METAL for ART-metallers

Don't like Ved Buens Ende, but definitely check out Fleurety - just as weird, but more developed and more interesting.

I love Isis, Orthrelm, and have even warmed up to the new Locust CD (though I don't think that's metal in any sense, but I love the keyboards).

Also, for non-metal noise-guitar kicks, check out the last CD by Raoul Bjorkenheim's Scorch Trio (can't remember title; it may not even have one).

Enslaved's new Below the Lights CD is total art rock black metal, complete with flutes. Really excellent cut-up of high-speed rage, pompous ghostly folk, and prog breakdowns.

Solefald are a pretty great Jethro Tull-influenced post-black metal band.

Secret Chiefs 3 are barely metal, but Zappa-possessed ex-Mr. Bungle guys (not the annoying ones) pulling a virtuoso art-rock take on the fake mysticism of old Murat temple "oriental" bands.

Yeah, Tarantula Hawk are like a slacker Magma, and their latest is good.

As for Khanate, the members' splinter groups like SUNN are more experimental, but more about drones than ROCK.

Ulver's gone all the way from black metal to bad techno to blipcore, complete with a Fennesz remix on the new one.

Pan-thy-monium are heavily psychedelicized metal from Sweden in the mid-1990s, sort of like Acid Mother Temple landing atop Entombed.

Burzum's Filosofem could be compared to Mark Rothko, so I guess that's art metal.

The last Mayhem studio album, Grand Declaration of War, was arty in a bad but not worthless Flock of Seagulls kind of way.

Arcturus were the first metal band to use amen breaks.

Do the No-Neck Blues Band count? Their founding drummer was in the Texas metalcore (80s metalcore) band Angkor Wat.

And everybody's favorite Chris Burdon-inspired performance metal act AC has reunited, to the delight of reconstructive surgeons everywhere.

I thought Mayhem's last album sounded like Laibach.

actually, hasn't one of Bolt Thrower just put out a very arty jazz metal album??

Heresy! HERESY!!!

Sigh!!!

Heresy! HERESY!!!

I take that back, I take it back! Or at least they're a less reliable beast in the golden Earache stable of Morbid Angel, Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh, Cathedral... And by now haven't they fought one crusade too many?

If every band named in this topic [plus the Thrones; Necrophagist; Absu; the original version of Kataklysm; even the reformed Celtic Frost] could gather for a 3-day festival in Iceland some year soon, I'd start building my ice bridge from New York now. Need somebody with a Segway to tow me part of the way on my runt bike. Party!

Oh absolutely, they've basically become the Motörhead of Death Metal: an instantly recognizable, perfected and insanely catchy formula band with a live show resembling a twenty ton steamroller. But because their charisma, you forgive them for releasing the same collection of ten identical songs every two years.

But Bolt Thrower is a bit of an odd choice for putting down - if you would name and shame also-ran DM bands, why not point out the obvious ones: Benediction, Brutality, Monstrosity & all the NYDM 'groove' DM bands (or alternatively, basically every early 90s band on Nuclear Blast). The success of those bands basically bled DM completely dry.

Mayhem is apparently recording a new album at the moment. I'm REALLY looking forward to that one, as Grand Declaration Of War had a very interesting core concept but was a letdown because of quite superficial flaws (some dodgy/amateurish experimentation). After three years, it's still surprisingly good once you look behind that. They just need a critical editor and Hellhammer & His Merry Men could well come up with something truly spectacular again.

Mayhem is apparently recording a new album at the moment. I'm REALLY looking forward to that one, as Grand Declaration Of War had a very interesting core concept but was a letdown because of quite superficial flaws (some dodgy/amateurish experimentation). After three years, it's still surprisingly good once you look behind that. They just need a critical editor and Hellhammer & His Merry Men could well come up with something truly spectacular again.

I really like the Mezzerschmitt EP, which is Mayhem minus Maniac plus a guy from Red Harvest, where they nail down a lot of the flighty concepts from Grand Declaration. (and sing in german, but offer one of those "we're not political" disclaimers on the back cover to thwart NSBM accusations.)

Also, the Swiss band Meridian do a wholly derivative but class job of basing their sound on the precepts of Grand Declaration. Fine and ingenious Swiss craftsmanship. I think they won their contract with Season of Mist via some sort of heavy metal Eurovision contest, but don't know much else about them.

I wanna give some love in the art-metal catagory to Today is the Day, mostly for their first two Amphetamine Reptile albums, which hold up really well as some sort of apex of the super ugly noise rock style made hideously misshapen and complex and scary. As for their Relapse work, I'm down with In the Eyes of God as slightly less with Temple of the Morning Star.

