Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Apparently it's Sister Irene O'Connor's "Fire of God's Love."

Ha, that's an awesome choice.

Let's see what the folks at Rate Your Music have as the best metal(lic) albums of 2014 as we just cross the first two months of the year... I added the label that put them out. No label means it is self-released.

  1 Behemoth  - The Satanist (Nuclear Blast)
  2 Whispered  - Shogunate Macabre (Redhouse Finland Music Publishing)
  3 Kriegsmaschine  - Enemy of Man (No Solace)
  4 Exmortus  - Slave to the Sword (Prosthetic)
  5 Gridlink  - Longhena (Selfmadegod)
  6 Woods of Desolation  - As the Stars (Northern Silence)
  7 Stormwarrior  - Thunder & Steele (Massacre)
  8 Persuader  - The Fiction Maze (Avalon)
  9 Primal Fear  - Delivering the Black (Frontiers)
 10 Hail Spirit Noir  - Oi Magoi (Code666)
 11 Bohren & der Club of Gore  - Piano Nights (Ipecac)
 12 Grand Magus  - Triumph and Power (Nuclear Blast)
 13 Alcest  - Shelter (Prophecy)
 14 Valtari  - Hunter's Pride
 15 Indian  - From All Purity (Relapse)
 16 MaYaN  - Antagonise (Nuclear Blast)
 17 Aenaon  - Extance (Code666)
 18 Kampfar  - Djevelmakt (Indie)
 19 Skull Fist  - Chasing the Dream (NoiseArt)
 20 Hannes Grossmann  - The Radial Covenant
 21 Stamina  - Perseverance (Power Prog)
 22 Stam1na  - SLK (Sakara)
 23 We All Die (Laughing)  - Thoughtscanning (Kaotoxin)
 24 Murmur  - Murmur (Underground Activists)
 25 Axel Rudi Pell  - Into the Storm (Steamhammer)
 26 Mechina  - Xenon
 27 Within Temptation  - Hydra (Nuclear Blast)
 28 Iced Earth  - Plagues of Babylon (Century Media)
 29 Appearance of Nothing  - A New Beginning (Power Prog)
 30 Benighted  - Carnivore Sublime (Season Of Mist)
 31 Cynic  - Kindly Bent to Free Us (Season Of Mist)
 32 Nothing  - Guilty of Everything (Relapse)
 33 Bull of Heaven  - 301: Weed Problem II - V
 34 Lie in Ruins  - Towards Divine Death (Dark Descent)
 35 Ea  - A etilla  (Solitude)
 36 Domains  - Sinister Ceremonies (The Sinister Flame)
 37 The Body  - I Shall Die Here (Rvng)
 38 Inferi  - The Path of Apotheosis (The Artisan Era)
 39 Winterstorm  - Cathyron (NoiseArt)
 40 Black Magic  - Wizard's Spell (High Roller)
 41 Sunn O))) & Ulver  - Terrestrials (Southern Lord)
 42 Soreption  - Engineering the Void (Unique Leader)
 43 Hexis  - Abalam (Halo Of Flies)
 44 Suicidal Angels  - Divide and Conquer (NoiseArt)
 45 The Wounded Kings  - Consolamentum (Candlelight)
 46 Iskald  - Nedom Og Nord (Indie)
 47 Corpsessed  - Abysmal Thresholds (Dark Descent)
 48 Nausea  - Condemned to the System (Willowtip)
 49 Slough Feg  - Digital Resistance (Metal Blade)
 50 Vanden Plas  - Chronicles of the Immortals - Netherworld (Path 1) (Frontiers)
 51 Lvcifyre  - Svn Eater (Dark Descent)
 52 Legion of the Damned  - Ravenous Plague (Napalm)
 53 Mike Jourgensen  - Moodeity (DU Recordings)
 54 The Mire  - Glass Cathedrals
 55 Pontiak  - Innocence (Thrill Jockey)
 56 Lascaille's Shroud  - Interval 02: Parallel Infinities - The Abscinded Universe (Masters of Metal Productions)
 57 Thyrien  - Hymns of the Mortals - Songs From the North (Massacre)
 58 Caliban  - Ghost Empire (Century Media)
 59 Major Kong  - Doom Machine
 60 Ring of Fire  - Battle of Leningrad (Frontiers)
 61 Thou  - Heathen (Gilead Media)
 62 Separatist  - Closure
 63 Chrome Division  - Infernal Rock Eternal (Nuclear Blast)
 64 Sunn O)))  - LA Reh 012 (Ideologic Organ)
 65 Truckfighters  - Universe (Fuzzorama)
 66 Infinite Tales  - Generation of the Last
 67 Nashville Pussy  - Up the Dosage (Steamhammer)
 68 Mustasch  - Thank You for the Demon (Bengans Vinylklubb)
 69 Culted  - Oblique to All Paths (Relapse)
 70 The Unguided  - Fragile Immortality (Napalm)
 71 Prostitute Disfigurement  - From Crotch to Crown (Willowtip)
 72 Vital Science  - Imaginations on the Subject of Infinity (Power Prog)
 73 Twilight  - III: Beneath Trident's Tomb (Century Media)
 74 Morowe  - S (Witching Hour Productions)
 75 Collibus  - The False Awakening
 76 TrenchRot  - Necronomic Warfare (Unspeakable Axe)
 77 Ænimus  - This Illusion
 78 Eldritch  - Tasting the Tears (Scarlet)
 79 Helms Alee  - Sleepwalking Sailors (Sargent House)
 80 Exodia  - Hellbringer
 81 Al Namrood  - Heen Yadhar Al Ghasq (Shaytan Productions)
 82 I Killed the Prom Queen  - Beloved (Epitaph)
 83 Slomatics  - Estron (Head of Crom)
 84 Artificial Brain  - Labyrinth Constellation (Profound Lore)
 85 Innsmouth  - Consumed by Elder Sign (Abysmal Sounds)
 86 Carnifex  - Die Without Hope (Nuclear Blast)
 87 Ex Libris  - Medea
 88 Satanika  - Nightmare (Iron Shield)
 89 The Wisdoom  - Hypothalamus (Heavy Psych Sounds)
 90 Elysion  - Someplace Better (Massacre)
 91 Tengger Cavalry  - Ancient Call (Metal Hell)
 92 Manowar  - Kings of Metal MMXIV (Magic Circle)
 93 Demon Eye  - Leave the Light (Soulseller)
 94 Thy Worshiper  - Czarna dzika czerwień (Pagan)
 95 Autumn Burning  - Autumn Burning
 96 Black Space Riders  - D​:​REI (BSR Records)
 97 Magenta Harvest  - Volatile Waters
 98 My Useless Life  - Negative Memories (Inverse)
 99 The Kennedy Veil  - Trinity of Falsehood (Unique Leader)
100 Lay Down Rotten - Deathspell Catharsis (Apostasy)

