Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Horns in the air!

I just got my last mailorder of 2013 in yesterday's mail! Finally just now getting Avenger's Bohemian Dark Metal, which is kinda ridiculous given how much I loved Feast of Anger, Joy of Despair. Also two on Dark Descent, big favorite label recently: the Fulmination double CD and the Craven Idol one.

let us know how that avenger is pls.

fuck dude it's great. just spent the last hour in the kitchen with it. riffs riff riffs atmosphere atmosphere atmosphere. long songs with multiple parts that develop from each other really naturally, pretty epic stuff. I have this bad feeling that the English translation of the lyrics comes via Google Translate but who gives a shit. also, aero jr. learned how to say "mosh." he doesn't finish his words a lot of the time so it comes out "ma" but in repeated trials as I moshed around a kitchen stool he pointed and said "ma!" and also when I stopped moshing, he yelled "ma!" and when I said "what do you mean?" he pantomimed moshing by closing his hands into fists and alternately raising and lowering them west coast style. so as we see Avenger is fucking awesome as usual.

lol ok that is the ringingest of ringing endorsements

that's so cute

Happy New year every one.. bring on the heavy, the grindy, the scummy! HAILS!!!

...the hellbeard

First show I see this year will be Wrekmeister Harmonies on Friday with Corrections House and The Body. Ready to ring in the new year with ears ringing.

The only non-work show on my schedule so far is Amon Amarth/Enslaved/Skeletonwitch, which I really want to see but might skip because it's on a Tuesday night.

Enslaved is worth the effort. Wish that tour was coming here.

Very slow going in my part of the world, as it always is when it's this cold. My first show just might be 70,000 Tons in a little over three weeks.

Weird lull here, too. There's a one-off Pinkish Black/Pallbearer show on the 10th, but my first touring gig might be KEN Mode/Inter Arma/Russian Circles in early February.

My first show of the year is going to be the back of my eyelids.

Actually, Toxic Holocaust/Exhumed/Ramming Speed/Mammoth Grinder is happening at a venue about a 10 minute drive from my apartment on the 26th, so maybe I'll drag myself over there.

should reshuffle the bill for optimal seo: 'exhumed ramming speed mammoth grinder toxic holocaust'

I'm gonna go see Honduran in a warehouse in Oakland on fri with some rad local openers..

Mordy, I assume you already know about Narjahanam, right? Rotting Christ : Greece :: Narjahanam : Bahrain. I hadn't, but their album Wa Ma Khufiya Kana A'atham hit Rdio last week, and I'm just getting to it. I see elsewhere they're compared to Orphaned Land, but this album, at least, seems much darker than that to me.

i hadn't but i'll check them out!

xxxposts: Pallbearer is playing a one-off in Portland 2/11, too. What are they up to with these sorta random shows? Are they recording in one or both of those places, I wonder?

Recording in Portland

Cool.

Pallbearer/Pinkish Black would be a rad bill.

They've become good friends and try to pair up a few shows in each band's hometown once or twice a year. Little Rock and Fort Worth are close enough they can pull it off.

Everyone welcome.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ILMrollingMetal/

All added will be made co-owners too

Any interested writers, I have a new project coming out Feb 4. All press welcome:

AVRAM - Metal Noam e.p. -- we wrote and recorded metal songs that use actual Noam Chomsky speeches in place of vocals (with his permission). One tune black/thrash, one doom number, one hair ballad. All hilarious, yet lyrically chilling and poignant.

Self-recorded, mixed by Billy Anderson, mastered by Justin Weis, artwork by Sam Ford.

All proceeds go to a charity of Noam's choice (or as we like to call it, "the Noam retirement fund.")

Hit me over email (heavymetalladiesnight - gmail) if you want the advance link.

Thanks and metal nerds unite!

My promo of the new Grand Magus just got here. Weekend: made.

It is delightfully dumb.

No idea what my first show of the year will be.
I got rough mixes / demos for a couple of records I'll be working on later this year. New Earth and Pallbearer are going to make the summer pretty exciting.

Another year, another NAILS album? pretty please.

Well, rocky, they put out two things last year, right? Didn't they do an EP as well, or was that the end of 2012.. I'm sure they'll have another thing put out soon, if they are on that type of output

I can't believe those dudes are from Ventura County. I mean, no wonder they're so pissed, but...

lol!!

Sean: I was just being hopeful.

barranca jagger (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ): are you in the 805?

Just stumbled across Knuckle Duster, the second album by Asomvel, which came out back in October. It lives up to its name—pure 200mph punk-meets-NWOBHM-meets-bar fight soundtrack. On Spotify.

Guys we only have 11 ballots in for ~~~ ILM METAL POLL 2013 - ALBUMS & TRACKS VOTING & CAMPAIGN THREAD~~~ (VOTING ENDS FRIDAY JANUARY 10th 11.59pm UK time/6.59pm EST) )

VOTING CLOSES THIS FRIDAY
Can you please all vote if you can. It would be much appreciated.

Yeah, vote!

According to my stats calculations from metal-archives data, the top 10 reviewed metal albums of 2013 are:

1. Stratovarius · Nemesis
2. Satan · Life Sentence
3. Atlantean Kodex · The White Goddess
4. Darkthrone · The Underground Resistance
5. Voivod · Target Earth
6. In Solitude · Sister
7. The Ocean · Pelagial
8. Carcass · Surgical Steel
9. Ghost · Infestissumam
10. Cultes des Ghoules · Henbane

http://www.furia.com/em/releases-year.html

by my count full 1/2 of the bands on that list are at least 20 years old, correct? (Voivod, Darkthrone, Carcass, Satan, Stratovarius)

you saying metal archive users are old farts who hate modern bands?

I dunno, 11-20 includes Bölzer, Hatriot and Sulphur Aeon, who are all pretty new. And Black Sabbath. Seems like an OK variety. Established bands attract more reviewers, of course. And remember that in this case I'm imposing the ranking with math, the reviewers aren't ranking anything, so don't over-attribute motive to the results...

hehehe hat riot

Kim finally started her own zine.

http://necrolustzine.com/

We're sorry.

Service is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue.

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Yeah, I've been trying to check it out most of the day and keep getting that same error.

Is that most reviewed or best reviewed, Glenn

necrolustzine.com works for me.

Best reviewed. Follow the link and you can see both the scores and the counts...

YES! Now 2014 may begin...

Slough Feg launch title track and pre-orders for “Digital Resistance”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuTgTrhzUCo

http://www.metalblade.com/us/covers/SloughFeg-DigitalResistance.jpg

Slough Feg have launched the title track from their brand new album, “Digital Resistance.” The record was recorded with Justin Weis (who produced the album with vocalist/guitarist Mike Scalzi) at Trakworx in South San Francisco from January-October 2013 andmarks the band’s first new studio album since 2010′s “The Animal Spirits.” When asked if the new album was a concept album, singer and vocalist Mike Scalzi explained that “Digital Resistance“is a concept album in the sense that The Beatles Sgt. Pepper is a concept album. “It has somewhat of a consistent lyrical theme that runs through several of the songs, but not every song— it is not a concept album in the sense that our “Traveller” album is.” Listen now and pre-order your copy at metalblade.com/sloughfeg.

Mike Scalzi elaborates on the concept behind the title track: “This song represents a last ditch effort to escape the inevitable. There will be no victory over technology– nor should there be in a broader sense— but I do fear what we are becoming. Biological evolution moves so slowly that we cannot perceive it. But social and moral evolution may come in great jolts or leaps. This can be dangerous to the preservation the species, biologically and morally/socially. But it’s also just fun to sing about ‘killing technology’ (like that other band from Canada did a long time ago). It’s a very dramatic subject. That’s why I call it “Voi-Vaudeville”.”

Scalzi discusses the cover art: “The artwork for this album was, as usual, a bit of a struggle. I had no idea how to represent an album called “Digital Resistance”. We finally decided that we wanted the background of Kiss’s “destroyer” album (a city in ruins), but instead of a rendering of our band in the forefront, I wanted the space-dog (Vargr) from “Traveller.” But we’d already used him, so I thought about wolves. I thought maybe a symbol (involving a wolf) representing the birth of a civilization might be appropriate. And that’s what we did—- we put Romulus and Remus, the two mythological children who founded Rome, and were raised by a wolf, in front of this destroyed civilization. What does it have to do with “Digital Resistance”? Modern primitivism? An atavistic civilization? Nothing whatsoever? Well, I suppose only time will tell.”
So what does Mike hope the listener will walk away with after listening to “Digital Resistance“? “Hopefully just enjoyment, entertainment. Perhaps a little bit of a lesson about the dangers of technology’s tendency to sort of dumb us down when things become so easy. The more we indulge in technology and allow it to do everything for us, especially allowing it to think for us (as in the case of looking everything up on your phone or computer rather than trying to remember and retain information), the more physically and mentally “flabby” we become. So there is somewhat of an urgent message, or complaint about this increasingly human tendency.”

Digital Resistance is set for release in North America on February 18, 2014 and will see SLOUGH FEG on the road with a few West Coast shows scheduled in March with the guys’ “sister band” Bible of the Devil, from Chicago. The band is hoping to do a short tour of Europe in May/June, and then hopefully to Chicago in July to do the “Ale Horn of Power” Festival.

Slough Feg is:
Mike Scalzi – Guitars/Vocals
Angelo Tringali – Guitars
Adrian Maestas – Bass
Harry Cantwell – Drums

Digital Resistance track listing:
1. Analogue Avengers / Bertrand Russell’s Sex Den
2. Digital Resistance
3. Habeas Corpsus
4. Magic Hooligan
5. Ghastly Appendage
6. Laser Enforcer
7. The Price Is Nice
8. Curriculum Vitae
9. The Luddite
10. Warriors Dusk

Great news!

It's a mighty fine album. Better than the last one, I think.

if you click on the order in uk button it takes you to amazon and no sign of the album.

As I just said on Twitter, metal must be doing way better than I think if Metal Blade is willing to sign Slough Feg and Relapse is willing to sign Ringworm. Slough Feg's last album hasn't even sold 1000 copies yet, and Ringworm's last one has sold a little under 1600 copies.

I wonder how the Slough Feg reissues did for them last year.

Well in Slough Feg's case its time a good metal band was given a chance. An alternative to Avenged Sevenfold and Attila is needed!

Slough Feg are terrible. You want a trad metal band that deserves to be huge? Grand Magus is that band.

I hate to be that guy but I think Grand Magus were much better earlier in their career.

What, when they were doomier? Nah. Hammer of the North and The Hunt are definite peaks for me; the new one hasn't 100% won me over yet, but it's still really solid. It's just kind of all-of-a-piece and doesn't have any real standout tracks that I've noticed so far.

The new Grand Magus needed some time to grow on me last month, but I'm really into it now. Not as hooky and Rainbowy as The Hunt, but very, very solid front to back. They can do no wrong, I've been into that band for a long time now.

Long-time lurker... Anyone else thinking the Aevangelist album got kind of lost in the year-end shuffle? It seems to beat Gnaw Their Tongues in the found sound/classical samples/weird chaotic noises game. But brutal as f--- too, in a Streetcleaner kind of way, with accomplished musicianship and actual riffs.

I think the big thing for a lot of critics is that it technically came out in 2012.

I just got emailed a promo on that - it's being reissued on vinyl. Gonna check it out this week.

It's from 2012? Had no idea. I only started seeing reviews of it recently. Anyway, it's pretty rad. Need it on vinyl.

I'm talking about the "Omen Ex Simulacra" album btw. Are you sure it's 2012? Everything I'm seeing says November 2013.

Ah, I was talking about their debut, De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis.

Phil -- have you ever seen Slough Feg live? I don't listen to any of their albums. But every time I see them, they blow the roof off. It's a superlative performance. But I won't argue on the studio output.