On that note, I also adore Mastodon, a band built on an old TITD rhythm section. Debut EP pretty good, debut LP fucking excellent.

As for Discordance Axis, I cannot wait to hear Jon Chang and Dave Witte's new band War Chalking. Anyone heard 'em?

Mostly these days I'm enjoying super-old-school style death metal, consciously retro bands like Sinister and Arch Enemy (great female vocals on both), Bloodbath, Grave, even total cheeseball acts like Destruction and Hypocrisy. That's why I liked Immortal's last record so much...it was totally retro. Black metal mixed with death metal guitar breaks.

Is it me, or is Cult of Luna strictly for people who think Neurosis take too long between records?

Best live band I saw in the last 12 months? Amon Amarth. And they're coming back around.

really not keen on it
must 've posted this in my sleep years ago.

that double bass drums thing. that's kind of like a baby's rattle, isn't it?

erm...
necrophagist.
they're fun !
benighted leams.
necrofrost.
necronomitron.
velvet cacoon.
i dunno it's all panto to me
i am now listening to aavikko in preference over music of such monolithic gravitas >ahem< and so should you.

Anyone heard this?

Citay, *Citay* Indie types (with a connection to {and maybe guys from?} the useless Fucking Champs, I believe) claim to be inspired by pastoral rennaisance faire parts on the first couple Heart LPs and the pretty intros to Metallica songs (and Led Zep, duh.) I for sure hear the guitar player (Ezra Feinberg - was he a Fucking Champ?) trying. But Heart and Zep and Metallica turned the rennaisance tapestries into rock; Citay turn it into chamber-group shoegaze music with a weedy indie non-singer. No surprise since Fucking Champs were basically just a loud version of Tortoise. (I never understood why anybody who liked metal would like them. I guess the idea was that if you learn some Iron Maiden or Queen guitar riffs and randomly string them together you don't need to have any songs. But you do.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), February 9th, 2006.
)
(Much of the Citay CD thing is instrumental, which is better than when the guy sings. Who knows, maybe guitar players would be less bored with it than I am. Maybe they'd be less bored with Fucking Champs, too.) (Actually, I have two guitarist friends who *like* that band, come to think of it. To me they just seem completely cold, clinical, and pointless.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), February 9th, 2006.

>Esoteric are about as psych as metal gets.<

seeing how heavy metal basically was a subset of psychedelic music in the first place.

I didn't really get into music until I was 18 and i started with Nirvana,Stones, Sex Pistols, Janes Addiction,Soundgarden etc and my mates gave me some metallica, pixies,anthrax,sabbath,Maiden , dead kennedys,Husker Du,Celtic Frost so I was never just into the one sort of music that so many people are like at that age.
But because i didnt like Slayer or Anthrax they didnt consider me a metaller, especially as i ended up listening to lots of indie and dance music.
And god knows what they would think now.

Ha, I STILL don't like Slayer and Anthrax much. (I mean, they're both okay, I guess. I have nothing against them. But I can't remotely imagine *choosing* to listen to either of them.)

...are their intellectual property. Anyway, there was an article in one of the Times' a week or so ago about the phenomenon of clueless scientists who spend part of their careers or the Ph.D. theses of their grad students duplicating research that was done decades earlier. They labor intently thinking they've come into a real "Eureka" moment. Then someone sees it, informs them it was published in some other journal twenty years ago, they get all bummed out and go into shock. With pop music, instead of being a subject of embarrassment and personal chagrin, it goes into the New York Times arts section as unique newness.

I suppose theres plenty who dismiss metal because simply they've never heard any metal bar the odd thing that hits the charts.
But i'd hope people will investigate further than Limp Bizkit or whoever.

I'm sure classic rock once had Abba on their cover.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Viikate/100_greatest_hard_rock_albums__classic_rock_and_metal_hammer/

I do think some of the stonehenge stuff that was mentioned can fall into the category, however.

When I think "Art Metal," I think of Celtic Frost's Into The Pandemonium, most all of Voivod's stuff from Killing Technology onwards, The God Machine, Course Of Empire, Sigh, and I hear elements of it in Tool/A Perfect Circle and Jane's Addiction. Oh, and Killing Joke for sure. I probably need to include Opeth these days (even though I do not like them at all) and a lot of the new stuff on The End Records certainly qualifies.

Also coming to mind are the loud guitarists camp such as Casper Brotzmann Massacre and Helios Creed.

Shit, the last post before the revive was a plug for... White Ward. Now I feel dumb.

Don't sleep on those recommendations though: Genghis Tron, Cult Leader, Valborg, Hybrid... so much goodness.