Rolling Metal 2017

Cloud Rat apparently have three more splits coming out this year.

What is the best split

to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the unplayed b-side

BOOOOOOOONANA

Thanks for those Cloud Rat links! That split with Crevasse has what's probably my new fave CR song in 'Fish in a Pool'. And I've also discovered Crevasse, who are from the same neck of the woods as Dead Neanderthals. So thanks again!

testing

oh come on this thread is innocent fun don't poison this one too

wow that Mortalized from upthread

those vocals are crazy.....fantastic riffs too

if Gridlink is anything like this i'm gonna be sad I ignored them for so long

Oh, you've gotta hear Gridlink. They were amazing. Especially the third album.

https://handshakeinc.bandcamp.com/album/longhena

omFG why did I wait so long to hear them, this is fabulous

^Yeah! That was my favourite album of 2014.

I think Pallbearer is finally clicking for me. I don't think this new one is such a big leap from their previous stuff, but I'm finding it more engaging. Maybe I'm just starved for some metal to listen to.

same here, gridlink were ~amazing~

Darke Complex, the nü-metal band I wrote about for Stereogum, turned the headline into a T-shirt. I couldn't be prouder.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7xjIwfVMAAtQkc.jpg

Noice!

love longhena, but have to admit i prefer the instrumental "karaoke" version. jon's vocals wear me down quick.

Slagmaur was discussed above when the band came to Brooklyn for a one-off festival appearance. The band is about to release Thill Smitts Terror, the band's first new release since 2009.

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/files/2017/03/slagmaurthillsmittsterror.jpg?w=630&h=567&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89

I was fortunate enough to get a digital promo of the record and it's brilliant. It orchestral but not orchestrated, it's heady but still heavy, it's unique in a genre that seems more open-ended than most but also has a lot of cliquishness as well. One gets the feeling they don't care. And as someone who adores Goth and industrial music, it's always nice to see those flavors incorporated into metal, hold the cheese.

Invisible Oranges is premiering the album that comes out 3/31 via Osmose Productions. Joseph Schafer says,

Thill Smitts Terror calls on black metal’s history and the underground’s current fascination with industrial music. Slagmaur’s songs share dense, layered production and vague choral arrangements with both symphonic black metal and Deathspell Omega’s coterie of disciples, but their steady, deterministic drums, and ever-present synthesizers seem kindred to Valborg, or even Code Orange. There’s no frostbitten forests in Slagmaur’s fairytale soundscape. Instead, the dilapidated industrial environments of the ‘Silent Hill’ video game franchise comes to mind. It’s the lind of record I can’t imagine receiving any kind of hype five years ago, but it’s exactly what black metal enthusiasts running the raw and atmospheric tape circuit ought to consider.

i know discussion of them is buried upthread but the new lantern album cooks

omg Slagmaur is actually going to happen!? I will struggle to rein in my expectations.

I'm reflexively a little worried about a band with "White" in their name, but I really enjoyed the teaser track from White Ward's upcoming "Futility Report."
For those who don't mind post-hxc in their black metal, or possibly the other way around.

https://dmp666.bandcamp.com/album/futility-report

that track rules

it reminds of something but I can't place it right now

Expander - Endless Computer

Sci-fi thrashpunk from Austin w/ an album forthcoming on NWN. Only a couple tracks up on their bandcamp atm, but both great.

xhuxk recommended Hammer King on Facebook and it's a hoot, really hooky power/trade metal. Dudes love hammers and kings

Is trade metal an autocorrect mishap or is it an exciting new subgenre I haven't heard

http://cornelius.rockpaperscissors.biz/dispatch/22164/iCdjb40w8Yszzzq7rkTmAQ

In the beginning is the breath. It roots all music, from Japanese Zen chant to hard rock anthem. Bay Area-based Cornelius Boots, woodwind maverick and shakuhachi pioneer, sensed this.

