~~~ 2014 ILM METAL POLL TRACKS & ALBUMS COUNTDOWN! ~~~ (Tracks top 30 first then Albums)

http://morneband.bandcamp.com/releases

53   The Ocean - Pelagial    261 Points,    8  Votes
http://i.imgur.com/L9QSw1i.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6R9cHdJ7hljxDDYq2tUCdO
spotify:album:6R9cHdJ7hljxDDYq2tUCdO

http://www.deezer.com/album/6959409

Genre:
Progressive/Atmospheric Sludge Metal/Post-Hardcore

#9 Rock-A-Rolla, #3 Metal Sucks, #8 Metal Sucks musicians
http://youtu.be/JfZMTDcqKnQ

52    fen - dustwalker    261.0    9 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/aPpPigN.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0TCydMhfBWdkVufpSUxdhH
spotify:album:0TCydMhfBWdkVufpSUxdhH

http://www.deezer.com/album/6202706

Genre:
Atmospheric Black Metal/Post-Rock
Lyrical themes:
Solitude, Sorrow, Landscape, Nature

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/54547/Fen-Dustwalker/

Review Summary: Atmosphere, melody, and brutality mixed together into a potent musical brew.

Dustwalker embodies a spectrum of moods and sounds that convey a rather compelling musical performance. It's a very meticulously arranged collage of atmosphere, melody, and brutality that exhibits an eclectic range of musical styles. Throughout the album, we witness Fen regressing back to the nature of their previous albums, while yet fusing them with a better understanding of themselves and what emotion they want to convey in their music. There's an array of genres and concepts present within the album as we continue to see Fen embracing an affinity for borrowing and breaking down whatever musical styles appeal to them, and then mixing them together into a potent brew of melodies and rhythms that go well beyond the average metal repertoire. In a nutshell, Dustwalker retains the aggression of Black metal, while adding a delicate touch of ambience and euphony to their music. Certainly an elaborate plot to work with, but it's nothing that hasn't already been explored by other artists. There's a very conspicuous influence which can be felt throughout the album that is distinctively derived from other bands well within their musical vicinity, such as Agalloch, Negură Bunget, and Altar of Plagues who have all pioneered the various possibilities of connecting the charismatic essence of Black metal with outside influences like Shoegaze, Folk, Post-rock and even to an extent, Progressive rock.

A song like "Hands of Dust" really illustrates the overall musical concept of Dustwalker. There's an array of different musical conventions uniting here to compose a sound that aspires to be as engaging as possible, and in that aspect, it succeeds with ease. "Hands of Dust" opens with an introductory guitar arrangement that is embellished with a graceful echoing dissonance, thus exuding an ambient allure to ease our descent into its ever-fluctuating musical realm. This is one of the many times in the album where the progressive influences are at their most consciously evident, because this whole song is a constant ascension to a different mood with every passing second, yet it tends to operate with rather contrasting dynamics in style. For example, during the song's dreamy shoegaze section in the beginning, we hear the vocals alternate from a soothing tone to a more frustrated growl, and yet the music remains well in its calming state. And it isn't until the latter portion that we hear any distorted riffs and relentlessly manic drumming, but even then, though discreetly lingering in the background, we can still hear the echoing remains of its initial ambient texture.

"Spectre" yet again reflects the band's affection for spacey musical environments, though this time they incorporate a more folk-influenced sound. The primary melodic framework of "Spectre" is exuded by a gentle acoustic arrangement, which is accompanied by an electric guitar that lets out a sonic wave of psychedelic radiance in the background. This is definitely one of the highlighting moments of the album because it is just such a beautifully composed piece. The vocals, especially, are sung with an exquisite harmony that really vitalizes the music with a graceful aura. The only flaw in "Spectre" is that it probably lasts longer than it should. After the vocalized section reaches its climax, the song arrives into an instrumental passage that dissolves among a haze of ethereal ambience. And as mesmerizing as these soundscapes may be, you will indeed find yourself noticing how needlessly prolonged this interlude gets after the first 2 minutes, which kind of makes "Spectre" lose some effect from its trancing spell, but overall it is still an exceptional piece. Depending on the preference of the listener, one may find that this sense of repetition actually works thematically with the atmospheric ideology of "Spectre", but Fen, whether consciously or not, tends to exhibit a lot of monotony and repetition within their other compositions, though to a less than inspired degree.

The final two epics, "The Black Sound" and "Walking the Crowpath", seem to surpass their state of relevancy long before they reach their end. Both songs clock in a little over 10 minutes, and within that time Fen embrace their metal attributes much more intimately than any other moment in the album. There's an excessive usage of slow tempos and heavy rhythms being deployed here that express an overall pessimistic sentiment, and though there are some invigorating riffs and bombastic drum rhythms to be found, that's all they really have to offer, lacking any sense of ingenuity to coerce our intrigue enough to eagerly hit the repeat button. "Wolf Sun", on the other hand, is the one and only redeeming song in the latter half of the album, and the reason for that lies in the one quality that "The Black Sound" and "Walking the Crowpath" failed to harness, an innovative approach. "Wolf Sun" displays a combination of alternative rock instrumentation with infuriated Black metal shrieks and raspy vocals. Of course, there is prominent usage of 'clean' singing throughout the song as well, but it is still very compelling to hear the two contrasting musical styles compliment each other in such an irresistibly harmonic fashion.

At its final moments, Dustwalker can very well be considered an even further progression in style from Fen's prior efforts, The Malediction Fields and Epoch, one that focuses more on their Shoegaze and Post-metal influences rather than Black metal. For anyone that was hoping this would be the direction Fen would explore more after hearing Epoch, then Dustwalker will be an experience well worth your time. As I mentioned before, there's an impressive level of creativity being expressed in their songwriting here, particularly in the methods of combining their different musical influences in a way that is both coherent and appealing. This is definitely a 'fan-pleaser', and though it's merely an addition to atmospheric Black metal and nothing that is particularly revolutionary or innovative in the genre, it still makes for a truly satisfying listen to anyone willing to give it a try.

http://youtu.be/z3xu8WO4Yqo

Kadavar were in my top five. Maybe my favorite of all the throwback rock releases this past year. Just great songs.

Production also sounds great. Really makes a difference with this stuff.

51    Cathedral - The Last Spire    263 Points,   8 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/GlpFWLm.jpg
http://www.deezer.com/album/6475137

Genre:
Doom Metal

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18020-cathedral-the-last-spire/

After nearly a quarter century, 10 albums, a major-label stint, and a deserved reputation as an act that helped pull doom metal from its stylistic exile, exactly how will Cathedral end its final album? That’s the question that hovers above The Last Spire, the excellent eight-track LP that will mark the end of the long-running, ever-restless English quartet. Early last year, Cathedral played their final show in Australia before returning to England to chart their own demise. For the last two decades, the band has pushed far beyond the slow-growing and wide-set roots of its foundational debut, 1991’s Forest of Equilibrium, to incorporate thrash blitzes, psychedelic tangents and 70s rock bombast. Talking through each entry in the band’s catalogue with Terrorizer earlier this year, frontman Lee Dorian acknowledged the deliberate nature of his band’s non-linear development. Sometimes they wanted to retreat from doom, and sometimes they wanted to retreat into it. “I hate complacency,” he said. “It’s not something you should ever feel, especially in terms of art.”

That perspective has kept Cathedral interesting for the long haul, even if it hasn’t resulted in necessarily great records. For instance, the band’s most recent LP, 2010’s The Guessing Game, spent 85 minutes dipping and diving into prog rock aberrations that sometimes felt excessive and often unnecessary. Cathedral kept twisting free from its traditionally lugubrious mid-tempo maul with an assortment of influences, from Uriah Heep to Genesis. Mostly, it made you wish Cathedral would just settle back in to doom again.

And for a moment at the close of The Last Spire, it seems that Cathedral will indeed exit with a sentimental reminder than that they’ve generally been more than a simply gloomy squadron. “This Body, Thy Tomb”, the final song, opens with a low-strung, generously distorted riff, which Dorian pairs with appropriately funereal imagery: “I exist in this coffin,” he opens from a backlit pulpit. “Murdered trust and misfortune has evolved into strife.” Just past the three-minute mark, though, Dorian and the strangling tone of Garry Jennings go quiet, fading into a series of somber instrumentals-- a twinkling acoustic guitar, a glass-eyed electric solo, a music box melody played on mellotron. Cathedral, it seems, will fade into their own apoptosis.

But the mighty band enters one last time, pounding at Jennings’ lead harder than it has for the entire record. Brian Dixon locks into distended drum rolls and swings hard coming out of them, while keyboardist David Moore and bassist Scott Carlson build steep walls around the riff, conjuring claustrophobia even while heading for the exit. No treacle here: Cathedral ends exactly as it started-- heads down in heavy doom. Swansong attachment aside, that return-to-basics approach is one defining characteristic of The Last Spire, an album that reconnects with Cathedral’s beginnings without simply repeating them.

Another is restraint: In an interview with Ghost Cult Magazine published the week after The Last Spire was released, Jennings admitted that the band left a lot of recorded material on the cutting room floor for this album. Of those five omitted tracks, he said, at least one of them was a 30-minute Cathedral farewell that was never finished. At 56 minutes, however, The Last Spire is very much the right length for a band whose most consistent handicap has been not knowing when to say when, or how to move toward the next track or album. No, efficiency has never been Cathedral’s bailiwick, but on The Last Spire, they operate with surprising and newfound economy. They surround lengthy tracks with much shorter ones and generally just get out of their own way. The first half of the record, for instance, moves as swiftly as anything Cathedral has ever done. A terrifying introduction of swelling field recordings, tolling church bells and grating noise passes quickly into “Pallbearer”, a 12-minute anthem that pauses just enough for an acoustic interlude before sprinting headlong into a burst of thrash. It’s an extended number, but Cathedral anchors shifting momentum to a grim mantra00 “War, famine, drought, disease!”-- and a center of doom gravity. You almost want it to keep going, a rare quality for this band. “Cathedral of the Damned”, meanwhile, crisscrosses samples between verses, choruses and solos, while “Tower of Silence” adds a dose of punk ire to its unfettered seven-minute march. By not pausing to take stock of its progress, Cathedral testifies to its true purpose and power.

The Last Spire is so close to the spirit of Cathedral’s earliest works that Dorian has said it’s the record he’s hoped to make since their debut, Forest of Equilibrium. Importantly, though, it does not feel like a microwaved visitation with the past or some self-obsessed tribute. Rather, these pieces sound like the work of a band hoping to fortify their legacy at the end of their career rather than simply prolong it. The last two decades of exploration reappear here, certainly-- listen for the sidewinding second guitar in the distance during “Tower of Silence”, or, more obviously, the playful and possibly avoidable keyboard-and-bass fantasy that sits at the center of the otherwise morose “An Observation”. But these are simply the positive after-effects of years of auditory experimentation, not the driving force for the record itself. They’ve got too much to fit into an hour for self-involved excess.

