tombs album earlier and couldn't make it past the fourth song. all the black-metal-referencing melodies sounded really really familiar, and not in a good way.

I even met 'unperson' a few times in person during my time there (although I doubt he remembers).

Yeah, I came down there interviewing for what became Carl Schultz's job.

Listening to the live bonus disc on the reissue of Amon Amarth's Once Sent from the Golden Hall right now. I vastly prefer Johan Hegg's current, lower vocals to his earlier, more black-metal-influenced screech, so the live versions of these songs are actually much better, to my ear, than the old studio recordings.

Metal Inquisition has quite an amazing investigation of Manowar's life in Auburn, New York when they're not playing to tens of thousands of people in Europe:

http://metalinquisition.blogspot.com/2009/02/metal-inquisition-investigative-report_20.html

BAN
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awesome inbestigative reporting

by which i mean omfg lol dr peppar

Swallow The Sun are fucking great

metal inquisition article is kind of a bummer. ;__; I like metal inquisition and all but the mean-spiritedness gives me a vice mag vibe sometimes.

wasn't feeling the new buried inside but maybe I just wasn't in an angry hardcore guy screaming at me at 8am mood. switched over to the new blut aus nord instead. loving it on first listen. surprisingly melodic for a hypnotic, repetitive black metal album. (especially after that dissonance fest a couple years back.) plus, it swings.

last few tracks are especially strong.

Dudes, you were all right about that God Forbid album. Pretty awesome.

lissening to tombs. liveblog! first track = boring, though scary-pretty at times. screamo vox a huge problem, gotta admit. almost gave up, but "golden eyes", holy shit! esp dig the straight-up, heavy-handed rock drumming. first half of "beneath the toxic jungle" is great too. then it drags again. don't dig the stonefaced blackened postrock when they play it straight. want more catchy shit. and the ambient stuff is straight filler.

second half (side 2) ups gaze quotient, for the better. "the divide" could easily be some midwest amrep also ran. hammerhead? really, really prefer the less hysterical vocals here. dude should pull back more often. good shit, fucking standout track. jeez, now that i think about it, hammerhead/vaz seem like the template for a lot of this record's tricks. beyond the more obvious godflesh thing i mean. "merrimack" goes back to the wounded howling (with some embarassing "look inside your soul" lyrics), but melodicism saves it. kinda started to tune back out after that.

really nice guitar tones throughout, raw and sharp, albini-ish, kinda, but thicker, more lo-end luv. clink clanky junkyard cymbals are weird, but maybe that's just the rip. good record, though the harder they try to crush my soul, the more bored i get. serious godflesh vibes on the 2nd half of "filled with secrets".

super short! without the short interludes, only about 33 min. probably for the best at this stage, though i'm surprised they don't stretch out more.

^ maybe that sounds too unimpressed/bitchy. i dug it, spun it twice, will listen again.

maybe i gotta go back to the stream and try the second half. i was def. not crazy about the recording or vox, and when they would toss in a blastbeat and black metal riff it just sounded kind rote; not like they felt it needed to be there.

I'm glad the Tombs isn't more than 33 minutes. Any longer would have been overkill...this album gets it right, concise and catchy.

Metal Inquisition has quite an amazing investigation of Manowar's life in Auburn, New York when they're not playing to tens of thousands of people in Europe

So let's see here. They invade the privacy of older acts in unfortunate circumstances but can't afford to pay for their own domain separate from blogspot.com. Or get the font in their captions right. Or distinguish a photo of an air-conditioner from a microwave oven.

I found that Manowar "expose" very cruel and tasteless.

A band known for it's taste..

I don't remember the band ever being cruel. They're having fun. What's wrong with that?

Never said there was!

They invade the privacy of older acts in unfortunate circumstances but can't afford to pay for their own domain separate from blogspot.com. Or get the font in their captions right. Or distinguish a photo of an air-conditioner from a microwave oven

or worse yet (and more likely) just doesn't care enough about his own writing to. a skilled writer could have used this information to paint a sad and profound portrait about what happens to bands that are at some point able to quit their day jobs for a music career, and spend the prime of their lives doing something for love that won't continue to pay the bills once they get too old to keep going. i have NO idea if this is the case with these guys, but it seems like something that could easily happen to musicians.

just saying it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than "lol they r poor"

"They don't live in a castle. OMGZ. Such loserz!!!!"

when all is said and done, i wonder who has seen and done more awesome things in their lives: metal internet blogger, or...

http://www.metalyou.com/img/history/p2.jpg

just read that blog, you guys werent kidding about it being cruel.

