Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Classy

xpost to aero

Yeah, I wss overstating for effect but we've all stood at merch tables watching kids drop hundreds of dollars on very, very little purchase then spend the show deciding whether to have fun or protect their new vinyl.

Anybody who's ever bought from Greg has thought he was way overpriced even before the USPS price hike. NB these two stories may be linked

so i'm noticing the opening track on the new Lord Mantis has a riff that sounds somewhat like the theme from Fraggle Rock

hey siegbran, thanx for the entrails rec, i heard abt that record but for some reason a review or a sample made me give it a pass (could possibly have been a review that tut-tutted D-BEAT WORSHIP so i have no idea what could have been going thru my d-beat addled mind)

i.e. entrails, awesome

The new Vader album is exactly what I want from Vader, and indeed pretty much exactly what I want from death metal at this point. Head-down, face-punching riffs, blasting drums, crisp booming production, straight down the middle (of your skull, with an axe). It rocks. And so does the High Spirits album.

― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, May 16, 2014 8:00 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I definitely like this better than Welcome to the Morbid Reich, which I did admittedly like but felt was a little 'soft'.

I know we're barely halfway through the year, but 2014 has so far been a great year for metal! Some excellent albums so far;
Lord Mantis - Death Mask - scathing, acidic black/sludge that will literally peel your skin off with layered riffs and Today Is The Day-esque vocals
Behemoth - The Satanist - Finally, these Polish stalwarts up the songwriting quality and production to create their first truly great album
Sigirya - Darkness Died Today - thundering doom metal from elder statesmen of the genre
Triptykon - Melana Chasmata - gloomy, atmospheric yet crushing goth/thrash/groove that evokes classic Celtic Frost, as well as Tiamat
Dark Forest - The Awakening - an apt title as this New Wave Trad Metal band drastically increase in quality, delivering a powerhouse of a power metal album
Slough Feg - Digital Resistance - classic celtic/sci-fi metallers prove once again they can do no wrong with their best album yet
And many more by greats like The Oath, Demon Eye, Morgue of Saints, Dread Sovereign, Tempel, Morbus Chron & Volume IV.
Also like what I've heard so far of new albums by Opeth & Mastodon, and looking forward to new YOB, Wo Fat, Tombs, Serpent Venom and loads more

It has been a very solid year, regardless of which subgenres float your boat.

On the basis of how obnoxious I find the production of the music and even the color palette of the album cover, I'm assuming Russian band 7 H.Target is the brutal death version of "kids these days [shakes fist]" but if you're gonna have a song called "Cyborg Kombat" this is what it needs to sound like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71uNeZPvZUI#t=810

As for production values that I can get behind:
This Skaphe ambient black doom metal thing, while cassette only (boo), is one of the most wondrously dismal and suffocated things I've ever heard. Penetrating the muck to find the song seems merely an option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTZB9uGbR3U

Cavernous death metal from Spain, 13th Moon, keeps the music pretty minimal but knows how to wallop you over the head with it. I love the drum sound. Reminds me of Gorgoroth's "Revelation of Doom."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tn_fFTCuXM (They also have a song on their label's soundcloud.)

Also what I've heard of that Vanhelgd album is pretty good but it seems like another of those things that others will like more than I. Could be a grower, though.

And dammit once again I meant those to be the non-embedded links. A thousand pardons.

Especially in light of the fact that the 7 H.Target link was to a specific timestamp, not to the whole album. Argh.

And apparently I even fucked up the timestamp link. It should have been this:
http://youtu.be/71uNeZPvZUI?t=13m30s

The irony is that this isn't even a song I like. It's just ... dazzling in its obnoxiousness.

