Ryan Martinie Was in the Wrong Band

I listened to a lot of terrible nu metal bands when I was younger. I used to be embarrassed about this but the truth is that such is the journey of every "trve" metal head. And you know what? It wasn't even that bad. In fact, give it a few more years and we'll probably see some kind of revival. It's inevitable. That's just how these things work.

That said, even in my more orthodox metal days, Mudvayne has always bordered on the acceptable for me, thanks largely to the exceptional bass work of Ryan Martinie. Nu metal is a genre where the band largely functions as one bludgeoning instrument, with the bass buried in a pile of grunting down-tuned garbage. Martinie's performance on the band's 2000 debut, L.D. 50, was probably the first truly impressive instrumental performance I can remember singling out.

Again, without disparaging the entire genre, nu metal didn't exactly ask a lot of its guitar players. But Martinie found a way to slap, slide, and pop everything he could out the sound, his bass lines defining their early hits "Dig" and "Death Blooms." With his pointy devil's doo and manic smile, Martinie channeled the manic intensity and technicality of Danny Elfman into a theatrical nu metal mold (I'm sure he would find the idea insulting, I would have loved to hear him on some bonkers tech death album). I was too young and inexperienced to realize it at the time but it was cool as hell. Check out a few of their live performances, with Martinie effortlessly pulling off his insanely technical parts while wearing some really cumbersome pants. You definitely won't feel embarrassed.

Lotus Thief: If Stevie Nicks Played Black Metal

Fair warning: I'm going full geeky gushing cheese-fest love-in on Lotus Thief's Rervm. It's possible that deep down I'm just so starved for melody that I'm seeing greatness that isn't really there, but I choose to believe that this album is a genuinely impressive melding of some great musical eras, metal and otherwise.

When I was in my late teens I was really into female-fronted gothic/symphonic metal bands like Nightwish and Lacuna Coil. The sound, melodious, sometimes operatic vocals over doom laden guitars, was catnip for net-based metal heads usually starved for melody, and probably in a few cases—in mine at least—feminine company. I don't mean to suggest that I listened to these albums out of lust—though there were certainly bands in the genre, especially its later phases, that marketed themselves to that demographic (See: UnSun).

I was in an all-boys school until I moved to Israel as a child, where my difficulty with the Hebrew language limited my social skills with other kids. I hid myself in computer games and comics, neither of which in the late-90s and early-2000s featured a ton of well-developed female characters. I knew about explosions, aliens, sorcerers, and super powers, but I didn't know romance in the classical sense. Gothic metal exposed me to those feelings and helped craft my first ideas about what it must be like to, well, be in love. It made me want to have those feelings for someone else, to act out their stories of passion and heartbreak. Looking back, it's probably why I ended up such an oversensitive doof.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.