Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Is the Occultation album very different from their first album? The first one grew on me a little bit, but it's definitely something you have to be in the mood for.

the blurb in the email w/ the download link mentioned Mighty Sphincter as a comparison point

!!!

Love Gigan. Haven't been able to figure out why they're not as huge as Gojira or at least Bölzer by now.

idk their sound is a hell of a lot murkier/dense/atonal to me than bands like Gojira or even Bolzer. I'm enjoying their albums more and more but they take longer to decipher

I saw Gigan live a couple weeks ago and their guitarist buried himself under so many layers of effects I could barely pick out a single thing he was playing, it was really disappointing. if that's standard practice for them I'm sure it isn't helping

Some of these whippersnappers are getting just stupefying at replicating the 1989 dm thing. The name is kind of silly, though:
http://youtu.be/aeB0_E6r2YY

And this ain't bad:
https://soundcloud.com/xtreemmusic/soulskinner-deadland-pt1

I was sick the night Gigan came through town, so I ended up missing the show. That's disappointing to hear about the effects. They use them more judiciously in the studio, I guess. I've always hated when guitarists hide behind reverb and stuff, but I don't get that vibe from their latest record. The playing is pretty damn tight without being wanker-ish.

Yeah they really do a good job of being technical and weird without losing the thread on their albums.

Well that was a bummer, Bölzer just walked out after three songs because they didn't like the sound.

Longer recap: all in all an excellent festival, sold out in the end which bodes well for the future. The concept of an all-Swiss lineup is good (Bölzer really is as Swiss as I am), the three day setup allows for a lot of local bands to showcase themselves, the venue is pretty good and the addition of an art exhibition was a nice idea too. The four headliners (Borgne on Friday, Rorcal, Bölzer and Darkspace on Saturday) were a clear cut above the rest of the bands in terms of professionalism/entertainment but Euclidean and Tardigrada were good and the rest pretty decent too. Borgne absolutely killed it as the closing band on Friday, I knew the albums are a one-man studio project so I was quite surprised to see them perform live as a (very energetic) five piece but a great performance and the material is awesome, I think I've repped for "Royaume Des Ombres" here before but they've got a pretty unique sound going on. Which I guess is the common thread for all the headliners and what made this bill so interesting.

On Saturday, Bölzer was placed in the secondary room and that proved to be a huge mistake. The preceding bands there sounded ok there but I guess the organisers felt they had to crank it all up a bit for Bölzer to be at least as loud as Rorcal and Darkspace before and after in the main room, and the sound guys couldn't make it work. From the start here was a huge feedback problem much to the chagrin of Okoi Jones, ending in him angrily walking off the stage after three songs. Well at least I managed to get a nice Bölzer shirt to show for it, have to say their shirt designs are fantastic.

I had my doubts whether Darkspace would be enjoyable live and while there was nothing to complain about musically (good mix of stuff from the albums, great sound, good crowd etc): these guys are boring as hell, I'm sorry to say. They didn't help things getting off to a lethargic start with first an overlong ambient intro, then kicking off with (I think only the first half of) 2.8 which is great on record but as a drumless guitars-and-synth instrumental doesn't really get things moving, then another 5+ minute ambient piece, and then that sub-par opening track (4.18) from III I. By then they were over 30 minutes in and they'd lost me, even though they proceeded with the faster and more varied (that's a relative term with Darkspace) material. I'm fine with music moving at a glacial pace, but it's hard to get excited when there's no dynamics whatsoever, nor any movement on stage - just three people with identical corpsepaint and slicked back hair standing like statues, flooded in blue light (cue Blue Man Group joke).

It was Geneva's own Rorcal that brought the house down. This is an awesome band, last years "Villágvége" was a fantastic assault on the eardrums (which I got to appreciate more and more throughout this year) and I can't believe they're not bigger. They're normally categorised as "doom" but it's more of a noise/sludge-meets-grindcore-and-BM hybrid. Live though, it all gets upped another notch, it's hard to describe how super-intense it all was, but it was impressive. Where they're different from the hordes of other artsy sludge bands is that they don't dick around too long, they go from glorious riff-less feedback-orgies to more riff-driven blastbeat sections, to a crushingly heavy doom groove and back again, all with throat-tearing roars on top. They've been around for a while but I really feel these guys are now ready for bigger things.

damn, rorcal sounds right up my alley. will be investigating...

"noise/sludge-meets-grindcore-and-BM hybrid"

Seems like a lot of contemporary extreme metal nestles in and around this particular venn diagram intersection (I'd throw in doom too, like siegbran said Rorcal is often called). I wonder if a new genre coinage will eventually emerge to allow people to save syllables.

NUDGECORE.

