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As it goes - opinions are like assholes, everyone has a shitty one... Most of what I would consider "perfect" or "unskippable" I'm sure would fall out of your wheelhouse and most likely the opposite is true. NBD. Fortunately, we both passed the metalhead certification test years ago. Enslaved - Mardraum

Show wrapped last night. Would've posted a small summary, but I was well past my limit of cheap beer. I think the appropriate term is piss drunk. Regardless, day 3 was the best of the week. Highlights - Sodom, Demolition Hammer, and Rotting Christ. Darvaza was pretty decent too. Didn't get excited about Tank, though the rest of the fest seemed to enjoy them quite a bit. Also didn't get much for Forbidden, mainly because they only have 1 song I even remember and secondly because who the fuck can follow DH after they level the place. Surprise of the day was Rotting Christ. Never seen them or listened to them much. Pretty freaking great. Overall show highlights aside from the above - Queensryche (the early stuff kills live and after seeing them both I think I prefer LaTorre to Tate), Lamp of Murmur (pulled it off live), Candlemass, Sumerlands, Savage Oath, and Autopsy. 6th year here and it just keeps getting bigger. Some growing pains and capacity issues at the venue, but they have always been good at working those things out between years. Up there with MDF for quality run organized festival by good people. If you're shopping for a fest to hit next year, can recommend.

Huoripukki - Ikuinen Kamppailu Destruction - Sentence of Death Dead Congregation - Promulgation of the Fall

Pungent Stench - Been Caught Buttering, Austria 1991. I feel like this album gets unfairly passed over. Absolutely one of the best death metal records of 1991. And I say that knowing there were some real bangers released in 1991. Massacra - Enjoy the Violence, French death/thrash 1991 Parler Anglais ou mourir? I liked this album well enough in '85, but it hasn't aged like a fine Bordeaux. More like 40 year old camembert.

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988)

Mark had asked about my never finished year end list for 2023, so I figured I'd share what I had before I gave up on it. I'd only just started making cuts, so this will be a lot longer than normal. Because of that I'm going to post it a little at a time and break it up by genre...and since the black metal list was the longest, I'll post it first. Black Metal Arnaut Pavle - Transylvanian Glare Arbor - Behold... The Age of Pagan Blood Atheosophia - Shadowgate of Winter's Spirit As the Shadows Envelop Me – Fedrekult Astral Tomb of Yearning - Summoning the Impenetrable Night Aeon Furnace - Providence Descends Abisma - Disciples of the Black Ram Black Hurst – S/T Blutschwur - Those of My Blood Crucifixion Bell - Mirages in Izar Ceremonial Crypt Desecration - Unholy Black Metal Against the Modern World Dai-Ichi – S/T Dominance - Slaughter of Human Offerings in the New Age of Pan Demoncy - Black Star Gnosis Ebony Pendant – S/T Fellwinter - The Dawn of Winter Final Eclipse - The Dark World Flaming Ouroboros – Blood Gauntlet Ring - Beyond the Veil of the Night Graf - Rite of Nocturnal Passage Gam - Alt hans væsen Geistaz'ika - Midnatsbøn ved djævelens port Helleruin - Devils, Death and Dark Arts Hinsides - Hinsides hörs djävulsklockans urklang Iron Firmament – Keepeater Kringa - All Stillborn Fires, Lick My Heart! Krigstjørn - Mod guders svig Kurgan - Ascetic Dissociations Lja – 1943 Mavorim - Ab Amitia Pulsae Motstand – S/T Mycorrhizae – The Great Filtration Noitila – Langennut Nöldr - Chaotic Mysticism from the Tormented Silence Nahasheol - Serpens Abyssi Nartvind – Breath of Night Orkblut – Ghost Paths to Septentrion Obsidian Grave – Blood of the Night Oerheks - Grondslagen Regnum Tenebrarum - Légendes noires Ravensrealm - A Crash of Heathen Thunder Sulphuric Night - Black Metal Tyranny Tsjuder – Helvegr Trest - Sorginak Unholy Craft - Naar all tid er omme Vestígio - Vestígios (^Mark and FA will both want to check out the above album) Versteck - Symbols of Seven Harmonies

