Your five favorite metal records of the moment

right now, man its easy to pad this list out with my Pagan Altar obsession:

Pagan Altar - Pagan Altar
Pagan Altar - The Lords of Hypocrisy
Pagan Altar - Mythical & Magical
Wo Fat - The Black Code
Fen - Dustwalker

Wo Fat live almost sells me on Wo Fat in the studio. Not quite though, because live they were otherworldly. Trance inducing, and telepathically tight on changes and extended jams.

Shit, sounds like I need to see them live then, as I've really fallen for their last two albums.

If they head up your way do not miss them. I figure they'll likely hit the road outside of Texas when they return from Europe at the end of April.

I will definitely keep my eyes open, thanks for the tip. Sometimes I give up tracking the tours for these blog hype stoner bands because they always end up so much more popular in Europe and spend their time over there.

It's great to see people discovering pagan altar. I remember people freaking out that they got in the alltime metal poll ahead of pantera and glam metal.

I thought I had replied more fully to the Miles Davis-influenced metal recommendations about 90 posts back. Thanks to all who offered them.

I had heard and liked the Fontanelle previous to this thread. Very Complete On The Corner box. As others said, definitely not metal. And for me, nowhere near as intense as the Miles from which it takes inspiration. But cool.

Really liked some of Wo Fat. Especially "The Spheres Beyond". That's as close as I've come to hearing the heavyish Miles-influenced sound I have in my head.

Going to check out some of the other recommendations as I'm able. I've been thinking for years that based on what I've read about him, I should be able to get into some Justin Broadrick stuff, so I'm looking forward to hearing God.

On a somewhat different note, I just... /discovered/ this Cloudkicker album last night: http://cloudkicker.bandcamp.com/album/the-discovery
It's not Miles-influenced, but it's pretty cool modern instrumental metal.

Also Chimp Spanner, which despite having a terrible name and some overly polished sounds and some rather vacuous passages, is also pretty cool modern instrumental metal. Not deep, but fun.

Oh, and I really liked the instrumental version of Periphery's self-titled. Which caused me to wonder: are there other metal albums that have been released in both vocal and instrumental versions?

The deluxe version of Nightwish's latest album came with a second disc of instrumental versions.

Which, considering the trouble they have holding onto vocalists, could really come in handy for them going forward. "Here are the backing tracks - rehearsal is Monday at 10."

- sacramentum - 'far away from the sun'; finally got a copy! (it's just been reissued on vinyl and cd). it's every bit as good as siegbran said it was. shot through with veins of beautiful icy tremolo melodies. really inventive drumming too.
- disma -'towards the megalith'; this has grown on me a lot. really like the production - actually audible, meaty, bulldozery bass.
- vader -'de profundis'
- spawn of possession - 'incurso'; not often in the mood for stuff this technical, but when i am, it's cracks-me-up amazing.
- judas priest - 'sin after sin'. recent 2nd-hand vinyl acquisition. rules.

(1) Sacramentum -- Far Away From the Sun: Despite the reissue being really LOUD (ugh!), this is just beautiful.
(2) Gorguts -- Obscura: Wow!
(3) Evoken -- Embrace the Emptiness: I can't stop listening to this. I love the moments in which the clean, ringing guitar peeks through.

Just three for now... I'm on the precipice of an enormous funeral doom phase.

ever heard this one, clarke?

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/The_Gault/Even_as_All_Before_Us/84669

i'm digging the aeternus from this year, after it didn't do much for me at first.

it's got a lot going for it before you even get to less-tangibles. the production is great, modern through and through but not radio-overdriven - the bass is really resonant and as if to make up for the occupied low end, the drum sound is really thick. the drummer seems to be very subtle - surely this is one of those albums where drum hits were engineered as separately as possible in some cases, so that musical differences could register? because he changes it up a lot in small ways. the guitar tone is nice and dirty. the songs have a very human-scale feel to them, pretty loose and riffy in the stretches before they make (frequent) shifts in rhythm/structure/etc. obviously very technical but somehow in a way that they let drive the songs, and be proportioned to the contours of the songs. nice growling.

i even like the spanish guitar interlude, and usually acoustic interludes on metal albums just embarrass me.

i totally concur on the aeternus album. others i've been enjoying in the past year or so:

new(ish)
- progenie terrestre pura - 'u.m.a.'
- summoning - 'old mornings dawn'
- lustre - 'wonder'
- carcass - 'surgical steel'
- autopsy - 'the headless ritual'

old (but new to me) discoveries (revelations!)
- tormentor - 'anno domini'
- dream death - 'journey into mystery'
- master's hammer - 'ritual'
- enslaved - 'frost'
- grave - 'into the grave'

Oh man, I love Dream Death. Check out the demo comp they had a while back, it's great.

cool, i will. really dig the album (was trying to track down a copy for ages....)

weakling

Isengard - Vinterskugge
Darkspace - III
Darkthrone - Sardonic Wrath
Hellhammer - Satanic Rites demo
Belketre - Ambre Zuèrkl Vuordhrevarhtre

*beams with pride* Darkspace got a hold of you then :D

Which of those other records d'ya think I'd most dig?

hmm, maybe the Belketre. None of the others are as extreme as Darkspace, but Belketre is almost uncomfortably dark and lo-fi. Truly "black" metal. (just as good is their split with Vlad Tepes)

I'm enjoying all kinds of death metal lately. Carcass, Suffocation, Incantation, Cruciamentum. I couldn't stand any of this stuff six months ago. My ears must be changing shape.