Early contender for album of the year:

Dad Metal

hai kvlt ppl you probably saw this already but a friend posted it on facebook so i thought i'd share in case you hadn't
http://www.cvltnation.com/world-burns-bolt-thrower-live-1993-now-showing/

23 HOURS LEFT TO VOTE
~~~ ILM METAL POLL 2013 - ALBUMS & TRACKS VOTING & CAMPAIGN THREAD~~~ (VOTING ENDS FRIDAY JANUARY 10th 11.59pm UK time/6.59pm EST) )

I'm really enjoying this Aevangelist album, now that I'm finally getting around to listening to it. In the subgenre I think of as "monster music", like Mitochondrion and Ulcerate. More waves of noise and groaning than anything rhythmic.

turns out I'm going to MDF this year, I am pretty fuckin amped about it

my body has been too fucked up for the last 6 months or so for me to commit to getting in the pit but I may actually ask a doctor to give me clearance to go in just once

Kinda got to bring the doctor with you and make him block for you.

I don't know a bunch of those MDF bands, but I ran the list through my playlist generator and made an Rdio list with a song from each one that was available: http://rd.io/x/QUPlBzMoOuY/

~~~ 2014 ILM METAL POLL TRACKS & ALBUMS COUNTDOWN! ~~~ (Tracks top 30 first then Albums)

I just got my last mailorder of 2013 in yesterday's mail! Finally just now getting Avenger's Bohemian Dark Metal, which is kinda ridiculous given how much I loved Feast of Anger, Joy of Despair. Also two on Dark Descent, big favorite label recently: the Fulmination double CD and the Craven Idol one.

― combination hair (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, January 1, 2014 8:33 AM

yeah, this is pretty epic, good strangled vox

eagerly anticipating: new Gridlink album Longhena next month! the first track sounds great and seems to me to edge a little closer to the more melodic Hayaino Daisuki stuff:

Gridlink - "Ketsui"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ZprczVr_k

unfortunately also sounds like this album will be Gridlink/Jon Chang's last; statement via facebook:

In a few weeks you guys will lay your hands on the last GridLink record and probably the last record I will ever make. It wasn't always going to be that way, but during the recording I realized that this was the end of the line for me. I don't think I will make a better record and I don't want to be in a band with anyone other than Takafumi Matsubara, who was cashing out his chips as well. This is a hard genre to play in. I've loved the style since I first heard it in the late 80's, via Napalm Death, however I have been notoriously critical of the genre and really only ever liked a handful of bands that play "grind"(I have gone so far as to say 99% of bands that call themselves grindcore are just playing short death metal songs). It's earned me a lot of scorn over the years but I haven't lost any sleep over it

I think about how lucky I have been to work with such talented people over the past 20+ years creating music in a genre that few can understand or engage with. I'm especially lucky to have met and worked with people like Rob Marton and Takafumi Matsubara, people who were not content to play in that space, but were committed to carving out a whole new sub-genre that was distinctly their own. Then there's the percussion team of Witte and Fajardo, both guys who were the absolute best at what they did, eclipsing not only their peers but those that inspired them to something more. And then there's the bass, which I grudgingly agreed to but turned out pretty damn good LOL

To this day, I am still surprised anyone listens to or vaguely understands any of the music I've been a part of. So once again, I find myself saying goodbye. I'm going to be focusing on writing new graphic novels, making video games and films, etc. Feel free to tag along.

Yeah the Gridlink is pretty damn good, and OTM with the Hayaino Daisuki nod - it's like a merger of those two projects. Also, it's pretty prog by Gridlink's standards, at a bit over 20 minutes run time!

Not to mention the instrumental that sounds like Starless-era King Crimson to me. (No, I'm not joking.)

oh man, excited for this! hope chang gets bored watching anime during his free time and grinds again. I've def come to view his involvement in a project as a serious mark of quality.

Phil -- have you ever seen Slough Feg live? I don't listen to any of their albums. But every time I see them, they blow the roof off. It's a superlative performance. But I won't argue on the studio output.

I'll argue. Start with last year's nicely priced reissue set of Twilight Of The Idols (1999), Down Among The Dead Men (2000) and Traveller (2003). I don't see how anyone who likes that type of music could say those albums are terrible.

This one is pretty brilliant. The Simpsons featured Judas Priest in the last episode but erroneously had a character call the band "death metal." Apparently the ire of thousands of raised, angry fists reached the show's creators who issued an apology of sorts with Bart's ubiquitous introductory chalk board mea culpa:

http://metalinjection.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/The-Simpsons-Judas-Priest-is-not-death-metal.jpg

I got bored with the Simpsons but should definitely watch that episode.

