Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Band That Made Power Death Worthwhile

A big part of maturing as a metal fan, and probably a music fan in general, is learning the art forgiveness. The doctrine of metal orthodoxy clearly states: You are only as trve as your latest record. In other words, if one album sucks, then by extension the band's entire catalog is now tainted.

This is obviously stupid but it was a sentiment I held on to for years, one that probably peaked with Immortal's super lame comeback album, All Shall Fall. It was years before I could spin Pure Holocaust or Sons of Northern Darkness again. All because of the legacy, man. But over the past few years, I've begun to re-discover some of my early, spurned loves, and the joy we once shared together.

In my nascent metal years I was a pretty big Soilwork fan. I devoured their first few albums like a child discovering extreme sour candy. The Chainheart Machine, A Predator's Portrait, and Natural Born Chaos were perfect gateway albums into the world of extreme metal. They were fast and nimble but featured plenty of grooves and those BIG ROCK moments the mind needs to gain a footing on a new sonic landscape.

But as it turns out, the band and I were headed in opposite directions. While I went deeper into the world of death and black metal, they became a pretty shitty pop metal band, overstuffed with self-serious cleanly-sung choruses and glassy electronics. And while that stuff still sucks (Figure Number Five has a few cool moments but is still mostly awful), my new attitude dictated that I give their old stuff a try.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Death Grips: Trancendental Drone Rap Rules

My rap music fandom extends to maybe three or four mid-2000s Bay Area singles (I still listen to "Tell Me When to Go" because I am lame) and almost nothing else. I am far from being an authority here. That said, I do know what I like, and that's pure heaviness. The distilled sonic essence of pure, weighted, and oppressive volume.

I first stumbled across Death Grips while trawling the depths of Grindcore Karaoke, J. Randall's (totally free!) carnival horror show of a grind/noise/punk/whatever label. Truthfully, I clicked on Death Grips's Exmilitary because I thought it was going to be some kind of politically-charged powernoise mindfuck. Lo and behold, I was greeted by the heaviest hip-hop jam I've ever laid ears upon.



"Beware" begins some real Trouble-a-Comin' guitar strains, overlaid by a rambling hobo speech from none other than Charles Manson. "The game is mine," he says. "I deal the cards." And then, BWOOOOOOOOM. The note begins, like a distant doom riff, cycling over and over, underpinning everything with that celestial echo that makes all heavy music feel transcendent and eternal.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Fun as Hell: The Surprising Depth of Vomit Fist

There's a bad habit among metal heads whereby describing a band as "fun" or "silly" ends up translating to "lacking in musical depth."  This is obviously a stupid sentiment. It's always the band that takes its Tolkien cosplay way too seriously that ends up being way funnier than the grind band with dongs, pizza, and weed all over their album cover (See: Immortal). But a lot of bands get dismissed outright just for trying to be a little funny (See: Cannabis Corpse, Cephalic Carnage) even though your willingness to skewer metal's aesthetics and generally just have a sense of humor should have no bearing on the depth or quality of your musical composition. After all, what's smarter than good satire?

That said. New York's blackened grind trio Vomit Fist are definitely "silly." They wear hilariously overdone corpsepaint and have songs with names like "Ass Hammer" and spout lyrics about the (allegedly) poor hygiene habits of the French. But beneath that lies impressive sonic ability.



Kicking out riffs for Vomit Fist is 57-year-old Nick Didkovsky, founder and leader of the (very) long-running experimental rock and jazz outfit Doctor Nerve and his willingness and experience with functional experimentation is on full display here. On their debut EP, Forgive But Avenge, Vomit Fist blast with the precision and aggression you would expect from any deft blackened grind outfit, but everything feels like it's filtered through some kind of glassy warp field, with crumbling harmonics, off-kilter time signatures, creepy samples, and some unsettling (in a good way) half-singing. Despite frequently veering into punk, thrash, and hardcore territory, their sound remains remarkably cohesive and listenable.

This is smart grind that's fun as hell and I'm pumped to hear what they do next.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Super Heroes Are Useless. Read Paul Chadwick's 'Concrete' Instead.


What would you do if you had super powers? This is a pretty common question bandied about between stoned friends in bars, comic book stores, and during road trips. It's mostly an exercise in humor ("I'd transform all the guitars in the world into pointy guitars."), but what would you really do? Would you act in your own interest or attempt to solve a global crisis? If you chose to help others, how would you do it? Would you even be able to help? Will your powers of flight cure cancer? Will your super strength put an end to rape threats on the internet?