Killing Joke - Killing Joke (2003) Coroner - Grin

I believe that is what really turned me off to IPAs. Like Surge, I won't turn down a perfectly good beer if someone is handing it to me, but they're never my first choice. Down here, breweries either try to see just how bitter they can make a beer as some kind of badge of honor or how many weird ass fruit combos can be added. It's akin to the hot wings trend, let's make these perfectly good chicken wings inedible as some test of manhood by adding 43 ghost peppers and top it with a scotch bonnet. People claim to enjoy them, but I can't see how. And it's all fine and good. Plenty of beer out there to like for everyone. Just annoying that every brewery has to have 60-75% of the menu dedicated to the same variation of style. In stores, seems that's all they carry anymore and most just suck (the ones you mentioned, Voodoo Ranger, Space Dust, 420, the list goes on). Many started out good, but over the years got bought out by conglomerates or over expanded and the quality dropped. Stone was sold several years ago and had never been the same. Everyone has their own preferences. I personally don't like German beer. Lukewarm on IPAs and Pilsners. Will never seek one out, but will never turn down a freebie.

Obituary - The End Complete (1992)

I'll have you know I read the whole thing. Surge finds some interesting stuff, sometimes. Good dude. Glad he got a job after getting his degree. I know he was trying to make a better life for he and his wife.

Obituary - Slowly We Rot

Enslaved - Eld (1997)

Happy Zombie Jesus day! Let's start off by serenading the neighborhood with some proper religious tunes. Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus Candlemass - Nightfall

Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)

@Nasty_Cabbage bringing the fucking Nina Simone! Cheers mate. Great stuff. Fornicus - Sulphuric Omnipotence Scourge Lair - One Hundred Eyes One Hundred Arms (demo) Judas Iscariot - To Embrace the Corpses Bleeding Non-skipper albums for me: Sad Wings NOTB Piece of Mind Seventh Son

Atheist - Piece of Time

First album was pretty good and I caught them live in Denver on that tour back in '17 opening for Denmark's Undergang which was a solid performance. But this new album's a snoozer, listened to half of it one time, wouldn't buy it. Just checked, it's the same 3 guys, wonder what happened? Turns out writing memorable death metal isn't as easy as it looks. Pungent Stench - For God Your Soul... For Me Your Flesh, Austria 1990 Benediction - The Grand Leveller, UK 1991

I don't know if it's worth a damn, not having tried it, but I've seen in my local that several of the better known foreign brewers like Paulaner and Weihenstephan are making non-alcoholic versions of their beer. If anyone can pull off a reliably decent tasting non-alcoholic, it's probably going to be one of them. What's interesting about those breweries though, is because their beer is so "blah" in flavor, their quality control is absolutely topnotch. It has to be because being so lacking in actual flavor any deviation would be incredibly noticeable

Obituary ‎@ Frozen Alive recorded at Stodoła Club, Warsaw Poland. August 24th, 2006

Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery

Testament - The New Order (1988)

Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

Control Denied - The Fragile Art of Existence (1999) Don't say that: I'm 27 too... * 2 😭

Totality was fucking amazing. I'm sorry I looked away from it even to get a shot on my phone, which can't do it justice, but there ya go:

Brutal Truth - Need to Control (1994)

Judas Priest - Painkiller

Rush - Moving Pictures

Nuclear Assault - Handle With Care

Akhlys - The Dreaming I (2015)

Couch Slut is great live. Saw them in a small dungeon of a club with Imperial Triumphant last year. Little different styles. Tiamat started as a death/doom outfit and Samael was black metal, but they do have some similarities. Also Tiamat hails from Sweden, Samael from Switzerland. Not sure how much interplay they had to influence each other, but it's definitely possible. Interestingly, they had similar career arcs moving towards a more electronic sound far from where they originated. If you dig that sound, this might be up your alley. One of my favorites along the lines of very early Samael. Serpent Noir (Greece) - Sanguis XI Sanguis XI | SERPENT NOIR | Hellthrasher Productions (bandcamp.com)