I added a few to the list which were metal enough for me even though it may have got a different designation by the RYM folks so the list above won't match the linked list exactly.

Of those, I've heard:

1 Behemoth - The Satanist (Nuclear Blast)
4 Exmortus - Slave to the Sword (Prosthetic)
5 Gridlink - Longhena (Selfmadegod)
7 Stormwarrior - Thunder & Steele (Massacre)
12 Grand Magus - Triumph and Power (Nuclear Blast)
13 Alcest - Shelter (Prophecy)
20 Hannes Grossmann - The Radial Covenant
41 Sunn O))) & Ulver - Terrestrials (Southern Lord)
45 The Wounded Kings - Consolamentum (Candlelight)
47 Corpsessed - Abysmal Thresholds (Dark Descent)
48 Nausea - Condemned to the System (Willowtip)
55 Pontiak - Innocence (Thrill Jockey)
71 Prostitute Disfigurement - From Crotch to Crown (Willowtip)
99 The Kennedy Veil - Trinity of Falsehood (Unique Leader)

The Stormwarrior disc is lame power-thrash IIRC, and Corpsessed is faceless Scando-death. The Prostitute Disfigurement was discussed extensively upthread. The Kennedy Veil is mediocre tech-death. All the others are good to very good; the Hannes Grossman disc is particularly recommended to fans of progressive death metal that verges on jazz fusion (Obscura, etc.). And I'd like to hear the Manowar, just out of idle curiosity.

Skull Fist way too low at 19.

don't know persuader but I am lolin' at how wimpy that name sounds

psyched to hear the new gridlink

there was a band from the bay area in the 80s called The Persuaders.. they moved to LA and changed their name to Babylon AD.. heard of em? lol I actually took drum lessons from the guy for like a month before he was like dude you know more than I do, i can't teach you anymore..

http://i.imgur.com/XXI0qnV.jpg

my dad used to keep an 16-inch-ish steel pipe next to the seat of his car in case he ever, y'know, needed it. he called it "the persuader"

haha whoops, forgot to delete the identifying information from that pic. Smooth. All gone now!