I am going back to watching the World Cup now. That I know how to do.

yeah, these 13th moon tracks are doing the trick

liking Dark Forest - thanks Greatjon

i really like power metal in theory. like i'm real retrograde i kinda feel like somewhere between priest/maiden/dio and early metallica is like the peak of what i need for metal. but everytime i hear "power" metal it seems really bad. i wanted to like mastodon more than i did.

pallbearer is probably my favorite metal thing i've heard forever.

i like Dark Forest but even they get a little neo-classic/yngwie/celtic woman at times

also there's one part where this harmony lead part is basically doing the "In a world made of steel, made of stone" part from "Flashdance" - maybe on purpose??? /chuckeddy

when it comes to power metal, I'm much less into the pompous overblown stuff and more into the stuff with teeth. ie early Helloween, though I realize many categorize that as speed metal. also loved the first two Angra albums, though I'm aware they had some grandiose shit going on at times.

Power metal to me is the true Heavy Metal. its the middle if the road. After all the roots of it, and the proto metal, when it finally found its true form I feel it was what has become power metal.
I'm not a huge fan but I will always tip my hat to that branch..

Yo player you ain't saying nothing slick to a carnivore wrt helloween

UMS - new Pallbearer is even better.

The latest Freedom Call album is the most satisfying power metal album I've heard since Sabaton's 'Carolus Rex'. It's been a decent year for metal of the the power/prom dress variety.

(and yeah, big thumbs-up for the new Pallbearer)

Listening to Vainaja from Finland right now. Aside from having a name you don't want to mispronounce they've got a pretty good death/doom thing going on.

Listening to the new Mastodon for the first time right now. First song OK, second song better.

Vainaja album is excellent imo. not sure why I didn't rep for them itt already in fact

the new Septicflesh is really, really, really good.

Finally getting around to that new Lord Mantis... I didn't know.. Sorry! lol..

Lord Mantis can eat shit forever imo, never heard them, never will.

On a brighter side, holy fuck, obsidian tongues was FUCKING FANTASTIC tonight.

That's too bad - the new Lord Mantis is indeed super fucking awesome. For me, it's a definite contender for metal AOTY.

oh wow yeah fuck that band

what's objectionable about them?

shitty racist lyrics and a trans person being murdered on the cover of the record is enough for me to not pay attention to them

Cover art by Jef Whitehead, because of course.

I'm not really interested in playing captain save a Mantis here, because there is a lot of objectionable stuff going on with that record that I can totally understand why people want to ignore it, but I don't think the lyric that's being pulled out is so much "racist" as completely fucking stupid and wrong-headed. It scans to me kind of like The Fall's use of the n-word, not intended to be hate speech as much as just a dumb fucking decision to write a song "in character" (always shaky ground to stand on anyway, I know).

I've read a few interviews in which the band discusses both the lyrics and the cover art. As a musician/songwriter I wouldn't personally have taken the same approach they did with respect to the subject matter, but the band members appear to be way more thoughtful about the whole thing than the online community's knee-jerk reaction would lead one to believe. That said, I totally understand folks who aren't into it. Shred on!

Fuck that Mantis dude.

hmmm not nice

uggg fuck this guy

In 2013, there was a lot of public awareness about the issues concerning the Trans community. While Jef Whitehead is known for his provocative music and art (and personality for that matter) it can be argued that in a year in which mainstream media is becoming more aware of Trans issues, the album cover can be construed as offensive, against the positive awareness that is currently circulating. Can you explain, or if you want, dispel some of the controversy about the album cover?
I was going to have Bartlett do it again but there were some communication problems mostly on my part. Jef’s one of my favorite dudes in the world and knows my brain enough to pull off something fitting. Trans awareness? I had no idea that this was going be such an issue. I thought maybe the trans community would be pumped that they’re getting some culture points! I tend to watch people a lot and in that I feel pretty detached from being human. It’s like being in a monkey cage, you start seeing people for the animals they are; laughing, eating, smoking, dick sucking, cum loving, piss-in-the-mouth monkeys. It’s strange thinking of sex when you see it from and outside perspective; meat slipping into meat; female, male. It’s blurred. I think everybody’s half gay when you remove the shame.