If The Last Spire is the end of Cathedral, it’s a lofty exit for a band that’s often tripped over its own artistic ambition and unease. These eight tracks serve as a swift, sinister reminder of why Cathedral mattered at the start and why they intrigued for so many years in the middle. When it mattered the most, they had the sense to recognize that their work was done and to experience the end with dignity-- and, thankfully, doom.

#33 Decibel, #46 Rock-A-Rolla, #11 Metal Hammer, #15 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/ucXybRkZUpw

Cathedral have called it quits, played their last live show, made their last video and the somewhat cleverly titled The Last Spire (released through Rise Above/Metal Blade) is reportedly to be their final album. One never knows for sure — surely over their time together the band must have amassed suitable fodder for rarities collections, live albums, greatest hits, cover records and so forth — but if it actually is the end of their run, The Last Spire is also the point at which the album Cathedral wants to make meets with the album that fans want to hear. It is an 56-minute victory lap that — far from actually sounding like one — presents eight songs of the dark, dreary doom that has come to be thought of as traditional in no small part because of Cathedral‘s crafting of it. The band’s lineup of vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Gary “Gaz” Jennings, bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Brian Dixon present some progressive moments reminiscent of or at very least nodding toward The Guessing Game – the synth interlude that interrupts the sluggish lumber of “An Observation” comes to mind; David Moore‘s contributions of Hammond, Moog, synth and mellotron aren’t to be understated in establishing The LastSpire‘s murky atmosphere — but in their structure and in their intent, cuts like the early “Pallbearer,” “Cathedral of the Damned” and “Tower of Silence” underline the doomed feel for which Cathedral have become so known both in their home country and abroad. They are Cathedral at their most Cathedral. And rightly so. One couldn’t possibly hope for more of them than that.

The aforementioned trio occur sequentially following the intro “Entrance to Hell,” which finds Dorrian repeating the phrase “Bring out your dead” — which in my mind always goes right back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but he sells it well — over suitably plague-addled atmospheres, with “Pallbearer” as the longest track on The Last Spire at 11:39 and marked aside from its strong hook by the backing vocals of Rosalie Cunningham behind Dorrian‘s signature semi-spoken delivery and the chorus of “War, famine, drought, disease” repeated to memorable effect. There’s a mournful acoustic break in the middle, but by and large, Jennings, Carlson and Dixon sound big, thick and threatening, and when the acoustics (backed by organ) give way to the resurgent groove and faster push of the song’s peak movement, the effect is fluid and entirely metal. They end slow and offer a more mid-paced distortion on “Cathedral of the Damned,” which is marked out by the spoken guest vocal by Chris Reifert of Autopsy and the line “Living in the shadow of a damned cathedral,” which may or may not be Dorrian dealing with his own legacy and the prospect of moving on after ending the band. Either way, it’s the riff and the buzzsaw guitar tone that stands out most as the band meet their longest track with the shortest full song (that is, non-interlude or intro), slamming head-on into the chorus as they do with no diminished returns on the subsequent “Tower of Silence,” the pair affirming Cathedral‘s potency on all levels as they round out The Last Spire‘s first half, whether it’s the vocals, Jennings‘ righteous solo, the heavy nod of the bass and drums, or the overarching catchiness of the chorus itself: “A tower of silence/Is waiting for me/Looming before/An astral sea.”

Really, one could read a lot of The Last Spire as being emblematic of Cathedral‘s self-awareness as regards their own ending, but when it comes to “Infestation of the Grey Death” starting off the second half of the album, the vibe is more of a return to “Entrance to Hell”‘s plague thematic than the band saying goodbye. Jennings smoothly layers acoustic and electric guitars in the chorus and post-chorus, Dorrian‘s vocals are caked in effects, and Dixon‘s thudding drums provide more than ample punctuation in the tempo’s slower push in comparison to “Tower of Silence,” verses and the chorus following the riff in doomly fashion and a more raucous second third giving way to a return to the heavy-trodding miseries for a sendoff. “An Observation” is the point at which The Last Spire is the least fluid, keeping the ambience consistent early on with the tracks preceding before rumble and synth strings (mellotron maybe?) give way to a synth solo at 5:42 that follows comparatively awkwardly behind a couple seconds of silence, as though the band, in realizing that nothing would offer a smooth transition between one part of the track and the next, opted not make a transition at all. They bring it into context with accompanying guitar and vocals, but just that initial change is enough to pull the listener out of the song’s flow, if only momentarily. Parts flow into each other well in the final minutes of “An Observation” as Jennings builds to a climax before moving into a more Carlson-led section of chugging push, and when “An Observation” is over, it’s time of “The Last Laugh,” which, at 38 seconds, is just that, the last time Lee Dorrian laughs on a Cathedral record. He’s done it plenty, so I guess the band felt it was appropriate to mark the occasion.

More importantly, brief though it is, the interlude does well in giving a couple seconds’ respite before “This Body, Thy Tomb” arrives as the closer. Pacing-wise, it’s an agony, but there’s still movement at its core thanks to Dixon and Carlson, and here as well the organ features heavily in filling out the sound. Mirroring the opener, there’s an acoustic interlude met by mellotron that comes on in much the same manner but still with better continuity than on the song before and a break of footsteps or churning water that leads back into the central figure of the song. It’s the last march — Cathedral‘s last march, to hear them tell it — and with the organ, guitar, bass and drums all firing together toward a single idea, it’s hard to argue against their having gone out in a manner befitting their legacy. The truth is, Cathedral probably could easily have been putting out records like this all along. Nothing on The Last Spire feels especially challenging for the band or the listener. But that they didn’t makes their decision to write this as their epitaph all the more special. It’s an album that, even if one isn’t familiar with the context surrounding or with the legacy that Cathedral will leave behind them, would make a surprisingly good place to start for a first-timer, since it’s accessible and it summarizes so much of what’s always been most appealing about the band. Since that unmistakably was their intent in creating it, The Last Spire is as true to Cathedral‘s idea of who they are as any of their work has ever been. – The Obelisk

Whoa, that's WAY lower than I was expecting Cathedral to place.

maybe ilm metal thread regulars have gone off doom

8 votes on 50-something ballots? Color me surprised, too.

yeah I thought more 50 year olds would have voted for them too

I feel like a good chunk of my top 10 has already placed.

50 Voivod - Target Earth 266 Points, 7 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/GwWKxcg.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5Woxw6C2pG4ZPzIbQ7xvlr
spotify:album:5Woxw6C2pG4ZPzIbQ7xvlr

http://www.deezer.com/album/6158267

http://www.spin.com/reviews/voivod-target-earth-century-media/

by Chuck Eddy

So you know how heavy metal supposedly, suddenly, got all avant-garde and high-IQ in the past few years, enabling its embracement by the hippest of the bearded Brooklyn hip? Well, whoever you're banging your microbrewed brainbox to, odds are Voivod beat them to their best ideas by a quarter-century.

Weirdness came naturally to these four French Canadian street-hockey pucks born around the dawn of the '60s, raised inhaling toxins from the planet's most enormous aluminum plant in Jonquiére, in the nexus of Quebec sovereignty country. In 1969, with Away, Blacky, Piggy, and Snake in grade school —l Front de libération du Québec terrorists bombed the Montreal Stock Exchange; by 1970, in the October Crisis wake of separatist kidnappings and murder, the province was all but under martial law. The boys soaked it all in, and by 1982, had started a band.

At first, Voivod seemed like a joke, apparently not on purpose. They had those silly nicknames, for one thing, and early on, that's all they went by. War and Pain — released in August 1984, a year or so after Metallica's debut, eight months after Slayer's — was called "probably the worst record I have ever heard in my entire life" by Paul Sutter in Kerrang, "like a moose being squashed by a steamroller (the vocals), whilst putting a strong magnetic current through a dustbin half-full of ball bearings (the band)." Their follow-up, 1986's umlautriffically named Rrr öööaaarrr, was some new species of fallout-shelter caveman splatter, complete with are-they-kidding? song titles on the order of "Ripping Headaches"; people lumped them in with thrash and/or speed metal, but already Voivod sounded like nobody else. They were listening to anarchist Brit hardcore (Rudimentary Peni, Discharge); left-field '70s Euro-prog (Birth Control, Egg, Amon Düül II, Nektar) that had a surprising Quebec following; 20th-century classical stuff; goth stuff and horror soundtracks; biker rock; Sonic Youth and Public Image Ltd.; and industrial firms like Einstürzende Neubauten and Laibach, whose T-shirts certain Voivoders wore at '80s gigs captured on 2005's D-V-O-D-1. They had a ridiculous concept — Voivods are time-hopping Viking vampires, see — but meticulous cover design and calligraphy from not-quite-here drummer Away (hence his name) and vegematic riffs from porcine guitarist Piggy to put it over.

Then, on Killing Technology (from 1987; note the two-faced title) and Dimension Hatröss (1988; note the recurring umlaut), they blasted it all into a deep and dense and ulcerous black hole of quantum sound, hanging ten on the galaxy's outer edge atop a jungle-drum rumble and stretching song matter toward ambient anti-matter via algebraic equations that later critic-approved metalgaze droners from Neurosis and Isis to SunnO))) and Liturgy and Pallbearer still haven't figured out how to calculate. Their convoluted structures, meanwhile, presaged entire metal subgenres largely preceded by the prefix "tech," but mainly populated by dorks opting for boilerplate brutality over having personalities.

On Nothingface (1989), Angel Rat (1991), and Outer Limits (1993), Voivod eased their claustrophobic congestion some, letting in more psych/prog/goth beauty, alternate-reality pop hooks, two late-'60s Pink Floyd covers, one 17-minute epic, and melodic college-radio jangle two decades before Baroness. The years since have been tumultuous: five often grumpy studio albums (plus live and outtake sets) between 1995 and 2009, including two with a vocalist who wasn't Snake, three with a bassist who wasn't Blacky but who used to be in Metallica, and two recorded after colon cancer killed Piggy but featuring guitar parts he'd cranked out before he died. Voivod (2003) is one of the band's catchiest records; Katorz (2006) one of their most rhythmic.

Target Earth, their new one, deserves to be the album whereon social-media-era tastemakers finally anoint them legacy heroes, in the amusingly eons-behind-the-curve tradition of Swans, Nick Cave, and Voivod's own early inspiration Killing Joke. Blacky's back, and if new guitarist Chewy from Quebec tech-deathers Martyr is no Piggy (nobody is), he holds his own — his fills in "Kaleidos" are nutso. As albums by Treponem Pal, Mekong Delta, Angel Witch, and others have demonstrated in the past year, great metal bands have a jellyfish knack for eternal regeneration when lineups change, and Voivod remain as sui generis as, oh, the Fall — their noise still can't be mistaken for anybody else's. The self-production here is a bit murky, maybe, and the drums and vocals have seen sharper days. But these dudes still turn sharp corners. Seven of 10 tracks last 5:45 or longer, but not even the 7:35 "Mechanical Mind" (first released last fall on one-sided, logo-etched seven-inch vinyl) wears out its welcome. It just builds, from wind-chiming start through yawping bad-dream multiverses and impatient time signatures and nyah-nyah-nyahs unto insanity: "Night arrives! / The guilt inside! / The worms of mind! / Scarred me for life!"