Don't forget everyone to join us on the rollout. Some really great albums so far on 101-83.

~~~ 2014 ILM METAL POLL TRACKS & ALBUMS COUNTDOWN! ~~~ (Tracks top 30 first then Albums)

Wow I thought for sure that Bart pic was fan art. If it's really directly from the Simpsons, then I have to say, "apology accepted!"

and really only ever liked a handful of bands that play "grind"(I have gone so far as to say 99% of bands that call themselves grindcore are just playing short death metal songs). It's earned me a lot of scorn over the years but I haven't lost any sleep over it

I agree with this statement!

Looks like Graveyard and Bombus are touring together this spring. That's a sweet bill.

If you haven't seen Graveyard, you need to see Graveyard. INSANELY good live band.

I haven't seen Graveyard.

The new Avichi just kinda dropped my jaw. Their (his) last album wasn't anything extraordinary but this might be. Comes out next week on PL. Black metal that manages to sound modern without wobbling into other subgenres.
http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/catharsis-absolute

glenn m on pazz n jop results:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2014/01/pazz_and_jop_tabulation_notes.php

• Enthusiasm scores (the average number of points awarded by each voter, which can range individually from five to 30) favor the extremes. Four of the top 10 albums by enthusiasm are metal (In Solitude, Black Sabbath, Locrian, Carcass), and three of the others (Dean Blunt, Autre Ne Veut, Julia Holter) are conversely atmospheric and oblique. The top of the full Enthusiasm table is quite a bit more adventurous than the raw winners list, and well worth poking through for new discoveries. At the bottom, the top 10 album with the lowest enthusiasm score is Haim's Days Are Gone, whose 9.6 average indicates that voters actually went out of their way to change the suggested 10-points-per-album default in order to properly quantify the limpness of their support. Sky Ferreira's Night Time, My Time would be ninth by simple vote count, but drops to 16th on points. The lowest enthusiasm score for any album with at least five votes is the Bon Iver spin-off Volcano Choir's Repave, which managed a remarkable 6.3.

• If those aren't quite adventurous enough, the Kvltosis table re-ranks the albums with an inverse weighting by how popular each voter's tastes skew, to deliberately look for intriguing anomalies. This reveals even more underground metal (SubRosa, Gorguts, Ghost B.C., Inter Arma, Windhand) and a variety of contrastingly rootsier folk/world/psychedelia (Tedeschi Trucks Band, Wayne Shorter, Mavis Staples, Rokia Traoré, Tal National, William Onyeabor). The Kvltosis winner (the album that people who don't tend to agree with anybody kind of agree on) is Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's English Electric. (Did you know OMD had a new album this year?) At the other end, the least kvlty album, and thus arguably the one even more definitively representative of the voters' aggregate tastes than the raw winners, is Miley Cyrus's Bangerz. Let this modulate your opinion of the whole enterprise however it must.

some album placements… i don't think i missed any before #89

19 Deafheaven, Sunbather
Deathwish Points: 361
Mentions: 35
37 Carcass, Surgical Steel
Nuclear Blast Points: 220
Mentions: 17
64 Black Sabbath, 13
Vertigo Points: 120
Mentions: 9
68 Gorguts, Colored Sands
Season of Mist Points: 110
Mentions: 10
79 SubRosa, More Constant Than the Gods
Profound Lore Points: 92
Mentions: 9
81 Kvelertak, Meir
Roadrunner Points: 91
Mentions: 9
89 In Solitude, Sister
Metal Blade Points: 81
Mentions: 6

o and:

• The Metalism table, which re-ranks the albums by prorating each voter's votes according to how much metal they voted for, turns up mostly metal, as it better, with In Solitude taking the title of Most Metal. Scanning through the rest of the Metalism top 20, though, makes me wonder if voters have actually listened to the things they say they like, as the non-metal entries show a distinct and frankly suspicious bias toward names you might mistake for metal bands if you didn't know: Chelsea Wolf(e), Burial, Forest Swords, Joanna Gruesome, Darkside. Although they didn't fall for Chvrches or Volcano Choir, which both seem like perfectly good metal names to me, so maybe it's fine. The two most popular completely un-metal artists, by this calculation, are the hip-hop group the Uncluded, and Elvis Costello and the Roots, which seems plausible.

They're having some technical difficulties, but that will all be back again soon...

60% of my ballot was metal, but i had two albums in the top ten so i think my kvltosis and eccentricity numbers are going to go haywire this year :/

congratulations, metalists:

http://furia.com/pjs/table_voter_2013_metalism.html

Chelsea Wolfe makes sense as metalist imo.

SURRENDER OF DIVINITY SINGER/BASSIST MURDERED FOR "TARNISHING SATANISM": http://www.ztmag.com/blog/news/?p=19655

heir (his) last album wasn't anything extraordinary

mebbe not, but there's no way I can fail to queue up a song titled "The Devil's Fractal Part I"

new finnish metal documentary, no subtitles in the trailer (and a pretty shocking-to-me 91k views so far) - some sieg-heiling a band at one point that's pretty ugh, I think a fair number of these finnish bands are some strain or other of nazi (Goatmoon, Ride for Revenge maybe?) which sucks because they make good records imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWzlSeGR5bU

Currently loving Exmortus's Slave to the Sword. Firstly because that's the title, secondly because this is the cover (apologies for gigantism)

http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/exmortus-slavetothesword.jpg

and thirdly because the band has this totally kick-ass blend of death metal, thrash, and shredtastic power metal going on, like 3 Inches of Blood with less shrieking and more balls. Basically, they're what I wish Revocation sounded like. How power metal are they? There's a version of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on this album.

I hope it's okay to post this type of thing, a Math Metal band I was in a bunch of years ago set up a Bandcamp page because we found a bunch of CDs, would appeal to fans of Russian Circles/Dysrhythmia maybe.

http://foeband.bandcamp.com/

Hey, what was the name of the project that made heavy metal soundtracks for sermons? IIRC it was a self-released deal, available on bandcamp, with at least 2 releases, within the last 2-3 years. Having trouble turning it up with a search engine.

Nevermind. Megachurch was what I was looking for.

oooh MaresNest I happen to love that kinda thing, will check it out

How power metal are they? There's a version of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on this album.

hah, alright, I'll bite

Long-time lurker... Anyone else thinking the Aevangelist album got kind of lost in the year-end shuffle?

didn't hear this until today...really really interesting record, good stuff

this is apparently Kvelertak performing on the Norwegian version of the Grammys and it is kinda bizarre:

http://youtu.be/eMRn4GMwTfA

Kinda?

That actually could not have been timed any better as I'm in a discussion on another forum about metal not being perceived as threatening anymore, contra the satanic panic 80's. I was grimly reminiscing about being hassled by authority figures for my interest in such socially disruptive music. That video had octogenarians clapping along like they were in the pews.

To be fair, they always seem to be polite at awards shows. There is some incredulous laughter in the crowd shots at the end of the infamous KLF/Extreme Noise Terror collaboration at some UK Awards show, but a lot of applause, if nothing else because that's what they're trained to do.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2suew_the-klf-vs-extreme-noise-terror-3am_music

I had planned to spend 2014 avoiding black metal entirely, but I'm about to check out the new Murmur album because a) Alex Perkolup (Flying Luttenbachers, Cheer-Accident) is in the band, and b) they cover King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part 2."

do they do the jamie muir percussion??

Just check out Aevangalist for the first time myself, this is great. I need more demented, blackly psychedelic metal.

Nice to finally see the Aevangelist album getting some love! It seemed a bit unfocused to me at first, but it gets more gripping on subsequent listens. "Demented, blackly psychedelic" pretty much sums it up just right.

Haven't listened to the Murmur disc in full yet. The KC cover is kinda muddy-sounding, but I don't have much more to say than that yet.

Morning listening: Corpsessed, Abysmal Thresholds and Exmortus, Slave to the Sword. The Corpsessed disc is Finnish death metal that sounds more influenced by Immolation and Incantation than Swedish acts; I've already talked about Exmortus above, and they continue to rule.

New At the Gates in 2014? Sure, why not, everyone else is doing it.
http://youtu.be/EFKuR3-G4K0

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18827-indian-from-all-purity/

omg what is that noise on 'rhetoric of no', you know the one i mean ftftftftftftftftftftf

righteous screaming too

Great record! The aggression is off the charts.

I had planned to spend 2014 avoiding black metal entirely, but I'm about to check out the new Murmur album because a) Alex Perkolup (Flying Luttenbachers, Cheer-Accident) is in the band, and b) they cover King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part 2."

― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱)

Apparently this is gonna be the year of black metal King Crimson because the new Hail Spirit Noir could not be Fripping any harder. Might wanna wait til next year to avoid. (The whole thing is on YT; I don't know if it's anywhere, uh, legitimate and I'm not sure how this forum feel about YT rips.)

On the same label and from the same country, the new Aenaon, despite the generic band name, is a really good, if less well integrated, black prog funhouse experience. Has some quality guesting on it.

I did some repping for that Hail Spirit Noir on the rolling middle eastern etc metal thread. I think it fucking kicks ass

Ah, cool, I only noticed and read that thread yesterday. Coincidence! (I wanted to love that Al Namrood too but the vocal effect made me wince.) And yeah, HSN is something special.

Skull. Fist.

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

I love Canadian metal bands.

Apparently this is gonna be the year of black metal King Crimson because the new Hail Spirit Noir could not be Fripping any harder. Might wanna wait til next year to avoid. (The whole thing is on YT; I don't know if it's anywhere, uh, legitimate and I'm not sure how this forum feel about YT rips.)

huh so they have kind of a carnival music prog thing huh

I wouldn't say "carnival music;" if anything the other band I mentioned, Aenaon, fits more with that. That term makes me think "novelty" or "flippant." Whatever HSN is doing, it sounds well thought out and developed. But we may be using the term differently.

That Skull Fist was the Headbangers Ballsiest thing I've seen in a while. Usually with these throwback METAAAAAL!!! bands I'm too wrapped up in suspicions about whether or not they're making fun of this favorite genre of mine, but that seemed miraculously genuine. Or yeah maybe it's a Canadian thing.

I tried to explain the Canadianness of Skull Fist and that ilk last week over at the Deciblog:

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/sucker-for-punishment-the-new-wave-of-moose-molten-metal/

Haha, "Demon for a Day" - a demon job-shadowing program, I guess? This is a really good album.

Moose + Molten = Molson?

devilock, when i say 'carnival music' i'm thinking of, like, the third king crimson album, or some of the more curdled bits of faux-classicism you get from wakeman or elp or whoever in prog—or say like some of the more zappaesque bits of cathedral's records. i assume it often has a parodic intent; one of the reviews of hail spirit noir i read said 'theatrical', maybe not in reference to what i have in mind, but probably in the same territory. say, the xylophone in the first track—an instrument it's hard not to associate with puppet shows, children's music, etc.

some pretty dirrty guitar work going on tho.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. When I've seen "carnival music" it's usually being applied to Dimmu Borgir's keyboards and such, as a pejorative (I assume). I like your unpacking of it more.

Or maybe I'm thinking of "calliope music."

well, it might be a little pejorative in my case, but i just find that whole feel kind of distasteful.

my dictionary sez 'calliope: a keyboard instrument resembling an organ but with the notes produced by steam whistles, used chiefly on showboats and in traveling fairs', so.

based on all of the above, going to listen to Hail Spirit Noir right fucking now

ok yeeeeeeah B-D

I'm just going to leave this here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9unWRsD2QQM

Skull Fist RULES.

I like how HSN are able to use black metal while keeping a controlled distance from it. The baseline feel is a lot closer to dark prog-rock like KC or Balletto di Bronzo, black metal being just part of the progressive cobweb.

On Facebook one of the HSN members, the keyboardist, last month linked to The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble's Reflections, saying it was one of his favorites and an influence on the band. Apparently HSN's prior album was dedicated to the Greek composer who wrote Reflections' music. Anyway I'd not heard of NYRRE, but after listening to their "classical baroque rock" I can sort of see the connections -- lots of grand, sweeping but weirdly jolting music akin to Chicago, The Strawbs, even Renaissance. For my fellow uninitiated:
http://youtu.be/Tyj8nFoWNBM

I will witness Eyehategod, Graves at Sea and Stoneburner this evening in Oakland.. My god friends AUGURS are opening, stoked for them. Lycus was suppose to play too but dropped off the last minute. A long night of super heaviness with punk as fuck ethos..

A good gig.. Graves at Sea was amazing, glad I finally got to witness that. And Eyehategod was great, even with the new drummer. and they seemed pretty stoked to be in Oakland.

Looks like there'll be a new Ufomammut record this year. For which I'm stoked. Sean, I like that Augurs EP. Reminds me really strongly of something from the 90s that I just can't place. The slower side of AcMe or Cavity or Union Of Uranus or one of those bands... Too numbed by

word!!

I just got a couple goodies from Malleus Labs in the mail yesterday, patch and shirt from the Magickal Mastery tour. They're supposed to finally play in the U.S. this year, but I didn't expect a new album! What's your source?

I got tickets for the Graveyard show at House of Blues Apr 26. It'll be my third time seeing them, and they are indeed not to be missed.

Grammys last night from a metal perspective

My oppressed metal Facebook contingency is collectively complaining that they neglected to eulogize Jeff Hanneman. A smaller number of people were angry about the omission of Clive Burr.

Black Sabbath winning the metal Grammy was unsurprising.

People seem very torn about the Metallica performance: Some say it sucked, some say it really sucked, a minority liked it (I am in the minority).

And we need some pix to make fun of...

http://metalinjection.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Slipknot-Crown-Grammys.jpg

Wow, do the KSE guys look like douchebags...

http://metalinjection.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Killswitch-Engage-at-the-Grammys-2014.jpg

For professional reasons, I'm obviously disappointed that neither Killswitch Engage nor Dream Theater won (especially since I'd spent time on Saturday preparing news stories for each band just in case), but a) if you're gonna lose a Grammy, at least lose it to the band that invented your genre; b) Sabbath's win was honest, given that it was for a new song, rather than a live version of a 30-year-old song or something like that.