Yes, now no one will ever mistake them (or it) for being sissies to charity or the pure milk of human kindness.

pretty fucked up, imo

I didn't like MI's mocking of Eric Adams' drywalling job, that was unnecessary. However, anything that brings Joey DeMaio down a peg or two is fine.

How have Man O War (they) sinned? C'mon, tell us, how they've been predatory
assholes. Other than the big crime of being absurd and harmless boasters for over fifteen
years (which many of their fans know is a joke and enjoy.)

Y'know, there's an ocean of difference between saying someone's made a mediocre to lame
record and just randomly condemning a group because their rentals or properties aren't on the
Santa Barbara, CA, mesa. (And do you even know where this is?) I'm astonished this requires a protest.

How many metal communities could withstand scrutiny nailing them on not being economically superior? It seems to me there was a documentary on Anvil last year, one which was sincere and painful but which everyone chose to ignore. Who watched that?

OK, let's just agree to shit on those who boast and don't go multi-platinum in the US.

Y'know, if you're going to critique groups -- a valid thing. Do it on the basis of taste and leave the character and class assassinations aside -- unless they've really asked for it. (Country rock comes to mind as a better target than metal.) Twenty years ago anyone could have written they didn't like Manowar's first album because it was cheesy and OTT. (I really liked it.) It featured a vocal overdub by Orson Welles, the guy who made the alleged best movie ever, Citizen Kane, but who was better known then for endorsing cheap wine.

Did you learn any of this reading Metal Inquisition? Nope. And I've just tossed it off the
cuff. Wow. What a bunch of probers they are. The Manowar guys are lower middle classmen. Nominate that blog for a Pulitzer.

I can see how people reading that as an introductory point to Metal Inquisition would be sort of cheesed off by it but it fits into a really large proportion of what they write, which is this completely self-mocking and backhanded celebration of pseudo-idolatry in metal and, like, being a kid and thinking that bands who give it all that on stage must be really living the high life... then figuring out in later life that they're actually hopeless broke cases like yourself

Oh, so they're doing a community service by teaching kids that being a metal star isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Er, no

As a longtime Metal Inquisition reader, I'm gonna speak up for them. I think Mencap's got it right - look at the title of the blog: "Metal Inquisition." In an admittedly often mean-spirited way, they deflate metal, looking at where these guys really live (they did one on Joey Belladonna recently, too, though it wasn't nearly as in-depth as the Manowar one) or what they do outside of performing and recording, but at the same time they make fun of their own ridiculousness as obsessed fans of the genre. But it's done from a position of real fandom - I have no doubt that those guys really love Manowar's music, because who would do such a thing about a band they didn't care about? Look at their recent post on Suicidal Tendencies, or their whole "wigger slam" thing - they're obsessed with this weird sub-sub-variant of death metal that seems entirely confined to MySpace, and have written numerous posts lovingly describing ultra-obscure bands no one but meth-addled teenagers could ever possibly like. These guys are fans, and I think the post was funny and informative all at once. Besides, as Michael O'Donoghue said, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy."

^^^

seriously, read any of their posts about their lives as teenage metal nerds before you get too upset, dudes.

reading through this now and they've got some funny stuff. the post about "screamo crunk" is classic.

i thought it was funny. and mean as hell, and way too long, but the funny bits are funny. i laughted at "a fifteen year old American coupe with four cylinders that puts out a 'meh' inducing 110 horse power." (mostly due to "meh" nostalgia, but still.) also: "Joey, I don't care if you are the King Of Metal. You better be the King Of Weeding, go out there and take care of that driveway!" i dunno. i like the dumb shit.

meh nostalgia?

yeah things are becoming a little more clear

they are nerds ergo it is funny

:/

that site is great if for no other reason than directing me to this essential campaign:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ImYY_HdAPxI/SQpvSNATdvI/AAAAAAAAAAM/aVgD3BpPUA8/s1600-h/StriborgCampaign.jpg

ford probes are funny, striborg is really funny, talking about the price of people's houses isn't really that funny.

^

What everyone in this thread has failed to grasp, as well as the bros at Metal Inquisition, is that those aren't the houses where each member of Manowar lives. Those are each member's secret entrance to the cavernous Hall of Metal craved deep below the earth's surface.

"carved" too, dammit.

Ha, that could very well be true.

Say what you will about Manowar, I can't help but admire their little self-made empire. Few bands have that kind of freedom to allow them to be not so much musicians as auteurs.

craved could work, maybe like "craven"?

Whatever about the Manowar thing, Metal Inquisition are totally right about Origin.

"The Great Plains" sounds ridiculously great. Is Scale the Summit like that, generally?

I also love the Wolves In The Throne Room EP