I remember a zillion years ago reading a demo review of a presumably awful band that wanted to coin a new term for the black/death metal hybrid and went with "bleath metal."

I like riffs and all but "glorious riff-less feedback-orgies" is what got me

Oh, I'm really enjoying this turgid, mutteringly atmospheric, but still propulsive new album by Emptiness. http://open.spotify.com/album/72pIeCmggT2obNvH5xKUxm

Anyone else finding it fallow for metal lately? I haven't been hearing much exciting the last couple months. I still haven't heard the Scott O))), so maybe that's a quasi-metal thing to look forward to.

Oh, man. The opposite of fallow. Here's a pathetically partial list I've been adding to as the year progresses.

http://open.spotify.com/user/glennpmcdonald/playlist/6P2GbFJtuMaRv5w5Lk5OoE

Glad I at least tried (unsuccessfully) to find the end of that playlist. Had no idea that Horned Almighty put out something this year. There were many other entries I probably need to hear.
http://scarletrecords.bandcamp.com/album/world-of-tombs

Seconding the, uh, fertility of metal this time of year. My horns are of plenty. In fact I just today found this in the metal-archives "worthwhile albums of 2014" thread (which I plumb regularly and always recommend others do likewise) -- crushing and dissonant Icelandic black metal sort of akin to Svartidaudi:
http://sinmara.bandcamp.com/album/aphotic-womb

And once again, in the hopes that repeating their names will somehow make their albums come out sooner, I await Lost Soul and Furia.

And xpost yes Emptiness has been doing good things to my brain chemistry.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/horrendous-ecdysis-lp-stream

New Horrendous in full. Joy of joys.

New Ancient VVisdom song.

actually jmm i was thinking we should run some quick metal subgenre poll threads for the year

yknow, couple dozen of the big name death metal albums, nother couple dozen big name black metal, etc.

good occasion to re-collect thoughts about them w/o all the pressure of an eoy poll

the other day i put on the artificial brain record from this year, which i suspected was good at the beginning of the year but was never really drawn to with other records a-waitin. turns out it is a monster!

the most interesting part of these polls are the individual lists anyway imho - what if ppl made up some personal top genre-based lists and shared them?

too heavy a lift

Difficult to say anything definitive yet, it's rare for me to be able to fully digest more than a hundred new albums in a year, so I tend to find the best records during the following years. But so far I like these:
Eternal Riffian - Aeonian (trad-ish doom)
Fluisteraars - Dromers (atmospheric black metal)
Dub Buk - Цвях ("Nail") (thrash metal)
Ghost Bath - Funeral (depressive black metal)
Heresiarch - Wælwulf (death metal)
Bölzer - Soma (death metal)
Kriegsmaschine - Enemy Of Man (dissonant black metal)
Basarabian Hills - Groping In A Misty Spread (dreamy ambient/black)
Neoheresy - Noc Która Dniem Się Stała (neoclassical/black)
Impetuous Ritual - Unholy Congregation Of Hypocritical Ambivalence (death metal)
Saor - Aura (atmospheric/blackgaze)
Taiga - Ashen Light (depressive black metal)
Vader - Tibi Et Igni (death/thrash)
Wijlen Wij - Coronachs of the Ω (funeral doom)
Zgard - Contemplation (atmospheric black)
Behemoth - The Satanist (death/black)
Doom:VS - Earthless (doom)

So I remember Order From Chaos from my tape trading, fanzine-making days. The Kansas City crew were legendary in the underground but never seemed to attract the attention of anyone. Even their debut album, 1992's Stillbirth Machine was essentially not one bootleg but TWO bootlegs released on two labels a year apart:

In the 1993 Decapitated Records MC/CD/LP release on the back of the booklet/sleeve there is a "Warning" note about the bootlegging of this particular album by the notorious "Wild Rag Records".

However, the band considers the Wild Rags release to be more legitimate than the Decapitated Records release despite both, in essence, being bootlegs. This was confirmed in an interview as follows: "Because at least Wild Rags released the format we designed. Technically, because they dropped us in November 1992, they had no right to release the album at all, but since they had no intention of holding to their word and send back to us the layouts and DATs, there was nothing we could do. The Decapitated version looks nothing like what we designed for them in the spring of 1993 (which was completely different from the Wild Rags version). So, as far as we are concerned, it is a bootleg. From misspelled names to words omitted from the songtitles, the Decapitated has many marks of a rank amateur." (Encyclopaedia Metallum

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10370447_702716443149074_8024591709820105635_n.jpg?oh=0475f6eb885d131f112ad7bc21d13a8b&oe=54B9627A

It not only comes with 12 albums but a 124-page hardcover book. Unreal.

listening to stalagmire by cauldron black ram, never heard this band before but this is really solid, groovy blackened death with some idiosyncratic compositional choices

So it was with great amusement that I saw the group is released a box set. Not just any box set, but a 12-LP box set!!!

