Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Speaking of bands Relapse should sign, how about Usnea... Oh wait! They did! Good job!

USNEA: Sophomore LP From Portland Doom Quartet Nears November Release Through Relapse Records; New Track Streaming

http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs190/1114457189250/img/1041.jpg

Having signed Portland, Oregon based funeral doom/death quartet, UNSEA, earlier this year, Relapse Records is now preparing the band's monstrous sophomore LP for descent onto the population in mid-November.

Today, USNEA unveils the full details of their awaited second full-length LP, which now comes as their debut for Relapse Records, a four-song sonic masterpiece, entitled Random Cosmic Violence. Blending the sounds of the doom forefathers like Disembowelment and My Dying Bride with the gritty sludge of High On Fire, USNEA has created a classic of the new millennium. Recorded and mixed by Jared "Fester" See at Haywire Studios (Stoneburner, Rabbits, Drunk Dad) who supplies additional guitars to the title track, and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Yob, High On Fire, Integrity), the artwork and design was handled by Justin Cory and Orion Landau.

Relapse has issued a single from Random Cosmic Violence, releasing the second track "Healing Through Death" via SoundCloud and YouTube:

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

Pulsating with tribal intensity, Random Cosmic Violence is one of those rare records which elevates itself above the boundaries that its genre typically self-imposes. Yes, this is a mighty heavy piece of sludge-laden funeral doom, but the musicality and songcraft exhibited throughout the entirety of Random Cosmic Violence immediately place USNEA not just at the forefront of the blossoming American doom scene, but at the tops of heavy music altogether.

Now set for release on CD, digital and both colored/limited and standard black 2xLP on November 7th in Germany/Benelux/Finland and November 10th in North America and the rest of the world, preorders for Random Cosmic Violence can be placed on physical versions and digital.

The last cassette I bought was Usnea's last album.

I'm looking forward to hearing the new Machine Head.

Wonder if it sounds like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD26H-YyxtI#t=48

I absolutely loved That '70s Show last night with Uncle Acid and Danava. Danava channeled Captain Beyond nicely and Uncle Acid encored with Neil Young's "Down By The River." So brutal. Oddly enough it sounded a little like what I would imagine the song would have sounded like in Lynyrd Skynyrd's pre-crash hands.

The only negative was that Uncle Acid had no CDs (I was planning on getting the new one from them) and ran out of all shirts before I had a chance to pick one up, which sucked because both shirts they had were pretty sweet and reasonably priced. It was the first show of the tour and they already sold out of stuff! I hope someone restocks them along the way...

the new Avatarium EP gives me serious Rainbow vibes. melodic doom with the guitarist from Candlemass and a really good singer and a Hammond organ and witchy lyrics. super-nice.

Oh man, I really hope there's more shirts by next week's Chicago show! Glad to hear it was a great show though, really been looking forward to it.

where is it? i didn't even know it was happening.

Subterranean.

New Stargazer track up on Bandcamp.

http://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/a-merging-to-the-boundless

Psyched! Such an amazing band.

http://hellbeard.bandcamp.com/

FINALLY... the new Hellbeard is up, out and ready for your downloading... thanks for your support guys!!!

Does anybody else think Couch Slut (whose debut record is fantastic, by the way) sound like Cloud Rat if they were a sludgy hardcore/noise rock band, or is it just me? I don't even mean because they're both fronted by women; their respective vocalists have similar voices, and similar styles of emotional expression.

Also, reading up on Couch Slut I see one of their guitarists has a weirdo prog black metal band called Epistasis who put out a record on Crucial Blast this year. Good stuff.

Hellbeard! Will check it out Sean.

I haven't heard Couch Slut yet, but when everyone was talking about Cloud Rat I forget to say one of my friends put out a split with them this year. The project is Orgullo Primitivo, and it's weirdo one man percussion only grind/noise.

Epistasis are fucking awesome

about a week late but finally had the chance to check out High on Fire live.