There are all sorts of idiosyncrasies tucked into the album's wormholes: Inuit throat singing and an almost lounge-jazzy midsection in the First Nations folklore-derived "Kluskap O'kom"; a Mediterranean intro credited to Greek oudist Perikles Tsoukalas making way for traffic-jam honking and extended staccato rhyming in the black-ice depressive "Empathy for the Enemy"; rain-forest polyrhythms under conspiracy theories of suppressed alien visitation ("skulls with conical shape, a map of outer space") in "Artefact"; intercepted satellite static or aluminum-smelting musique concrète opening several tracks, presumably courtesy of Blacky, who has dabbled in electronic music in recent years. "Corps Etranger," cold and clammy then raging, is recited in French, and seems to concern a parasitic disease — maybe Piggy's cancer.

In the world of extreme-metal experimentation, writing songs you'll remember once the album's over isn't cool; either that, or most bands don't know how. Voivod have for ages — environmental horror and nuclear/biological/chemical warfare and chaos theory and drone weapons of the formerly future frontier have been obsessions since Killing Technology days. Target Earth kicks off with cyber terror: a hacker attacking the power grid. But somehow, Snake's nasally accented repetitions, more robotic than monstrous, manage to consistently communicate shades of emotion — worry, despair, but also a hopeful calm — outside metal's usual purview.

So a dystopian nuke-wasteland dirge like "Warchaic" ultimately finds him looking to rebuild a "brand new world" like a 16th-century New France settler, then up next is the swinging punk protest "Resistance," not entirely un-skeptical yet actively embracing gas-masked street demonstrators toppling champagne-sipping gargoyles from ivory towers — a shout of solidarity with Occupy anarchists or Arab Springsters or Montreal students rioting over tuition hikes or Wal-Mart workers trying to unionize in Jonquiére. Eventually, we conclude with an odd, ominous minute-and-half snippet called "Defiance": black clouds, world in flames. But it doesn't feel like the end. Just the opposite; it feels unfinished. To be continued…maybe forever.

#16 SPIN, #25 Metal Sucks musicians, #21 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/itHcrRaZhXs

I had pulled that same review, doh.

Cathedral was decent, just outside of my top 50. There was so many other great doom albums.

49    Progenie Terrestre Pura - Uma    275 Points,    7  Votes  One #1
http://i.imgur.com/Dza14do.jpg
http://www.deezer.com/album/6963455

http://lastrit.es/reviews/7028/progenie-terrestre-pura-u-m-a-

If I’m being completely honest, I should probably admit that Progenie Terrestre Pura had me hooked before I ever heard a note of its debut album U.M.A. Not only am I a certified sucker for almost anything even vaguely categorizable as post- or industrial black metal, but that cover. I mean, seriously, take a good look at that gorgeous cover art. Accepting the band’s invitation doesn’t mean I have to stay for the whole party, though. Luckily, the album is every bit as classy and satisfying as its futuristic artwork implies, and U.M.A. announces the arrival of a hugely promising new talent.

The funny thing is, Progenie Terrestre Pura is a hell of a tough thing to describe. It’s nominally black metal, I suppose, but what else? Symphonic? Sort of. Ambient? Sure. Industrial? Of a kind. Atmospheric? Certainly. But if we combine any of those terms with black metal - symphonic black metal, industrial black metal, etc. - you’re sure to get the wrong idea. How about this: The first time I dived into U.M.A.’s deep, tremulous pools, the overwhelming impression that came to mind was that this is the album to answer the unasked question: What if Devin Townsend’s Ocean Machine was a black metal album? Superficially, there’s almost no real similarity here with Townsend’s masterpiece, but I still can’t shake that initial thought. There’s something about U.M.A.: its production, maybe, or its dense yet spacious sheen, or just some damned, intangible...feeling.

The album’s opening tune doesn’t even bother getting around to any actual blasting until near the four-minute mark, and even then, nothing sounds in the least bit aggressive, even as the guitars tremolo constantly, and the programmed beats pound unerringly, and the vocals float above the fray in a hoarse, detached whisper. The closest to properly “heavy” the song gets is when the drums lock in to a double bass pattern in the last minute or so. But even then, sheesh, this is like jackhammering through a rolling countryside of cloud-hills from 30,000 feet.

As the album unfolds, Progenie Terrestre Pura consistently reminds me of countless other artists and sounds without the entire assembled package ever sounding quite exactly like anyone or anything else. Imagine, I suppose, if DHG had set up shop in Star Wars’s Cloud City rather than the dank bowels of the Death Star to record 666 International. Or, I don’t know, if Darkspace and Blacklodge took some tranquilizers and fiddled around with the space disco of Lindstrøm and Pantha du Prince. The band’s sound is split almost cleanly down the middle between space-age black metal tricks and mellow, soundtrack-y bits stuffed full with all the retro-futurist-sounding bleeps and bloops of, hell, Tangerine Dream? Maybe some Windham Hill compilation?

Given the clear difficulties I’m having in communicating Progenie Terrestre Pura’s expansive vision, is it...is it cool if I dub this “new age industrial black metal”? Probably not, at least to anyone but me, but boy oh boy, this album is a pure sensory treat. And of course, to call any portion of this album “black metal” in any restrictive sense of the genre is a stretch. But still, lineage matters: I can’t see quite how you get to a world with Progenie Terrestre Pura without first moving through Mysticum, Limbonic Art, Aborym, and Dodheimsgard.

The most important point, though, is that U.M.A. is one-hundred percent about mood. You’ll find some muted clean vocals way toward the end of “Sovrarobotizzazione,” and “Droni” sees the band whip up some (relatively) intense interplay between the programmed drums and mechanistic riffing, which later transitions into a classic heavy metal gallop, but almost certainly by design, U.M.A. is a single, 51-minute journey through pillowy atmospheres and sharp outcroppings of metallic suggestion, like crude three-dimensional polygons barely glimpsed through the glittering haze of a comet tail. Elsewhere, the instrumental interlude “La Terra Rossa Di Marte” swoons and plunks away like Joe Satriani playing a Perdition City pinball machine in Tron, because, well, of course it does.

For all its brilliant, gleaming surfaces, though, Progenie Terrestre Pura seems to understand the tension, the undercurrent of whitewashed unpleasantness that simmers in all utopian futures. By grafting this sort-of industrial black metal onto such beautifully atmospheric soundscapes, U.M.A. occupies the same aesthetic terrain as a Minority Report or a Blade Runner. Maybe U.M.A. takes the listener on a similar journey to Ocean Machine, after all, except that the referent unit is an entire civilization rather than an individual, cast into an uncertain future and left to consider the conditions of its inevitable end.

It’s like a death becomes musical, but this one’s for the life.

http://progenieterrestrepura.bandcamp.com/album/u-m-a
http://youtu.be/cFOO1qSXS6Q

I'm not a big doom guy but would have tried it out and I never even heard the Cathedral and it's solely because I couldn't find it on Spotify -- I just did, but it's not in their main profile, it's part of some splinter profile and I notice AG didn't include a Spotify link for it either:

http://open.spotify.com/album/48bUcwkqymPVOyptcyNrph
spotify:album:48bUcwkqymPVOyptcyNrph

One of the more annoying aspects of Spotify, I wonder if anyone else out there was stymied by this.

48    Vista Chino - Peace    276 Points , 9 votes
http://i.imgur.com/EtOyXpA.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/7tiZXwV3bxIY1bOReyVroe
spotify:album:7tiZXwV3bxIY1bOReyVroe

http://www.deezer.com/album/6900186

http://www.spin.com/articles/vista-chino-peace-napalm-records-kyuss-album-stream/

"It's very simple to play Kyuss songs," says Vista Chino frontman John Garcia. "Anybody can do it, but you've got to have character."

From 1991 to 1995, Garcia was the frontman for Kyuss, the band who helped pioneer stoner rock's husky dude-rock vocals and charging post-Sabbath melodies, fogging up the alterna-landscape like a smoking steamroller. Since their breakup, the band's guitarist, Josh Homme, has certainly stayed busy, yet Garcia and drummer Brant Bjork cycled through band after band with a fraction of the spotlight until reforming (with livewire bassist Nick Oliveri) as Kyuss Lives! in 2010

Renamed Vista Chino in 2010, Garcia and Bjork still have that Kyuss character in spades on their debut, Peace, writing bulldozing stoner anthems that live up to the legend of their former band. They released the record under the new moniker after Homme sued them for "trademark infringement and consumer fraud," but the sound is like classic Kyuss never missed a swinging, bluesy beat in 18 years. "We don't like getting speeding tickets, let alone fucking federal lawsuits slapped on us," Garcia says. "There were times when we had to be doing depositions when all we really wanted to do was be in the fucking studio. But names are obviously not important to us. We're going to be making music anyway. And nobody has a fucking right to take our joy away. We're lifers. We're grateful to be here."

Hear this blistering reunion in full below, and read a track-by-track breakdown where Garcia explains what it was like singing through Jim Morrison's microphone. Tour dates below the tunes. Pre-order the album from Amazon here and from iTunes here.

"Good Morning Wasteland"
John Garcia: Kyuss, as well as Vista Chino, will always do instrumentals. "Good Morning Wasteland" is an example of a song that didn't call for lyrics. It just has a very organic feel to it, and that's what Brant Bjork was going for as a producer. That's why we didn't go to a studio in Hollywood or Los Angeles, but instead built a studio from the ground up in Joshua Tree, California.

"Dargona Dragona"
Some people have told me that the vocals on this song sound raw and distorted, and that's because I was singing into Jim Morrison's U87 [microphone]. Our engineer, Harper Hug, is in the process of building Robby Krieger's studio in Los Angeles. So they've become really good friends and were talking about Vista Chino. Robby Krieger told him, "Hey, Jim sang out of this microphone before. What do you think the guys would think of using it?" And of course when you put a U87 in front of me that Jim sang out of, of course I'm going to be a little bit intimidated, but it was also inspiring as well. And I was honored, because I'm a fan.

"Sweet Remain"
For me as a singer, this song is a totally out of my range. It's very, very high for me, but it was super fun to experiment with that range. Singers' voices tend to deteriorate just a little bit as they get older. And mine has, knock on wood, held up, and I really wanted to test the boundary of my vocal ability.

"As You Wish"
I remember around the time we were working on this one, a lot of people were asking me what the record was going to sound like. I honestly didn't know. This is a song where Brant and I learned to trust each other again. We went through a couple of different versions of it until we found one that works.

"Planets 1&2"
"Planets 1" is one of my favorites. Brant Bjork called me one day and said, "Hey dude, would you mind if I sing this song?" And I said, "Absolutely. 100 percent please. Go for it." His vocals bring out another side of this band. And then "Planets 2" is just so minimal; it's the less-is-more thing. It's just six lines. Believe it or not, it's hard to be simple. I love to fill up every single minute of a song, and when you do that, you wind up finger-fucking it, ruining it.

"Adara"
All it takes is the first line to get a story going, and then it just flows. "Adara" was a direct product of that. It's very fun to sing, and, for lack of a better word, it's very, very classic Garcia for me.