For all the good they do, super heroes are, at their core, woefully misguided. They're delusional obsessives for whom the universe tailors itself to accommodate a range of personal quests and vengeful motives. Gotham is a crime-ridden hell hole and remains that way despite Batman's best efforts. Why? Because he needs it to be that way in order to exist. Superman's Metropolis is the favored target of meteors, alien ships, and other massive objects falling from space. Spider-Man lives in a forest of conveniently placed anchor points. The world morphs to accommodate their powers, and in doing so creates a need for them.

Paul Chadwick's now-defunct series, Concrete, is the antidote to this paradigm.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Metal Cinema: The Cosmic Heartbreak of Asunder


The now-defunct Asunder were a funeral doom metal band active in the Bay Area from 1998 to 2006. They released two full-length albums, A Clarion Call in 2004 and Works Will Come Undone from 2006.

Funeral doom is meant to be slow, dense, and pitch black. In rare cases it will temporarily warp space-time, creating a small black hole that will drain the light and happiness from anything within reach. Asunder were appropriately low and slow, with death growls that crumble mountains, but their brand of doom holds an undeniable warmth and humanity. As a a spiritual predecessor to the heartbreaking and highly melodic works of Samothrace, Asunder's riffs, while still capable of burying you in hopelessness, drip somber melodies that stir the heart before crushing it into cosmic dust.

This footage, taken in 2006, captures the majesty and ritualistic thrum of their sound perfectly. With almost no shots of the crowd, they are the only light in an endless dark.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Watch Can Freak Out Everyone in Germany

For the uninitiated, Can were a German experimental weirdrock band active in the late 60s and early 70s. Their music was highly improvisational and, oddly enough, highly successful, even landing a few songs on the singles charts.

This live performance, filmed in 1970 in Soest, Germany, is a pretty good introduction to their music. But more priceless is the crowd's total lack of comprehension. A few people are uncomfortably nodding along—one woman is fine just blowing bubbles in the corner— but the vast majority just stare, totally frozen, unable to process what they're seeing and hearing. That right there may just be the best indication of just how far out of time and space the band was.

Enjoy the show!

Mad Max and Avoiding CGI Burnout

Yesterday's mention of George Miller got me thinking, specifically about the rapidly diminishing returns of the CGI spectacle and why I don't think it will be a problem with his upcoming film, the latest addition to his Mad Max canon, Fury Road.

There wasn't a movie on this planet I was less excited about than The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. For a studio looking to milk every last drop of the LoTR franchise, the book's final epic battle was a godsend, an action-packed mega event to build a third (it was originally meant to be two) movie around. Sure enough, we got three hours of battle scenes padded by bits of sparse and misshapen story.

That's FINE, though.  I'm not immune to spectacle. Pacific Rim was no better as a story but its relatively novel (for most people) visual palette made it a stirring cinematic experience. Unfortunately for The Battle of the Five Armies, no CGI aesthetic has been more thoroughly drained than the Massive Army Porn genre that began with literally the opening minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring and went on to color every major action/fantasy blockbuster for a decade (See: Troy, 300).  The prospect of shepherding my belligerently stoned friends through the labyrinth of escalators at the theater and sitting through three hours of sweep shots of lumbering trolls and two differently colored puddles of soldiers merging in the middle of the screen just doesn't do it for me anymore. The well is dry.

That said, Miller is working with a palette all his own, one strong enough to tell a story by itself, and one that hasn't been beaten entirely into the ground. While just about any post-human society movie draws at least some visual reference from Mad Max, the Auto-pocalypse genre has been a largely dormant genre save for the Fast and Dystopian Futurous re-make of Death Race 2000. Miller's also returning to this canvas with tools he's never had before, ones that will give life to his mad vision without dictating it. Who knows if the story will be good, but I can guarantee there will be some thrill in watching it unfold.


Can't wait.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Dead World Crust From the Open Road

Sometimes a cool name is enough. And Neutron Rats is a really good name, one that makes easy prey out of movie geeks like myself who enjoy slapping metal soundtracks over terrible old sci-fi. If The Goonies had been conceived and directed by George Miller (he of Mad Max fame and yes you should be very excited for the new one) it would’ve been called The Neutron Rats and followed the tetanus-rich adventures of a gaggle of angry little post-apocalyptic gradeschoolers as they looked for a severed head to use in their ruined society’s version of basketball.

This is ugly, clattering, wasteland crust that snubs black metal in favor of punk’s more belligerent tones. It’s fast, with squealing guitars and drums that always feel one beat sideways, but far from incomprehensible and the bass is so thick and noxious all the plants in your house will die. Enjoy!