Is that Rockzo the Clown from Metalocalypse?

Looks like there'll be a new Ufomammut record this year.

Don't see any info on an album on the Ufomammut site. What do you know that we don't?? BTW this is the shirt I got:

http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/126329361/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Layout_Men.jpg

That shirt is sweet.

So this amused me: Metal Albums with Googly Eyes

My personal favorite:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/93a026f49deed23ae1cc57c726099c48/tumblr_n01kypJRnm1trrkjfo1_1280.jpg

Fastnbulbous - There's lots of "we're gearing up to make a record" talk on the Ufomammut social media machine. I don't think it's at the announcement stage but I'd guess by the end of the year there'll be new music released.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Reveal Details On New Recordings

http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs190/1114457189250/img/440.jpg

Following the November release of their BBC Session 2011 Anno Domini two-track live 12" via Southern Lord, new recordings from WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM have been confirmed for a 2014 release. Following several months of anticipation, the Cascadian black metal clan comprised of brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver now humbly unveil their impending full-length release, Celestite.

Taking a different approach than their previous LPs, Celestite is a completely newly envisioned, parallel-universe version of Celestial Lineage, the beautifully blackened fourth studio full-length epic WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM released via Southern Lord in 2011. Celestite arises with a whole new, ethereal approach. There are no drums and no vocals. Rather, deep, heavy crystalline synthesizer journeying, Eno-inspired analog processing and arcane acoustic instrumentation expand upon dimensions folded within the universe of Celestial Lineage.

The Weavers tell us: "To make Celestite, we delved into the subterranean sonics that are buried in the mix of Celestial Lineage. We isolated them, processed them and took this unearthed soundscape as our starting point. Upon this base we recorded an entirely new album. Some melodies from Celestial Lineage are recognizable, but these familiar sounds appear as ghosts, barely tethered to the original compositions. This new album is an unorthodox foray; a fully instrumental, experimental companion record to Celestial Lineage. We left some work undone with Celestial Lineage. The recording of that album in the Winter of 2011 was a monumental project for us personally, and the creative fire from those recording sessions was still burning. This recording process was an opportunity to journey into our own inner universe to complete that which needed to be completed."

Paired once again with producer Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), Master Musicians Of Bukkake), Celestite came to fruition at Avast Studios and WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM's own Olympia-based studio Owl Lodge. While cloistered during the recording sessions they made use of a mammoth arsenal of crumbling vintage equipment including a Serge Modular System, Korg Poly6, Korg MS20, Korg Mono/Poly, Roland Juno 106, Roland Jupiter 6, Roland Super jx10, Jomox Airbase 99, Access Virus and more. The album also features a guest wind ensemble including friends Josiah Boothby on French Horn, Steve Moore (Earth, Sunn O))), Stebmo) on Trombone, and both Mara Winter and Veronica Dye on flute.

The upcoming release of Celestite is doubly exciting for WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM as it will mark another new venture for the duo; the inaugural release on their own new label, Diadem Records. The band states, "Diadem Records is the imprint we created to release Celestite and future albums. Most importantly for us, working on this album has revealed a whole new vein of creative energy for WITTR. Now that the long trip of creating this album is finished, our appetite is whetted for future projects, thus we feel it necessary to pre-empt the inevitable chatter that will accompany the release of this record. WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM has not permanently abandoned the guitar and drums! We sense that one day -- perhaps sooner, perhaps later -- we will be inspired to return to our stacks of amplifiers and cabinets to create new music."

I don't care if the hipsters like 'em, I do too.

fuckin rad.

i wish i could chant something and make it come out today

looking forward to this

how is two brothers a clan

So basically they're going to do what Burzum did last year?

I've always sort of admired them for making music every bit as boring as spending the day wandering around in a forest.

aren't there bears in the forest

I'm sure you're all in mourning
http://www.musictimes.com/articles/3767/20140128/motley-crue-announce-break-up-extensive-farewell-tour-alice-cooper.htm

Last gig is on the date of Mick Mars 100th birthday I believe.

INDIAN

yeah, that album is pretty immense

Hey, this is worth listening to, a dude I know turning out some pretty great doom. Also, it's $4, so why not.

http://kultofthewizard.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-wizard

Also hi dudes, hope to be more around this year. Babies.

Not calling you babies, meaning I have one. Sleep deprivation is a hell of a thing.

well, not 2014, but i finally got around to cultes des ghoules' henbane and it is really, really good. that one riff build in the middle of "festival of devotion" is blowing my mind. also enjoying all of the grim cackling.

The new Hammercult, Steelcrusher, is pretty fun. Recommended for anyone who might have wished 3 Inches of Blood tossed in a little more death metal.

new agalloch in may apparently

This is a couple years old, but I just discovered Djerv, who kind of sound to me like what you might get if you swapped the LA shoutiness out of In This Moment and replaced it with Norwegian Kvelertakian stomp. Bracing, but catchy. Or catchy but bracing.

http://rd.io/x/QUPlByJTr1w/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq3FAy-JTAg

I wanted to like that band but something about it just left me cold.

I like Djerv a lot. They're about due a new record.

How the hell did I miss Gloria Diaboli for so long? It's not as good as Rites of Thy Degringolade (not much is), but still very entertaining in that rabid Canadian black/war/death hybrid way.

A friend turned me onto this.. Kinda post hardcore in a Refused type of way. a little looser and more spastic and/or thrashier.. whatevs.. good stuff, and they are French.. who what've thought! lol

Remote

Since 2014 seems to have hit a lull, here are bands that really should not have faded into obscurity:

Abdullah, with Iommi riffs and a vocalist that almost reaches the pummeling fragility of Warning/40 Watt Sun's Patrick Walker:
http://youtu.be/qZea4deXMDc

Enforsaken, rendering Jesper Stromblad's career of riffs moot, yes seriously (find the album The Forever Endeavor):
http://youtu.be/OSGfOlPnJMQ

And Yyrkoon, Gojira's darker, heavier, Lovecraft-addled brother, locked away in an attic:
http://youtu.be/zJOpBmW1cV0

So this is happening:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1/q71/s720x720/1560674_10202843550001468_1877794796_n.jpg

OhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygod!

holy shit!

Anyone else interested in Gilead Fest? It's a tiny festival in Wisconsin with a great lineup:

http://www.gileadmedia.net/fest/

Weekend passes just went on sale for a paltry $75.

man I'm listening to some of the bands on that list...that sounds like a blast tbh!

You should come. It's going to be something special.

Last time looked pretty kick-ass & I think this one has upped the ante. Shame I'll be in the US a month & a half before it's on.

Phil Anselmo thinks more metalheads should listen to the Smiths and Morrissey:

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

Just downloaded the new/last Twilight release. Looking forward to checking it out!

Gilead looks cool, but they picked a bad date, the same weekend as Pitchfork. I'm probably not going to P-fork, but not sure I'm up for driving to Osh Kosh and spending two nights there on my b-day weekend.

I don't have specific comments yet, but am enjoying the new Slough Feg album a lot!

the new yautja record is amazing, don't sleep on it until they get signed to relapse like yall did with inter arma

Yeah, it's the jam.

this is good. v. pummeling, if i had to choose a word.

the new cynic record is pretty awesome, kind of difficult to get my head around, less accessible than traced in air, only tangentially metal (unfortunate tendency of things lately)

With Behemoth and Sunn putting out records today and gobbling up all the available ink, this digital only live album from Coliseum is likely to slip through the cracks. Which would be a shame because it's great.

https://coliseum.bandcamp.com/album/faith-and-curses-live

The Body have collaborated with Haxan Cloak on a record called I Shall Die Here. I'm sure it will split the vote but personally I love it. It's coming out on RVNG Int.

Loving the Behemoth, Sunn & Ulver, Indians and especially the new Bong - Stoner Rock.

Congratulations jjjusten. Have you seen the Dad Metal clip? You've got it all to come...

arent the body also collaborating with Thou? i know they're playing as one unit at Gilead fest, and i know that Thou were recording recently, but not sure if they're doing a recording together

I didn't know about that but thanks for the tip... I'm promoting a show with The Body soon... I'm worried I may end up terrifyingly depressed after meeting them like the psychologist in Watchmen after he speaks to Rorshach.

One of the most terse interviews I've ever done.

Couldn't have been worse than the time Glenn Danzig threatened to throw me out the hotel room window.

Well, no. They were just very… concise in their answers.

Couldn't have been worse than the time Glenn Danzig threatened to throw me out the hotel room window.

Go on...

It's not exactly on of my finer moments...

http://fanart.tv/fanart/tv/258616/tvthumb/go-on-502543ae3ac89.jpg

We still want to hear...

(anyway...)

New RONNIE JAMES DIO Covers Album “This Is Your Life”
Celebrates the Life and Legacy of a Legend
Available April 1, 2014 via Rhino

RONNIE JAMES DIO: This Is Your Life Track Listing:

1. “Neon Knights” – Anthrax*
2. “The Last In Line” – Tenacious D*
3. “The Mob Rules” – Adrenaline Mob
4. “Rainbow In The Dark” – Corey Taylor, Roy Mayorga, Satchel, Christian Martucci, Jason Christopher*
5. “Straight Through The Heart” – Halestorm*
6. “Starstruck” – Motörhead with Biff Byford*
7. “The Temple Of The King” – Scorpions*
8. “Egypt (The Chains Are On)” – Doro
9. “Holy Diver” – Killswitch Engage
10. “Catch The Rainbow” – Glenn Hughes, Simon Wright, Craig Goldy, Rudy Sarzo, Scott Warren*
11. “I” – Oni Logan, Jimmy Bain, Rowan Robertson, Brian Tichy*
12. “Man On The Silver Mountain” – Rob Halford, Vinny Appice, Doug Aldrich, Jeff Pilson, Scott Warren*
13. “Ronnie Rising Medley (Featuring A Light In The Black, Tarot Woman, Stargazer, Kill The King)” – Metallica*
14. “This Is Your Life” – Dio

* Previously unreleased

Some of it is cringe-inducing and some of it reeks of those lousy tribute albums with all-star has-been lineups. Though as much as Metallica has fallen from the mark, the band still does a mean cover jam (see the Mercyful Fate medley) - so I kinda wanna hear that.

I'll definitely check it out on Spotify (or more likely Rdio, since the sound quality is way better and there are no ads), just to hear the Motörhead, Metallica and Halford tracks.

Almost immediately after typing that post, I got sent a promo stream of the album. Here are my tweeted notes on the four tracks I listened to, in order:

Rob Halford et al., "Man on the Silver Mountain": Decent/plodding arrangement. Vocals are obviously doubled, and Halford DOES NOT SCREAM.
Motörhead/Biff Byford, "Starstruck": I don't like Byford/Saxon, but Phil Campbell shreds the FUCK out of this. Lemmy's bass sound: HUGE.
Corey Taylor et al., "Rainbow in the Dark": NO KEYBOARDS. WTF? But Taylor could totally do classic metal if he wanted (think Armored Saint).
The Metallica medley is NINE MINUTES LONG. Vocals are as rough as you probably expect, but the music's rendered in a pleasingly "Garage Days"-ish fashion.

who the fuck contacted/greenlit Tenacious D for the Dio tribute & one of his best jams too

fuck that shit

as much as i really, really don't want to play captain save a D, they worked with dio a couple of times, so i'm guessing there might have been some mutual appreciation there. having said that, no i don't want to hear their fucking cover of goddamn legendary genius dio.

who the fuck contacted/greenlit Tenacious D for the Dio tribute & one of his best jams too

fuck that shit

and there you go. when i read the tracklist i rmde at that one, but it made sense.

the fucking Obliteration disc is awesome as hell.

Um... Wendy Dio.

lol well all right but of all the people to get "the last in line." really certain it'll be "hilarious" and "rocking" to hear them emphasize the i in "line" to really draw out the hilarity of metal!! gah.

a month late but

2013: THE YEAR IN BALLOU

in rough order of enjoyment I got out of em, below are the records I could determine that Kurt Ballou either mixed or produced or engineered, basically twiddled some knobs on. I gather he gets stick for sometimes propagating his signature sound a bit too much, arguably at the possible expense of the individuality of the bands he records but he still puts out more than a few badass sounding albums every year; this year's Nails in particular, absolutely smothering, and can't really imagine someone else doing as good a job. And anyway in the below you'll actually find a decent amount of diversity, it's not all strictly on the sludge/crust/hardcore "balloucore" axis; beastmilk, skeletonwitch, immortal bird, ramming speed, toxic holocaust, and my dark horse favorite, the heavy post punk of swedish youngsters stiu nu stiu

Baptists - Bushcraft
Phantom Glue - A War of Light Cones
Nails - Abandon All Life
All Pigs Must Die - Nothing Violates this Nature
Beastmilk - Climax
Meek is Murder - Everything is Awesome, Nothing Matters
Kvelertak - Meir
Nice Hooves - S/T
Stiu Nu Stiu - Ultra Silvam (12")
Immortal Bird - Akrasia EP
Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed
Elizabeth - Insomnia (7")
Ramming Speed - Doomed to Destroy, Destined to Die
Doomriders - Grand Blood
Toxic Holocaust - Chemistry of Consciousness
Modern Life is War - Fever Hunting
Oathbreaker - Eros|Anteros
Castles - Fiction or Truth?
This Routine is Hell - Howl
Sleeping in Gesthemane - When the Landscape is Quiet Again
Generation of Vipers - Howl and Filth

That's a great set of records, right there.

Jesus Christ that is a hardcore studio tan that guy's getting. I only heard a couple of those records but I really dug the Toxic Holocaust one

the Ramming Speed record is really fun.

Meanwhile, for fans of Balloucore, new Trap Them soon. Yessss!

that actually brings up a question i had for you guys:

interested in metal records that don't sound like shit! like well recorded records...do they exist? (anything w/trigger drums automatically DQ)

is this ballou guy good? (though "signature sound" makes me nervous)

Last year's Gris album stood out to me as extremely well recorded.

Krallice is probably one of the best-recorded metal bands, Colin Marston is a great engineer/producer. Crystal-clear without being too polished, sort of like... ambient aggression or something (I have no idea about recording techniques/terms etc, obviously)