"Mas Vino"
That was a live recording one night. Bruno and Brant were in the studio, and they called me up and said, "Come on in and cut some vocals." Listening to them play it, there was a great vibe, but because of where the song sits in the sequence of the record, we decided not to release it with the vocal on it. I think eventually we might release the piece with the vocal as a B-side. Until then, I think like a fine wine, it needs a little bit of time.

"Dark and Lovely"
I can see this becoming a 15-minute jam, where it's a trip. It's a very classic-Kyuss type of tune. If you partake in smoking the herb, that one's going to be one where you light back up. I think a lot of people think this band partakes in that a little bit, when actually, in reality, I can't remember the last time I smoked a bowl or a joint or a bongload. It's been that long. I'm waiting for the right time and the right moment to be able to sit down and do exactly that to this one.

"Barcelonian"
This song is just a perfect example of this band beginning anew. "Barcelonian" is not a song Kyuss would have played. But that's great. What we wanted was exploration, and "Barcelonian" is a direct product of going down a tangent. I don't mean it to be crass to the band, but the music sometimes gets redundant and boring. So exploration is fun.

"Acidize – The Gambling Moose"
I did eight different vocal takes on "Acidize." Because I did eight different versions, it was one of the last songs we recorded. And then "The Gambling Moose" is very classic — not to be talking about myself in the third person — but very classic Garcia. It's a fun song to sing. I love the snare sound when it comes in. It's a fitting ending chapter to this book.

#27 Rock-A-Rolla, #4 Obelisk, #2 Obelisk readers, #9 Captain Beyond Zen, #1 Stoner HiVe, #49 Terrorizer
http://youtu.be/3LWvOl8ZqRY

If, like me, you thought the idea of a reunion sans Homme and Reeder – and only intermittently featuring Nick Oliveri, who's become a one-man turnstile in the band – was kind of half-assed and pointless, you're liable to be a little stunned by what the quartet have put together for their debut album under the rebrand, Peace. A few notable moments aside, Peace is where you figure Kyuss would have eventually ended up when they got tired of creating spacier, more drawn out songs and decided to get back to basics. Kind of a no frills ying to Homme's Queens of the Stone Age yang.

"Dargona Dragona" bypasses all of Homme's latter day flirtations with farflung strands of blues rock and 70's metal and zeroes straight in on that Blues for the Red Sun template, shedding aggro-fuzz riffs like a dog with mange… we're instantly transported back to an era where it was just these guys and Fu Manchu and it was still desert, not stoner, rock. The other previously leaked single, "Barcelonian", features a more melodic, string-bending guitar line that is the most Queens-like thing on the album, deceptively so if it's the only thing you've heard so far.
Brant Bjork's ace drumming pretty much steals the show from "Sweet Remain" onward; there's a compressed, small room touch to the album's production which seems to benefit Bjork's kit the most… you can almost envision the dude hammering away at the skins in a basement with faux wood paneling while a modest crowd of beer-swilling yokels do a few 12 oz curls and nod along approvingly. If a drum solo is in the works for the live show it surely belongs sandwiched between "Sweet Remain" and it's album follow up, "As You Wish".

In spite of the overall stripped down approach, Vista Chino do prove that they can still throw down the heavy duty space jams in two specific instances, both coming at what would (presumably) be the last song on each side of the vinyl or cassette: "Planets 1 & 2" is the more restrained of the two, sticking with a fairly conventional songwriting framework but going all Jam Room in the middle. The finale, "Acidize/The Gambling Moose" is – like the title suggests – a multi-part suite, the first half settling into the first real chill out segment of the album, crooning vocals and jazzy licks providing counterpoint to Bjork's unflappable drumming. The back nine ("The Gambling Moose") ends the album on an extended boogie note, more Hooker & Heat than Jam Room this time.

It's pretty much a given that cats are gonna want to take sides, some claiming that Peace is merely QOTSA-lite while others insisting that Vista Chino are the better band for their sense of focus, but this is hardly an either/or proposition here: the truth is that both acts are at the top of their game right now, and for former naysayers like me who'd written Kyuss Lives! off as mere legacy act cashing in on former glory, it's time to eat a bit of crow and acknowledge that Peace is the best work any of these guys have done since the mothership crash landed back in '95. Bravo, gentlemen. – Jeremy Ulrey, Metal Injection

Another album I thought would be higher

47    Portal - Vexovoid    282 Points,    8 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/l5P61hk.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0PtGwwqM6zFvawkY3JHtfq
spotify:album:0PtGwwqM6zFvawkY3JHtfq

http://www.deezer.com/album/6965793

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17576-portal-vexovoid/

Musical density can falsely suggest volume: Listening to a two-sided, 40-minute, wall-to-wall extreme noise record, for instance, can seem like an hours-long gauntlet, especially compared to a 12-track LP of the same length filled with breezy pop songs, each guided by its own system of verses, a chorus, and a bridge. For the latter, the clear striation of parts lends a certain momentum to the listening experience, goading the music toward a clear finishing line, and then repeating the process. But that 40-minute noise record might stuff as much sound as it can into that equivalent space, supplanting pop's rests and dynamics with a barrage of musical information. If you don't think intensity can warp your sense of time and space, remember the notion the next time you're at the gym.

Excepting their 2003 debut, Vexovoid-- the fourth and most recent album from Australian heavy metal abusers Portal-- is the band's shortest full-length to date and their first to fall just to seven songs. At 35 minutes, it is barely longer than your average primetime sitcom or less than a quarter of the music rock'n'roll votary Ty Segall released last year alone. But parsing Vexovoid, Portal's first as a quintet and first since 2009's addled and diverse Swarth, should take you the better part of this calendar year. Initially forceful and ultimately complex, Vexovoid redirects the image of death metal through a dervish funhouse, where the expected shapes have been mutated and multiplied into orders so strange they seem surreal. Rhythms stay the course where you expect them to shift before finally switching without warning. Sharp-barbed riffs emerge from and climb above dins that once seemed irreparably unordered. Songs that, for the first minute, appeared to have but one aim and direction find a half-dozen new missions and vectors in a five-minute span. Hearing it all go by-- the forms flux, the pieces connect, the momentum volley-- provides an exhilarating, bewildering sort of audio whiplash. Vexovoid is a gauntlet that, to run again and again, is every bit as exhilarating as it is exhausting.

Portal has long tapped into sounds beyond death metal basics to warp their core, with traces of doom metal and stoner rock, black metal and noise rock trapped within their already-claustrophobic music. But Vexovoid eliminates the seams better than ever before, with alien sounds woven perfectly into the native space. "Orbmorphia" splices the kind of technically daunting sprints that canonized Meshuggah into rote death metal blitzes. "Plasm" hammers away with similarly primal simplicity, but Portal perverts it via sly embellishments-- molten waves of repetition rather than riffs that slice and flee, or the slow quake of the bass rather than an ordinary game of four-string keep-up. When the drums disappear after three minutes, they give way to a corrosive drone. The transition is surprising but deserved and brilliant, a conclusion foreshadowed by the now-obvious maneuvers of the tune's first half. Likewise, the guitars of closer "Oblotten" radiate grimly with the lock-step tremolo of black metal, while drums boom in the distance, as though industrial samples have been slingshot randomly into the frame. Hidden behind each of those percussive quakes, there's a sad little riff shared between the bass and a guitar. When the cacophony finally chokes out, though, only that riff remains, creeping quietly into nothing.

Go back and trace its progression: It's the kind of detail that you might miss the first dozen times you hear Vexovoid, especially if you've persevered its meticulous and merciless 35 minutes in one sitting. Such intricacy is precisely what makes Vexovoid-- a trove of interconnected themes and variations, distractions and redirections, barbed by the one of the heaviest bands in the genre-- so rewarding. If these 35 minutes feel like twice that, it's because Portal thought through every step, packed all of its ideas as tightly as possible, and left it for you to decode.

ILM's voters are loving their death metal this year.

#31 Decibel, #19 SPIN, #23 Metal Sucks musicians, #19 Terrorizer

http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/vexovoid
http://youtu.be/olWih7eajpk

An album with three #1 votes up next. Anyone wanna take a guess?

Beyonce!

46    Stara Rzeka - Cien Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem    287 Points,    7  Votes, Three #1s
http://i.imgur.com/XaCNHjK.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/11gK31t01ictIPjrWJwSlQ
spotify:album:11gK31t01ictIPjrWJwSlQ

http://www.deezer.com/album/6806667

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/stara-rzeka-cien-chmury-nad-ukrytym-polem

Poland didn’t experience a wave of nostalgia for the countryside through its music or art in the same way that countries of the West did. After WWII, most Eastern Bloc states were involved in large-scale, pressured urbanization that drove people from villages and small towns into industrial cityscapes, which soon began expanding at the hands of Stalin’s economic development strategy. This had a huge impact on Poland in particular, because it was destined to provide the region with coal — the fuel of the empire — and required the use of a strong labor force. While musicians across Western Europe, the UK, and the US juxtaposed tales of agraria with insights concerning the scope of urban development, censorship brutally reigned over any Pole brave enough to demonstrate their affection for the livelihoods they had left behind. Urbanization continued deep into the 1980s, and by the time music expurgation started to soften, artists such as Kazik and Jacek Kaczmarski had set a consistent discourse in motion, which raged, quite understandably, about the state of political affairs, Solidarnosc, and governmental abuse, as opposed to the disenchanted memories of lives led outside the city.

The few musicians who did express rural reminiscence in ways that didn’t confirm to government-dictated aesthetic preferences often found that their output was limited to low-key performances for friends in underground bars instead of large public concerts and radio airplay. Artists bearing such inclinations risked imprisonment when censorship was at its most heightened, and this meant Poland bypassed any Americana-tainted trends to land itself slap-bang in a cultural zeitgeist that revels in admiration for the cosmopolitan cities it has done so well to develop; Kraków, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Warszawa, Lódz, Poznan, etc. Stara Rzeka is a product of that stepping stone in absentia, of a musical landscape that went from mass deprivation to instantaneous bombardment in half a decade, and despite the project’s channeled objective, it draws influence from a wonderfully varied selection of stylistic sources.

The outfit is fronted by guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Kuba Ziólek, who also plays in Alameda Trio, Innercity Ensemble, and Ed Wood, among others. On his first solo effort as Stara Rzeka, he uses a range of guitars, effects pedals, synths, and a MicroKorg to meld transcendental acoustic folk music with drone, kosmische, and black metal to mind-blowing effect. Cień Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem ramifies a sense of nostalgia and longing in the modern era by exemplifying the understated beauty of the Polish countryside, along with a sonic depiction of hard graft in working the fields and a warmhearted appreciation of the surrounding topography.