“I had a dream when my clarinet professor told me to try to play an etude like Eddie Vedder would sing it,” Boots recalls. “I tried it and started to write my pieces. Tone issues I had struggled with began to resolve themselves. I could play my own piece, or play like a singer, and then quickly put up a Mozart piece, and it would come together.”

These experiments culminated in Holy Flute (release: May 12, 2017), an unexpected homage to where bamboo meets metal. Boots’ shakuhachi resonates, sighs, and roars in new versions of Dio, Sabbath, Danzig, Led Zeppelin, and Lamb of God classics and on originals that extend the tradition. It’s not an easy way to go, even if it bears a faint resemblance to a novelty gimmick. “I don’t recommend it as an approach. I’m doing this with a very discerning intention,” says Boots. “For every Black Sabbath song that works, there are twenty you shouldn’t try to do. It’s a picky process.”

mannnnnnn that new Lantern is great. I liked the first one and I'm usually big into lo-fi recordings but the first one at times is hard to parse due to the lack of clarity in the sound (although it's still great).

This Entheos album 'Le Zahir' is reaaaaally good. Progressive black metal or something.

https://entheosqc.bandcamp.com/album/le-zahir

another vote for lantern 2. listened to it a while back and dug it okay, but gave it another spin last week & it really clicked. great album. hadn't heard the 1st, which now sounds like a half-finished sketch.

Oops trade meant trad

Btw earlnash if you can read this your band is good you should post it itt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb32OC3AIGk

Haven't really posted any of my music on ILM before, so I checked a bit. My band just put this out this week. A guy in Greece who does a doom/stoner metal page on Facebook with 24k users added it up today. Got curious what some of you guys on here would think. Thanks.

new Mastodon is pretty sweet, fairly consistent effort for them. lots of hooks, a few spacey/psychedelic moments, catchy riffs.

I dig....

Yeah, I didn't like any of the singles, but the album as a whole works really well. Better than the last one, I think, but I haven't listened to the last one in a long time.

3rding the Lantern

Cornelius Boots

Involuntarily shouted "OH FUCK OFFFFFF" when I saw this name.

We're a quarter of the way through the year and here is the current metal(lic) chart on Rate Your Music for the year...

 1.	Converge - Jane Live
 2.	Exquirla - Para quienes aún viven
 3.	Immolation - Atonement
 4.	Accept - Restless & Live - Blind Rage - Live in Europe 2015
 5.	Soen - Lykaia
 6.	Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
 7.	The Great Old Ones - EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy
 8.	Pain of Salvation - In the Passing Light of Day
 9.	Junius - Eternal Rituals for the Accretion of Light
10.	Planning for Burial - Below the House
11.	Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
12.	Pillorian - Obsidian Arc
13.	Kreator - Gods of Violence
14.	Fen - Winter
15.	Havok - Conformicide
16.	Overkill - The Grinding Wheel
17.	Persefone - Aathma
18.	Sanctuary - Inception
19.	Dumal - The Lesser God
20.	Wolfheart - Tyhjyys
21.	The Flight of Sleipnir - Skadi
22.	Benighted - Necrobreed
23.	Wiegedood - De Doden Hebben Het Goed II
24.	Pallbearer - Heartless
25.	Bloodbound - War of Dragons
26.	Cellador - Off the Grid
27.	Firewind - Immortals
28.	Rosk - Miasma
29.	Horisont - About Time
30.	Bathsheba - Servus
31.	Beheaded - Beast Incarnate
32.	Analepsy - Atrocities from Beyond
33.	Sunless - Urraca
34.	Black Cilice - Banished from Time
35.	Black Star Riders - Heavy Fire
36.	Dodecahedron - Kwintessens
37.	Mors Principium Est - Embers of a Dying World
38.	Eclipse - Monumentum
39.	Au champ des morts - Dans la joie
40.	Ungfell - Tôtbringære
41.	Xandria - Theater of Dimensions
42.	Violet Cold - Anomie
43.	Nova Collective - The Further Side
44.	Battle Beast - Bringer of Pain
45.	Ex Deo - The Immortal Wars
46.	Hour of Penance - Cast the First Stone
47.	Dopelord - Children of the Haze
48.	Striker - Striker
49.	Grails - Chalice Hymnal
50.	Laster - Ons vrije fatum

I'd be interested in people's Q1 picks. I've only really listened to Pallbearer, Power Trip, and the Cloud Rat stuff.

lol that Pain of Salvation is way too high. average at best

my list will only come into being when Cleric release the new one

I'll vouch for the Beheaded (which Phil recced and is dope) and the Hour of Penance and Overkill.

