Rolling Metal 2019

This is sort of surprising...a one-man Australian black metal act paying tribute to Yukio Mishima.

https://kommodus.bandcamp.com/album/an-imperial-sun-rises

When I think of Yukio Mishima, I think of one word: discipline. Here’s a man who never missed a deadline for his writing, or art. A man who identified the physical weakness within himself and sought to crush it.

In his short lifetime he left a body of work, a legacy that contained 35 novels, 25 plays, 200 short stories, and 8 volumes of essays. An amazing bibliography that assured him a place as Japan’s most celebrated author. An athlete who forged himself a new body from sun and steel. A pariah who disregarded the zeitgeist of his era – the erosion of Japanese tradition and the cultural pressures to transform the country into an emasculated leftist shadow of its former self. He contested his surroundings and matched his words with action, transforming his world to reflect his art. Training religiously, forming a militia, and ultimately immortalising himself through his work and through his death. Total commitment, total belief. Mishima had the drive and vision to make a poem out of his life. And in our contemporary era I think there is much to learn from him. To attempt to attain and exercise that same monastic drive in our own chosen paths. To have the sheer will and faith in ourselves to ignore all the ephemeral influences, distractions, and rabbit holes that are shoved down our throats, that obscure our focus, and derail our progress. To recognise and understand what it is we want and attain it, to attack it mercilessly until we are synonymous with it. How can we change the world if we can’t first change ourselves with discipline, determination and steadfast focus?

News, politics, social rhetoric and trends it’s all agenda and half-truths. Instead, we need the glorious sun, that defined our earliest incarnation of gods and goddesses. We need the steel to make us stronger and conquer. We need Mishima.

Having read the blurbs he's posted alongside his previous three albums, I don't think this guy's a fascist; I think he's just a dummy who's absorbed Extremely Online ideas about nihilism and filtered them through his own mental problems ("'One Thousand Years Of The Wolf' was recorded in the dry, infernal summer of MMXVIII amidst constant mental anguish and instability"). And the music is standard shouting-from-the-back-of-the-cave, dull and monotonous; I was just intrigued to see YM's photo on the cover.

Going by this cover I've got to imagine he's goofing on some level

https://imgur.com/fao70P1

well anyway dude's wearing a baseball cap on his first demo and what looks like his grandma's mink stole on his head on the second...

I don't think this guy's a fascist

Mishima was famously a Japanese nationalist, so 'far-right dog whistle' warning still applies.

I wonder if he knows Mishima was gay, and whether finding that out would change his impressions any.

In any case, the album art >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the actual music.

Inter Arma stop in Chicago was a lot of fun this week - if they come through your town, go see 'em! Great bill, too - Thantifaxath & Pulchre Morte had great sets.

I am at the Dio hologram show in Asbury Park, NJ. Full report next week.

Mishima's revered in the Noise/PE world for the same qualities the Kommodus dude mentions and his sexuality is embraced as perverted/transgressive. I'd guess Kommodus has read only Sun & Steel and maybe Patriotism. Doubt he's delved into Confessions of a Mask.

hey seriously though this Bergraven album is the fuckin business

As promised, my review of the Dio hologram show.

JCLC, you were not lying. this is crazy!

Yeah, this new Bergraven - which came out in March, apparently - is great. And how did I not know these guys made four albums under the name Stilla (with a different vocalist) between 2013 and 2018? Gonna check those out soon.

I love the Stilla stuff but haven't enough Bergraven to compare them. Ensamhetens Andar has some really interestingly weird riffs and basslines.

Imprecation's Damnatio Ad Bestias is one of the better death metal albums I've heard so far this year.

As usual, Esoctrilihum delivers the esoteric goods:

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-telluric-ashes-of-the-o-vrth-immemorial-gods

It's at least on par with last year's Inhüma.

On the tech death end of things, I'm really enjoying Sinners Bleed's Absolution:

https://war-anthem-records.bandcamp.com/album/absolution

I should probably check out their debut.

:(

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/megadeths-dave-mustaine-diagnosed-with-throat-cancer/

do your best Dave, hopefully you've got years of recording albums i have no interest in hearing ahead of you

In a way it's a real shame since their last one Dystopia had a couple of really excellent songs but man those lyrics. I'm not easily offended but it's just facepalm after facepalm.

I don't want him to get cancer but I would like it if he wasn't such a right wing tool.

exactly

btw Siegbran if you remember the track titles could you post them, I'd be interested to hear them

For example The Threat Is Real is a pretty awesome song but I dare you to sit it out.

Well the music's good

There are several ways to interpret the lyrics and I don't think I like any of them

Not sure how long this has been floating around out there, but I just found out about it today - not so excited about anything new from Vektor any longer.

