Rolling Metal Thread 2010

I was raving about Christian Mistress in June and Nate followed suit with his own effusive praise. I am nuts about their new album (my review is in the new Sword-slammin' issue of Decibel), it's NWOBHM done right, with a great female singer to boot.

I put the CD on in the car the other day and didn't like it much, though it might just have been my mood. If AMG wants a review, I'll give it a fuller listen.

I enjoy music with both Sleep/Sabbath AND Skynyrd/Hatchet influences. I dont think ditching one for the other is a good basis for a bad review.

are you guys basically saying that everybody has to like the Sword or they are posing

I'm certainly not, I haven't even heard the new album yet! I was just quoting the review everyone was talking about. I am looking forward to the new one though.

are you guys basically saying that everybody has to like the Sword or they are posing

^posing.

I haven't quite convinced myself that there's nothing of value on the new Ozzy album, but man, there are some steaming cesspools of awfulness on it. I don't have a pole long enough to see how deep a pit "Let Me Hear You Scream" is, and if I did, I probably wouldn't want to get any of that stuff on it.

Do you want to read my track-by-track review of the new Iron Maiden album? Probably not. But here it is anyway.

I agree with the review, Phil. Incredibly long album that needs time to sink in, but no tossed-off tracks whatsoever.

On the other hand, the new Boris EP with Ian Astbury is totally tossed-off. (Like most Boris records.)

I like the "Rain" cover a lot actually.

Yeah, that's about the only thing I did like.

Best thing on it, no question.

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this Boris thing yet, definitely not top tier material. I do have to say I'm very surprised to see Phil call them "deadly dull live", both times I've seen them they've been outstanding.

Here's an interview I did with Tommy Clufetos, drummer for Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie and now Ozzy Osbourne...

posted already on the swans thread but since i'm listening again right now feel i should repeat how groovy the new swans album is. sadly, my speakers can only handle 120 watts of power.

i feel good now.

Finally checking out Heliocentric, really not too sure about the new Ocean vocalist. Liked the first couple of tracks well enough, but when the piano-heavy power ballad "Ptolemy Was Wrong" came on, my interest faded quickly.

dug the new decrepit birth on first listen. I remember people trashing the production on this one - what's the deal? I've certainly heard worse.

I have been working on the upcoming October Thrones/Christian Mistress tour for weeks. Should have some dates to announce very soon. Likely, they are coming your way. Folks who write for local weeklies, please take note! :)

re: Decrepit Birth, the drum sound is terrible.

And funnily enough, the City of Fire CD also has a pretty decent cover of "Rain" on it.

I've heard about this LA retro-proto metal band Gypsyhawk 3 times in the last 2 weeks. Whenever that happens, I try to pay attention.

Apparently Brian Tattler of Diamond Head is praising them too.

Thoughts?

http://www.myspace.com/gypsyhawkusa

Jumping into the Boris discussion a few posts up, yes, the BXI EP is totally tossed off and undercooked (minus the "Rain" cover, which bests the overrated original) but that's really part of the appeal, I think. I bet we could come up with a bigger laundry list of *overcooked* collaborative efforts... nice to hear something a bit more nonchalant. It's not anywhere close to the best thing Boris has let out in recent years, but it doesn't need to be. It's a fun, stopgap EP.

Oh, and Boris are always incredible live, a sure bet for a fucking loud rock show with a wall of drone/sludge/noise tossed in here and there.

check out ~~~ F&*^ THE MOJO/ROLLING STONE CANON, HERE IS THE ILM ALLTIME HEAVYROCK/METAL ALBUMS POLL RESULTS! - WITH SPECIAL GUEST : HENRY, ILM'S FAVOURITE HEAVY METAL DOG ~~~

a question for more experienced metal listeners:

is there anything special that a death metal musician has to do while they're playing that's any different from what 'a normal musician' would? what are they listening for to know where they are, to know what to do when? have death metal listeners / musicians worked out an idea of how the elements fit together so that they usually reckon by them? ('then we do this blast-beat section for four bars of the guitar riff, then…')

i'm at the point where i can hear that every band and every style is just as attached to their musical patterns as any other kind of music, but since death metal especially goes out of its way to use patterns that are quite distant from a lot of intuitively meaningful musical idioms—especially where turn-on-a-dime structures and awkward rhythms and time signatures are concerned—i sometimes wonder whether the really technical bands don't just have to learn each song entirely by rote.

and i realize that all performing musicians have to learn each song entirely by rote, but usually they're helped out by working in styles that don't try so hard to thwart so many 'natural' musical idioms. with free jazz musicians, say, it doesn't seem at all mysterious to me how they learn what to do and can re-perform 'the same'. but the rigidity of death metal seems like it makes that work a little differently. (maybe it's more like performing schoenberg or webern?)

(i've been listening to the inherit disease album mentioned upthread, and now i'm wondering what the best way would be to represent the singing in print. )

in the studio death metal is recorded one chunk at a time, one instrument at a time, from what I know. drums first. there is totally a comparison between death metal composition & serialism, imo.

unrelatedly, did everybody hear the spite extreme wing album VLTRA from last year? 'cause some of y'all would dig that. epic structures, lots of looks (opens with a black metal burst that eases into an enslaved-proggy deal but then does a thrash breakdown, all without seeming like it's trying too hard), pretty damn good.

Smithy someone asked a question Here that you & chuck might be able to answer

xxpost - J I think you might need to start a thread on that topic. And I suspect that different bands would give you different answers. If you're a writer, perhaps sending interviews/queries to a bevvy of your favorite artists would yield enough info to make a substantial and rewarding article.