Ziólek has used his Bandcamp page to pry apart the intentions, inspiration, and content of this mysterious and little-known full-length. The text is all in Polish, but Google’s translation is relatively accurate if you can forgive minor glitches in the algorithm. In accompanying notes for the album’s brilliant opener, “Przebudzenie Boga Wschodu,” Ziólek recalls taking a cocktail of psychedelics and watching the sun rise; he discusses the importance of this process in every day life and identifies how such a phenomenon is taken for granted as a consequence of its frequency. His aural interpretation sends acoustic guitar stings calmly into a wave of grainy feedback and synths, which unfold over the 12-minute track’s mid-section and the first point at which the record takes an unexpected turn — a rattling cage of distortion, vicious drum ricochets and scorched vocals — an astute contrast to the initial chords, which leaves you feeling as though the music could go in any direction. Fortunately, the path it takes is selective in its variation, as it boasts rich and sumptuous overtones that leak across the confides of categorization.

Those first few minutes encompass a fascinating sequence, because at that early stage, the album is still building its hypnotic momentum. The track title translates as “The God of the East Awakens,” and as an opening piece, that sentimentality for the countryside and the importance of agricultural Slavic traditions begin to unfold, whether they are conscious or otherwise. Even though Ziólek is more interested in the village as a contemporary phenomenon, where farmers use loud machinery to drown out the squealing of pigs as they are slaughtered for black market trade, and where every second dwelling has an internet connection, the project’s namesake translates as “Old River” and is in fact a settlement just outside of Tuchole in Northern Poland. The region is home to one of the country’s most superb National Parks; it’s a perfect setting, typical of an area encompassing natural wonder, and a miniature model for the Polish village that saw its community split apart during mass urbanization. Throughout its history, Poland has seen so much tumult as a consequence of its geopolitical situation, while the rural landscape has remained the same — the sonic personification of that image is expertly rendered through Ziólek’s use of historical references, sylvan imagery, and symbolism, from the reef knot (often used to tie bales of hay) on the cassette version of the album’s cover to his appropriation of Avraham Halfi’s poetry. This is not an album that merely wallows in the sanctity of the countryside, but it embeds itself deeply within the culture while gesturing towards daily toil and the supernatural components that come with it.

It’s difficult to listen to the hurling black metal tirade of “Tej Nocy” without paying particular attention to the bells that chime through the opening bars. It brings to mind the presence of the Catholic church and the influence it yields in every village throughout Poland. As a structure, it remains dominant, a place of worship and importance, but not necessarily of promise, as the clusters of drunken men drifting around the outsides of the parish will tell you. However, the religious connection is carried from the church to the fields and the areas that people work. Priests ceremoniously visit these localities during the beginning of May and bless them to ensure a bountiful harvest. With Stara Rzeka, ecclesiastical connotations extend far beyond “Bron Nas Od Zlego” (“Deliver Us From Evil”) and are transported through the hypnotic, trance-enducing drone sequences of the title track, as well as the graceful and punishing “Nächtlich Spaziergang Durch Klinger.” The album deals equally in darkness and in light, regardless of the spectral tones it conjures and the recording errors that resulted in its delay — Ziólek has achieved a fascinating production that thrives on the intensity of everything it borrows from.

Cień Chmury paints a fragmented picture of the humble life, pulling forcefully on a swarm of influences that range from musical curiosity and 19th-century poetry to rural tradition and beyond. What makes this effort so captivating in practice is the way that these stylistic preferences blend together like a fresh slab of kaszanka, bitter and potent, congealed in dried blood. The depth of this unparalleled synthesis is flaunted through an incredible cover of Nico’s “My Only Child,” which operates as yet another symbol — this time depicting Ziólek’s fixation on decline and transformation, themes he finds entrenched deep within Desertshore, as well as in the passing of an era in European history. Where in the past, yearning for the countryside was seen as a regression antithetical to urban planning, Stara Rzeka flips that notion on its head, not only through illustrating its value in a society that remains dominated by the role of the city, but with an honest and accurate depiction of the beauty there to be found.

01. Przebudzenie Boga Wschodu
02. Tej Nocy/Broń Nas Od Złego
03. Cień Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem
04. Prześwit
05. Nächtlich Spaziergang Durch Klinger
06. My Only Child

http://stararzeka.bandcamp.com/album/cie-chmury-nad-ukrytym-polem-cd-instant-classic

I enjoyed the Stara Rzeka track on the Spotify tracks playlist. I wish I'd had more time to listen to this properly, I might have voted for it. Still looking forward to checking out the whole album.

45    black sabbath - 13    294 Points,   10 Votes   One #1 but no Bill Ward
http://i.imgur.com/ZqkVBAR.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/1WLFpcTap1kwv9j2IHuqRg
spotify:album:1WLFpcTap1kwv9j2IHuqRg

http://www.deezer.com/album/6651515

#1 Revolver, #12 SPIN, #25 Rock-A-Rolla, #6 MetalSucks musicians, #10 Obelisk readers, #13 Stoner HiVe, #3 Metal Hammer

http://youtu.be/VWa3mPQLWHg

"We decided to write horror music" is how Ozzy Osbourne describes Black Sabbath's birth in the great new heavy-metal oral history, Louder Than Hell. And that's exactly what they're doing, once again, on 13 ? a reunion set with three-quarters of the original band ? that revisits, and to an extent recaptures, the crushing, awesomely doomy spectacle of their first few records.

Needless to say, this is kind of a big deal. It's impossible to imagine heavy metal without Sabbath's groundwork. And Osbourne hasn't made a studio record with the band he founded for 35 years, not since he was ousted for being an unreliable alcoholic drug casualty after 1978's Never Say Die! Moreover, this reunion comes at a time when the evil germ of the evil gene of their sound is deeply resonant: See Southern heavyweights Mastodon and Baroness; experimental metal acts like Liturgy and Boris; and hundreds of other bands around the world that owe a debt to the godfathers of gloom.

13 is steered by superproducer/superfan Rick Rubin, and it shows that, for all their innovations, Sabbath were a product of their era ? at core, they're a blues-rooted prog-rock band, and 13 may surprise some people in its proto-¬metal traditionalism. The eight-minute opener, "End of the Beginning," goes through various time shifts, beginning with a sludgy stomp, switching to a galloping midsection and ending with a floaty, almost Beatlesque outro. "Zeitgeist" recalls "Planet Caravan," from 1970's Paranoid, with shimmering acoustic guitars and gentle-Druid hand drums set against restrained jazzbo soloing by Tony Iommi, the man who revolutionized hard-rock guitar with his downtuned tritone riffing. After some reverse-recorded psychedelic spirals, "Damaged Soul" goes from molten blues to a hot boogie jam powered by Osbourne's harp; it's not far from Cream or Hendrix.

Philosophically, of course, 13 is more monstrous, at times comically so. "Down among the dead men's vision/Faded dreams and nuclear fission," Osbourne whines on "Zeitgeist" in a voice as piercingly unpretty as it was back in the day; on the single "God Is Dead?" he rhymes "gloom," "doom" and "tomb" ? metal's unholy poetic trifecta. Osbourne is the main wild card here. In the early Aughts, his drug-addled dark-lord persona evolved into reality-TV caricature. Yet he takes to his task here with full aesthetic sobriety, as if conscious of his responsibility to teenagers facing existential terrors for the first time.

The other wild card is drummer Brad Wilk, formerly of Rage Against the Machine, filling in for original drummer Bill Ward, whose disagreements with his former bandmates have sadly reached a point where he's even been cropped out of photos on blacksabbath.com. Wilk doesn't have Ward's subtle swing. But he's a powerhouse, and his head-cracking style gives 13 a more modern feel. Above all, this reboot shows that the genre Sabbath helped birth remains timeless, insofar as the devil remains gainfully employed on Earth, and heavyweight rock shredding still kicks ass. ? Will Hermes, Rolling Stone

http://www.merchmethod.com/prod_images/xlarge/HF044.jpg

lol

STARA RZEKA!

44    Power Trip - Manifest Decimation    303 Points,    9    Votes
http://i.imgur.com/wwla9F0.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/4MmnkDKnBnvUcXDFtV5NLf
spotify:album:4MmnkDKnBnvUcXDFtV5NLf

#15 SPIN, #11 Stereogum, #4 Pitchfork

http://powertripsl.bandcamp.com/releases
http://youtu.be/N-T8JbG9ht4

Before Manifest Decimation, Power Trip were one of those groups people said you needed to see live to understand. This isn't to take away from the EPs and singles they released before this LP, because they contained good songs. It's just that they were still eclipsed by frontman Riley Gale and company's whirling dervish stage presence. There's a reason they've toured plenty with their west coast pals, Trash Talk: they play bridge shows, they make liberal use of gang vocals, their fans are very into circle pits, and, hell, they shout out straightedge hardcore bands on their Facebook page. But this debut eight-song collection, their first release for Southern Lord, is such a strong record that you could never see Power Trip live and still understand what makes them special.

The Dallas, TX, quintet play crossover, i.e. thrash that draws from hardcore punk. The guitars, placed up front, are clean, dexterous, and fast; the vocals and drums, in the back, are draped in sludge and reverb. Those elements will, at times, remind you of the darker side of the old-school thrash spectrum (Slayer), but the spirit of this stuff pulls more from the hardcore scene, like their Astoria forebears Leeway or, on the burlier side, Cro-Mags. Unlike other contemporary thrash bands, Power Trip create a legitimately violent atmosphere, and don't go around wearing sleeveless jean jackets with the front of their baseball caps turned up. They sound less like they're here to party, and more like they want to kick your ass.

You could safely say Power Trip are a punk band. Their whiplash fight song, "Power Trip", includes the lines "We ride as one/ We?re ruled by none," and you believe them. Manifestcloser, "The Hammer of Doubt", was originally out, in different form, on a 2010 compilation called America's Hardcore. They've covered Prong. They could easily cover Black Flag. They remind me of my early days in high school when I was coming out of a steady diet of hardcore and getting into bands like Metallica, D.R.I, Suicidal Tendencies, and Anthrax.

The music on Manifest Decimation is bleak, dirty, heavy. It's also very catchy. At any given moment, Gale can sound like Lemmy fronting Cro-Mags, Discharge, or Exodus. At other times, he locates a grizzlier tone that evokes guys wearing corpsepaint. There are samples about death and Texas from movies like Robocop 2 and Blood Simple. The Italian artist Paolo "Madman" Girardi offers detailed old school apocalyptic metal cover art. The lyrics deal with government and religious suppression like so: "Histories trapped in illusion, who sees through who?/ For every mindless vision of who owns the truth/ For every one who spoke out, thousands were slain/ Torture and bloodshed in the sake of some holy name." That's the classic side of things, but while Manifest Decimation does sounds vintage (the chug-chug-chug, the whammy-bar abusing solos), these guys aren't stuck in 1986.

What helps makes this album great, outside of the excellent riffs and choruses, is the way Power Trip mix in flourishes that place Manifest Decimation firmly in the present. (In that sense, you'll also think about another Texas band, the now defunct Iron Age.) There's nothing obvious; it's little touches, like the weirdo echo effect on Gale's voice throughout. The album opens with a blast of swirling feedback and ominous synth tones, something threaded throughout the album via brief, almost industrial snippets. The feeling's picked up in some of those headier vocal effects, too-- the phased pan on "Conditioned to Death" (which features some great early Metallica riffing), the disembodied backing vocals on the frantic "Murderer's Row" (complete with some Slayer-like soloing). It adds to the urgency and intensity, and also sets them apart. That said, none of it would matter if they weren't writing songs like the swarming title track or the Motörhead-banging "Heretic's Fork".