Suffering Hour - The Cyclic Reckoning - not as good as their first, but still a solid record Of Feather & Bone - Sulfuric Disintegration - fucking grind into oblivion Stygian Obsession - Form is Void - never seen anything else by these dudes but this crushes Cruz - Culto Abismal - another crushing one off (for me anyway)

Yeah I've seen Obit a few times and have never been disappointed. Obituary - Dying of Everything, 2023, pretty good for a buncha old men in their 50's. Obituary - Darkest Day, 2009. I almost always go with one of the first two or World Demise, I've gotta start working some of these middle/later albums into the rotation. This one's not truly spectacular or groundbreaking, but it's perfectly serviceable.

Phosphorus - Sonos a Tenebrae (demo) Saw them about the time this came out with Cattle Decap and Cannibal Corpse. Needless to say they were the weakest band on the bill but still very enjoyable. Show was even on my birthday. Nice of them I think.

Sargeist - Let The Devil In

Summoning - Lugburz (1995)

Rotting Christ - Non Serviam Inquisition - Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult

Windhand - Eternal Return, Richmond VA 2018 YOB - The Illusion of Motion, Portland OR 2004

Eternal Suffering - Drowning In Tragedy, BDM Boston Mass 1999 Suffocation - Pierced from Within, BDM NY 1995

Church of Misery is fucking great fun. Will have to check this out. Not sure about the Monkey business, but if the Church thinks enough of them to do a split, they're worth a go. Panzerfaust - The Suns of Perdition Chapter 2 Dodheimsgard - Monumental Possession

Sarcofagus - Envoy of Death Savage - Hyperactive No Future, No Past - Finnish Speed & Thrash Metal Explosion 1986-1992

Swans/Soundtracks for the Bind (1996)-It's been said by many, that in a career of making weird albums, this is the weirdest album Swans ever made. love it or hate it-and fans fall on both sides of the fence (I am on the love side) there is nothing like this album. The album that was the final straw breaking the Swans for 14 years. They reformed in 2010'ish and they came to more general notoriety in 2012 with their massive trilogy beginning with The Seer in 2012 which garnered a great deal of praise in all music internet sites that cover left of field experimental music, which is when I discovered them. 2012 was when I got into headfi and hifi gear, put together a proper listening system and started following the machinations beyond metal. At any rate, Soundtracks for the Blind (2 discs, 4 LPs) and 26 tracks is a herculean listen at over 2 hours. It's long been a favorite for fans of experimental rock music. Some would say it's been eclipsed post 2010 in terms of what Gira strove to achieve-some kind of transcendental music that pulls from many genres. It's an album that requires patience, there is over indulgence and bloat to be sure, but I find the entire experience utterly compelling. The roots to Soundtracks predates 1996 some 10 years to the beginning of the Swans existence and is as you might guess, conceived to be the soundtrack to movie that never existed. There's quite a bit ambient music and overall vibe of ambient drone on this album, but also explosive music and field recordings, and creepy, voyeuristic voice tracks. I believe Gira and Jarboe both recorded people in their lives with mental and physical health problems to create a sense of watching a film designed to give the listener a feeling of discomfort. The album is unsettling and beautiful. Much credit has to go to Jarboe, Gira's long time collaborator who has one of the most elastic, powerful, beautiful and at times brutal female voices in experimental music. In fact, the entire album has a combined effect of surrealist experience-reminiscent of a bizarre David Lynch movie and other worldly experience beyond the capacity to explain in words. The voice overs create a sense of watching a haunting documentary of some corner of the underbelly of twisted human existence-ne'er do wells living sordid, utterly depressing lives-something that draws me in, repels me but I just can't take my eyes off the screen--- or perhaps, turning to look at the multi car accident on the other side of the highway-traffic backed up for miles, emergency vehicles, cars burning, bodies on stretchers....and you just can't restrain yourself from slowing down to look at the carnage. There is nothing that I've heard that sounds like this album.