O
M
F
G

Two Fridays ago, I decided on a whim to see their show in Tampa (already had tickets to the Sunday show two days later in O-Town). Much as I love HoF, I hadn't really spun them in a while so I was kinda feeling like I was going to be underwhelmed, and worried about show fatigue seeing them twice in three days.

Nevermind how loud the damn show was (in a good way), Pike is just insane live. Those leads are piercing, and that bass so rubbery. They generate so much sound for a three piece. "Fury Whip" is a monster track and I love that they closed with "Snakes for the Divine".

Two days later in Orlando was even better. More intimate space and seemed louder, room was darker so it had this murky metal feel. same exact setlist but it felt like an earthquake was going through the building.

if you ain't seen em do it. cos damn.

The new Primordial track leaves scorched earth in its wake. Figuratively speaking.

http://soundcloud.com/metalbladerecords/primordial-where-greater-men-have-fallen/s-5Wb5n

This just cracks me up, Euronymous must be spinning in his grave so fast you could hook up a dynamo.

At this time next week (Saturday October 4th), we invite you all black metal dads and mothers to bring your children to the Helvete Underground "Family Afternoon". There will be a facepaint "workshop" so that little boys and girls can look like their parents "idols" for an afternoon... Starts 3pm, ends 5pm, free entrance, there will be drinks for children and adults. And it should be fun.

Phobocosm album is sounding good. The guitarist does some nice, drifting and discordant melodic things that sound derived from black metal.

lol @ facepaint workshop

I reviewed the new Decapitated album. I like it, but it really makes me miss Vitek; the way the two brothers played (and wrote) together was really unique.

Talking of stuff making Euronymous spin in his grave… here's Atilla (backed by various Mayhem members) singing Limahl's Never Ending Story in a Japanese karaoke bar. No need to thank me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDLGIVV4JGo

love the witch mountain

that atilla clip is the greatest

I've seen Necrobutcher and Kristopher from Ulver head banging to Tarantula by Zombie in a bar in Oslo… I'm building up a picture of Mayhem as people I'd like to go out drinking with. (If I still drank.)

liking the Occultation album on Profound Lore the more I play it

definitely not generic ambulance-chasing occult rock blah - the blurb in the email w/ the download link mentioned Mighty Sphincter as a comparison point which is welcome and otm - and also the least Kurt Ballou-like Kurt Ballou recording since the Beastmilk album (unless there was something I missed on that front)

mega-latepass here, but where has Gigan been all my life? this band rules.

Is the Occultation album very different from their first album? The first one grew on me a little bit, but it's definitely something you have to be in the mood for.

the blurb in the email w/ the download link mentioned Mighty Sphincter as a comparison point

!!!

Love Gigan. Haven't been able to figure out why they're not as huge as Gojira or at least Bölzer by now.

idk their sound is a hell of a lot murkier/dense/atonal to me than bands like Gojira or even Bolzer. I'm enjoying their albums more and more but they take longer to decipher

I saw Gigan live a couple weeks ago and their guitarist buried himself under so many layers of effects I could barely pick out a single thing he was playing, it was really disappointing. if that's standard practice for them I'm sure it isn't helping

Some of these whippersnappers are getting just stupefying at replicating the 1989 dm thing. The name is kind of silly, though:
http://youtu.be/aeB0_E6r2YY

And this ain't bad:
https://soundcloud.com/xtreemmusic/soulskinner-deadland-pt1

I was sick the night Gigan came through town, so I ended up missing the show. That's disappointing to hear about the effects. They use them more judiciously in the studio, I guess. I've always hated when guitarists hide behind reverb and stuff, but I don't get that vibe from their latest record. The playing is pretty damn tight without being wanker-ish.

Yeah they really do a good job of being technical and weird without losing the thread on their albums.

Well that was a bummer, Bölzer just walked out after three songs because they didn't like the sound.