When I was 20 I used to hang out at Neo a ton, it’s a Goth club in Chicago. I was there one night on a shit ton of acid as usual and I’m outside smoking and this pimped out SUV pulls up and this hot chick tells me to come take a ride with her so I get in. We start making out like immediately and stop at this light. She asks me if I like drugs and then pulls out this big crack pipe and takes a huge rip then she starts going down on me in the car, so I stick my hand up this chicks skirt and just get a handful of dick. My whole world just fucking crashed right there. That’s when I first started thinking like that, the whole detachment and seeing people as meat thing. So I just said fuck it and then blew my load in that dudes mouth. He got some young dick and I got a new perspective on the animal kingdom. Hope that explains something.

cool guy

jesus, now i'm glad i've never dug too deep into his interviews

oh my god

:-o

cool so that cover is just a shock tactic then

and the line "I am the raping n___" is, too.

Fuck that clown.

I am so not even wanting to point this out because fuck defending that dude or even endorsing anything he does by association on any level... but, genuine question here regarding how/why we draw the lines we do. No judgments here on anyone, in all sincerity, but I find it interesting that when I brought up being uncomfortable with "Dismember the Transgender" there were a few people quick to defend the genre's right to offend but then everyone is double-quick to jump all over Whitehead for this album cover.

Obviously I get that Whitehead, as proven time and time again, is a a pretty reprehensible dude on multiple levels, but I do find it interesting that Prostitute Disfigurment gets the pass because it's "expected" in their genre but somehow Lord Mantis is crossing a line.

(and, yeah, I am setting aside the lyrical thing here, just focusing on the cover art)

i remember the dismember convo and iirc there was talk there about 'its just that long tradition of metal shock value,' but seems to me that interview excerpt reveals there's more to it than that in this instance

Oh yeah, that's totally true, hence my second bit there about how awful the dude is, I totally get that as a differentiating circumstance. And again, not calling anyone out here or feeling like I'm personally invested in this in anyway, it's just genuinely interesting to me to see how stuff like this may or may not get reacted to.

I saw Desecration do a song a few weeks ago called "Cunt full of maggots". Don't know which side of the argument that helps.

Had a long chat with Charlie from Mantis, and his lyrics for that song supposedly come from a very dark place from his childhood, he insists it was never supposed to be HIS point of view but that of the protagonist. It wasn't his intent to offend, and I believe him, but offend he certainly did. It was a stupid thing to do.

I'm more offended by his disingenuous pretending he is surprised at the reaction from people.

Or his statements defending Jef saying how he was proven innocent of rape and how folks are still teeing off on him. Didja maybe forget the conviction for domestic violence or the horrifying misogyny that continued to come out his mouthpiece?

I am so not even wanting to point this out because fuck defending that dude or even endorsing anything he does by association on any level... but, genuine question here regarding how/why we draw the lines we do. No judgments here on anyone, in all sincerity, but I find it interesting that when I brought up being uncomfortable with "Dismember the Transgender" there were a few people quick to defend the genre's right to offend but then everyone is double-quick to jump all over Whitehead for this album cover.

Well...speaking only for myself, I'm "okay with" (in the "not finding it any worse than the rest of their catalog" sense) Prostitute Disfigurement calling a song "Dismember the Transgender," basically because it's pretty obvious their intent is solely to entertain. They're a Cannibal Corpse knockoff, no more no less, and frankly "Dismember the Transgender" is a moderately clever title, by death metal standards - I mean, it almost rhymes! Whereas Lord Mantis are just deliberate ugliness on every level, from music (I think their records sound like shit and don't respect them as song/riff-writers) to cover art to the main dude's repulsive comments in interviews. Their work isn't intended to "offend" in a showbiz sense (and by the way, who's being offended? Who's being exposed to a Prostitute Disfigurement album without actively seeking it out?), it seems intended to hurt. So fuck him and fuck them.

Burzum Syndrome