You'll just have to take my word that I do indeed possess a tape copy of Babylon AD's s/t, only one of many embarrassing artifacts from my days of bad taste in the 80s.
WHEN THE HAMMER SWINGS DOWN / LIKE THE THUNDERING SOUND / OF A SHIP HITTING GROUND

Hey who remembers Smashed Gladys. Noisy Mama? Child's Play? So glad I discovered actual metal because it led me away from the horrible stuff I was filling my Case Logics with.

Wounded Kings is my favourite of the first two months of the year. But at the moment the forthcoming Triptykon album is outclassing them all.

Worst show I ever saw (and had to review): Babylon AD, Roxy Blue and Wildside, three bands on major labels grasping at the post-grunge leftovers for whatever-generation glam rock you would have called them at the (now defunct) Marquee in NYC.

The attendance was sparse. When you factored in three bands, three road crews (all with their own tour busses even though none of them made a dime in their career, most likely) and all of the record company personnel from three different major labels (Gerri Miller of Metal Edge fame actually had all three bands take a photo with her in the middle of the dance floor after doors opened and there was no logistical issues in making this happen), there was hardly a paying customer in the place.

I sat upstairs at the balcony in the cordoned-off VIP section, taking notes, wishing I was anywhere else, when some guy started to chat with me, asking me who I wrote for, what my deal was.

It was an amiable chat when suddenly he asked me "By the way, do you like Winger?"

I was taken aback by this, but answered honestly: It wasn't my thing at all but I understood the appeal of the first album and also understood why the second one didn't do as well.

He perked upm and said "Oh wow, that's great! Because I wrote the first one and not the second one..." Then he motioned to the dude sitting with him and said "Hey Kip, guess what this guy said."

Which is how I met Reb Beach and Kip Winger. Kip was actually very nice. It was just a very strange show all around.

Man, Shogunate Macabre is making me laugh out loud with its happy powermetal goofiness. I think I like it, and I tend to hate melody in my metal. It gets pretty video-gamey at times, and sounds kinda like if Rhapsody (ca Symphonies...) were really into thrash.

That high placing of Kriegsmaschine in that RYM chart is entirly justified, the album is completely awesome. Deathspell Omega (or their sister band Mgła) is the closest approximation.

The drumming is a particular highlight - the guy was already damn impressive on Mgła's With Hearts Toward None but on this one he pulls out all the stops.

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/black-metal-is-sublime/

why do dudes gotta do this still

I can relate to wanting to intellectualize black metal, and god knows I'm fluent in the overwrought. I'll be kind and assume this article was written amid the excitement that comes with first discovering and grabbing at everything to do with the genre. Black metal's "resistance to inwardness"? The inwardness is what drew me to it! Nineteenth C. Romanticism "unacknowledged" as an influence? Immortal want to burn down churches? (In their angular tunics, to boot.) What in the world.

Also, the RebKip anecdote was hilarious. The "do you like Winger?" question made me envision and expect Stewart from Beavis and Butthead, though.

Why Black Metal Is No Better or Worse Than Any Other Genre of Music

I checked about 5 times to see whether that article was written in 2011. Dude must write realllllllllly slow.

Oh, wow, this Whispered album is fantastic. It's black metal in the sense that black is the sum of all colors. Worth playing at least once if you like anything at all; worth playing leerily if you don't usually like lots of your anythings mixed together with cheerful disregard for whatever.

I have high hopes for Wounded Kings based on the title track. Should be getting it in the mail tomorrow.

lol glenn are you implying that there are records (not that one apparently) that are worth playing if you don't like ANYTHING

black is the sum of all colors

P sure this is false but I'm enjoying the album so far, one track in!

Is Vardlokk going to be recording anything else, anyone know? The 7" is a monster.

anyone liking the new Conan? Not a great leap forward but a solid slab of doom IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqeVLT61Nu4

Into 2014 so far, I'm enjoying Alcest, Behemoth, Drudkh/Winterfylleth, Indian, Hail Spirit Noir, Indian, Kampfar, Murmur, My Useless Life, Sammath, Stilla, Whispered, Wijlen Wij, and Woods of Desolation.

Also, Waldgeflüster, Verlies, Rots and Fluisteraars.

