markm

Swans/Filth (deluxe)-F.A. was right, this is compelling. Gira has done a tremendous job compiling massive multi disc sets of old albums with additional comp materials. It's a case of the sum is greater than the parts. This set I'm streaming is the original, abrasive so called "no wave" meets industrial album Filth that I've read about for years but never bothered with. Having listened to my share of Neurosis and weird ass droning metal, Sunn0)))) etc., my ears are primed for this . I'm sure at the time it was pretty "out there", today I can hear all kinds of echoes in bands like Ministry, God Flesh and even the recent Killing Joke discussions. However, those comparisons come largely from the additional material beyond Filth. Filth, seems to me was a young group of artists reacting at their disgust with the human race in the U.S. in the early 80's. So this set is really a massive 3 disc set of Swans 82-84 with Filth at the centerpiece. A lot of the material beyond Filth sounds like an underground post punk and punk vibe. From Amazon: definitive picture of Swans in the years 1982 - 1983/4. Includes: Disc one feature the Swans' original debut LP Filth from 1983, with the line up of M. Gira, Norman Westberg, Roli Mosimann, Harry Crosby, and Jonathan Kane. Also features versions of 'Strip/Burn,' 'Heatsheet,' 'Blackout,' 'Clay Man,' 'Stay Here, and 'Weakling,' all recorded live. Disc two includes Body to Body material comprised of various studio out-takes and live recordings 1982-85, with a nine-minute version of 'Raping a Slave,' recorded live in Berlin, 1984 (originally released with FILTH on YGD-11) while disc three features the Debut 12' EP #1, originally released in 1982. Plus additional live performances from NYC and London. Unfortunately it's only available in vinyl or as a digital download. They have a 2 disc set-basically the first two discs of the above set called Filth/Body to Body/Job to Job reissue-may grab this one I prefer physical media-especially for something like this. For some reason, I can't get enough Swans. All of Gira's re-issues have tons of extras and most of it engrossing to those with a penchant for wide ranging experimental and in this case heavy fucked up music.

This is turning into more of the random thoughts/what's on your mind kind of threads. I live in in what they call exerbs. I bring this up because in the developed world, affordable housing is a real problem. My wife and I both grew up in Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, moved to LA and came back east to raise our daughter. My wife was staying home with our one year old at the time. On a teacher's salary, I found an affluent well paying school district with a high tax base and more competitive teacher salary to afford a decent home on the property we wanted for our 3 big large Newfoundland dogs-actually way more property than I'd rather have to maintain these days. I'd be perfectly fine living in an urban environment or suburbs just out of DC like Silver Spring/Takoma Park in MD or Arlington VA if I Had space for my kayaks which take up a third of my two car garage out her in the semi rural area where Ilive . Plus, it would cut down on my drive to the river which is my playground. But on two moderate salaries in education (my wife is the assistant to the dean at Mount Saint Mary's University), there is no way we could swing the $500,000 or more more mortage-might be closer to 3/4 million now-- for the kind of home we'd want closer to D.C. Shoot, I'd be happy to live in D.C., but wouldn't get the space I'd want for my gear. And, it would be sweet to be close to the culture in DC-music venues, diverse restaurants and the like.

I don't think Laurel Canyon is an actual genre so much but a musical scene. The musical landscape has changed so dramatically since we grew up that a mainstream indie or even pop album with pop rock or folk, singer songwriter, etc. focus gets my attention----anything well done that's not hip hop or dance music. I only know the Laurel Canyon term other than the place, as I used to live in L.A., from that Lana Del Ray album from the online reviews. I've tried sampling her other albums, and they don't do anything for me. Re: Laurel Canyon: that sort of country tinged folk rock isn't my big go to and never owned albums from most of those artists except Neil Young and Zappa who are both amazing artists, but now I like a wee bit of Eagles, Carly Simon, DORS, Janis Joplin, Steely Dan (mixing genres here), CSN&Y, Buffalo Springfield, Fleetwood Mac, even stuff like Moody Blues, ELO, etc. in my non metal mix. Don't ever really put it on other than random play though when I'm in the mood for listening to a rock mix genre shuffle. You may or may not be an asshole, but not because of your musical tastes. Close minded? Hyper focused on the slimmest margins of musical experience to confounding levels? Check. That does not make you an asshole. I'd have to ask your ex to really know that 😁. I reckon we can all be assholes from time to time. Then, again, you were into punk at a time when most metal fans, myself included despised punk. Now, more of us from the day have come around. So closed minded is relative I suppose.

Actually, I'm not really a fan of King Buffalo. Jon prolly likes them more than I do, but I think Jon and I are in agreement they are serviceable as background rock music. I know they are sometimes labeled as a stoner band. I think of them as a stoner adjacent progressive jam band. Nothing wrong with that but not much wow factor. General of Whitenoise you like the stoner with hyuge riffage with punk attitude. I get that and like that style too. To me Wo Fat is more nuanced blues rock stoner with a kind of Stevie Ray Vaughan jam feel. They do take their time to get to the point though. Cavernlight/As We Cup Our Hands and drink from the Stream of our Ache (2017)-dig the new Cavernlight album so revisiting their last one..... Driving back and forth to my Mom's retirement home pushing music my wife will semi tolerate Lana Del Rey/Norman Fucking Rockwell-one of the pop albums in recent years I genuinely like for its homage to 70's Laurel Canyon musical scene of the 60's-70's Then, Rainbow/Rising and Scorpions/Love Drive-afterwards I asked her, so what do you think of those two albums-"it's just noise"-but she didn't tell me to "turn that shit off". For the record, she liked Love Drive slightly better remembering the overplayed track-Rock You Like a Hurricane and doesn't hate power ballads and referred to Rising as "one of those pussy bands" meaning of course bands like Poison and Whitesnake...-after 28 years of marriage, I'll have to take that with a rye smile. Swans/Filth-Because the heavenly Father Alabaster tells me I need to listen it again-It has a certain charm.