Also Triptykon, Celtic Frost, Sodom, Exciter, Mercyful Fate.

ooh ty!

intro was truly beautiful. second song is like a BM take on The Fall :D

can see myself really getting on with this

holy shit this is magnificent

it hits the same wonky pleasure-spots that the most haggard, fucked-up Fall does, seriously. feels like a malignant, semi-lucid Other swaggering demonically to bathe me in wrongness

Gigan - Multi-Dimensional Fractal-Sorcery And Super Science
Mithras - Behind the Shadows Lie Madness
Aevangelist - Omen Ex Simulacra
Absu - Tara (as usual)
Megadeth - Rust in Peace (ditto)

Verhzleyavbtreleambreb is not only a fucking incredible song, but possibly the most unfuckwithable songtitle since 'Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos'

incantation - mortal throne of nazarene

I love that record. There's something deep and primeval about Incantation. Maybe because the vocalist sounds like Treebeard.

on a big metal kick.

morbus chron - sleepers in the rift
cosmic church - ylistis
moonblood - blut und krieg
darkthrone - panzerfaust
teitanblood - death

autopsy -'tourniquets, hacksaws and graves'
morbus chron - 'sweven'
annihilator - 'alice in hell'
mayhem - 'deathcrush'
behemoth - 'the satanist'

also,
necrovation - s/t
slaughter - 'strappado'
the obsessed - s/t
paysage d'hiver - 'einsamkeit'
pestilence - 'consuming impulse'

rigor mortis!!!

Teitanblood - Death
Thorns - s/t
Harvest Gulgaltha - Necrosophic
Rotting Christ - Thy Mighty Contract
Dream Death - Somnium Excessum

Brutality - Screams of Anguish

xp I feel like I should note that this is the first Rotting Christ album I've ever owned, having taken some weird disliking to their music back in the day that I'm over. Great stuff!

http://lastrit.es/reviews/7257/spectral-lore-iii

still feeling this so much this year

https://jackholesrealm.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/c0021227-solar-system-and-nicolaus-copernicus-spl.jpg

If I had wishes, I would shout to you and scream
But now I realize, you're like young dying streams
I'm in the real world, with people, crises and scars
Copernicus, I don't care about your stars

Vorum - Poisoned Void/Undergang (new one with Danish title)
Dark Descent death metal. Undergang takes me back to first hearing demos by Entombed, Grave, Funebre, etc, real gutteral grave gnarl. Vorum is just vicious old school death.

Inquisition - Obscure Verses for the Multiverse
A couple of songs on this approach Bolzer's "Entranced by the Wolfshook" for weird melodic ideas that sound new to metal. Also greatly appreciate the weird, warping riffs generally.

Stargazer - A Merging to the Boundless
These guys are so great. I feel like this walks back what I didn't like about "A Work of Great Ages," a more defined production highlighting the contrast between the fluid, proggy bass guitar and mildly discordant, off-kilter riffs.

Root - Hell Symphony
Finally got a copy of this. Czech old school black metal, featuring the weird barks of Jiri "Big Boss" Valter, founder (and no longer member) of the Czech branch of the Church of Satan. I was listening to Triptykon recently and realized some of the bits with clean vocals actually reminded me of later Root.

Necrophobic - Nocturnal Silence
File under bands I somehow never heard until recently. Great black death stuff, first time I listened to it in the car I wound up driving around for ten minutes so I wouldn't have to stop it before the album ended.

Okay I used the word "weird" like fifty times, sorry.

wait so you liked the one before 'work of great ages' better?

Nah, I should've separated that. I didn't like Work of Great Ages as much, kind loses the band in that murky production. New one's great, though.

kind of loses, that is. It's like 85 degrees and 99% humidity here, I think my brain's melting.

At the moment i'm listening to:

Tribulation - Children Of The Night
Taiga - Gaia (over-the-top Siberian depressive black metal)
Obsequiae - Area Of Vernal Tombs
Vile Creature - A Steady Descent Into The Soil
Below The Sun - Envoy (really beautiful cosmic doom, again from Siberia)

*Aria*

I love this Vorum track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOECtl6Q4A

^^^^ awesome. They've really got a knack for making their stuff sound vicious.

Tribulation - Children Of The Night

I really like this record but it doesn't really stick with me; not necessarily a bad thing if you can kind of rediscover an album repeatedly.

Going to have to check out Below the Sun and Taiga later.

I quite liked last years "Ashen Light" by Taiga so good to see they have a follow-up so quickly.

i don't have five right now but i genuinely can't stop listening to coroner's mental vortex and razor's shotgun justice

Those are great albums, man, easily worth 250% of many other metal albums.