Recently, people who take metal seriously have spent some time talking about whether or not thrash is dead, or if we're actually in the midst of a thrash revival. Power Trip have found a way to create something new by pulling from the past. In that way, it feels like they exist on both sides of the argument without giving a shit either way. ? Brandon Stosuy, Pitchfork

Should also include Nate's epic review - http://www.cvltnation.com/the-end-of-the-end-black-sabbath-13-review/

It’s possible to make good heavy metal music and to hate the Beatles (though I wouldn’t recommend it.) It’s not realistic to play in a metal band and thoroughly dismiss Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, early Scorpions, Motörhead, or some era of Iron Maiden. Those are the building blocks upon which all have since constructed. You can argue with me on this, but it will be your ultimate loss because all of the aforementioned bands wrote Timeless Shit, and little that’s followed has been as crucial or as successful.

In the late ‘80s, it was popular to bash on Black Sabbath. It was schoolyard lore that they couldn’t play their instruments. Zeppelin were supposedly the better musicians and certainly the richer men. Metallica was faster and more modern. There was a lot of misinformed revisionist mythology going around. But then Grunge happened, and every band in that canon spoke loudly on record and interviews of being heavily influenced by Sabbath. All of a sudden the rough edges had value again. And eventually Sabbath heeded that call and came back to us.

In 1997, the Reunion happened. A live double CD set followed. And with it came two brand new songs—the first that Iommi, Butler, Ward, and Osbourne had produced together since their 1978 swansong Never Say Die. The reaction was mixed on the concerts, and relatively unanimous (not in a good way) on the radio single “Psychoman.” Ozzy was not in good form on this tour, and fans alternately reveled in Bill Ward’s good nights and chastised the entire band when he was off or on medical leave. Ward missed a lot of the reunion shows due to ill health. In fact, he had a heart attack before the tour began, and even when he was present on the road, there was another drummer being paid to wait behind a curtain in case he was needed.

Now let me pause for a moment here to say that I love Bill Ward as a drummer and a mythological figure. From every interview I’ve seen, he’s the sweetest man you could imagine. Along with Bonham, Moon, and Crover, he’s one of the greatest rock drummers to ever walk the Earth. His personal influence on my life and drumming cannot be discounted. And the night I saw him play with Black Sabbath on the 1999 leg of the Reunion tour brought me literally to tears. But I can certainly see how it was a very different experience for the other members of Black Sabbath.

When Ozzy was finally fired from Black Sabbath back in 1978, the dirty job was delegated to Bill Ward. He and Oz were friends, and it was assumed that the bad news would be best received from his mouth. At the time however, Ward was only in slightly better shape than Osbourne. His bouts with alcohol, drugs, and prescription pills were pretty legendary by the mid-80s. It’s a well-known bit of Sabbath lore that Ward recorded on the Heaven & Hell album in 1980, but retains absolutely no recollection of doing so.

By the time Mob Rules rolled around, Ward was out entirely, the throne occupied by Vinnie Appice. When Dio left after disputes that Iommi was sneaking in at night to turn up the guitars on the mix of their Live Evil album, Appice also fled the sinking ship and sailed into glory with Ronnie James. Ward found himself back for the Born Again album with Ian Gillan (which really is their last great record until Dio and Appice returned for Dehumanizer in ’92), but only rejoined the group sporadically for the remainder of Sabbath’s career. That is, until the official Reunion in late 1997.

By the time Ward returned to Sabbath, he had not made a lot of big career moves. The Bill Ward band released an album called Along the Way in 1990, which got a little bit of attention thanks to a cameo from Ozzy. It’s actually a pretty cool record, but it does beg the question: do you own this album? Did you even know about it?

While Ozzy was writing multi-platinum discs and touring the world, Iommi was dragging Sabbath’s name through the muck, and Geezer Butler was ping-ponging between those two projects. Meanwhile, Ward was–among other things–a high school guidance counselor.

With significantly less miles under his belt than the other three members, Ward was admitted back into Sabbath for the Reunion, then proceeded to have a heart attack before the first show. Though he performed on the shows recorded for the Reunion album in 1997, he had to be replaced by Mike Bordin of Faith No More for all but two of the gigs in 1998.

Reunion is primarily a live record, but each CD contains one new studio cut. “Psychoman” is a hint at how Sabbath perceived itself in its original lineup at the cusp of the millennium. It rocks, but admittedly sounds both forced and rushed. At the time, Iommi was quoted that he preferred not to make a new album unless it was on par with their first three records. That had many of us convinced that they would never even bother.

The other new track was called “Selling My Soul.” Remember that one? No? Well, it’s not a terrible track. But it is only about three minutes long. And the drum part was performed by a machine because Ward was reportedly unable to keep time.

What I’m trying to get at is this: as much as I love Ward, as much as he seems like a genuine human being and a visionary percussionist, he just wasn’t reliable. If I played in a band with a guy who needed to be replaced by a machine in the studio, and by a session player on stage, and someone who simply wasn’t investing in his instrument and career on the same level as the rest of the band, I too might not want to share 25% of the proceeds and glory with such a fellow, regardless of his disposition.

Don’t get me wrong—I do not prefer Ward’s replacement in this scenario either. Brad Wilk is a fine, fine drummer. But I never liked a note of Rage Against the Machine. I’ve done my best to pretend that Audioslave never existed. The fact that Wilk was the compromise is a sincere bummer. Why couldn’t the band have hired Tommy Aldridge, Ginger Baker, Jason Bonham, anyone from their era or homeland or position of prestige and experience? It’s a fucking drag, and it’s one of the biggest reasons that folks don’t even want to give 13 a chance.

When Black Sabbath came out on 11/11/11 with their big announcement that it was all the original members, people were excited. I can’t say I had much faith in Ozzy, but Iommi and Butler had just knocked it out of the park with the Heaven & Hell band. And if you’re not keeping 2009 masterwork The Devil You Know in heavy rotation, you’re doing it wrong. That is truly the best Black Sabbath album since the 70s. But it’s always going to remain in the shadows thanks to the brilliant legal loophole that the Osbourne’s lawyers wove into the reunion contract.

Despite the fact that Tony Iommi was the one man to never quit or be fired from Black Sabbath, although he kept using the name for album after album into the mid-90s, he was no longer legally allowed to use it following the 1998 reunion unless Ozzy was involved. But for over a decade, Ozzy was busy with his television show, his lackluster solo albums and repeated last-ever-final-see-me-now-or-never-ever-ever tours. And so Iommi got tired of waiting, made amends with Dio, and reactivated Black Sabbath.

In 2007, Iommi, Butler, Dio, and Appice released three brand new tracks (two great ones) as bonus material on Rhino Records’ The Dio Years anthology under the name Black Sabbath. You may notice that Bill Ward was not invited to that party either. A lot of folks want to believe that Ozzy and Sharon are the greedy gargoyles responsible for Ward being ousted from the 13 album and tours. But hmm, in 2007 he was MIA again.

Ok Sharon and Ozzy are in fact greedy gargoyles. Let’s not pretend otherwise. They shut down this particular version of Sabbath with a cease & desist & “our lawyers will feed your lawyers to starving children in third world countries” efficiency. With the risk of killing off a highly functioning unit, Iommi and co hastily renamed the group Heaven & Hell, and then proceeded to record and tour.

The resulting album was 2009 doom metal masterpiece The Devil You Know. I smacked my forehead in disbelief when I read reviews of this album that dismissed it as “slow, turgid, and doomy.” Since when is doom metal not monotonous? The songs on this album are slow, apocalyptic, and evil, one after another after another. It’s a fantastic example of what a really mature metal band is capable of when egos and financial speculation are removed from the picture. Truly, it’s one of the purest visions of unadulterated heavy metal in the 21st century. And because it bore a name other than the one it deserved, it sank out of sight like a stone.

When I saw the band live in 2010, the venue was half full at best. Lucky for me, it was the one show of the entire US tour in which the support was not Coheed & Cambria. The night I saw them was a one-off in Seattle with Neurosis. Yes, I saw Black Sabbath and Neurosis, and most of my friends stayed home to save 75 bucks. What a supreme loss they felt when Dio passed a matter of months later.

There was almost no way that 13 could compete artistically with The Devil You Know. I was well aware of that in advance, and prepared for the disappointment brought by Ozzy and his committee of puppeteers. When 13 finally came out in the US on June 11, I drove to my favorite record store in Portland – 2nd Avenue Records – and picked up the double vinyl the day it was released. And damn was I pleasantly surprised.

Now I did have some idea what to expect. The album’s single, “God Is Dead” was released while I was on tour in Europe in April/May 2013. In fact, I had the pleasure of visiting and performing in Birmingham, England, while the song was in heavy rotation. There was something really magical about being in Sabbath’s hometown and hearing their new tune being played on the radio, hourly. I imagine that’s how it feels to be in Cleveland or Toronto when a new Rush album drops.

“God Is Dead” is a pretty impressive return to form. Yes, it’s consciously retro Sabbath. No, Bill Ward is not with us. But otherwise, Ozzy is not embarrassing himself; Wilk is doing his job without overstepping his bounds; and Iommi and Butler are absolutely delivering. It’s heavy as hell, and almost nine minutes long. Not exactly what one could easily peg as a sellout maneuver.

When I turn on popular rock radio, I do not hear music like “God Is Dead.” Most of what Clear Channel programs for us is a host of sure things from the past, from artists who paid their dues, jumped through hoops, and are being rewarded in retirement or the afterlife for playing a good game. A select few like Tom Petty or John Fogerty get their new songs played on classic rock radio alongside “Hotel California” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Focusing on actual new chart hits, I couldn’t begin to tell you. Big Time Rush and Yeezus simply do not write songs that I want to hear. “God Is Dead” is pretty damn good fare for a brand new recording in rotation on popular radio, and stands out on every level.

This was the first track, and the first target. Now that new music (sans Ward) had been revealed, it was time for the first crowd-sourced potshots. The vocals were “mixed too loud”. The lyrics were corny. It sounded more like solo Ozzy than classic Sabbath. Bill Ward was being cheated. I don’t really agree with any of these criticisms.

The first thing I noticed was that Ozzy wasn’t singing through Auto-Tuner. Ever since he’d first employed the technology (and Ozzy was certainly the first singer I ever heard use it) back on 1995’s Ozzmosis, it’s sounded awful to me. Rick Rubin got Ozzy off the Auto-Tune teat. That’s almost like saying that he got him to put down the bottle or to quit pissing his pants. Also, the song rocks and is well recorded, crafted, and composed.

There are thousands of bands mining the ore that Sabbath once wrought. Can you think of any with as good a guitarist? How about a bass player as good as Geezer? Or a drummer as talented as Wilk? Or with a singer as charismatic as Ozzy? Or with the songwriting skills and craftsmanship of these four with a world class production courtesy of Rick “Slayer/Danzig/Public Enemy” Rubin? No, most bands would kill to operate on this level, or produce material of this quality. I hear you balking, but please, stay with me.