OFC are pretty esteemed in the underground; there's a whole strain of rabid blackened death/war metal that is derived from OFC (and Blasphemy). But they definitely didn't make much of an impact back in the day (I remember reading about them in the Wild Rags house mag and occasionally seeing them on tape traders' lists, but yeah, that was it for about ten years...).

yo metal bros you guys know anything about WITCH CROSS? super catchy NWOBHM type stuff, almost reminds me of the scorpions in terms of catchiness

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

Hell's Headbangers reissued that one on picture disc in 2011 as well as CD and a 3-CD/DVD box set. I received a digital promo of it back then. It's really good.

I think there was a big vinyl box of Witch Cross, too! But I just got the plain CD, which is fucking great.

I was still at Roadrunner when that was reissued and Monte Conner (also still at Roadrunner then) emailed me complaining that they'd fucked up the mastering somehow and asking if I had a contact at the label. I didn't, but I had gotten the promo, so I let the publicist know. No idea whether anything came of it.

Well then. I sure didn't know this was coming. Says it's not metal, though.
http://progenieterrestrepura.bandcamp.com/album/asteroidi

I assume it'll be released on the 15th. I feel sort of stupid sitting here clicking things that do not make music play.

that new horrendous record fuckin rules

my copy has been shipped and I can't wait to get it

man good call on the new horrendous. i love how rocky it is. some nice old school death and thrash guitar tones. and you can tell they spent some time on the arrangements and performances.

by that last part i mean the arrangements are versatile and dynamic and the recording makes the band sound like they are playing in a room rather than in a bunch of isolated click-tracking sessions (not sure on the production details though). ordering on vinyl pronto.

Yeah it sounds great. Every song is a winner. I love how the double bass comes in on the first track. Sounds really live, as you said.

And that instrumental toward the end of the album reminds me of a band from the 80s and it's driving me crazy. Seriously sounds like something from the Rhoads/E. Lee era of Ozzy, or ... Dokken, I dunno. Not something I was expecting to hear on a Horrendous album but this whole album has been a pleasant expectation smasher.

Maybe more the Jake E Lee period than the Randy Rhoads. Sounds like it could have been on The Ultimate Sin, especially with those oooh-WOO-oooh guitar leads.

Maybe oooh-WEE-oooh is the onomatopoeia I am looking for. I've been listening to this song too much.

yeah, this horrendous album def seems top-notch on my initial pass...

I'm counting at least three Borges references in the tracklisting of the new At The Gates (due 10/27)

haha nice I am only seeing two but the titles as a whole do seem to be like Borges signifier salad

incidentally I always thought of Krallice as the most Borgesian metal band

"The Circular Ruins" may be one you're missing? or "The Book of Sand"??

a few of the titles seem kinda Lovecraftian to me...

which in turn reminds me that one of my favorite unappreciated later Borges stories (from the collection The Book of Sand) is a Lovecraft homage entitled "There Are More Things"

I don't know enough about Krallice to comment one way or the other on their Borgesity. would be curious to hear your reasoning though

(PS wow *do not* look up the wikipedia entry for "There Are More Things" because that shit is Spoiler City, USA)

wait a sec circular ruins and book of sand were the ones I had! still not seeing a third tho :(

Are we counting "Death and the Labyrinth"? I remember a Borges collection called Labyrinths, and even though it's a pretty Borgesian word, I don't think any of his titles featured it.

But yeah all of the song titles sound feasible. I'm actually surprised there isn't a JLB story called "City of Mirrors."

"Death and the Labyrinth" is the title of a book Foucault wrote about Borges, so I figure it counts; also I tend to get the title confused with "Death and the Compass"

I can think of at least one title to disprove your theory, though ("Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth")

agree with you on "City of Mirrors"!

Oh, right, look at that. This has been a good excuse to pluck my own Borges collection from the shelf.

This is, like, third hand at best, two hands of which are people on the internet, but supposedly the Aborted vocalist panned the new ATG, saying it sounds like The Haunted with Tomas on vox. Actually I guess all three hands are on the internet, because I am in fact on the internet.

Still looking forward to getting it, because a) it's At the Gates, b) I dug the advance track, and c) who cares what someone from Aborted said. I don't think I've ever heard, or at least remembered, an Aborted song.

Meaning the Aborted dude claimed to have heard the whole thing.

There's a metal show on the amazing WFMU; I'd never heard it til tonight. Not bad! The dude likes him some King D/Mercyful.
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/57687

They're playing Communic at the moment and for one blissful moment I thought it was the new Sanctuary. Ha. Communic rules, though.

xp

cool I have no memory of that Ibn Hakkan one gonna have to revisit