Rolling Metal 2016

so relieved to learn your stance about black metal, been wondering for so long

Man every day, the black metal controversies
It's llike I can't BREATHE I'm drowning in it

like the Nightspirit, thus he has spake

the band Wretch is really going all in on the "82 St. Vitus SST glossy promo shot" aesthetic

I like true metal, much better than false metal imho

Nice! That Bandcamp piece nails most of my favorites from the past year except for Spirit Adrift, Christian Mistress, Castle and Valkyrie. Lucky to have Chris Black in Chicago, I've seen all his bands many times. He's performing at Alehorn in a couple weeks as Professor Black. I'm not sure if that's a new project, or just cherry picking songs from all his bands. I got tired of unwieldy terms like new old wave and retro wave. It's just heavy metal.

new Testament is fun as usual, seems a little more vibrant than the last one, which I also liked.

but i'm only a few songs in, maybe the polka and xylophone songs show up 3 songs in

well. that's a first. something must be wrong with like the mp3s on Amazon as the second halfo f each track just cuts out to silence. tried on multiple devices.

it's only three songs it does it on. having to msg them now.

Drakkar productions has been licensing TONS of recentish French black metal lately, and I'm resolutely trying to audition at least a track each time they send me an email. FOMO is a terrible curse.

Anyway, last year's entry from Malcuidant, "Et la terra brula" is one the keepers that justifies the search. It's more straightforward BM than what I usually go for, but spritely tempos and crisp production make this one stand out for me.

https://drakkar-productions-official.bandcamp.com/album/malcuidant-et-la-terre-br-la

spinning the new Crowbar. I'd kinda given up on these dudes after the shitty Oddfellow's Rest but I liked the one they did a few years back. a few tracks in, though, this one adheres to the trad Crowbar formula but it seems vibrant as fucking hell. Kirk is roaring his ass off again, there's purpose to the writing that was missing. this is almost making me feel high school aged again.

not gonna top "Broken Glass" but I really like how many metal elder statesmen there are still making good fuckin' shit in addition to the new blood.

Mr. Amalgamoth if you read this I don't know how to/if I can reply to ilx emails so: I'm glad you're carrying on and I have all your stuff anyway because Ophidian Forest fucking rule. Thanks.

Happy Halloween. 2CD out today, other formats in the coming months. Really glad bands can still pull off these sneak attacks nowadays.
http://i.imgur.com/op4mxgJ.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTGw5xbhvyI

ah, correction: the release date was changed for the CD version - Nov 25

New CdG sounds promising! New Hail Spirit Noir is awesome. This Prostitute Disfigurement (sigh) CD from 2006 I got today? Also awesome.

Dio fans rejoice(?) - Elf's two albums, Carolina County Ball and Trying to Burn the Sun, are being reissued next month on one of Cherry Red's sub-labels.

Cannot wait for the Cultes des Ghoules. My favorite black metal band going, and the vocalist is amazing.

the bandcamp article continues to be a great resource

https://highspiritsmetal.bandcamp.com/album/motivator

this is so fucking great, great songwriting and sense of fun. gets at a lot of great stuff about 80s metal w/o feeling like it's just aping it.

Email I just got: "EARACHE RECORDS ACQUIRES NACHTMYSTIUM BACK-CATALOGUE TITLES"

Wonder if they got a used toaster and car stereo as part of the package.

I wonder if they just paid him in drugs or

new Khanus track here, where they up both the Finnish folk quotient, and general occult vibe. Maybe closer to dark ambient than metal actually
https://khanus.bandcamp.com/album/dance-of-the-shaman

if the Cultes des Ghoules doesn't trump them, 2016 may go down as the year two metal EPs (Khanus & Cadaveric Fumes) topped my best of list.

about to buy the hell outta the new Ulcerate, one of the best death metal bands in the world

It's really dope. Nice Halloween soundtrack

hey hey the new DSO is streaming in full

https://deathspellomega.bandcamp.com/album/the-synarchy-of-molten-bones

They have not gone pop metal, in case you were worried.

Oh, the Lifespell Omega conversion album is going to be amazing.

Ditto the tropical-metal album from Blut Aus Sud.

Sweet Hollow by Them is pretty fun King Diamond mimicry. The vocals, the horror album concept... they actually pull it off not too badly.

https://them6.bandcamp.com/ (whole album is on Youtube)

This Bhavachakra album... scrapy, trebled out guitars (with that modern underdriven distortion sound I'm not super fond of), discordant, DsO, probably own "Obscura," yeah yeah. Some of the riffing attempts eloquence successfully but the production's kind of distracting - sounds like the guitars were recorded on a cassette four-track while everything else was done in a pro studio. Especially those drums.