the last Kowloon Walled City was really well recorded, kind of tense, spacious sounding sludge metal verging on post hardcore

i heard… 5?… of those ballou-produced albums last year

ums, i think he's got a good sound. lots of presence for the bass, loud and realistic drums, separable parts (which i would guess is a challenge in the thrashiest hardcoreiest bits of some of this stuff).

i haven't really noticed any terrible production lately, it just generally seems fine to me, not super noteworthy.

omg i wish my order from Aquarius wasn't still sitting in limbo, i want to hear that Beastmilk!

I have also heard 5 of those (Nails, All Pigs Must Die, Beastmilk, Kvelertak, Skeletonwitch). Didn't realize the Beastmilk and Skeletonwitch were his work, so I guess his style isn't as overpowering to the bands as some might assume.

Nice Hooves - S/T

this record rules btw

nice hooves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU4_p0KHpWs

That band name makes me think of a New Yorker cartoon in which deer construction workers are cat-calling does that walk by the job site.

ballou's style is very present--everything is pretty cranked but also well-defined. works well for the uptempo bands he tends to record.

the krallice records sound great. i thought the inter arma record had some really interesting production that suited it well. i do think the production can make or break records in metal more so than in other genres.

9. “Holy Diver” – Killswitch Engage

noooooooooooooooooo

they disrespect Dio, and more importantly they disrespect the results of the all-time metal trax poll

the last Kowloon Walled City was really well recorded, kind of tense, spacious sounding sludge metal verging on post hardcore

― a chance to cross is a chance to score (anonanon), Friday, February 7, 2014 3:18 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they record their own stuff in a member's basement iirc? there are def bigger fans of this band then me, overall, but yeah they do have a good sound

i think they went to a real studio for the most recent one

ums - Ballou is Converge's guitarist, he started off producing their records (edit - actually even before that looks like produced among others Until Your Heart Stops which makes a lot of sense) and went on to produce a ton of records, especially for bands that followed in their metallic-hardcore-but-don't-call-it-metalcore wake, bestowing on them a bit of Converge's trademark sound and only deepening their influence.

I mean just look at this list, which is still far from comprehensive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Ballou#Production_and_recording_discography

I'd describe his production sound, as really vivid, intense, kind of... front-loaded? agree with cad, it's very present, it's like the band is playing 2 inches from your face, but with surprising clarity

The last Kowloon is gorgeous. Their singer/rhythm guitarist just built his own studio: http://antisleep.com/

hah look at the second post there, quite the convergence

hey! I totally missed that.

I'm not a huge fan of Ballou as a producer, he's pretty effective in what he does (ie, metalcore) but that brickwalled to the extreme, overcompressed sound is pretty tiring. He's the new Ross Robinson, in that respect.

I don't like everything Ballou's recorded, and figuratively he's a bit like Steve Albini in that I imagine bands would gravitate to him to get a particular sound. But look back on the varied stuff he's done, even more than a decade ago: Until Your Heart Stops still sounds amazing, and different from Suicide Note, different again from the Jan Michael Vincent Car Crash. It's not all Converge-core.

and on the same tip, I would not have guessed he produced the Beastmilk record.

(I can't front on Ross Robinson, didn't he produce Burn, Piano Island, Burn?)

was gonna say, I'd be willing to bet he is somewhat keen for more non-metal bands to come knocking, much like Albini circa 1993 probably hankered for more recording jobs for bands who didn't sound like idk Tar or someone

(I can't front on Ross Robinson, didn't he produce Burn, Piano Island, Burn?)

also relationship of command, the first time i heard a record mastered so brutally i thought it was breaking my stereo. think there's a bit more nuance in ballou's stuff but yeah they're pretty brickwalled

Ballou is the first guy who's managed to really capture Skeletonwitch on record, so respect for that.

Yeah, the Skeletonwitch album is easily the best sounding record they have ever made.
They also have one of his disciples doing the sound for them on the road.
Even though they were third on the Amon Amarth / Enslaved bill, the live sound was the best I ever heard from them.
And I have seen this band literally dozens of times (they came up in Ohio when I was there - I sold their self-released CDs in my record store for them).
The bass really could be heard, giving even older material a groove, a new dimension I was unaccustomed to hearing.

I just recorded with Scott from Kowloon.. dude knows what he's doing. the new Hellbeard is sounding really good..

(I can't front on Ross Robinson, didn't he produce Burn, Piano Island, Burn?)

Really badly. It's the worst sounding Blood Brothers album, compressed to shit and so exhausting to listen to. Granted I haven't heard the reissue on Epitaph, which might be remastered?

really loving the use of horns on this Behemoth album. also Nergals vocals are some of the best he's ever delivered.

Horns? I just lost any interest in checking out that record.. lol

That's funny, seeing that there are horns on it just made me want to check it out.

sean is not a horny dude

i listened to that record in the background but reasonably closely and "horns" did not really come up prominently in my mind, so i think you can probably still check it out.

It's not like it's ska metal, dude. The horns sound seriously evil.

The Skatanist?

Celtic Frost used horns, so horns are metal. Especially French horns.

yeah, they're flourishes, it's not like they're recording Extreme singles....

well I figured they were not doing bad ass Earth, Wind and Fire horn lines..

And I was more than half kidding

man this Obliteration album isn't innovative or anything but it's one of the most aggressive 80s-esque sounding death metal albums I've heard in a minute.

I would really like to hear/start a doom metal band with a lineup like Roy Wood's Wizzard - double drummers, cello and baritone saxophones. Mmm. Yeah. Metal needs more horns.

Or maybe have Borbetomagus play with Lugubrum. Anyway I gotta check out that Obliteration album.

It's not like it's ska metal, dude. The horns sound seriously evil.

I will be listening to this album

Just got the new Behemoth today, and while I haven't listened to it yet (currently playing Evangelion again to lead into it for possible continuity and contrast's sake, for I am nerd you see) I laughed at the reflective Time Person of the Year cover overlay. (It's you! You're the Satanist of the Year!) Internet feedback has been all over the place for this album; I'm genuinely curious.

And yes to Obliteration -- if you've not heard their previous album, Nekropsalms, you must. Hearing that for the first time last year is what compelled me to check out their newest.

Last, this Artificial Brain thing on Profound Lore is lining up nicely along the Demilich-Gorguts-Mitochondrion axis of weird: http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/labyrinth-constellation

Oh wait, last for real: the new Blut Aus Nord, some kind of 10 year anniversary EP for the DMP label, is absolutely awesome, a little of each of their styles, the industrial conking and the electrified shimmering, and a great Pitchshifter cover: https://dmp666.bandcamp.com/album/debemur-morti

Folks, catch the Russian Circles / KEN Mode / Inter Arma tour if you can. All three bands are in top form. Great, great night of music.

gonna try to & make the cambridge show on the 21st, but will have to trade shifts. figure 50/50 at best. :(

amazing fucking albums i missed in 2013

portal - vexovoid
tribulation - the formulas of death
rotting christ - greek to me

HAILZ!

I really wish I'd heard The Formulas of Death before I made my year-end lists and whatnot. Awesome record.

coulda sworn the last Deathspell Omega album had horns in there somewhere in the maelstrom

If you're looking for horns and metal I heartily recommend these guys:

http://www.oretubadoom.com

Just got the new Behemoth today, and while I haven't listened to it yet (currently playing Evangelion again to lead into it for possible continuity and contrast's sake, for I am nerd you see) I laughed at the reflective Time Person of the Year cover overlay. (It's you! You're the Satanist of the Year!) Internet feedback has been all over the place for this album; I'm genuinely curious.

they're coming here in May. definitely going

Behemoth spoilers incoming:

Having listened to The Satanist three times last night, twice in a row and then once a few hours later, I can safely say that at the least it's their best since Zos Kia Cultus -- the other superlatives might have to wait. But yeah, it's pretty huge, full of actual songs with perfectly complementary parts rather than the usual tinker toy assemblage of stock riffs keeping time behind Inferno's distracting blast furnace drumming and Nergal's distracting blast furnace roaring. Inferno is way low key, you'd never even guess it was him, and boy does that work in favor of the songs. The wonderfully homogenizing murk of the production would've obscured most of his usual over-the-topness anyway. And yes, Nergal sounds amazing, like he actually knows where in the song he is, delivering not reciting.

The last song cracks me up. People on metal-archives were saying it sounds like "Kashmir," but with the choirs, horns, bluesy solo, and spoken word, it reminds me more of the "cover" of "Kashmir" that P Diddy did with Jimmy Page. So you have that to look forward to.

/END SPOILAGE

everyone otm about the new behemoth, holy shit

guyz, i think we might could need a dedicated behemoth thread this year for outreach purposes, i read noted ~poet~ michael robbins speculating that it would become a buncha kids' BLONDE ON BLONDE already (tho i am not sure which one is the 'funny' song about getting stoned yet)

It's only a construction defect in the fabric of time that led to Nergal rather than Dylan first using the expression, "bitch ov a sybilline vulva."

wish the lyrics were less comprehensible on this tbh

What I think of when I think of evil horns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC73Os9NmZE

Not very metal, tho.

um i listened twice and no horns really jumped out at me, were they just playing some sustained tones in the arrangements, if so zzz

lookin for some bb king, chess records, famous flames horn stabs here

I've always liked the low-in-the-mix horns on (most of) the QotSA records.

wow can the behemoth seriously be that good

I liked zos kia cultus plenty and have followed them casually since but I'm intrigued

I don't think it's all that special but I have never really cared for them in the past so ymmv

um i listened twice and no horns really jumped out at me, were they just playing some sustained tones in the arrangements, if so zzz

lookin for some bb king, chess records, famous flames horn stabs here

― j., Sunday, February 9, 2014 7:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they're faint, background flourishes. I didn't notice them on first listen myself

I came on board with ZKC and have always admired Behemoth from a slight distance since then. This one is the first album of theirs I genuinely love. I wrote it up for Burning Ambulance.

started listening to new behemoth on the ride to work tonight, but then called a friend. so i find that it mostly sounds like a conversation about furniture and veterinary selection.

expected something a bit less genteel, tbh

man you just cannot find your sweet spot huh

I love it when I hear internet uproar about an album, do a search in my email box, and find a haulix invitation from two weeks ago. Will check back in soon.

Pretty much in the same boat as J0hn on this one going in. Thought ZKC was a fine album, but didn't change my life. Would be happy to find a Behemoth record worth going back to.

The live performance on the accompanying DVD is really good, too, but oh my god the combined strobing light show and incessant editing cuts put it at Seizure Level: Grand Mal. I had to keep glancing away from the screen.

j., the horns are most prominent on the title track (track 6), if you want to look for them.

feeling very positive towards the satanist on my first listen. they are great live and I've generally liked their albums in the past but time will tell if this is their first that I really keep returning to. guessing it will be.

yeah its a good album--catchy, well-made, rocks pretty hard

in a promo email from Relapse just now:

Recommended If You Like:
My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Slowdive, Deafheaven, Torche, Jesu, Title Fight, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Hum, Cold Cave, Loop, True Widow

so I guess 2014 is going to be terrible

hum!!!

Heh, I was thinking about all of you dudes when I read that email.

FWIW, I'd love to read more press blasts bringing up Hum. Love that band so goddamned much.

Is that about the band Nothing? They're from Philly and I wanna check them out sometime.

hum were really good, no argument here

Is that about the band Nothing? They're from Philly and I wanna check them out sometime.

Bingo!

Triptykon's second album, Melana Chasmata (rough translation: "black, deep depressions/valleys") will be released on April 14 (Europe) and April 15 (North America), 2014, through Century Media Records/Prowling Death Records Ltd.

http://www.centurymedia.com/media/news/large/635273443691695003.jpg

Like its predecessor Eparistera Daimones, the album was produced by Triptykon's singer/guitarist Tom Gabriel Warrior and guitarist V. Santura and recorded and mixed at V. Santura's own Woodshed Studio in southern Germany as well as at Triptykon's rehearsal facilities in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2013 and 2014. Those who have already heard Melana Chasmata have described it as "atmospheric, dark, diabolical, and dramatic", "diverse, epic, and doomy, but on an entirely different level", "a fierce boulder of abhorrence", or "very heavy and yet very aesthetic at the same time".

Melana Chasmata will feature the following nine songs, at a playing time of around 67 minutes:

1. Tree Of Suffocating Souls
2. Boleskine House
3. Altar Of Deceit
4. Breathing
5. Aurorae
6. Demon Pact
7. In The Sleep Of Death
8. Black Snow
9. Waiting

Further new Triptykon music has been recorded, to be released as an EP or mini album later in 2014 or early in 2015.

Among other formats, the album will be released as a 32-page Mediabook (with lyrics and liner notes to every song, and with a special fold out poster), as a gatefold vinyl double album (with posters and large-format booklet), and for digital download. Additionally, Century Media is scheduled to issue a special box set, limited to 2000 copies. The box set will include the album, a Triptykon silver pendant, a poster, postcards, a Triptykon tote bag, and a cap.

The Triptykon album is very, very good. No surprise there, but I'm already enjoying it even more than the last one. Towering and beautiful.

True NSBM.
http://youtu.be/ZrIMq0DEo9E

(Maybe I knew about this last year, I don't even remember, but after seeing it mentioned in this interview http://thequietus.com/articles/14452-nergal-interview-behemoth I had to track down a scene or two. Hilarious.)

Really glad I saw Triptykon when they toured the US for the last album. Doubt I'll get to see them again. That Tom G. Warrior guitar tone live: totally mind-crushing.

Well, they are playing Maryland Deathfest.