Afterbirth - In But Not Of (2023) Slimelord - Chytridiomycosis Relinquished (2024)

KAT - Oddech Wymarlch Swiatow (Polish thrashy hm a la 1987) Accept - Metal Heart

Circle of Ouroborus - Night Radiance Recluse - Stillbirth in Bethlehem (my favorite Christmas album) Wode - Servants of the Countercosmos

NP: Fabricant - Drudge to the Thicket ▶︎ Drudge To The Thicket | FABRICANT | Fabricant (bandcamp.com) I'm going to be kind of a dick here and call attention away from that striking cover art for a moment to their band photo on MA Why? Why would you include that? Is Weird Al going through a beatnick phase? Never mind those two poorly disguised cenobites behind him. Was this taken in a church basement? Is the body of a high school senior who was about to have his yearbook photo taken splayed about in a half eaten bloody puddle behind that screen. Just please please tell me Weird Al Beatnovick sounds exactly as I imagine he does. Like listening to Steven Wilson talk through a word problem in an artsy and all too self serious whisper. He has to sound that way. This is like an entire David Lynch film in one photo. The music's good by the way. They've got a cool way of gluing riffs together that sort of tumbles and lurches along unpredictably.

On Saturday my flatmates were watching rugby. I set up a new audio interface and switched to Windows 11 to solve some problems it was having. Finally started working. I then went to a gig in the evening, but not quite worth reporting. A local band Verminthrone, (The Cull | Verminthrone (bandcamp.com)) which sounds like it would be black metal, but closer to Pantera. Meat and potatoes. Decent. The opening band was Electric Wizard worship (Industrial Nightmare | Voidlurker (bandcamp.com)) but just a little too simple for me. The guitarist lost his pick before the last song and played with a credit card. You couldn't tell the difference. My favourite part was the knob twiddling guitar effects feedback over drum and bass that they finished with. That was pretty cool. Sunday was fairly uneventful. Played mini-golf. Point being, I found occasion to write something on this here forums. Oh, big name drop, on Friday night I had quite a long chat with Karl Sanders from Nile. It was like we'd been buddies forever. Nice bloke.

Circle of Ouroborus - MatterEther Hypnosia - Extreme Hatred Arnaut Pavle - Arnaut Pavle

Ah. This one's pretty easy as it's about how our brains process music. A musical phrase "resolves" usually when it ends on a note that more or less demarks it's conclusion as a single musical statement within the song like a single sentence in grammar. So if you were to take Twinkle twinkle little star / How I wonder what you are, the resolution is the note that the word "Are" is sung over. Note we're going one syllable per beat. Line one line goes up three times in a row so: twinkle/up twinkle/up little/up, star/middle, and the second line goes down how I/down wonder/down what you/down are/down, with the fourth down breaking pattern from the first line and resolving the phrase (and for what it's worth I wasn't choosing a children's song as some sort of taunt. It's just a melody everybody knows). Of course it's music so there's all manner of complications that can and will come into play, but that's the basic idea. It's also possible to create songs without neatly resolving melodies like Nina Simone's rendition of Langston Hughe's poem Strange Fruit. Note that the piano behind Ms. Simone here begins with a relatively simple four chord series that moves and shifts as the song goes on because it needs to be malleable and not static or neatly timed out to use the exact cadence the poem necessitates. I hope that helps some. The way human pattern recognition works, whether we like it or not, is moment to moment, and a big part of our enjoyment of music is following this kind of thing (often subconsciously) with it's surprises and it's predictability going hand in hand. I also think you're perfectly fine enjoying music on a much less analytical and much more visceral level. Bringing the music nomenclature into it just helps me with articulating some of this stuff a little more exactly. I don't need anybody to think that I'm insulting them by throwing that kind of language around. It's really more for my benefit than anyone else's.