Twilight is pretty bad and I'm not feeling the new Within Temptation either.

And I mean, obv Within Temptation isn't really my thing but I actually liked The Unforgiving, it had a really nice 80s rock sound, like a modern Bon Jovi or smth. The new one just sounds desperate, and the choice of guest vocalists is terrible. The dudes from Soul Asylum and Killswitch Engage? Xzibit? Tarja Turunen?

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19096-warfaring-strangers-darkscorch-canticles/

comp of 70s u.s. proto-metal

So I wrote this. Purists will object, as Ashbery says.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/03/dayal_patterson_s_history_of_black_metal_reviewed.single.html

Fave metal of 2014 so far fwiw:

Slough Feg
Behemoth
Grand Magus
Indian
Black Space Riders
Eric Church

Selim Lemouchi, songwriter/leader of The Devil's Blood, has died. Very sad news, he was a tremendous talent.

oh no :(

Oh man. I was looking forward to whatever he was going to do next. RIP.

Babymetal performing with Chthonic.
http://youtu.be/6eRvLeUq9pg
Digging the lycra skeletons. The article it came from is here:
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/babymetal-metal-japanese-pop/

you guys are trippin' on that Babymetal..lol Its not for me, I guess.

The Fluisteraars three-track debut album Dromers is awesome if you'd like your black metal in long slabs of hypnotic midtempo riffs in 3/4 time between Burzum "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss", Drudkh "Autumn Aurora" and Moonsorrow.

I haven't read Dayal Patterson's book yet, but that review struck me as rather patronizing.

But who cares? Fans aren’t looking for good writing from a book like Black Metal—they’re looking for lore, for new and eviler bands to listen to, for absurd statements from their metal gods. (“Living off human blood, decorating your flat with tombstones, animal carcasses, digging up graves and shit, does something to you,” explains Emperor’s Terje Vik Schei, who is “no longer a Satanist and now married with children.”) On that score, as your average metal reviewer might have it, it delivers the goods and then some.

Why put yourself above other readers like that? How do you know what average fans and reviewers want out of a book? It's like what movie reviewers always do when writing about things like comic book adaptations, bracketing their criticisms with the qualification that the movie was made for fans and fans won't care. Why presume that? If good writing is important for you, shouldn't you charitably assume that it's important for other people?

So today I bought the Bölzer - Aura 12" from bandcamp and got the flacs and bloody hell this is just fantastic. It's hard to categorize as there's bits of black, death, doom and heavy metal and its quite magnificent. Count me in as someone desperate to hear a full length!

They're supposed to have a new EP out this month.

Bölzer are also unbelievably good live. If you're going to either Roadburn or MDF, DO NOT miss them.

Interesting review of Morbus Chron - http://www.popmatters.com/review/179524-morbus-chron-sweven/

Listening at work but need more time with it.

The Fluisteraars three-track debut album Dromers is awesome if you'd like your black metal in long slabs of hypnotic midtempo riffs in 3/4 time between Burzum "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss", Drudkh "Autumn Aurora" and Moonsorrow.

This Rauhnacht album coming out on Hammerheart would seem to fit here too. I'd never heard of him. Am correcting this problem. (There's even a cover of "Glemselens Elv" on the vinyl edition.)
http://youtu.be/F26Fxv_qYPA

Oh man the other songs from that album, which I'm finding in the related vids, are all great. I need to stop so I can just order it and take in the whole thing at once.

btw if anyone really likes this style but doesn't mind some lo-fi production, I cannot recommend Horn highly enough, specifically the albums Der Kraft der Szenarien and Naturkraft.
http://youtu.be/MoqzHdXL-Zo

It's not metal at all but I picked up the new Bohren & der Club of Gore and it's pretty great, something that all fans of the dark arts should check out, preferably while wearing a smoking jacket and drinking a glass of the reddest wine imaginable.

Have been awaiting the Rauhnacht album, I'm a big fan of Stefan Traunmüller and his projects (Rauhnacht, Golden Dawn, Wallachia). I guess the language barrier will keep a lot of people from getting the most out of it, but there's a steady stream of interesting German language "alpine folklore" themed metal coming from Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria like Lunar Aurora, Rauhnacht and Angizia.

Bohren album is excellent. already looking forward to someone putting forth a tortuous sub-xhuxk argument as to why it should be in the EOY metal poll

kinda been thinking about getting into Bohren, will give the new one a listen