Rolling Metal 2016

^^^ That is VERY nice. Also you got me to check out CdG and already ordered one of theirs, thanks.

Absu in NY pretty soon, debating going. Tho I did go see Archgoat this wkd (speaking of Cultes des Ghoules style), and they were great. Pretty positive vibe too, for such a Satanic/blasphemous band -- nice candles/incense stage decoration. Openers were a Swedish black metal band called Valkyrja that I'd never heard of, but they were also good (great drummer too), in a very traditional black metal way.

Anyway, encouraged me to go to more metal shows. will check that Recitations too!

Here's my list of stuff that I have checked out or will be, mostly culled from above but some not.
Some I have checked out, some I have not.
ILM is if I "discovered" it here; RYM is Rate Your Music.

Band                            Album	                                   Source
Abbath                          Abbath                                     ILM
Aluk Todolo                     The Wire                                   ILM
Anthrax                         For All Kings                              ILM
Beseech                         My Darkness, Darkness                      ILM
Bison Machine                   Sweet Leaves Vol. 1                        ILM
Black Tusk                      Pillas Of Ash                              RYM
Bloodiest                       Bloodiest                                  RYM
The Body                        No One Deserves Happiness
Borknagar                       Winter Thrice                              ILM
Brimstone Coven                 Black Magic                                RYM
Brutus                          Murwgebeukt                                ILM
Cauldron                        In Ruin
Chthe'ilist                     Le Dernier Crépuscule                      ILM
Church of Misery                And Then There Were None                   ILM
Cobalt                          Slow Forever                               ILM
Conan                           Revengeance                                RYM
Convulse                        Cycle of Revenge                           ILM
The Cult                        Hidden City                                RYM
Cult of Erinyes                 Transcendence                              ILM
Cult of Luna / Julie Christmas  Mariner                                    ILM
Dakhma                          Astiwihad-Zohr                             ILM
Destroyer 666                   Wildfire                                   ILM
Dream Theater                   The Astonishing                            RYM
Eggs of Gomorrh                 Rot Prophet                                ILM
Église                          Église                                     RYM
Ehnahre                         Douve                                      ILM
Eight Bells                     Landless
Entropia                        Ufonaut                                    RYM
Exmortus                        Ride Forth
Exumer                          The Rising Tides                           RYM
Fallujah                        Dreamless                                  ILM
Fjørt                           Kontakt                                    RYM
Forndom                         Dauðra Dura                                RYM
Fuath                           I                                          ILM
Geryon                          The Wound And The Bow                      ILM
Gorguts                         Pleiades' Dust                             ILM
Headspace                       All That You Fear Is Gone                  RYM
Hexvessel                       When We Are Death                          RYM
Holy Grail                      Times of Pride and Peril
Hostium                         The Bloodwine Of Satan                     ILM
Howls of Ebb                    Cursus Impasse: The Pendlomic Vows         ILM
Hyperion                        Seraphical Euphony                         RYM
Inherit Disease                 Ephemeral                                  ILM
Inverloch                       Distance | Collapsed                       ILM
Krallice                        Hyperion                                   ILM
Kvelertak                       Nattesferd                                 ILM
Latitudes                       Old Sunlight                               ILM
Lycus                           Chasms                                     RYM
Magrudergrind                   II                                         RYM
Master                          An Epiphany of Hate                        ILM
Mechina                         Progenitor                                 RYM
Megadeth                        Dystopia                                   ILM
Mesarthim                       Isolate                                    ILM
Mesarthim                       Pillars                                    ILM
Moon Tooth                      Chromaparagon                              ILM
Mourning Beloveth               Rust & Bone                                RYM
Mütterlein                      Orphans Of The Black Sun                   ILM
Myrath                          Legacy                                     RYM
Naðra                           Allir vegir til glötunar                   ILM
Novembre                        Ursa                                       ILM
Nucleus                         Sentient                                   ILM
Obscura                         Akróasis                                   ILM
Omnium Gatherum                 Grey Heavens                               RYM
Ondt Blod                       Finnmark                                   ILM
Oranssi Pazuzu                  Värähtelijä                                ILM
Plateau Sigma                   Rituals                                    ILM
Primal Fear                     Rulebreaker                                RYM
R.I.P.                          In The Wind                                ILM
Recitations                     The First of the Listeners                 ILM
Ripper                          Experiment of Existence                    ILM
Rotting Christ                  Rituals                                    ILM
Savage Master                   With Whips and Chains                      ILM
Sinistro                        Semente                                    ILM
Skáphe                          Skáphe²                                    ILM
Skuggsjá                        A Piece for Mind & Mirror                  ILM
Striker                         Stand in the Fire                          ILM
Sturm, Lacey                    Life Screams                               RYM
Suspiral                        Delve into the Mysteries of Transcendence  ILM
Temisto                         Temisto                                    ILM
Ті, що падають вгору            Divina                                     ILM
Ulver                           ATGCLVLSSCAP                               RYM
Violet Cold                     Magic Night                                ILM
Voivod                          Post Society
Votum                           :Ktonik:                                   RYM
The Wakedead Gathering          Fuscus: Strings of the Black Lyre          ILM
Wildernessking                  Mystical Future                            ILM
Witchcraft                      Nucleus                                    ILM