still debating on whether I'm going but since I missed NOcturnus AD when they came here and want to see Pungent Stench, I believe it's a yes.

At first the Behemoth record didn't really jump out at me but after a couple of listens there are a few really great melodic moments. It's surprisingly subtle.

i noticed that--there are some interesting basslines and some un-metal riffs that are pretty cool

very quiet pauses too

man you just cannot find your sweet spot huh

― j., Sunday, February 9, 2014 7:52 PM (Yesterday)

i can! and it's the satanist. listened to it three times in the last 24 hours, love it almost unreservedly. the horns are wonderful, generally low enough in the mix to add atmosphere but not give off any kind of "symphonic" vibe, just some nice, menacing, entertainingly pompous texture. the lyrics are similarly obscured, but the lines that do pop out seem both amusing & rather poetic (tho i'm quite disappointed to find he isn't singing "bring forth thy anus offering" in the first stanza ov thee title track). great album.

re: amusing/poetic lyrics, is that opening line what I think it is

all that & a bag ov snakes

The Triptykon album is very, very good. No surprise there, but I'm already enjoying it even more than the last one. Towering and beautiful.

unprepared for a record better than the last triptykon record

not sure whether I like it or not but here's a Chinese atmospheric black metal act with synth-string sections and some Louisville feeling in the slow parts - I want to say "it's all over the place" but that's not exactly it, it coheres and is its own odd thing

(4th track is especially good but lacks the weird synth stuff.)

revisiting last year's Secrets of the Sky album...still really like this a whole lot. at times the band lacks identity, but I really like the underlying moodiness. some of the vocoded vocals on the second track reminded me of Cynic's "Traced in Air" but executed here a bit better.

I'm probably the last person to hear this but the track released from the upcoming Morbus Chron sounds amazing, and nothing like their debut (which I did like a lot). I see they took the Tribulation freakout plunge as well.
https://soundcloud.com/centurymedia/morbus-chron-it-stretches-in-1/

man this Obliteration album isn't innovative or anything but it's one of the most aggressive 80s-esque sounding death metal albums I've heard in a minute.

Noob question: what '80s death-metal bands should I check out if I like this Obliteration album?

try Autopsy. production sound not as big but they're very much worth your time. also Abscess, which shares several members with Autopsy - there were two Abscess albums on Tyrant Syndicate, who also put out one of the two Obliteration albums. recommend both of those Abscess records & Autopsy's Mental Funeral and Severed Survival.

Awesome, thx.

did sund4r not post about the new Jute Gyte on here?

https://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/

80s death isn't really my thing, but 2nd autopsy, esp mental funeral

there's a smidge of stuff like early Death and Possessed too. they combine a lot of influences into a kind of dm-gumbo.

Just listened to Vardlokk's new "Skraelingjahlaut" 7" and really dug it. Doomy with a serious groove, coffin squeak vocals (a bit like the Botanist, but less grating), oozing slide guitar chords (like Fields of the Nephilim at their closest approach to metal) and big piles of sheer noise -- "out" guitar bits, nasty layered synths, probably a kitchen sink. B-side is dubbish (not dubstep) reworking with all that plus demented air raid siren theremin (I think). Yum. On Outer Battery records and presumably the usual streaming sources -- I found it on Google All Access, anyway.

the NWN reissue of the four Cremation demos is some of the best, most obscure music I've ever heard. Not obscure in the sense of "nobody's ever heard of it" but in its mood, its feel. An incredible disc.

Just ordered the Vardlokk 7" and intending to order the Cremation. Thanks dudes, you're making this thread pay off for me today!

you might think of DM in waves.. First wave, the Florida stuff.. second wave, the swedish stuff.. 3rd wave, everything since. lol. With bands like Possessed, Venom and even Slayer being proto.. just my opinion

anything on this cremation thing that wasn't in the vinyl release from a few years ago?

and yeah, really great. been too long since I've spun those guys.

Noob question: what '80s death-metal bands should I check out if I like this Obliteration album?

While the bands I'm gonna mention don't share the sound of that Obliteration disc, and were more 90s than 80s, I think the early Norwegian death metal scene is unique and substantive enough to merit its own recommendation.

Molested - Blod-Draum
Cadaver - Hallucinating Anxiety; In Pains
Darkthrone - Soulside Journey
Thou Shalt Suffer - Into the Woods of Belial

With the exception of Cadaver, these bands went on, in much more popular guises, to make black metal (and even Cadaver put out Discipline as Cadaver Inc, which has a millennial, grinding, Voivod-inflected black metal thing going on), but before that transition they created some of the most unique and sceneless death metal I've ever heard. I can't really compare them to anything, not even to each other. Weird, ghostly music that died prematurely.

Also Algol's Entering the Woods of Enchantment.

Craig Locicero from Forbidden/SpiralArms/Man Made God referred to Ghost as Scooby Doom... I thought that was pretty funny.

Meanwhile Locicero played on that horrendous Tateryche album last year.

He's a goofy dude.. Don't get him going on conspiracy theories.. whoa!

Neurot Recordings is pleased to welcome long-running Eugene, Oregon-based doom metal trio, YOB, to their expanding household of eclectic, thought-provoking music. The band -- founding vocalist/guitarist Mike Scheidt, drummer Travis Foster and bassist Aaron Rieseberg -- will release their seventh studio offering this Fall preceded by an appearance at the illustrious Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands in April.

Comments Scheidt of the recent union, "YOB is very happy to have signed to Neurot for our new album. Travis, Aaron and I agree that Neurosis is the epitome of forward-thinking heavy music, made with zero compromise. Our love for their music is total. Neurot's dedication to putting out uncompromising music is no different. To have this opportunity to put an album out on their label is an honor that runs deep. We cannot wait to share our new music with Neurot and our friends worldwide."

Neurosis' Steve Von Till notes, "This was meant to be. Neurot has always sought out to work with those who share in the purification of spirit through sound and who harvest their sound from originality and intensity. When I listen to YOB, see them leave it all on the stage, or share a conversation with them about life, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that they embody what Neurot stands for completely and we are so very honored that we get the opportunity to work together with them on their next album."

Adds Scott Kelly, "YOB, as with all things that actually matter, there is only one. They have built their temple with a foundation concreted in absolute truth. The truth is the riffs, the truth is in the delivery, it's in the unwavering commitment, and in the handshake and the look in their eyes. If you don't know them, then you are fucking up your own lifes' truth. There's is nothing heavier on the face of this earth than this band. The Neurot Family is honored to be a part of legacy of this, the monolithic treasure of sonic achievement that is YOB."

Further details on YOB's forthcoming new release to be unveiled in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Scott Kelly not one exactly shy about bestowing praise is he.

If you don't know them, then you are fucking up your own lifes' truth.

i love this

that Kelly quote re: YOB is so great

not to get too hung up on the horns thing but for the record Behemoth snuck straight up smooth jazz sax onto this album and it works

Got my copy of the Aevangelist album today. Love it. Have to remember that you can't spell their name without Vangelis. And tea backwards.

Talk about buyer's remorse. While I am in general down with Reckless' practice of saving space on the sales floor by providing only the liner notes in plastic sleeves, it burned me in this instance. I totally would not have bought the new Prostitute Disfigurement album if I'd have known there was a song called, "Dismember the Transgender". It pays to do your research, I guess. Not that I expect delicate handling of sensitive topics and progressive thinking from a band called Prostitute Disfigurement, but sometimes the lines we draw are arbitrary and I feel okay saying that in 2014 I don't want to give me money to a band that writes a song called "Dismember the Transgender".

woof.

the cover of that too, yikes

the song "compulsive beheading disorder," later in the album, is a sensitive look at a syndrome misunderstood by so many

what kind of baffling aesthetic decisions wd u have had to have made to even buy an album by a band called Prostitute Disfigurement. not buying the idea that the name is particularly evocative of a strain of brutal & nihilistic metal-as-philosophy; it's the sort of terrible bullshit a 15 year-old would come up with to shock his mother

I'm trying to get the rules straight regarding certain extreme metal topics: Bashing Christianity is okay, but bashing Judaism will get you into trouble. Violence aimed at women is okay, but when it's aimed at the transgendered a line has been crossed.

This post is not an attempt to bash you, Jon. But the inconsistencies of what is accepted and what is taboo among extreme metal bands and fans gets me quite weary. Because violence against women is one of the most serious problems in our society yet death metal, goregrind and the like have been raping and killing women off for ages with nary a complaint.

If you don't have albums that you love and paid money for that involve bashing Christianity and/or doing terrible things to women, I would be surprised. But that shit gets a pass and in fact someone will be along to give me shit for not giving it a pass, most likely.

Now playing: Cannibal Corpse "Stripped, Raped, And Strangled"

I mean, shit. The band NAME is about disfiguring prostitutes.

like, Cattle Decapitation and Cock And Ball Torture (.ogg) are great fucken names because they're violent without being openly and brutally callous

*humorously & luridly violent

Bashing Christianity is okay while bashing Judaism is not (not like that ever stopped Absurd or any of their NSBM compatriots) bc Christianity has been the hegemonic cultural context of Europe + the rest of the Western world for the last thousand years. It's punching up.

I knew I shouldn't have even posted that. I regretted it almost instantly after I hit 'Submit Post'. I was trying to branch out of my comfort zone wrt metal and I've rarely tread in the brutal death metal waters. I read some positive buzz about this particular album on Twitter and a couple metal blogs, so I grabbed it. I knew I was getting into some murky waters and I was approaching at the "lol angry 15 year-olds wanna be offensive" approach hinted above. But something about that particular track name rubbed me wrong. I get that it's conflicted, to say the least, given the band's name.

I don't know why I'm willing to overlook the violence against women thing, but not against the transgendered. Maybe it's because I listened to the new Against Me a lot before I cracked this one open. Like I said, the lines are arbitrary and I don't have a good defense here. But, I'm okay saying that I definitely do not want to hear a song about dismembering the transgendered in my life.

like, Cattle Decapitation and Cock And Ball Torture (.ogg) are great fucken names because they're violent without being openly and brutally callous

lol dude this is a ridiculous standard

people want goregrind that doesn't offend them, like it's ok if it's theoretically offensive but if it genuinely offends then no-go

goregrind does not "punch up"

it descants the insalubrious

I don't see how I could be any more clear about this

essentially tho anything that is a horrific taboo you've gotta imagine will be of thematic interest to taboo-breaking metal outfits

its all part of being "extreme" ro them. If music cant be extreme do it another way. "shock rock" has been around a long time tho.

personally ive no interest in it, not even when i was 15

have you guys heard there's these awful movies where guys in hockey masks basically murder all these teenagers for no reason

So offensive.

To victims of hockey mask murderers of course. And the mother's of hockey mask wearing murderers.

To me it's all fiction. The lyrics that musicians use are no different than the images and themes and dialogue of movies and television. You want to dismember the transgendered? As long as it's a dumb song (or a scene in a dumb movie). Just leave Marissa Martinez alone in real life, okay?

I am more bothered by rape, to be honest, than straight-out violence. Maybe this is because I have known women who were raped who have shared with me stories about how they can't watch rape scenes in movies or TV shows that they actually like because it's personal to them.

I don't know many people who have been tortured and nearly killed who might take some horror movie personally. Maybe if I knew people like that or people who were killed in such a manner that I might feel differently.

I just hate the inconsistencies where one form of abuse or violence is practically sacrosanct in some genres while others are off-limits. I think it's all goofy regardless of whom is being impaled.

in a promo email from Relapse just now:

Recommended If You Like:
My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Slowdive, Deafheaven, Torche, Jesu, Title Fight, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Hum, Cold Cave, Loop, True Widow

so I guess 2014 is going to be terrible

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, February 10, 2014 7:08 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just playing this Nothing album of which aero speaks and it is both really well done and incredibly opportunistic sounding. it also contains nothing I would describe as metal and I'm fairly lax about protecting the borders so to speak

"nothing" in my second sentence was not a pun btw

I think I'm usually able to treat all of the subject matter and lyrics in this type of stuff as "fiction" and approach them the same way as I would horror movies. But I have a hard time when it comes to violence specifically directed at the gay/queer/transgender communitues. I think its a combination of so much irl hatred against these groups in the media right now and the fact the my wife and I do a lot of donating and volunteer work for groups like HRC that it bumps up against some deeply held personal beliefs. I get how it is, let's say, inconsistent, on one hand. But I also don't feel like I'm a hypocrite for deciding that's where I draw the line for myself, personally. It's up to you where you wanna draw that line.

i draw the line in a really different place, but i appreciate your willingness to explain your purchase of that album. i personally can't treat "prostitute disfigurement" as acceptable because even if it were fiction i wouldn't be amused by/interested in/want anything to do with it.

Yeah, I get it, the whole thing has really made me question why I wouldn't and didn't draw the line elsewhere.

Now I do feel weird about throwing my thought process out there.

Anyway, back on topic. This Hail Spirit Noir album is really good, if you don't mind a healthy does of prog mixed in your metal.

yeah i think its pretty tough to tell when that line into being for-real offended is going to be crossed. i never really minded the band name either but i def feel weird about the song title jon mentioned--i guess it sounds explicitly target-y which is maybe the problem.

