Rolling Metal Thread 2010

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?

Seeing Slayer/Megadeth in east rutherford, nj tomorrow night. Very stoked.

ok, why did I wait so long to listen to the new ihsahn and immolation records? both are just excellent.

Thanks for reminding me about Ihsahn. New Immolation is good.

yeah, new immolation isn't reinventing the wheel or anything but it's way solid.

Very solid. And even better live. I just keep waiting for them to out-do Close To A World Below and it keeps not happening. Still have mad respect for Ross and co.

yeah, seeming them live was what made me think, "why the hell haven't I listened to yet?" every time they said, "this is off the new one" I was floored.

*seeing them live

"a thunderous consequence" just kills

So the new Kylesa seems to be channeling early-90s indie rock in a big way. You know, back when the big riffs were still cool, like Sugar and Drive Like Jehu. Good stuff.

So not just the wrong thread but the wrong board entirely here... but I felt I should say 'Valhalla Rising' is the most metal film I've ever seen! Like Hawk The Slayer for grownups, if that doesn't make it sound too rubbish. Don't want to spoilerize it but if Wardruna were a film, I reckon this would be it. Really ace ambient, drone, Krautmetal/Current 93 meets Coil meets Hair and Skin Trading Co. soundtrack by two guys called Peter Peter & Peter Kyad. There's a little bit about them on the internet but if anyone could tell me if any of their other stuff is worth buying I'd appreciate it.

Oh I want to see that so bad. The international trailer looks fantastic. The US trailer is lackluster in comparison.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/valhallarising/

It looks amazing. Kind of like Von Trier, post Dogme 95 but without any of the gross over stylization/perfume ad bits that marred Antichrist but with all of its deranged violence left intact. But in other ways a bit like Greenway... every set up is framed like a painting. And in some ways like a Takeshi Kitano flick... lots of broody, contemplative scenes, that stretch on and on, occasionally punctuated with extremely unpleasant and implacable violence.

But with Vikings. And drone metal.

Oooh, that does look good.

Synopsis:

For years, One-Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner - forced to fight for his life and the amusement of his pagan slavers. Aided by a boy, he finds his moment, furiously kills his captors and together they escape, beginning an odyssey through an unknown land. After falling in with a band of Vikings, One-Eye and his young companion find they must confront terrible fate in the quest for their freedom.

So the new Kylesa seems to be channeling early-90s indie rock in a big way. You know, back when the big riffs were still cool, like Sugar and Drive Like Jehu. Good stuff.

Don't take this the wrong way cos I do like those bands to an extent, but that sounds really wrong for Kylesa. I missed them with Converge the other week for some reason.

Some people aren't going to like the album, that's for sure. The sludge has been thinned out a fair bit, with more emphasis on psych influences.

seems to me like kylesa have increasingly been steering in that direction for a few albums now. last album definitely had its share of 90s indie.

I'm interested to hear the new Kylesa. Not so interested in seeing Valhalla Rising, which bums me out. I love the subject matter, but hate Refn's other movies. I thought the first Pusher was boring, turned off Bronson and the second Pusher movie halfway through, and never even bothered with #3.

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

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

― Nate Carson, Wednesday, August 11, 2010 6:01 AM

No, I hadn't heard that one but I gave it a listen.
It seems difficult to capture the strangeness and mystery
conveyed by bands like Thergothon and Unholy, but Asunder does
not a bad job of it. I enjoyed Works Will Come Undone for the most part... Thanks!

Maybe I need to give the new Ihsahn another chance.
I found his voice hard to listen to and some of his song structures
a little showy and lacking a good flow. The saxophone is cool though!