Ugh, so wrapped up in the formatting my intro above is a mess. Oh well, you get the idea.

This Circus Maximus album is really great melodic progressive metal if you think you'd like Dream Theater better if they were a little more fond of the later Rush albums without so many 20-minute concept-suites.

new Drudkh/Hades Almighty split EP June 3rd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCIg3-1ae-8

Decibel is streaming the collaboration with The Body and Full Of Hell:
http://decibelmagazine.com/blog/exclusive-album-stream-the-body-and-full-of-hell

I love both bands, cannot wait to listen to this one.

All the years of working way too hard at keeping up with new metal music have worn me down, to the point where I can't handle listening to much new stuff at all anymore. However, the handful of albums to excite me in 2016 so far are Cobalt, Oceans of Slumber, Gehennah, Oranssi Pazuzu, Aluk Todolo, Grave Miasma, and Vektor. And the new Megadeth is swell. Eight keepers in three months is still pretty good!

the 'mighty' Brass Mug of Tampa has always been a local favorite for no good reason but after the terrible sound they put Absu through last night (compared to the crisp sound they got in Jacksonville), that place should be razed to the ground IMO

2016 albums I like a lot so far: Aluk Todolo, Amon Amarth, Oceans of Slumber, Plebeian Grandstand (French noisecore a la Converge), Wormed. I haven't heard the new Vektor yet but I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for the heads up on Wormed.

And Amon Amarth! What a week.

Now time for Absu night #3

I am digging the Ritual Chamber album; no surprises, it's just Incantammolation style death metal but it's Dario Derna (of Krohm and Evoken and 20 other bands) and is extremely well done.

(Also some great guitar work that reminds me of Autopsy. Pinch harmonics!)

Just got Temisto and I'm listening to it for ten minutes before work. Excellently rabid vocals and riffs but with some stealth progginess.

Forgot about Amon Amarth! The new album is so much fun, us usual.

It's fun, but they're also stretching out in a way they haven't since Twilight of the Thunder God. They're experimenting with a bunch of different things (concept album, guest vocals from Doro Pesch) and it all works. Don't know if I need to see them live again, but I'm thinking about it just because Exmortus are opening the show.

On a somewhat similar not, there's also a new Moonsorrow coming. Not sure if they, or anyone really, can top a song like Huuto but expectations are high nonetheless.

highly anticipated:

Be'lakor - New Album Title, Cover And More Released
http://www.metalstorm.net/events/news_comments.php?news_id=28938

Album Title: Vessels

Tracks:

01. Luma
02. An Ember's Arc
03. Withering Strands
04. Roots To Sever
05. Whelm
06. A Thread Dissolves
07. Grasping Light
08. The Smoke Of Many Fires

Release dates:
June 24th worldwide, through Napalm Records
July 1st in Australia and NZ, through MGM

The band said regarding the record: "Vessels is the product of well over a year's hard work - without doubt, it's the album that has challenged us the most. It's much richer and more textured than any of our other albums. There are parts which sound like the Be'lakor that fans know, while other sections might surprise some people. Our goal was to keep the music exciting and varied, for us as much as for anyone else. Vessels is also our first concept album, which has meant that lyrically we've really pushed ourselves this time around. We hope our fans will enjoy it as much as we do!"

Dunno if Aldo still posts here or not but there's a new Book of Sand album he can check out

https://mouthbreatherrecords.bandcamp.com/

Digging this lil thrashcore EP RIYL DRI after the first 2, Straw Dogs, Nuclear Assault...

https://larrydistribution.bandcamp.com/album/triage-power-beat

^^^ You caught me at just the right time with that, been listening to Sacrilege and English Dogs... itch scratched.