The new album 13 opens with “End of the Beginning.” This is another tune over eight minutes in length, and crushingly heavy. The lyrics are a bit more clever than the poetry you wrote you in high school, and smack of wisdom hard won through experience. Perhaps that’s because they (like most of Sabbath’s lyrics) were written by bassist Geezer Butler—a man with a high school education, a lot of book reading, and a life filled with peaks beyond most of our imaginations.

For my money, “End of the Beginning” is probably the best song on the record. Apparently somebody else agreed, as there’s no more modern formula than to front-load an album with the best track first. If you don’t lure in the listener right away, you may never have them. The true denouement of this song isn’t until the end of the entire record, but we’ll get to that later. Suffice to say, the best riff in this song is the last one. Iommi repeatedly finds ways to save the best for last, and end on the most heavy and epic note possible.

Next up is the single, “God Is Dead.” My one real qualm with this song is that the lyric is a bit of a cop out. When I first heard the title, it sounded heavy. And when Ozzy laments “God is dead,” it has a serious impact. But by the end, he’s singing, “I don’t believe that God is dead.” A bit weak, wouldn’t you say? It’s a controversial title and chorus, severely under-mined in application. But hey, maybe it will keep those protective mothers from burning records and putting hexes on these nice boys from Birmingham.

On Side Two, things change. Yes, I’m listening to this record on vinyl, the way it was intended. Maybe a lot of kids in the ‘70s also listened to Black Sabbath on 8-track, but I don’t see that format being offered here. So as far as I’m concerned, the right way to listen to this album is on vinyl, in front of big wood cabinet speakers, with a freshly loaded bong. If you’re evaluating or condemning this album bone sober over tiny computer speakers, you’re not really showing a great deal of respect, are you?

Track three is called “Loner.” It’s an ode to all the lonely, outcast, misunderstood, burnout Black Sabbath fans. That’s really 99% of their fan base, and apparently they know it. When John Darnielle wrote his 33 1/3 series novella about Master of Reality, he recognized this too, and made the main character in his book just such a loser, locked in a psych ward, yearning for his Sabbath tape.

What’s really cool about “Loner” is how much the main riff recalls the blatant underachiever vibe of the Technical Ecstacy era. It’s clear that the same man who wrote “All Moving Parts (Stand Still)” and “Gypsy” penned this tune. It even recalls something Dave Chandler of Saint Vitus might have come up with around the time of Children of Doom. At 2:12 the sleaziest riff on the entire record slinks in, bringing images of this “loner” kids cruising the gut after midnight with bleary eyes, drinking Sparks, eventually sleeping solo in his room above his parents’ garage.

Finishing Side Two is “Zeitgeist.” This song is my one personal complaint on the whole album. There’s actually nothing particularly wrong with it. But one of the primary criticisms folks have leveled at 13 is that each song seems to correspond pretty directly to another from Sabbath’s back catalog. I would argue that most of the songs are no more referential here than might be expected. Since when should a band that invented a genre not be allowed to rip itself off? What if—gasp–a new Kraftwerk album sounded like an old Kraftwerk album? There’s no doubt that if Sabbath had come out with an entirely new, updated, 21st century sound, literally everyone would hate it.

But “Zeitgeist” may be both the safest and laziest move here as it’s so clearly “Planet Caravan” mark II. From the bongos and classical guitars to the kooky outer space lyrics, it’s an exercise. Sure, it breaks up the flow of an otherwise very heavy album. It also reflects on they way the band arranged its classic albums with tunes like “Solitude,” “Embryo,” “Changes,” and “Laguna Sunrise.” There were always mellow Sabbath tunes, and most of them were great. This one is simply a copy of perhaps the twenty-fifth best Sabbath song and the very best Pantera song. Sorry Phil.

Side Three kicks off with “Age of Reason” – a seven minute slab of doom that sounds like a hybrid of Volume IV and Heaven & Hell. I should note here that throughout this album, Iommi’s leads are absolutely top notch. Perhaps it’s because instrumentalists like him don’t really get worse as they get older. The years are much harder on singers and drummers, much more physically demanding instruments. The other factor is that while recording this album, Iommi was undergoing treatment for lymphoma. There was a very real possibility that this would be his final album, and he’d just watched Cancer silence good friend Ronnie James Dio. So while there is a certain sterility to the recording overall, the leads sound very much alive—leaping out of the speakers—a conduit from wicked modern metal to classic selling-your-soul “Crossroads” blues.

Next up is “Live Forever,” another apocalyptic doom track concerned with no lighter subject than mortality. Younger bands could never get away with a lyric like “I don’t wanna live forever, but I don’t wanna die.” Somehow when it’s being sung by sextagenarians, it carries the weight it deserves. It’s also cool that the faster groove in this song shares a certain cadence with “Johnny Blade” off Never Say Die.

“Damaged Soul” is a blues number that accentuates the band’s patented 6/8 swing. The production reminds the listener that Rick Rubin famously worked with the Black Crowes. It’s here that the harmonica finally comes out. And right at 3:51, Iommi is playing with such spirit that he flubs a note and leaves it in the song. It’s one of the most magical moments on the album and really underscores that this really is just four guys making music. As produced as it is, there’s no keyboard, no backing choir, and no guest rappers.

The last song on 13 is “Dear Father,” another mournful dirge that would have fit somewhere in the various Dio eras, or could have been the closer on an Ozzy solo album. If you like “Disturbing the Priest” from Born Again, skip right to this track. It’s gruesome and grungy and unrelenting in its darkness. Toward the halfway point, it kicks up into a “Children of the Grave” style gallop before descending back into the tar pit. And (spoiler alert!) it ends with the sound of rain and church bells, bringing us full circle to the “End of the Beginning” and to the original song “Black Sabbath” from their eponymous debut on Feb 13, 1970. Clever, poetic, a bit stupid—in other words–pure Sabbath.

All in all, 13 is a helluva record. It’s telling that Tony Iommi thanks Rick Rubin in the liner notes “…for producing this record and for his insight in what it should be.” While any of us can sit around and speculate about what this album could or should have been, this is what we have. I don’t believe anyone sets out to write a doom metal album with chart success in mind. None of these guys really need the money. 13 was made as a final monument to one of the all time great rock careers that was stifled too many times by booze, bad business, and worse luck.

The band had been flirting with Rick Rubin since 2000, knowing full well that he’s a master at putting wind in the sails (and in the sales) of artists in the later stages of their career. I’m no Death Magnetic fan, but it’s clearly more vital than St Anger. As revisionism goes, the American Recordings album series that Rubin helped Johnny Cash lay down before the Man in Black died is all class. Rubin possesses the skill to focus on what is great and mythic about a band, and to help the band recognize that. Seeing yourself from the outside is difficult for any of us, and even more so for superstars with decades of lousy reviews and millions of adoring fans.

If you’ve read this far and you’re still gutted that Bill Ward wasn’t on the record, well, I’m with you. Maybe the other guys feel that way too, because all three of them thanked Bill pretty sincerely in the liner notes. Brad Wilk certainly did an ace job as “guest musician / drums & percussion.” He plays well and safely throughout the record. And I can’t blame him for doing his job, but there are risks Ward used to take that gave the songs dynamics and life. His off-the-rails hybrid of blues, jazz, and rock was truly inspired. There are tom rolls on 13 that are so precise that my ears yearn for the sound of an accidental rim shot, or two sticks clicking together, or that weird little one-off cowbell tone heard when Ward accidentally hit a mic in “The Wizard.” But I also believe that if Ward had been involved, this album would have taken a long time to record, and we wouldn’t have it now. Or maybe ever.

But there’s still hope. Ward is alive. The fans have spoken. Many voiced their opinion online (the Facebook fan page “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath has 595 members.) But in the real universe, people came out in droves, buying enough copies of 13 to push it to #1 in the UK—the first time the band has topped their homeland charts since Paranoid came out in 1970. And as of June 19, 2013, Sabbath dethroned Queens of the Stone Age for the number one spot in the US. That’s a first for Sabbath or even Ozzy. And it’s a good sign that dark, occult-themed metal can overcome all obstacles. Satan’s sitting there, he’s smiling.

In Greek mythology, the Titans begat the gods. The way people talk about 13 makes me feel like the Titans awoke after thousands of years and stormed up Mount Olympus to show off their lightning. And the people said, “Big deal. Zeuss pisses lightning three times a week.” Perhaps these people don’t understand the rules of de-evolution. Or entropy. The nature of the universe is that things get worse, and energy dissipates into nothing. When that doesn’t happen, it’s a bit miraculous.

When Eric Clapton or the Rolling Stones put out a new album of soft-core tracks for baby boomers, I’m not interested. But when Priest brought Halford back in 2005 for the Angel of Retribution album, that was fucking impressive work. In 2012, Rush wrote a 66 minute concept album called Clockwork Angels that is creatively on par with anything they’ve ever done, and heavy as hell to boot. This is the company that 13 belongs in, alongside other traditional doom masterpieces of the 21st century—2005’s eponymous Candlemass (the best reunion album I’ve ever heard), and 2009’s The Devil You Know by Black Sab—I’m sorry—Heaven & Hell.

13 is not perfect. It’s not the all time masterpiece, nor the crown jewel in Sabbath’s catalog. But considering the popular music of today, and the number of lousy Sabbath albums that came out between 1984 and 1995 (seriously, check out Ice T’s cameo on “The Illusion of Power” off Forbidden), this is firmly in the better half of their catalog. If this album had come out any year between 1979 and 1991, it would be considered one of THE classic Black Sabbath albums. But now, I guess we just know too much. Our idols are puppets for our amusement. We love to raise them up and then cast them down.

I love Black Sabbath. Their music has changed my life on all sorts of levels. I own all their albums, including the bad ones. I never thought I’d see those four guys on stage together, and in 1999 it happened. Never thought the band would make another album—and certainly not one that sounded so much like the band I grew up with. 13 years after it was promised, here it is. Cue thunderclouds and church bells.

Special thanks to Erik Highter and Robert Ham for their two cents, and to my girlfriend Sivonna West for buying the 13 LP for me as an early birthday present.

Stara Rzeka album is one of my favorites of the decade so far; that being said, it's probably too much to hope that Jute Gyte is going to show up now :/

if only sund4r had voted

or imago

hunt them down dam

43 The Body - Christs, Redeemers, 307 Points, 8 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/zzEqqGX.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/1ZapNoH3eRFzDaJHKPTjpY
spotify:album:1ZapNoH3eRFzDaJHKPTjpY

#7 Rock-A-Rolla, #31 Pitchfork
http://youtu.be/SSQ4Feyrl8E

In metal (or at least the type of metal that could be loosely classified as 'Trve' ? i.e. leather, not spandex) vocalists are descended from three distinct character classes. There is The Magus (the grand vizier of truth and illusion; one who sees through the veil - Ronnie James Dio is a good example), The Beast (most low and accursed; a grunting ork warrior who lusts only for blood and triumph in battle - see Cannibal Corpse's Chris Barnes) and The Penitent. The Body's Chip King hails from the latter category. The penitent is a man torn to pieces by the uncaring universe; screaming for his life in the talons of some gargantuan animal which may or may not be a metaphor for the hellish depths of his own soul; utterly dwarfed by the hideous undulating movements of the world around him, like a sand crab crushed by a tank track. The Penitent is a man in pain, and the men behind the deadly serious assault of Christs, Redeemers know a thing or two about pain. Both the giving and receiving of it.