well, it is in the imperative

i guess it sounds explicitly target-y which is maybe the problem

yeah that's what I was thinking and couldn't quite articulate it. also is it supposed to be a riff on "smear the queer"

(right i mean i recognized i had that visceral rxn to 'dismember the transgendered' and then remembered that one of my favorite pig destroyer songs is about dismembering a woman and had to think a little harder)

goregrind is specifically about vicariously relating to positions of extreme exaggerated power over the helpless - it's a space for that vibe. it's perfectly ok to say "no, fuck that" obviously but drawing the line anywhere once you're ok with a genre that's about identifying with the victimizer (for whatever purpose: and I personally think there's value in an aesthetic space where that sort of identification can take place - this is something I've talked to fellow abuse survivors about, it's a thing for some people & I for one am down) seems so odd to me. rape & kill indiscriminately, that's swell, but don't do it to the transgendered? c'mon. these bands are about imagining the thought processes of people who victimize, period. they're not about striking a vicarious blow for the genuinely helpless. there are no goregrind bands who sing from the POV of the victim.

ty for that post; has helped reconfigure my above revulsion for 'prostitute disfigurement'

yep, i forgot i can count on ilm to tell me when my opinion or thought process is WRONG.

boy howdy, now i can feel okay with a song called "Dismember the Transgender"!

well, or you can ask yourself why "prostitute disfigurement" was cool with you while "dismember the transgender" isn't

did you even read my posts? that is exactly what i'm questioning.

i get where you're coming from, but how much imagining/vicarious relation do white straight cis dudes have to do to assume a position of power over women/transgendered people tho?

being that I own Anal Blast albums, I ain't even ENTERING this discussion....

and a song about raping and killing indiscriminately IS one thing, but a song specifically about raping and killing a race, a gender identity, etc isn't indiscriminate.

i get where you're coming from, but how much imagining/vicarious relation do white straight cis dudes have to do to assume a position of power over women/transgendered people tho?

it depends on the white straight cis dude? a lot of abuse survivors have a whole lotta issues to work through and violent art is one space for it which I think is what's going on a lot of the time in goregrind. idk I know for a lot of people white + cis = anything that ever happened to you doesn't count as trauma but I think goregrind is largely a space for processing trauma.

i just feel like i kind of put myself out there, displaying my inconsistent thought process and why i'm tripping over what i am or should be comfortable with, explaining why i got to where i am able to draw this particular line in the sand (even if it isn't the one others think i should draw!) and aero comes along to tell me i'm wrong. it's frustrating.

and a song about raping and killing indiscriminately IS one thing, but a song specifically about raping and killing a race, a gender identity, etc isn't indiscriminate.

well no but most of these songs have specific victims? idk maybe social justice goregrind will be a thing but it won't really scare anybody and one thing about goregrind is it's supposed to inspire revulsion, not "fuck yeah, the oppressor really got his from this crazed serial killer" feelings

i do think that agonizing over things like this seems oddly common w/smarty pants metal circles in a way that never happens with like film afficianados or lit geeks, ie questionable protagonist etc

that sounded totally dismissive which i dont mean at all

i just feel like if you worked out your feelings after reading the lyric sheet for angel of death a billion years ago you kind of bought the ticket and took the ride

"social justice goregrind" = Cattle Decapitation, no?

goregrind for me is easy to ignore due to the toiletsauce indecipherable vocal stylings though I admit I'm drawn to cheeseball B-movie motifs/slasher elements. I had a pretty uncomfortable reaction to the "Dismember the Transgender" too only because I just two weeks ago heard two metalheads I was hanging with lamenting how much it sucked that Repulsion had a transgender in the band, and led me to leave the convo.

to date though I'm still most offended by Malevolent Creation deciding to drop "you fucking n****rs" at the end of track 8 on that one album...

true about specif victims! it just seems like the kind of tracks/bands we're talking about are specifically geared towards inspiring revulsion in a certain type of person, and its usually an oppressed person - women, people who have been raped, or whatever - that's not something im down with in a scene that is often very actively hostile to women and gay people. i mean sure, lol social justice goregrind, but there is a lot of goregrind out there that isnt about killing and raping women and calling them cunts from the stage and encouraging the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows! it's really just a few bands that inspire that and act like that and they are typically very noticeable from their names and song titles. just my personal experience tho.

yeah I mean I still think Cattle Decapitation is a really, really elegant metaphor for oppression and abuse, whereas Prostitute Disfigurement is strident and pointed in a way I don't really gel with, but I accept that you can't really abhor the one and embrace the other & expect to be taken coherently

really?

also gr8 post roxy

i just feel like i kind of put myself out there, displaying my inconsistent thought process and why i'm tripping over what i am or should be comfortable with, explaining why i got to where i am able to draw this particular line in the sand (even if it isn't the one others think i should draw!) and aero comes along to tell me i'm wrong. it's frustrating.

yeah I mean...sorry! but it's like...I can't even grasp how absolutely every other song on the album shouldn't also make you feel kind of monstrous? which is the point? it's in the same terrain as Whitehouse essentially.

jjjusten I think lit geeks do have a whole little Bataille-friendly playground for this sort of thing

o roxy of course you can take yourSELF coherently. it's a matter of personal aesthetic rather than doctrine though - aesthetic is coherent, but is often hard for an outsider to appreciate (you seem to understand this particular disparity)

*despairs*

I will say that porngrind does really attract the kind of audience that I don't like to associate with. some of the musicians in these bands are pure loons too. the late Don Decker of A.B. was a regular in this IRC channel we posted in and one day he gleefully shared an interview he'd just done via Word and on reading it I couldn't comprehend how this guy was allowed out in public.

when it comes to grind I'm more into the punkier/crustier type anyway from a sonic perspective, but then again I do own the latest by Analdicktion so.....

thanks for letting me know that i can take myself coherently dude

i meant that one can take oneself coherently, it was a generic you

youre a generic you

im jk, nothing but love

fwiw i still haven't even listened to the record! i bought it, took it home, and scanned the titles when i was ripping off the shrink wrap.

and i get what you are saying, which brings me to my handwringing today, but that particular song title struck me as much more noxious than any of the other ones. like i read "Beaten to the Grave" and it doesn't really registed. but "Dismember the Trangender" was kind of a boot to the head. as you say, that's the intent. but it did make me stop and think.

I think it's actually really good that song has triggered intelligent discussion about it – and I'm not sure that wasn't the intent.

true about specif victims! it just seems like the kind of tracks/bands we're talking about are specifically geared towards inspiring revulsion in a certain type of person, and its usually an oppressed person - women, people who have been raped, or whatever - that's not something im down with in a scene that is often very actively hostile to women and gay people. i mean sure, lol social justice goregrind, but there is a lot of goregrind out there that isnt about killing and raping women and calling them cunts from the stage and encouraging the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows! it's really just a few bands that inspire that and act like that and they are typically very noticeable from their names and song titles. just my personal experience tho.

yeah...I mean I feel you, and part of my engagement with this stuff is how much I often come at it from the other side - like, the unfriendly space you describe, hate that; my favorite grind bands are like Foetopsy, who're pretty clearly joking. But an act like Prostitute Disfigurement, I think there's an essentially Sadean "hurt people's feelings" aesthetic going on - that there's a bad vibe ride that's valid and ok within the context of the work? what you talk about at shows, obviously that's where it gets messy and any questions of what's at stake aesthetically become very different questions.

I'm actually really curious what the lyrics for the song are.

hoo boy, yeah i knew don decker through the scene up here pretty well, and ill just say that he was not terribly separable from the anal blast persona. one fucked up dude

xpost BWARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHGH
KWOWAERRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHGHGHGHG
AAKKKAAKKKAKKKAKKKAKKKAKK!
(drums cut out, next track)

yeah, i get the distinction w/r/t foetopsy et al - i mean there's a lot of really disgusting grind that's some of my favorite music in the world, but it's disgusting in a way that isn't strictly focused on specifically doing harm to women, because that's fucking stupid to me

like 99 out of 100 metal dudes in extremey crazo bands are exactly the pasty D&D nerds you expect under the fake blood and on stage vomiting and then theres that 1 remaining guy xpost

hah yeah I basically was explaining to my non-metalhead friends that most of us are just as geeky as them, but sometimes it's hard to tell who's kidding. ie, I still get the impression that 3/4s of S.O.D. was in on the joke, and then there was Billy Milano

Having so many thougths right now, but basically I feel kinda chastised for being "wrong" about how goregrind works.

there are no goregrind bands who sing from the POV of the victim

This would actually be pretty great, and way more scary/revolting/abject than anything goregrind's coughed up/farted out in quite a while IMO. An experiment worth undertaking.

the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows

I feel like the word "constantly" here might be a little over the top. But I'm not gonna get into it if it's gonna become A Thing (if, for example, the word "cis" is going to be deployed with a straight - no pun intended - face).

there's a pornogrind band around here - a 2 piece - and one of them is DEF not in on the joke, and it's kind of sad but mostly extremely lol to watch them work

xp hahaha i cant

its clear from your post that you've been a woman at a lot of shows though

I have been at lots of shows with women, and observed women at lots of shows. At every show I go to I spend at least as much time watching the audience as watching the band. I have never personally witnessed violence against a woman at a show (a woman being in the pit doesn't count). But whatever, like I said, I am not gonna get into it.

Sorry guys, didn't mean to cluster up the Rolling Metal thread.

I mean, for 98% of my posts on ilx I might as well type them directly into a Word doc for all the interaction I get out of 'em, but this one takes off?

well, or you can ask yourself why "prostitute disfigurement" was cool with you while "dismember the transgender" isn't

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, February 17, 2014 5:44 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean i think i explained why i feel this way. i guess i prob shouldn't have given the impression that anything about goregrind is really all that cool w/me (and i feel the exact same abt slasher films). it is a fine and not always logical line but i can't prefigure what's going to do it for me. that said, the difference between "dismember the transgender" and "compulsive beheading disorder" (which is pretty lol, credit where it's due) seems obvious to me.

there should be a thing like the Congrats on your 50* tweet! for ilx

Nah, this is the most interesting the metal thread's been so far this year!

Horse, if you don't wanna get into something, or think you shouldn't, maybe don't bring it up.

he just wanted to deride the word "cis", its cool

a woman being in the pit doesn't count huh

that said, the difference between "dismember the transgender" and "compulsive beheading disorder" (which is pretty lol, credit where it's due) seems obvious to me.

I had typed this out almost verbatim earlier, but gave up when it got caught in too many xposts.

there should be a thing like the Congrats on your 50* tweet! for ilx

― 1 P.3. Eternal (roxymuzak), Monday, February 17, 2014 11:32 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

congrats on your 50 FP post

would that include just women willfully in the pit, or those that involuntarily got included in the festivities? cos you know the latter NEVER happens at metal shows!

xxxpost of DETH

Horse, if you don't wanna get into something, or think you shouldn't, maybe don't bring it up.

seriously, c'mon

I'm actually really curious what the lyrics for the song are.

same here. couldn't find em online but I imagine it's just a matter of time.

I mean, for 98% of my posts on ilx I might as well type them directly into a Word doc for all the interaction I get out of 'em, but this one takes off?

well, but it's a good question, a key one for post-thrash metal really from Slayer onward, right - how are we to relate to the narrators of these songs? what's the function of writing in the first person about: murder, atrocity, torture, et al? what does the listener get out of it, what are one's limits and is there value in exceeding them within the work -- these are all super-old pre-modernist questions for sure but metal really hits them hard, and tends to do so at this who-gives-a-shit-about-theory level that's really visceral, that's an actual test of theories of excess in art etc.

I think it's a very good question (I mean it is a little hilarious because the band is called Prostitute Disfigurement! I mean if that's the name of the band you gotta figure at least one of the song titles is going to step far far beyond the bounds of politeness but that a particular song made you uncomfortable and why it is different from "Compulsive Beheading Disorder" is definitely worth thinking/talking about).

i think it's obvious why its different from compulsive beheading disorder, i think the main issue is why does it stand out if the name prostitute disfigurement doesn't (and songs to that effect don't)

i think rox made a good point about specified targeting being like a bright line here but right i mean that runs right up against all these other instances of the same kinda thing just with different people under the crosshairs

like it bothers me that one raised my hackles more than the other

for me it's just kind of the nudge from barely tolerating something to no longer being cool w/it imo

and the use of the imperative

didn't expect to find myself looking up interviews w/PD today but here we are. thanks to an interviewer for this excellent q

There are so many “frog-noise” bands coming up these days: especially in the Netherlands the new old motto seems to be: “faster, harder, louder”. Is your change of direction some sort of a statement or are you just looking for your own style? Niels’ vocals have become even deeper.