I'm definitely going to listen to that Book of Sand album later, the guy has some interesting ideas though I haven't been massively impressed by the execution of anything he's done yet.

I really like the new Cobalt & I got sent an advance of the new Sumac which is probably going to be the album to beat this year.

holy FUCK the Wormed album!

i like to imagine the vocalist looks like Rocksteady from the Ninja Turtles when he screams like this

Man the music there is good, but those vocals. Sounds like a Tibetan monk with strep throat.

The contrast between the vocals and the music is one of the best things about them. I described their last album as sounding like a caveman running around a spaceship.

Nah that dude does not sound like a caveman. Paul Baloff sounded like a caveman. That dude sounds like one of the aliens from V with a guinea pig stuck in his gullet. It's like a modern super-extreme!!!! style I'm not into.

I liked the Putridity album last year so I suspect I'm gonna dig this guy's vocals, excited to hear something heads are going pretty nuts about

lol the monk with strep throat thing is so otm. the only diff between you and I is that I see that as totally awesome.

I have no problem w/ Wormed's vocals. Stoked to dig into the new one, Exodromos was something else.

I'm not into the BREEEEE BREEEEEE vocals, I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, Sindrome's demos got reissued by Century Media with a second disc of a live bootleg. I've always liked those dudes' music even if the singer did write an angry letter about a review I wrote of one of their demos. It's really solid thrash stuff, they should've gone somewhere but their second demo came out in '91 and, well, who wanted to sign thrash bands in 1991?

This may be of interest to some folks here. The Numero Group is putting out a 3CD/5LP box of all White Zombie's pre-Geffen Records material in early June. I reviewed it for The Wire, and heard that all the music had been remastered by WZ guitarist Jay Yuenger. Since, when the early stuff was reissued in 2008 as part of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, it was mastered from vinyl (seriously, on a major label release), I was curious about what Numero was gonna be willing/able to do. So I emailed Jay and asked. Here are the answers I got.

1) Did you remaster the early material from the original tapes? If so, did you get those with Rob's help/permission, or from some other source?
All the early material is from the original tapes, and the transfers are hi-def, 24 bit. It took a long time and a lot of work, but Rob signed off on this stuff.

2) There are several previously unreleased songs from the Pig Heaven session, and two from Gods On Voodoo Moon that are also very rare. Was there additional material that you/Numero chose not to include?
No, everything from the sessions for the early 7"s is included.

3) I have heard that the version of Make Them Die Slowly that the world is familiar with was version #3 or #4 of that album - are there other tapes, and if so, do they sound substantially different? When remastering this box, were you able to do anything with/to/about Bill Laswell's production choices?
Okay, here's the official timeline on this, and I checked with Sean [Yseult, bassist] to make absolutely sure I'm giving you the correct info. The album was recorded three times. The second version was never finished, was aborted when Laswell stepped into the picture, and the third version is the one that was released.

The first version is very interesting. It was totally finished, mixed and everything, but the masters have vanished. I contacted everyone I could find who had anything to do with this version, and nobody knows a thing. What we do have is Sean's cassette of the mix, which came straight off the board, and it's a fascinating document - the sound is much more powerful, the band sounds great, and this version of the album fits into the timeline, the transition between the art-noise-damage sound and the metal sound, much better. It makes much more SENSE as part of the history of the band.

I transferred all the material from the cassette, which includes a few songs that nobody's ever heard, and cleaned everything up, and it actually sounds pretty good. We're hoping that we'll be allowed to let people hear this stuff at some point, but we couldn't include it in the box set.

super interesting. guy who wrote the liner notes to this is a friend of mine and a good writer, stoked to see what he put together. I saw them on the Soul Crusher tour in L.A. in May of '88 and that was a blistering show, didn't really get into the Big Popular Band era of them but they're interesting imo

Always wanted to hear these old albums. Like smithy I never cared for their popular era bar a couple of great songs but I'm damn sure I'd like this stuff as i like a lot of music from that scene

A weird comparison popped into my head at one point: during the peak of their art-noise era (basically, Psycho-Head Blowout and Soul-Crusher), WZ were to Led Zeppelin what Pussy Galore were to the Rolling Stones.

sounds like i really need to hear them

it was weirdly hookless stuff though. like, you had to listen and listen and listen to really get an angle on it, but it was so assaultive that that was a challenge. spent a year or two pretty into 'em

got this box in mp3 promo form last week, never checked this stuff out before but Make Them Die Slowly especially is really great

I loved MTDS when it came out. The terrible Bill Laswell production is actually... distinctive? I'd love to hear an alternate or live version of that album from that period, though, that shit must've been crushing live.