I think you’ll find in the land of the blind it’s the one with the longest cane who rules the proverbial roost, mostly by virtue of tripping over the least shit… the proverbial roost, mostly by virtue of tripping over the least shit… Also, all us headbangers more than a little bit crazy? I know I am. I had a third point, but I forgotten what it was going to be. Probably something as equally unfunny as the first so perhaps it is best forgotten… NP: Sadistik Exekution - We Are Death, Fukk You

I wouldn't say the part I'm playing is one of a "rube" as I'm a very cynical and jaded, some would say a grizzled old New Yorker. I'm not educated or refined or cultured or traveled or high falutin like Doc though. I'm just a common man with simple tastes who flunked out of university within a year for being lazy and disinterested, and then went back home and performed manual labor for many years. I'm what they call downwardly mobile. An extreme underachiever. Neither my parents or any of their parents ever performed manual labor. So you can't conflate my having a fairly decently developed vocabulary and knowing the difference between there, their and they're with me being highly intelligent. Being reasonably proficient in English does not in and of itself necessarily make one highly intelligent. It's all relative. Every time I find myself in a convo with or in the company of someone who is in fact highly intelligent, it becomes painfully obvious to me very quickly that I'm not on their level. I sometimes wish I was more intelligent as I do value intelligence over most other things. But I'm not. So instead, I prefer to think of it in terms of how most people are just incredibly, monumentally fucking stupid. Dumb as a stump as I like to say. So that might leave me as just a bit smarter than many of your average 'rubes' and typical dumbasses relatively speaking, but certainly nothing even remotely approaching 'highly intelligent." Remember, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I suppose that could be seen as an arrogant 'elitist' attitude to have that I dismiss most people as being dumb as shit, but I reckon it's true so fuck 'em. But anyway yeah man, I do understand that many people such as yourself get quite a bit from metal themes and lyrics. I figure you're probably well in the majority on that front. I haven't actually run into that many other fellow lyric dismissers or lyric deniers in my time. My boy Navy comes to mind as one, but we're outliers to some extent I think. And I know I've said this a thousand times but just to be clear, this holds true just for extreme metal only. I figure if a band goes to all the trouble of making their vocals/lyrics completely unintelligible, then I will happily ignore them and just focus on the sound and the timbre and the rhythm of the voice itself as an instrument. And I think we can all agree that the human voice can be a wonderful and very powerful instrument. I do often listen to the lyrics in other genres of music though, and I've even been known to sing along. I have a pretty shitty voice, but I never let that stop me. I'll sing in falsetto a lot, but then I'll also try to hit all the low notes (and fail) singing along with Pete on Type O songs or Andrew Eldritch on SoM songs. I frequently find myself alone in the kitchen singing lyrics to songs that I can't even remember which decade I might last have heard them. Which means those inane lyrics had been bouncing around somewhere inside my head taking up bandwidth for decades. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Or to taste. But I think you know I totally respect everyone's right to enjoy whichever aspects of music give them the most pleasure, be that lyrics, or themes, or artwork, or scrutinizing liner notes, or the band's makeup and costumes, or the display of accomplished musicianship, or the actual music itself, or the fact that it pisses off their parents, or watching live performances or just watching the vinyl go 'round and 'round on the turntable or whatever combination of those elements it may be. That's the beauty of music, we all have the freedom to enjoy our music in whichever ways we want to. Rest assured I'm quite aware that I'm generally looking to get different things out of my music than what most people are, even most other metalheads. But then I am a 1%er, a 'counter-culture' guy as you've called me. And as such I'm acutely aware that I'm just not like everyone else. I have my own shit going on over here, I look at things differently, I'm on my own wavelength, my own frequency, I march to the beat of my own drummer, I care about and concern myself with different things than most normies care about. I'm not bragging though and I deffo wouldn't expect others to aspire to be like me. Because when you're different, a lot of the rubes don't/can't understand where you're coming from so they just assume that guy must be a little crazy. But that's fine, I'm totally cool with being different and doing my own thing up in my little corner of the woods here. And by the way I do like me some Opeth every now and then, BWP, MAYH, GR, they were one of my gateway bands. OK maybe not as much in recent years, but in the past I had. No it's Emperor I can't stand. Maybe Nightside but that's it. Teenage prodigy or not, I blame that Ish dude (whose name I can never remember how to spell) for the proliferation of symphonic black metal, which in my holy book is a mortal sin. NP: Seraphic Entombment - Sickness Particles Gleam, Alabama 2023. Keep going back to this one. Disma - Towards the Megalith, 2011