Christs, Redeemers starts unexpectedly, with a looping, woozy choir and a female sung folkish lament. The vocal is warm and clear ? almost welcoming - and it's only in the tracks final minutes, as the wooze sours and begins warping and blurring at the edges that you realise that you've been had. By the time the first perfectly weighted hammer strike of churning guitar and filth encrusted drums comes down on your head you're on the floor with your legs uncontrollably kicking like that poor sap in Texas Chainsaw Massacre - a pig ripe for the hook.

Choirs and folksy elements are nothing new in metal, of course. These combinations of the sacred and the profane go back at least as far as Black Sabbath's clanging church bell. What makes The Body such a different proposition is the way that these purified ingredients are utterly degraded by the filth surrounding them. The sweeping strings and choir of a track like ?An Altar Or A Grave?, while initially threatening to push the album toward bathos, give way to ?Failure To Desire To Communicate??s punishing crackle and roar, which wouldn't sound out of place on a Werewolf Jerusalem or Taint record. Sure, the crossover between extreme metal and harsh noise is a much more established one these days, but The Body never sound like they're incorporating these elements for the sake of it. Each usage evokes something, a feeling or an image that suits the conceptual thrust of the album as a whole: a broken spinning turbine, the clang of heavy machinery, rain falling onto a punctured tin roof.

What message The Body are choosing to impart is pretty much obscured due to the impenetrability of the lyrics. I would hazard it is not a positive one, seeing as the vocalist sounds disgusted by the sheer fact of his own existence throughout, but none the less the images the album conjures are strong enough in their own right to give Christs, Redeemers conceptual weight. It can't be overstated how important the seamless introduction of noise elements serves to lift The Body beyond the reach of pretty much every other extreme metal band. A track like ?Shrouded?, for example, is little more than static and a steady, defeated pulse with the vocals set into the far back of the mix, like a man being drowned in wet cement, yet it sounds so hopeless. It sounds like weakness and despair and is brutally affecting. More so than a lot of more 'traditionally' played music in the genre.

That all of these separate elements come together without ever compromising the album's impact is a testament to the vision and surprising levels of compositional depth that The Body bring to play. No one element is ever allowed to dominate but, rather than spreading their ideas too thin this serves to fill the album with variety while ensuring it never wavers from its nihilistic mission. I've been listening to it for two whole days now and I'm still discovering new features, like a man up to his arms in tar pulling out body parts and splinters of bone. In a year that's been dominated by the spectacle of former noise musicians funnelling their abrasiveness into more conventional arenas,Christs, Redeemers is a welcome fetid volley from the keep-noise-hideous brigade and an album that will keep you horribly transfixed for a long time to come. ? Mat Colegate, The Quietus

AG, See email with attachment with reviews that won't have all the ?s

ok

btw is ANYONE using Deezer links?

42 Paysage d?Hiver - Das Tor, 316 Points, 9 Votes, One #1
http://i.imgur.com/sakVyvd.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/5dhZUJlNVn2oH2yfWU2LEH
spotify:album:5dhZUJlNVn2oH2yfWU2LEH
http://www.deezer.com/album/6571752
http://youtu.be/QeWQrrCN8jU

Founded in 1997, Paysage d’Hiver (“Winter Landscape”) is a side project of Darkspace’s very own vocalist/guitarist Tobias Möckl a.ka. Wroth or Wintherr (depending on the season). Now if you’ve heard of Darkspace, but thought Paysage d’Hiver was a specialty cheese, that is not all together surprising. Witherr has made the barrier to entry unquestionably high for potential Paysage fiends. Many of his early releases were issued on cassette format only, limited to a few hundred copies each. It has only been very recently that Wintherr’s own label, Kunsthall Productions, has made Paysage’s back catalog readily available on A5 digibook format.

Putting the project’s frustrating distribution choices aside, Paysage has been consistently releasing high quality material for over a decade. But after 2007′s Einsamkeit, the Paysage camp went suddenly dark. And it was only until last year that Wintherr broke his silence and hinted at a new release. Now after a six year long wait, the latest “demo,” Das Tor (“The Gate”), is finally upon us.

As the project’s name implies, Paysage focuses on a frigid mix of howling wind, ambient synth, and atmospheric black metal. Each release is typically composed of no more than six tracks, many of which shoot past the fifteen minute mark, and each expresses some ambient aspect of Wintherr’s favorite time of the year. At almost an hour and twenty minutes long and composed of just four monolithic tracks, Tordoes not break with tradition. Instead, it continues down the path of incremental growth and subtle refinement to its original frostbitten formula.

And part of that formula is its heavy use of post metal. As your ears peel back all the layers of blast beat and guitar driven cacophony, the post metal influences here are quite obvious. Opener “Offenbarung (Revelation)”

is a shining example of that fact, as it’s immediate whirlwind of blast beasts and black metal riffing lays down the foundation for the several minute long crescendo that ensues. And like all post enterprises, Wintherr employs subtle chord shifts and repetition as he continually overlays one theme after the next. Around eight minutes in, a sinister riff emerges as the song reaches its climax and begins its gradual denouement. Wintherr does a masterful job of not over using one particular structure to the point of monotony, which is something I’ve felt he has been guilty of in the past.

But one technique that I seem to not get enough of is those fantastic synth effects that give each Paysage song a certain joie de vivre. For example, “Macht des Schicksals (Force of Destiny),” contains haunting keyboards about four minutes in that gently hover over the blast beats and buzzsaw below, adding just enough texture to make the whole exercise worth it. Their influence is then felt several minutes later, providing the melody in which all the fury now centers around. Fans of Kristall & Isa and Nacht will feel right at home with this record, as the exact same techniques are revisited on Tor.

The last two tracks are really separate movements of one massive body of work. “Ewig leuchten die Sterne (The Stars Shine Forever)” slows down things considerably, introducing a simple melody that takes on a very cinematic quality as it repeats and unfurls over the next few minutes. Then the last track, “Schlüssel (Key),” repeats the same theme, but drowns it in distortion and buzz. What was haunting beautiful a moment ago now sounds cold and despondent.

Das Tor was recorded and mixed in Berne, Switzerland by Wintherr himself, and then mastered for CD and LP by Fredy Schnyder of Nucleus Torn. Wintherr continues to opt for the Burzum-esque production of the early ’90s that long time fans know and love (sigh). But what is a pleasant surprise this “demo” time around is this record actually sounds dynamic! With Tor, Schnyder proves that you do not need to compress to modern day insanity just to keep your “kvlt” status intact. In fact, there is a bit of sparkle in this wintery mix that you can easily discern despite Paysage’s penchant for hum and buzz. As is a sub-genre tradition, Wintherr’s vocals are mainly set in the distant background and come and go as they please. They act as sort of an aural wind chill factor on this record. All in all, given the lo-fi objective, this record does a remarkable job of balancing underground aesthetics while still maintaining a modicum of dynamics (Fell Voices, pay attention!).

Das Tor is the most cohesive Paysage record to date despite the fact it doesn’t really break any new ground or ruffle any feathers. It’s simply a solid slab of atmospheric black metal and for fans of Fell Voices, Ash Borer, and their elk, a must own. – Alex, Metal-Fi

wrong image for Christs, Redeemers but that EP was amazing too

if only sund4r had voted

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, January 14, 2014 2:36 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or imago

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, January 14, 2014 2:42 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

I hope you hold a grudge

anyways:

there's quite a few showing up that were on my 'hope to check out b4 voting' list but I just totally dropped the ball this year :/

Imago refused to vote. You shouldn't take that lying down

41 Castevet – Obsian, 325 Points, 11 Votes
http://i.imgur.com/NzEg7rJ.jpg
#13 Stereogum, #37 Rock-A-Rolla, #20 Pitchfork
http://castevet.bandcamp.com/album/obsian-2

Music is inescapably physical, whether it rivets you to your chair or propels you to the dance floor. This physical dimension is not uniformly distributed across genres: death metal tends to churn harder than black metal; thrash metal harder than power metal; and so forth. (This isn’t limited to metal, either: compare dubstep to IDM, or hard bop to free jazz.)

The counterweight of physicality is often intricacy or technicality. It’s not impossible to be intellectual and dispassionate while also striking with the force of a clawhammer, but it takes skill to balance the two. Think of Tool’s “Ænema” video: a clay figure inside a box which is then thrown. You can anticipate the arc of a rectangular prism in motion, but the effect on the flesh inside is both horrifying and unpredictable. New York’s Castevet call to mind such imagery on their nervy, harrowing second album, Obsian.

Castevet’s debut album Mounds of Ash condensed the slow creep and explosive crescendo of post-rock-influenced metal into tighter, mathier songs. Obsian manages a similar trick, but by exploding those structures from within, such that each song feels like build and burst — tension and release — are happening simultaneously.
That seeming paradox is possible because of Castevet’s command of rhythmic precision — largely thanks to drummer Ian Jacyszyn’s fierce economy, and the band’s willingness to spring from unison to contrapuntal dissonance in a flash. “As Fathomed by Beggars and Victims” is a fine, disorienting example; it opens with a groove that one can hardly pin down before it dives straight into lock-step machine-gunning. “Cavernous,” meanwhile, is not spacious and echoing as its title would suggest, but instead jitters and stutters and always winds back in on itself.
Castevet’s tonal palette is limited — this is a three-piece band, after all — but much like Ulcerate, that limitation is embraced as a challenge, leading to a hermetic album that is inventive, restless, and bristling with a singular vision. Obsian is Castevet’s first album with new bassist Nick McMaster (also of Krallice, with whom Castevet share an aesthetic kinship). McMaster’s bass often plays a lead role, as on the closing groove of “The Curve,” where his high-fret twangs snake up and out of the instrumental torrent below.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Obsian is that its mood is so mercurial. The overall tone seems equal parts malevolent and sorrowful, which is largely produced by the contrast between guitarist Andrew Hock’s vocals and melancholy chord voicings, which are odd even before they’re run through the band’s choppy rhythmic blender.
Though the mood feints and shimmers, the album’s closing two songs combine to form a relentlessly morose ten-minute suite. The band introduces some understated clean vocals (courtesy of Nick Podgurski of Yukon and Extra Life, among others) which call to mind the similarly goth-leaning excursions on Tombs’s Path of Totality. Although the album’s last minutes hint at some small glimmer of light, even that small cloud-break dissolves into a single, faint trumpet note, left to waver in the dark like an unanswered beacon.

No balance between body and brain — no matter how cunningly struck — can subvert momentum, not when the trajectory of all is to dust. – Dan Lawrence, Invisible Oranges