In other news: Rush Time Machine tour was killer last night! La Villa Strangiato; need I say more?

i don't know, this seems like a pretty good thread for catching the ear of someone with something to say. i'm not looking to write an article, just to understand metal better.

haerosmith, i'd guess that if death metal is recorded piece-by-piece, that's partly because it's just too difficult—or costly—to record it live, in terms of engineering and getting it right and such. but if they record it piece-by-piece they must have already learned how to play it whole, right?

(i guess the comparison to serialism is helpful because it points out that to perform or record their difficult-to-get-a-'natural'-feel-for music, serialists would have been working from scores. i assume that death metal musicians don't, exactly, since technically they play in an uncomposed/'folk'/semi-improvised tradition, but it would be interesting if they did tend to notate their music more precisely than other metal bands did.)

technically they play in an uncomposed/'folk'/semi-improvised tradition

There is no improvisation in death metal. It has to be recorded piece-by-piece not only because the music is complex and requires great precision of execution, but also because the tunings and frequencies bleed into each other, especially with the guitars all downtuned and whatnot. So unless you want the bass to disappear into the guitars (even more than it already does) you've gotta record everything separately and mix it really carefully.

well, yeah—i was stressing the 'tradition' part of that sentence. the serialists were part of a tradition that included improvised performance, too, but obviously a long time past.

when is Earth gonna make a new album?

j,

don't have much to add to this (just a listener myself) but I think that this video that was posted in mordy's listening club thread would be of some interest to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGrwNM5ROBc&feature=player_embedded

but bear in mind that, even in the context of death metal, gorguts are making music that's pretty non-traditional.

whoa, full stream of the new thou album on npr.org! awesome.

― The world’s most violent pizza delivery man (Alan N), Monday, August 2, 2010 2:51 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

i just stumbled across this stream looking for some tunes to listen to during work and i think i really like these guys.

yeah, I really dig this band. they've put out a ton of stuff already but they only seem to be improving with time.

tons of mp3s available on their own site if you're interested:
http://noladiy.org/mp3/thou/

degradation of human life, we pass like night from land to land, and peasant are some of the better releases that come to mind.

I still have to give summit a proper listen.

oh cool, thanks for that link.

just wrapping it up now, it's a strong record and i think it's going to sound great when i'm able to play it loud. they're not incredible musicians but i find their limitations really charming. they're kind of like a sludge version of wittr.

yeah, playing it loud is exactly what I'm waiting for!

Finally gave the new Enslaveda really good listen on the drive home from the Rush show. Wow, they've done it again.

gave summit a listen last night. very good overall, and they're getting there, but this is not their masterpiece. more of their "clean up the band's sound and add some embellishments" record. (horns and viola and some other stuff I'm not remembering, in this case.) will be playing this a lot.

and destroyer, on your comment about thou's musical limitations - I've never actually looked into it, but these guys have got to have some connection to 90s hardcore. their lyrics, politics, love of splits, aesthetic, etc. all scream it to me. their musicianship follows with that and I find what they pull off and how they go about it charming as well.

Hey Everybody, I've been a lurker on this thread off and on for almost 2 years now. I've really enjoyed all the discussion and recommendations. I'm a fairly new fan of metal. I dabbled in it just a little when I was a kid, but only recently got really obsessive over it. It's one of the very few genres I haven't fully explored. I don't want to go on too much just yet, but I just want to thank the contributors here for a lot of good leads and information.

Most recently I've been exploring a lot of Finnish metal -- death, doom, black, etc. Today I was particularly blown away by doom bands Thergothon and Unholy. I listened to them almost all day at work.

In general, I've been listening to a lot of black thrash and classic death metal, but I'm open to just about anything as long as it moves me or bludgeons me into some happy oblivion.

Thergothon has me wondering what other funeral doom I might enjoy. It's not a genre I thought I'd like that much, but I have listened to a lot of drony and dirgy stuff ranging from the Swans to Birchville Cat Motel.

Skepticism
Winter

And have a wee look at the poll we're running ~~~ F&*^ THE MOJO/ROLLING STONE CANON, HERE IS THE ILM ALLTIME HEAVYROCK/METAL ALBUMS POLL RESULTS! - WITH SPECIAL GUEST : HENRY, ILM'S FAVOURITE HEAVY METAL DOG (TOP 100!) ~~~
Most people here have voted. Lots of black,doom,stoner,death,thrash & trad heavy metal in it so far.

oh and check out Corrupted.

Hey, thanks Herman! Winter looks really interesting.
I'll check out the others as well and the poll.

Has anyone heard Atanatos's last album, Beast Awakening from 2006?
It's really good blackened thrash with some aspects of death and NWOBHM,
and even some subtle symphonic elements.

This sort of mix might sound nightmarish to some, but man, it works so well!
I haven't heard anything quite like it.

So much good stuff has come out this year, too, but I've been delving
in the past so much, I've almost forgotten. The new Abscess really stands out for me.
What else? I need to jog my brain a bit.

Oh yeah, the Polish band Preludium is supposed
to have a new EP due out soon, but it seems to be
indefinitely delayed. I'm looking forward to it.

welcome, seren!

Over at Hellbound I posted an interview with my favourite new Canadian metal band, a wickedly good female guitar/drums duo called Mares of Thrace, whose debut album is a cool blend of Neurosis and the Jesus Lizard: http://www.hellbound.ca/2010/08/introducing-mares-of-thrace/

They're a ferocious live act, and the drummer is one of the better female metal drummers I've seen. Well worth checking out!

"Thergothon has me wondering what other funeral doom I might enjoy."

Do you have Asunder's last album on Profound Lore?