That's not to say I'm not going to listen to it a lot for a week or so, though.

xxpost
That's the second mention of Them I've seen in the last day or two and it finally jogged my memory of this bizarro world, Brazilian, Christian KD clone, with pretty much plagiarized music and song titles, and album art that dips far enough below the threshold of embarrassing to flip around and become awesome again. Anyway, turns out that they, like apparently every other band in existence, have a new one out this year. As usual, the music sounds stiff and almost programmed, esp compared to something like the actual KD. And haha those verses of "Silent Tears" are outright stolen from "A Mansion in Darkness." I binged on this band a couple years ago when I first saw them mentioned at metal-archives and I wish I'd remembered in time for Halloween this year.
https://visionofgodrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dark-night-day-of-the-dead

but I mean this is really the purpose of this post:
http://i.imgur.com/S7koot5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/W3GyLYm.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/49RQ6rs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hVIUJYx.jpg

Amazing covers!

just in case any of you wanted to hear some synth-heavy, dreampop-vocall'd welsh psych-doom then you may wish to get in touch with your inner mammoth weed wizard bastard*. it's really quite something. heads-up courtesy of tt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y2g0g3r6hY

*british humour

I countersign Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, although it took me some serious psychological effort to get past the name.

The new Madder Mortem is out, and I won't be terribly surprised if it ends up being my album of the year. What a fantastic band. They're like a midpoint between djent and Voivod and Nightwish, which is a pretty good targeting formula for me.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2rXW7pX2XlPi23Gs97rIOI

Also, if you like big happy turbo-melodic power-metal, give the new Theocracy album a listen.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3asAAUyg67JJa8VAvsfmVK

I think I'm about ready to put this Ysengrin/Sartegos split in my cart

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resvrrezionespiritval

2 songs apiece, plus interludes
Ysengrin offer cavernous doomy BM with lots of textural and dynamic shifts, big spooky choirs, some of the weirdest snare hits this side of the Shaggs, hideous clanky bass, and a dash of rawk swagger.
Sartegos are I guess blackened death? (deadened BM?) with refreshingly bright guitar solo breaks -- lots of up/down fast 8ths verging on explosions in the sky-style post rock territory

Both bands are new to me and I'm curious to hear more from both.

more metal with crayon covers plz

Great album covers. They do promise some darker-than-average nights.

MWWB are great

digging the first couple of tracks from this EP by Rivette from Finland - NWOBHM for softies p much. not as good as High Spirits but worth an ear

https://rivette.bandcamp.com/album/in-vertigo

Just booked tickets to see MWWB tomorrow, supporting Ufomammut. I expect to be doomed into space

I was just listening to that Rivette EP today! Not bad. The Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard made our Doom Chart last month - https://doomcharts.com/2016/10/11/the-doom-charts-for-october-2016/. New one should be out by the weekend hopefully.

Glad to hear someone is enthusiastic about Madder Mortem! I reviewed it and raved about it elsewhere and it's been crickets.

Dark Night album art made my day thank you!

Here's another UK stoner doom psych band that has an interesting release: https://spiderkitten.bandcamp.com/album/ark-of-octofelis

Ya good call on Dark Night. I mentioned them in my Halloween piece where I also offered up Hail Spirit Noir and Slasher Dave as ideal additions to yr Halloween mixes. I guess I should have posted before Halloween.

I've been so anticipating the new Furia full length that I didn't notice they'd slipped another of their oddball EPs into the world earlier in October. Says it was recorded in an actual mine 300+ meters below the earth, so, uh, ok. Sort of droney, jangly, folky, but seething with that Polish black metal life force that seems to be powering half a dozen brilliant bands right now.
https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/guido

Speaking of, according to W.T.C. there's a new Medico Peste album coming. Their wonderfully diseased debut Tremendum et Fascinatio got overshadowed by everything else coming out of Poland, but it's quite good for fans of that slithering, visceral strain of black metal akin to Glorior Belli's Manifesting the Raging Beast or for that matter Polish stuff like Cultes des Ghoules or Blaze of Perdition (or even Arioch-era Marduk when they're not full speed ahead).

Decibel is streaming the new Ruinous album. One of my favorite death metal albums of the year.

the new Furia finally appeared and made my album of the year decision a lot easier
https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ksi-yc-milczy-luty

good god

Furia is a great band that should have a much higher profile than they do, I'm looking forward to the album.

Furia's last album was kinda drifting into the sort of "post black" (or whatever) that didn't really hit me, but this fucking thing. This fucking thing. It's like a black metal version of an Earth album. I'm on my sixth listen just today and I can't even remember the last time something like that happened.

Songwriting aside, the sound of it is just ...

why the hell couldn't this be the Polish black metal band to put out an hour and a half long album this year

to be fair, no album really needs to be an hour and a half

Ulcerate's new album is boring me to tears

Do I just not like avant-death any more? But I like Gorguts. And I quite liked the Dysrhythmia, which is basically a Gorguts spin-off. So idk. Maybe you have to be Gorguts. Will check out DSO shortly but ugh tbh