DiSanto's wife's appeal for help got RTed by Kim Kelly but I don't think it mentioned Vektor so I'm just figuring this out too. Yeah, horrifying and I'm done with them.

Yep, that's exactly how I found out about it. Awful story.

from what I gathered, he was the only remaining member.

The new Organectomy album, Existential Disconnect, is out today on Unique Leader.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2958267555_10.jpg

So are Meads of Asphodel sketchy? I hope not. I always thought they were genius weirdos and the new one out today doesn't change my mind.

They're pretty sketchy, yeah.

meads of asphodel, whose song titles include the lovely "jew killer" and "children of the sunwheel banner"

— machine girl kelly (@mulchlord) June 12, 2019

Are Meads of Asphodel one of those problematic acts? I honestly need to start keeping a spreadsheet.

— Jeff Treppel (@JeffTreppel) May 20, 2019

That Treppel tweet begins a thread to which I contributed.

I know you're gonna "BUT DA RIFFFFFS" anyway, but hey, at least you asked. That's something.

That thread doesn't really say much. The band was asked about Sonderkommando:

What is the story of Sonderkommando? From what I’ve read, it’s taken from the point of view of the individual who takes the bodies from the gas chambers and searches their bodies for valuables before finally putting them in the incinerators.

The story is of hatred and how racism can create such horror. The album deals with Hitler and the German war machine that cloaked the racial elimination of the Jews. It tells of most European countries being complicit to the crime of murder where women and children were slaughtered because of a twisted ideology. Anti-Semitism, no matter what your view is on this subject; can be no excuse for killing children and treating a race of human beings like vermin. Hatred is the key lesson the human race needs to learn as it is hatred that drives us to obscene cruelty and illogical acts of brutality. The Sonderkommando were the unfortunate Jews who dragged the naked corpse covered in piss and vomit from the gas chambers. They pulled out the gold teeth of the dead and cremated the remains. It was mass murder unlike anything else in history. Maybe not as vast as Stalin’s crimes, but the deliberate European scale of an industrial death machine that involved vast logistics and efficiency is beyond comparison.

The Grim Tower

Also, kindly keep your self-righteous snark to yourself.

I snark because we've done this dance before, and we'll do it again. You always come down to "separate the art from the artist" (even when the art is called "Jew Killer") and "but the music's good" (as though there's not multiple lifetimes' worth of good music in the world without the taint of Nazism on it) and "I know I'm not a Nazi, so it's OK". So whatever. Be happy with what makes you happy. So far as I know, Miles Davis beat every woman in his life at one point or another - I'm not throwing away any of his records.

You haven't been paying attention but that's okay. I don't have the ego you do so I don't take it personally.

Invisible Oranges contributors put together Top Ten lists for the best albums at the midway point of the year.

Here is mine.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9mmaJIW4AI8-YX?format=png

i know i'm a few years late but the last Raspberry Bulbs album, Privacy... phew. Like Bone Awl but with catchy melodies and arena rock riffs. A little like Okkultokrati but from a different angle.

Blackened funeral doom from Aalborg, Denmark:

https://hethe.bandcamp.com

Angry Metal Guy hates it so you know it must be good.

Add 'drone', 'trip-hop' and 'Stuart Dempster-ish' to the list of labels. It's quite the trip.

Nature Ganganbaigal from Tengger Cavalry has died.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/tengger-cavalry-frontman-nature-ganganbaigal-has-died

I wrote about his band that I saw twice. We hung out a lot when I ventured to Brooklyn a while back for a panel when Brian Slagel's book came out and he was there; we went over to Saint Vitus and talked all night about music. He was engaging and friendly.

He had a somewhat public suicide attempt some time ago but the prevailing thought was that he was doing much better. Perhaps not. Mental illness is a bitch.

Revolver Fans' Top Five Albums of 2019 (so far)
http://www.revolvermag.com/music/fan-poll-5-best-albums-2019-so-far

1. Rammstein
2. Motionless in White
3. Whitechapel
4. Baroness
5. Death Angel

man that news about tengger cavalry is so sad.

I wasn’t interested in this Rammstein record at all but I saw them live last week. They absolutely killed it and the new songs sounded great so I probably should listen to the new album.

scathing doom-sludge w/an ex-Moss member

https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/nightfucker

Is this a band that people know? Sounds kinda like shoegaze-y black metal.
https://yelloweyes.bandcamp.com/album/rare-field-ceiling

hell yeah

i played their last album a lot

er, next-to-last, i guess! i knew there was one in 2017 but i wasn't really feeling it like 'sick with bloom' so i just gave it a pass

yellow eyes are great. New Slough Feg album just arrived