I hesitate to bring this up, but maybe they only did the song (as in, they probably came up with the title first) because 'dismember' rhymes with 'transgender'. I mean, that's the level of literary theory we're dealing with when you talk about this specific genre, let's be honest.

That's kind of what I assumed, and I struggle to take the vast majority of goregrind or pornogrind any more seriously than AxCx.

aero's comparison with Whitehouse is interesting and one that occurred to me at the first stages of the debate, and the Slayer example jjj gives is also kind of otm - the version I was thinking about is first wave BM, where to this day we're kind of ignoring how repugnant Varg is or whether Norsk Arisk Black Metal meant Darkthrone were actually racists really because Fenriz has turned out to be a sweetie.

I get the point about this being offensive and offensive to specific people though, but can't help thinking the 'live it like you write it' brigade is probably within the societal normal distribution for people who think like that anyway - there's undoubtedly more racists and wifebeaters at a Rihanna show than a Meat Shits show (for definite if Chris Brown is there).

The difference in perception between music and lit/film is also kind of fascinating now it's been brought up.

And of course where do Hatebeak and Caninus fit into all of this?

There's more posts about this band ITT than records sold by them

"post more"
"just not about that"

MAKE YER BLEEDIN' MIND UP

whenever this stuff comes up i always wonder how the sum total of human suffering created by all of metal stacks up against NYHC dudes kicking the shit of each other because they think Murphy's Law told them to.

I remember when NYHC dudes kicked the shit out of metal dudes.

(Get off my lawn.)

So did you all buy the new album by Cripple Bastards today then?

Speaking of music made by unsavory characters, the new Mayhem single is out and seems to have death metal creeping into it. I love this band and will be uncritically receptive to anything they do.
http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/premiere-mayhem-release-new-song-psywar/

Also, the Prostitute Disfigurement songs written (or co-written) by their bassist are even worse than the usual run of the mill Chris Barnes-type of tabloid serial killer stuff written by their vocalist. I doubt the bassist wrote "Dismember the Transgender," however, as his seem to be mostly aimed at his ex or exes (the lyrics literally say that). Lovely folks, but fortunately their music is so dull that I don't have to wrestle with whether or not I'll listen to it. Besides, In the Nightside Eclipse may be my favorite black metal album of all time and the drummer on that one killed a gay man in a homophobic rage so I don't get too choosy about maintaining any kind of integrity.

I like Mayhem and yet can't bring myself to listen to Burzum. My line is Varg-related.

I'm neutral on Prostitute Disfigurement

Hooray for capital letters

^works for the previous post too

I like mayhem too, of the non-murderous kind

My only problem with the new Prostitute Disfigurement album is that it's nowhere near as good as the one before it.

I just got a stream of the new Emmure album - the first track on that is called "Bring A Gun To School," and track 8 is called "Free Publicity." I love Emmure.

Oh, if I can go back about a zillion posts, if someone is trying to explore brutal death metal, the Prostitute Disfigurements of the world are not your only option. It's funny, though, my first impulse was to recommend Embryonic Devourment, whose songs are all about the David Icke conspiracy theories of a reptilian illuminati running the world (universe?) -- but then I remembered that a lot of people suggest Icke's ideas are anti-semitic and that "reptilian" is merely code for "Jewish." Maybe Hour of Penance? The Church, being the ultimate down-puncher, would be fair game according to The Rules. Conversely you could listen to Brodequin, who will regale you with detailed descriptions of every method of torture utilized by your friendly neighborhood Christian empire (historically speaking, of course). I listen to both and let them fight it out.

Funnily enough, I just listened to this year's Embryonic Devourment last week. It wasn't bad, but I didn't pay enough attention to the lyrics to pull out the Icke stuff until I read it in a review a few days later.

I think it's pretty clear that when Icke says "lizards" he doesn't mean "Jews," he means lizards. He's insane, you see.

hes snooker loopy

Maybe soon there will come a brutal death metal band writing songs about the conspiracy theory that David Icke's conspiracy theories are coded anti-semitism.

I wish there were more specialized-topic bands like Dim Mak to be honest

This conversation has entertained & enlightened me more than any of the bands ever could. I think I achieved gore nirvana when my parents refused to buy me Symphonies of Sickness for my 14th birthday. Quit while you're ahead and all that...

I've sat through a couple goregrind albums and kinda enjoyed them - Last Days Of Humanity - Putrefaction In Progress was recommended to me by a certain other metal musician & it's goddamn fucken impressive

listening again now. got really bad indigestion so this is perfect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68VUrXL0uqs

whoa
i clicked on that and this is what happened:

my eyes winced and i made a face
the music started and it made me feel sick
i lasted about 3 sec

this stuff is not for me at ALL
at least i know what it sounds like, kinda.

i don't begrudge anyone whatever they want to enjoy but it's not my kind of heavy or dark, that's all i mean
sorry for butting in every 2 years or so to pipe up for purely demographic reasons

Sounds like someone pouring ball bearings into a metal bucket.

one for the sticker

i appreciate aero's thoughtful comments abt goregrind's utility to trauma survivors, but i'm stuck with the impression that this kind of music (goregrind & pornogrind specifically) is produced by and large by guys for guys - mostly straight & white guys, but let's not dwell there. this is music for men that's all too often obsessed w first-person narratives about the butchery of women. and sure, butchery in general, but women do seem to bear the disproportionate brunt of it, especially where certain bands are concerned.

afaic, there's a blurry but very real threshold point past which explanations and intentions fade from view and what remains are the things themselves. here we have millions of men fantasizing endlessly, album after album, about raping and killing women. does this have potential art value and even positive social utility? sure, but only in the sense that everything does. i wouldn't begrudge anyone the right to draw boundaries wr2 such stuff, even when they're seemingly unconsidered or even incoherent.

millions of men

Ha ha, dude, how popular do you think goregrind is, exactly? I think "dozens" or "scores" of men is a more accurate description.

would imagine that millions of dudes have been into the likes of devourment, cannibal corpse & pig destroyer over the years. the world's a big place. i mean, i'm a dude and i like pig destroyer, wouldn't really lump them in w the other two, except, well, just a lot of women getting butchered all around. i'm not saying it's wrong, just weird and worth thinking about.

hundreds of thousands? i dunno. a lot.

huh wow gosh i wasn't thinking before but i've given it some thought and i'm really thinking now

lemme know how that works out

well, on the one hand

well, on the other hand

^ thoughtful post

^ booming thought

*gorenoise*

Are Last Days of Humanity all taking their tuning off the snare or what

dunno if it's really even metal (what is, these days?), but the new cynic is amazing. surprised to hear it described as less than accessible. certain passages recall the beatles, imo, which is about as good an accessibility benchmark as i can think of.

oh i don't think it's remotely as catchy as traced in air even, beyond "the lion's roar"

it's very good though

I'll listen if it has any songs as remotely awesome as "Nunc Stans" on it.

lol nunc stans

is there a joke or

sorry automatic reaction to reading the word "stans" on ilx instead of in a tracklisting

maybe yr right, i am for the moment all hung up on the beatleyness of "the lion's roar". and the title track, and "moon heart sun head" and "holy fallout", and... like most cynics, i'm sure it'll take some time before the whole thing really settles in, but nearly every track here has some fair best-on-the-album claim. and yes, remotely as awesome as "nunc stans" is the operating principle.

"stans" is Latin for "standing" (present participial iirc). "nunc" is Latin for "now."

good to know

oh also i don't think i like any of these new cynic songs as much as i like "box up my bones" from that ep a few years ago but who knows, it could grow on me

this particular usage seems to be from Boethius whose name you hardely ever hear any more

“Nunc fluens facit tempus,
nunc stans facit aeternitatum.

(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)”

"nunc stans" = "the now that remains"

"nunc fluens" is also the intro to traced in air. cool

http://www.manowar-collection.de/Manowar1984Poster.jpg

Last, this Artificial Brain thing on Profound Lore is lining up nicely along the Demilich-Gorguts-Mitochondrion axis of weird: http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/labyrinth-constellation

a lot riff-groovier tho, and very loose guy-in-a-room feel on the drums

that sounds great in a 30-second sample, will bookmark for later

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2014/02/coffin-dust-this-cemetery-my-kingdom/

cheers

yeah ok that one is a lot more fun (cuz of thrash probably) than the artificial brain

seriously fuckin a TWIN GUITAR LEADS

i feel bad for people who lived in dark historical times where it just wasn't possible to double up some sweet guitar leads, it's like not having sunlight or blue skies

If you're not a fan of shredtastic technical death metal, you should probably avoid Hannes Grossmann's The Radial Covenant. He's the former drummer for Necrophagist, current drummer for Obscura, and also plays with Ron Jarzombek a lot. Jarzombek is on this album, as are Jeff Loomis, Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry), Christian Muenzner (Obscura, Spawn of Possession), V. Santura (Triptykon) and a bunch of other folks. It's more melodic and power-metal-ish than you might expect, with less jazz-fusion bass than I'd hoped for, but still definitely an excuse for lots and lots of guitar solos.

oh fuck that sounds great

I think that Wayne still is in the Bay area. This seems like a fun couple of nights out for him and/or those who are:

Brainsqueeze Fest

Friday - April 18, 2014
Oakland Metro - All Ages
Ghoul
Cannabis Corpse
Final Conflict
Iron Reagan
BAT
Fucktard

Saturday - April 19, 2014
Oakland Metro - All Ages
Municipal Waste
Negative Approach
Fucked Up
Impaled
The Shrine
Kicker
Conquest for Death

Sunday - April 20, 2014
Eli's Mile High Club - 21+
Brainoil
Deny the Cross
Connoisseur
+ wild and unpredictable guests
BBQ + Andrei Bouzikov art showing

k has anybody heard of a d00d named J0hn F!nb3rg (aka F!rst R0w T@l3nt aka 3nt3rT✧✧✧@u✧✧.c✧✧)?

Basically, I bought a ticket to see Iced Earth on 4/24 of this year. The day after I purchased, I got a second email and ticket confirmation. I emailed to ask why and they (he) claimed I bought a second ticket. Instead of offering to investigate for me, he insisted I bought the ticket. After five emails and subsequent refusals to investigate any fraud, I initiated a chargeback.

To my surprise, I lost. He submitted documentation "proving" that I submitted two orders (his proof consisted of purchase orders his own company sent which didn't even contain IP addresses).

I began putting together my appeal and wrote them back demanding they investigate fraud, but he merely said he'd 'pass it onto legal' and since my anxiety has been out of whack lately, I decided to give up since it's less than $30.

I searched for the guy's name on the net and found SEVERAL character assassinations so I was wondering if this is a persona non grata I've never heard of? Honestly can't believe the shit this guy has put me through over one ticket - if I'd have ordered it by mistake, I'd have just eaten the cost, I've done dumb stuff like that before...but I was at a bar watching football at the time of the alleged 'purchase'.

If it's the same guy I am thinking of, he has been a booking agent for metal bands, mostly on the level of Metal Blade, Earache and the like, for decades now. He's also known as a douchebag of the highest order, fucking over bands and labels and managers all the time. Back when I was booking bands (and I discovered what a thankless job it is) he was considered a "necessary evil" to work with because hardly anyone would take on the bands that he did. But nobody enjoyed the experience and there were people who simply didn't work with him. So... Good luck if it's him (and I'm pretty sure it is).

this is exactly what I found when I searched his name on the net. and yeah, at this point, I've essentially given up...$25 isn't worth the stress involved.

my credit card 3-digit auth code and exp date have changed since that transaction, so there's no chance of him pulling another fast one on me. just don't like being dicked over. like seriously, forwarding my complaint to 'legal', as if he's going to threaten to sue me for threatening to file an AG report? lord.

Ha ha ha ha, NOW I know who you're talking about – I remember some of my industry friends talking about this guy a few years back and how much of a scumbag he was.

"Necessary evil" was the exact phrase they used as well.

so so glad to have met this crucial metal pioneer :/

I was going to say this seems like a bad business model, but apparently he's still around, so I guess I'm the one who's wrong here.

Listened to the Nervosa album tonight. They're an all-female thrash trio from Brazil who sound uncannily like Destruction, to me anyway—not just the riffing, but the vocals, too. They're good, though, so I hope they don't get dismissed the way, say, Gallhammer did. (I liked Gallhammer; I thought they brought a healthy dose of silliness and fun to crusty black metal, and their last album was pretty goddamn bizarre.)

Gallhammer were great. Who dismissed them? Terrorizer/Zero Tolerance magazines here loved them.

There was a weird perceived-hype-backlash with them and probably some sexism in there, too. I thought they were awesome, for the record.

there was definitely a lot of grousing about how they couldn't really play etc, from people/a demographic of people who... didn't usually take such a principled stance on the matter

the second (?) album Peaceville released over here was really good iirc imo

I loved Gallhammer.

lol Pitchfork and all that, but the new Slough Feg album is on Spotify and is sounding p great: http://open.spotify.com/album/4BPyUjCnERSNMLQ23Z5P1w

otm. "laser enforcer", which has been kicking around for some time now, is still my favorite, but it's a damn solid album overall. better than the animal spirits, if not quite down among the deadmen.

did any of you guys ever watch this one man metal doumentary that vice did a while back? http://www.vice.com/noisey-vbs/one-man-metal-part-1

they get pretty good access to these dudes and overall it's interesting.

leviathan dude seems like typical functional misanthrope, they do get into some of the actual bad shit that's happened to him (this is pre-assault charge).
striborg dude seems pretty well-adjusted, regular guy who just likes to wear capes and walk in the woods occasionally.
xasthur dude i would actually be concerned about, he seems unwell.