Label Love: The Purple Kiss of Colloquial Sound Recordings

Transgression. It is the ultimate goal behind all extreme music (and ultimately all good music). Yet metal, despite remaining an aural abomination to so many, fails to achieve this more often than not. Satanism fails to inspire in the modern era. More Norse sword swinging? Meh. Vaginal stabbing fantasies of unrequited gore? Get outta town.

Despite its outsider status, metal remains one of the more image-conscious genres on the planet. Orthodoxy is law and for many the spiked arm bands are just as important as the riffs summoned forth by their bearers. Aesthetic is part and parcel. Which is a big reason why Colloquial Sound Recordings, in addition to unleashing all sorts of experimental/blackpunk audio hell, is so refreshing.

Let’s take Choker, an eerie mix of proto-punk and blackened noise. The music isn’t far from what the previously featured group Villains are up to, yet the packaging, a seventh grade girl’s after-school collage, offends metal’s sensibilities in the most delightful of ways. The theme runs throughout CSR’s myriad artists, with unusual imagery enhancing an already unusual experience.



Aksumite, the label’s flagship act (fronted by label maestro Damian Master) and the current object of all my musical affections, follows suit in its own way. The duo’s scant releases have turned plenty of heads with their incredibly catchy “blood cult punk,” with 2012’s Prideless Lions garnering particularly rabid acclaim, but it’s their subject matter that conjures the greatest spells. Aksumite belt out tales of the ancient African empire of Aksum, chronicling its rise and fall throughout the first millennium. “Via India! Via Aksum! Their goods! Their men! Their women! Their money! Their minds!”, Master howls. It’s not only a super cool history lesson. It’s a super cool “Fuck You” to the Euro-centric/Norse paradigm that has dominated the genre for so long. How’s that for transgression?



Cool music. Cooler message. Get over to CSR’s page and start shopping.

Learning to Love Being Loud

There was a time in my metal life cycle, somewhere in those early years of petulant orthodoxy, when a duo like The Angelic Process would have gone straight into the trash can. Back then everything had to follow the rules. Viking metal was from Scandinavia because those dudes were totally actual vikings and not just pasty basement nerds like me. Black metal bands without corpsepaint were fucking posers who were only in it for the fame and had never actually murdered anyone.

Point is, I could find just about any reason to dismiss legitimately good music, forgetting what it was I was really after. Heavy, unrelenting, light-draining, world-obliterating noise. Ten years ago, my response to The Angelic Process (now sadly defunct following the death of K.Angylus) would have been something along the lines of, “Drum machine? Fuck that. Real metal bands use real drums. Don’t even come near me with that processed unmetal bullshit.” But age is the enemy of orthodoxy and this band destroys worlds and opens hearts.

Noise, doom, the sound of the moon crumbling into the sea. It’s kinda hard to even categorize The Angelic Process. Endless, cascading oppression? Good enough. Whatever it is, it helped me connect with what I really love about heavy music. And that's really fucking heavy.

Ear Wax!

Today I took a look inside my ear buds and came face to face with the true horror of the human body. If you think that your bowel movements are the only truly objectionable thing emanating from your sweaty flesh bag of a body, you have yet to encounter a good thimble-full of earwax. It’s like scooping poop out of your ears.


Anyway, the reason I bring this whole thing up is because I have a ton of filthy noise building up in my ears and I wanna share it in the hopes that it grosses you out too. In a good way. Just think of this as an In Case You Missed It/Quick Hits/Lazy Asshole’s List sorta thing. Be warned though. Some of this shit is old. Downright rank even. Anyway, BEHOLD MY EAR GUNK.

Axeman - Arrive
Horrible confession to make. I actually don’t like that much late-80s/early-90s extreme metal. Most of it is just a little to rudimentary for me. Level 1 riffs, bad vocals, ho-hum Satanism. It’s all just kinda ‘meh’ these days. Do I appreciate the lineage? Sure. But you can know and appreciate that humans came from monkeys without wanting to fuck one. That said, Axeman is a monkey I would fuck. This demo, a one-off release from west coast black metal renaissance man Volahn, most definitely rips. Each of these three tracks picks a killer riffs and rides it without over-reaching. Take with beer.