Longer recap: all in all an excellent festival, sold out in the end which bodes well for the future. The concept of an all-Swiss lineup is good (Bölzer really is as Swiss as I am), the three day setup allows for a lot of local bands to showcase themselves, the venue is pretty good and the addition of an art exhibition was a nice idea too. The four headliners (Borgne on Friday, Rorcal, Bölzer and Darkspace on Saturday) were a clear cut above the rest of the bands in terms of professionalism/entertainment but Euclidean and Tardigrada were good and the rest pretty decent too. Borgne absolutely killed it as the closing band on Friday, I knew the albums are a one-man studio project so I was quite surprised to see them perform live as a (very energetic) five piece but a great performance and the material is awesome, I think I've repped for "Royaume Des Ombres" here before but they've got a pretty unique sound going on. Which I guess is the common thread for all the headliners and what made this bill so interesting.

On Saturday, Bölzer was placed in the secondary room and that proved to be a huge mistake. The preceding bands there sounded ok there but I guess the organisers felt they had to crank it all up a bit for Bölzer to be at least as loud as Rorcal and Darkspace before and after in the main room, and the sound guys couldn't make it work. From the start here was a huge feedback problem much to the chagrin of Okoi Jones, ending in him angrily walking off the stage after three songs. Well at least I managed to get a nice Bölzer shirt to show for it, have to say their shirt designs are fantastic.

I had my doubts whether Darkspace would be enjoyable live and while there was nothing to complain about musically (good mix of stuff from the albums, great sound, good crowd etc): these guys are boring as hell, I'm sorry to say. They didn't help things getting off to a lethargic start with first an overlong ambient intro, then kicking off with (I think only the first half of) 2.8 which is great on record but as a drumless guitars-and-synth instrumental doesn't really get things moving, then another 5+ minute ambient piece, and then that sub-par opening track (4.18) from III I. By then they were over 30 minutes in and they'd lost me, even though they proceeded with the faster and more varied (that's a relative term with Darkspace) material. I'm fine with music moving at a glacial pace, but it's hard to get excited when there's no dynamics whatsoever, nor any movement on stage - just three people with identical corpsepaint and slicked back hair standing like statues, flooded in blue light (cue Blue Man Group joke).

It was Geneva's own Rorcal that brought the house down. This is an awesome band, last years "Villágvége" was a fantastic assault on the eardrums (which I got to appreciate more and more throughout this year) and I can't believe they're not bigger. They're normally categorised as "doom" but it's more of a noise/sludge-meets-grindcore-and-BM hybrid. Live though, it all gets upped another notch, it's hard to describe how super-intense it all was, but it was impressive. Where they're different from the hordes of other artsy sludge bands is that they don't dick around too long, they go from glorious riff-less feedback-orgies to more riff-driven blastbeat sections, to a crushingly heavy doom groove and back again, all with throat-tearing roars on top. They've been around for a while but I really feel these guys are now ready for bigger things.

damn, rorcal sounds right up my alley. will be investigating...

"noise/sludge-meets-grindcore-and-BM hybrid"

Seems like a lot of contemporary extreme metal nestles in and around this particular venn diagram intersection (I'd throw in doom too, like siegbran said Rorcal is often called). I wonder if a new genre coinage will eventually emerge to allow people to save syllables.

NUDGECORE.

I remember a zillion years ago reading a demo review of a presumably awful band that wanted to coin a new term for the black/death metal hybrid and went with "bleath metal."

I like riffs and all but "glorious riff-less feedback-orgies" is what got me

Oh, I'm really enjoying this turgid, mutteringly atmospheric, but still propulsive new album by Emptiness. http://open.spotify.com/album/72pIeCmggT2obNvH5xKUxm

Anyone else finding it fallow for metal lately? I haven't been hearing much exciting the last couple months. I still haven't heard the Scott O))), so maybe that's a quasi-metal thing to look forward to.