Yeah, Rate Your Music tends to overrate power metal.

Haven't heard anywhere near a majority of those, but these are the ones I rep for:

3. Immolation - Atonement
5. Soen - Lykaia
6. Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
11. Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
13. Kreator - Gods of Violence
22. Benighted - Necrobreed
24. Pallbearer - Heartless
27. Firewind - Immortals
31. Beheaded - Beast Incarnate
44. Battle Beast - Bringer of Pain

It's not so much that RYM tends to overrate power metal as everyone else tends to underrate power metal, btw.

And Converge - the high ratings for everything they put out are a complete mystery to me.

Obvious standouts for me so far this year include: Ikina, Battle Beast, Ravenscry, Fen, Heretoir.

Black Anvil, Ungfell and Todesstoss are what I've been digging this year, Stabscotch's record is my AOTY so far though I think it's more strictly noise-rock than metal. I'm really impressed by Dodecahedron's new one after the first listen too.

In alphabetical order...

2017 Metal Albums I Own
The Afternoon Gentlemen - Still Pissed 2012-2015
Circle Of Dust - Machines of our Disgrace
Junius - Eternal Rituals for the Accretion of Light
King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering
Kreator - Gods Of Violence
Laster - Ons Vrije Fatum
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Overkill - The Grinding Wheel
Uniform - Wake In Fright
Woe - Hope Attrition

2017 Metal Albums On Wish List
Anomalie - Visions
Anvil - 5 Original Albums in 1 Box
Bathsheba - Servus
Black Anvil - As Was
Disharmony - Goddamn The Sun
Dread Sovereign - For Doom The Bell Tolls
Falls of Rauros - Vigilance Perrenial
Fen - Winter
Horn - Turm Am Hang
Light of the Morning Star - Nocta
Lorn - Arrayed Claws
Naudiz - Wulfasa Kunja
Obituary - Obituary
Pallbearer - Heartless
Pyriphlegethon - The Murky Black of Eternal Night
Rebel Wizard - Triumph Of Gloom
Solitary - Dise​ased Hear​t of Soci​ety
Venenum - Trance Of Death
Violet Cold - Anomie

This is the kind of stuff that doesn't really get a genre tag that makes any sense to me, like progressive sludge or stoner prog or something but this new Jagged Vision is shaping up nicely.

http://jaggedvision.bandcamp.com/album/death-is-this-world

― szyslakial moescreancy (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ)

shit I'll ride for in 2017

Ruinous--Graves of Ceaseless Death
Obituary--Obituary
Beheaded--Beast Incarnate
Immolation--Atonement
Hour of Penance--Cast the First Stone
Midnight--Shox of Violence
Lantern--II
Iron Reagan--Crossover Ministry
Mastodon--Emperor of Sand
Overkill--The Grinding Wheel
Power Trip--Nightmare Logic
Kreator--Gods of Violence

actually been a pretty slow purchase year in 2017 so far, a lot of what i've recently acquired is from 2016

I checked out the Havoc record. Heard a shitty funk bass line that sounded like something Robert Trujillo threw away two decades ago and a rant against supposed political correctness and shut it off. Pretty sure the rest is not genius.

Oh yeah, the Body Count album is out now. I'm gonna check that out today.

xp Yeah I want to play that record to someone next time I hear the argument that metal should become more "political." We don't need a bunch of mini-Mustaines running around so please stick to nameless horrors and space and forests and shit, thanks.