Bill Laswell has to be one of the most instantly maligned but formerly in demand producers the world has known.

Checking out the St. Francis Duo album Peacemaker Assembly. Not metal, but metal-adjacent: Stephen O'Malley on guitar, and UK improv hero Steve Noble on drums. This is their second album; the first came out in 2012. Relatively close in spirit to the Sunn O))) album Pentemple, where they had the dude from Striborg (I think) on drums.

Playlist somewhat updated for March.

ILM's Rolling Metal Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

Back when I was buying any used cheapish vinyl I could find I picked up a copy of "Soul-Crusher."
Took it home, played it, really didn't get it, but kept it as I didn't part with things.

A few years later and I literally move back to NYC when I get press passes to the 1989 CMJ because I did not have enough money to go and come back. My hatred of northern Virginia, living with my parents and my restaurant jobs were a palpable consideration in my dumb decision.

That convention was so amazing to me being an unjaded fanzine editor who was just absorbing any and all music that I could get my ears on. Got to see Sepultura's first ever American performance at an S&M club (a place I would not long afterwards also see my first ever S&M). Although Bob Mould's show was not a CMJ event, someone tried to sell me tickets before finally coming back and saying "Eh, just go." So I did and my mind was blown.

Anyway, that year was the legendary show at the Loeb Student Center at NYU with Soundgarden ("Louder Than Love" just came out) alongside Primus (unsigned), Prong (still on In-Effect/Combat), Bullet Lavolta (criminally underrated Boston band on RCA somehow) and of course... White Zombie! Signed by Geffen but before releasing anything by the label.

The performance blew me away! They were fantastic!

I wandered backstage (nobody stopped me for reasons I still don't understand) and met Sean and Rob. I blurted out in my socially retarded way "I got 'Soul Crusher' and I hated it! But I loved the show!"

They seemed to appreciate my dumb honesty and we became friends. Wound up seeing them all the time back in the day, and Rob but especially Sean were always really nice to me. It was nice to see them take off like they did.

I will have to get that boxset. My old vinyl copy died with the rest of my vinyl in the Great Basement Flood of 2010.

Skuggsjá, the piece that Enslaved and Wardruna were commissioned to write to celebrate 200 years of the Norwegian constitution (!) has been recorded and released as an album. It's really good.

Yes, it most definitely fucking is! Love the heaviness but also the horns and Viking vibe. The people who decry Enslaved's progressive direction should definitely check this out because it's very heavy but also very smart.

It can be streamed here: https://skuggsja.bandcamp.com/album/a-piece-for-mind-mirror

one-man blackened death metal project The Wakedead Gathering, surprisingly coherent (not sure I know other one-man DM bands), with a dark, old school vibe. Demigod is the first old band that springs to mind with this stuff, but thinking fans of the 2014 Domains album might also like.

Many thanks for the attention drawn to The Wakedead Gathering, whose most recent two albums I now have in my possession. Music, lyrics, general vibe are all incredible.

Consider me a convert as well, really solid stuff here. Bonus points from being from my old stomping grounds of Columbus, Ohio who had a very fertile metal scene when I lived there (Deadsea, Teeth Of The Hydra, Eye - who did an album with Mexican Summer and just signed with Laser's Edge and play a particularly heavy psyche-rock a la Hawkwind and Uriah Heep, Skeleton Witch played there a lot before they were signed and Acheron is based out of there)... It's nice to see the area still fly the flag of quality and relatively unique metal.

not sure I know other one-man DM bands

Immediately springing to mind is Hooded Menace's Lasse Pyykko's Claws, pretty good SweFinDeath with doomishness. Put out a full length on Razorback in 09:
https://razorbackrecords.bandcamp.com/album/absorbed-in-the-nethervoid

And I guess Dan Swano's Moontower could count here.

Any others? ilm powers, activate!

Ritual Chamber! Again, doomish death.

this is actually from December 2015, but I just heard about it: Kthoniik Cerviiks - SeroLogiikal Scars (Vertex of Dementiia)

https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/khthoniik-cerviiks-serologiikal-scars-vertex-of-dementiia

Tech-death-prog on Iron Bonehead. Can hear bits of Bolzer, Gorguts, Voivod, Stargazer, Thantifaxath. Just a whole range of cool reference points, but to my ears, this still sounds unique. Anyone know these guys?