The Great Old Ones - Tekeli-li
Ah, the French. When you think about it, it’s actually unsurprising that they’re so good at black metal. I mean when you think French cinema do the words “depressive” and “monochrome” not come to mind? This shit is just in their blood. Anyway, The Great Old Ones just dropped their second full-length and it’s refreshing on two levels. One, it’s black metal that doesn’t suck. Second, it’s got some actual heft. While a lot of their blackened countrymen are plying riffs so light and shimmery they could be worn as evening gowns, TGOO are actually pretty heavy, taking equally from their sludgier American counterparts and their northern neighbors. HP Lovecraft lyrics never hurt either, even if you can’t understand a word of them.



Impetuous Ritual - Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence
Have we reached peak Murk? I thought we did with the release of Grave Upheaval’s last album. But here we are, still knee deep in deliberately incomprehensible guitar tones and howling cave bear vocals. Honestly, I can take or leave this style and this album (not typing that name again) is as good or better than anything else in the genre, but where it really grabs me is the solos. While a lot of cavern-core bands tend to avoid featuring any particular instrument in the midst of their murk, Impetuous Ritual aren’t afraid to shred. This thing is full twisting, howling, acid-bent solos spiraling straight out of the void. Oh, they are glorious and plentiful. Check out “Venality In Worship” and see what I mean.



Bast - Spectres
I was really on the fence with this one for a while. Bast play a weird mix of stoner doom and latter-day black metal (think Conan meets Wolves in the Throne Room and their ilk), which, when it works, works really well. It just doesn’t work all the time. That isn’t to say it’s ever terrible. It’s just that the seams sometime become very apparent, like on “Denizens” an otherwise killer song that shifts gears between monolithic stomp and shimmery black riffs just a little to quickly. Both parts are solid but the transition is just a little bit, well, artless. If you can get past the hiccups, though, you’ve got the beginnings of something special.



GridLink - Longhena
Yes, GridLink have already been blown by pretty much the entire metal press but in light of the band’s recent breakup over guitarist Takafumi Matsubara’s medical issues, it’s worth a reminder that Longhena does indeed slay serious squirrel pussy. Even if it does frequently veer dangerously close to Matsubara and Jon Chang’s other project, Hayaino Daisuki, that’s not a bad thing. In a way it’s an amalgamation of what they were trying to achieve with both projects: hyper-speed grind pop. Matsubara’s contribution to the genre will be missed but this is a pretty fucking solid legacy to leave behind.



Ok! Cool. That about cleans out my ears this week. Scoop up the filth and enjoy!

Forgotten Realms: Suspended in the Brume of Eos


I swear that sooner or later we’re going to start discussing more recent metal releases but I’ve been sitting on this album for a while and it’s too good and too unappreciated to go unmentioned here.

By the mid-2000s, melodic death metal had become something of a cursed realm. Whether it was the hordes of Swedish clones aping the Iron Maiden-meets-Morbid Angel blueprint of the mid-90s or the legions of American tough guys who grafted it onto East coast hardcore and were promptly signed to a three-album deal by Metal Blade Records, the term “dual guitar harmonies” now elicits more groans than horns. The genre’s forefathers, In Flames and Dark Tranquility did little to move things forward once the genre really took off, either just rehashing their sound over and over with a smattering of fancy new electronic elements or abandoning their roots entirely.

Of course people still like melodic death metal when they hear it, it just has to go by a different name these days lest it be dismissed outright. When Minnesota duo Obsequiae released Suspended in the Brume of Eos in 2011, Agalloch and other transcendental black metal acts like Wolves in the Throne Room were thrown around as comparisons, but to my ear their lineage is easily closer to Gallery-era Dark Tranquillity (God that pretentious extra ‘L’ always killed me) trapped in an evil Renaissance fair.

The black metal comparisons work up to a point, especially with the raspy, buried vocals of Blondel de Nesle, but whereas those bands use guitars to create atmosphere and texture, Suspended in the Brume of Eos is about the riff. Opener "Altars of Moss" makes a serious statement, its opening melodies dancing and weaving like drunken, flute-wielding Satyrs in the forest. The riff remains front and center, swerving between the nimble-fingered slashing of "In the White Fields" and "Arrows" before delving into the realms of heaving doom on "The Wounded Fox" and the title track.

Also absent from so many of Obsequiae’s supposed peers but present here in glorious abundance are some epic, hair-in-the-wizard’s-maelstrom solos. They’re not technical marvels or anything, but the explosions of melody like the one at the 2:20 mark in “Altars of Moss” are a sweet relief to ears accustomed to months of monolithic sludge and blackened abysses.

Look, we’ve already wasted enough time on an album that’s already three years old. Just turn up your speakers and jam this thing.