Oh, man. The opposite of fallow. Here's a pathetically partial list I've been adding to as the year progresses.

http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/6P2GbFJtuMaRv5w5Lk5OoE

Glad I at least tried (unsuccessfully) to find the end of that playlist. Had no idea that Horned Almighty put out something this year. There were many other entries I probably need to hear.
http://scarletrecords.bandcamp.com/album/world-of-tombs

Seconding the, uh, fertility of metal this time of year. My horns are of plenty. In fact I just today found this in the metal-archives "worthwhile albums of 2014" thread (which I plumb regularly and always recommend others do likewise) -- crushing and dissonant Icelandic black metal sort of akin to Svartidaudi:
http://sinmara.bandcamp.com/album/aphotic-womb

And once again, in the hopes that repeating their names will somehow make their albums come out sooner, I await Lost Soul and Furia.

And xpost yes Emptiness has been doing good things to my brain chemistry.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/horrendous-ecdysis-lp-stream

New Horrendous in full. Joy of joys.

New Ancient VVisdom song.

actually jmm i was thinking we should run some quick metal subgenre poll threads for the year

yknow, couple dozen of the big name death metal albums, nother couple dozen big name black metal, etc.

good occasion to re-collect thoughts about them w/o all the pressure of an eoy poll

the other day i put on the artificial brain record from this year, which i suspected was good at the beginning of the year but was never really drawn to with other records a-waitin. turns out it is a monster!

the most interesting part of these polls are the individual lists anyway imho - what if ppl made up some personal top genre-based lists and shared them?

too heavy a lift

Difficult to say anything definitive yet, it's rare for me to be able to fully digest more than a hundred new albums in a year, so I tend to find the best records during the following years. But so far I like these:
Eternal Riffian - Aeonian (trad-ish doom)
Fluisteraars - Dromers (atmospheric black metal)
Dub Buk - Цвях ("Nail") (thrash metal)
Ghost Bath - Funeral (depressive black metal)
Heresiarch - Wælwulf (death metal)
Bölzer - Soma (death metal)
Kriegsmaschine - Enemy Of Man (dissonant black metal)
Basarabian Hills - Groping In A Misty Spread (dreamy ambient/black)
Neoheresy - Noc Która Dniem Się Stała (neoclassical/black)
Impetuous Ritual - Unholy Congregation Of Hypocritical Ambivalence (death metal)
Saor - Aura (atmospheric/blackgaze)
Taiga - Ashen Light (depressive black metal)
Vader - Tibi Et Igni (death/thrash)
Wijlen Wij - Coronachs of the Ω (funeral doom)
Zgard - Contemplation (atmospheric black)
Behemoth - The Satanist (death/black)
Doom:VS - Earthless (doom)

So I remember Order From Chaos from my tape trading, fanzine-making days. The Kansas City crew were legendary in the underground but never seemed to attract the attention of anyone. Even their debut album, 1992's Stillbirth Machine was essentially not one bootleg but TWO bootlegs released on two labels a year apart:

In the 1993 Decapitated Records MC/CD/LP release on the back of the booklet/sleeve there is a "Warning" note about the bootlegging of this particular album by the notorious "Wild Rag Records".

However, the band considers the Wild Rags release to be more legitimate than the Decapitated Records release despite both, in essence, being bootlegs. This was confirmed in an interview as follows: "Because at least Wild Rags released the format we designed. Technically, because they dropped us in November 1992, they had no right to release the album at all, but since they had no intention of holding to their word and send back to us the layouts and DATs, there was nothing we could do. The Decapitated version looks nothing like what we designed for them in the spring of 1993 (which was completely different from the Wild Rags version). So, as far as we are concerned, it is a bootleg. From misspelled names to words omitted from the songtitles, the Decapitated has many marks of a rank amateur." (Encyclopaedia Metallum

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10370447_702716443149074_8024591709820105635_n.jpg?oh=0475f6eb885d131f112ad7bc21d13a8b&oe=54B9627A

It not only comes with 12 albums but a 124-page hardcover book. Unreal.