And didn't you move for a while to New Zealand or Greenland at some point? Since I'm 'Merican, I can't distinguish the two, other than they are beautiful cold places with a lot of white people. I should probably check out Sulphur Aeon's first two albums at some point. Funny how my musical tastes sync with your much of the time. Have you been listening to The Long Road North much? I think it's my most listened 2022 album so far. It's struggle listening to old favorites with a collection that keeps growing. Like some of our socio-political discussion-you know, the impracticality that the current model for successful global affluence being dependent on ever growing economies in a world of shrinking natural resources, listening to an ever growing musical collection for me becomes a game of hide and sink. For bands like the Gathering, I often will make playlists or queue's with different qualities-chick bands for instance. I have the Gathering added to a massive playlist of "non metal" which tends to include everything from classical/jazz to punk and "clean" metal. It's inanely large, about 14,000 tracks and I play it like my own eclectic commercial free radio station. If I listen long enough I'll hear all of those little niche bands I might forget about. In fact, I'm listening right now as I'm waking up. It gave me Kurt Vile, G'N'R, a track from a Wagner opera, a movement from a Shostakovich symphony-number 8(why do the order of vowels in his name always fuck up my spelling?), Stolen Babies, Motorhead, Social Destruction, Kinks and Nightwish-there's my chick metal!

Digging deeper into winter dark beers while available...and it's not even Winter Oliver Brewing (MD) Speed of Darkness Imperial Stout-saw this one -local brewery and grabbed a single-enjoyable Founders Dirty Bastard Scotch Styled Ale Navy you were right about Oscar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout-good shit And, no I did not have all three tonight 😁

Sulphur Aeon - The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos-2018-Been a minute since I've listened to this. They say the older you get, the faster times goes by. Did not think it was 4 years ago. Zach turned me onto this one. Dig the huge, exotic, melodic sound married with dissonance making this something different than your run of the mill DM release.

I feel like I've been paying minimal attention to 2022 metal with minimal focus. Yet, still end up with a few albums. Small for me get so far, but the December list blitz has yet to smack me upside the head. Antichrist Emporium-III Autopsy-Morbidity Triumphant Blackbraid-Blackbraid I Cavernlight-As I Cast Ruin Upon the Lens That Reveals My Every Flaw Blut Aus Nord-Disharmonium Boris-W Cave In-Heavy Pendulum Cult of Luna-The Road North Darkthrone-Astral Fortress Drudkh-All Becomes the NIght Haunter/Discarnate Ails Immolation-Actos of God Messa-Close Nocturnal Triumph-S/T Otolith-Folium Limina Undeath-It’s Time to rise from the Death

I love those two albums, too. Anneke is a Goddess. Agreed they are marginally metal at best but a very cool band. Some goth, some rock some prog, some doom even with Mandylion arguably. But basically a rock band.

Paradise Lost-The Plague Within Krieg-Transient

A lot of this is personality style. Like, I'm pretty laid back and typically don't get on with high strung Type A individuals.

The Underground Resistance was definitely a high point in their current era IMO.

Swans/Filth Deluxe Remaster 2015 (Bandcamp Stream)-so another bucket list listen. So impressions? Interesting which usually means it's not very good. As an art experiment, I didn't hate it. But I never need to listen to this again. Or do I? King Buffalo/Dead Star-I think Jon really liked this one....enjoyable at minimum. There's not a lot you can say bad about King Buffalo. Unfortunately for me, there's not a lot great to say either which is to say, it's perfectly fine but that's all. Acid Witch/Riot Among us- an AMG rave...this is silly and basically pretty much sucks. Ya know, I'm always on the lookout for good stoner and doom. This does not qualify as good in the most marginal reading of the word good. So forget pretty much. This is just bad. Bloodbath/Survival of the Sickest-preleased tracks for all time it seems-meh Gevurah/Gehinnom-I do not hate this. Morbific/Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm-as much as I liked last year's debut, nothing about this holds my interest. Insert sad face. Peace Clinic/Bayonet / L.I.C.E. / Peace Clinic-a couple of the Vortex dudes I follow on my stream bought this so it must past elite standards-it's like a ten minute blast of hardcore/grind/power violence type thing. All in all-unfruitful afternoon. Then again, I'm just working in my classroom on a student early release day/teacher proff day-so fuck it. Time for cocktails-five days off from work....thank you Pilgrims....sorry Native Americans....we were pretty shitty to you, apparently.

Which reminds me, the only Halford albums outside of the Priest moniker that I have or have heard are Crucible and Resurrection, both of which I think are pretty solid.

And, I see now that I have access to their 22 spreadsheet on my Google drive without even bothering with their Reddit web address.

I actually like it-but it is fairly subdued. It may still make the cut tho. Something about Halford's porky Santa Clause look was annoying. I was hoping he's at least make an attempt to resurrect the Metal God of days of ore.

And I listened to Drudkh-Belong to the Night, again...some enjoyable parts....the only album of theirs I own is Microcosms from 2009. The new one has a stronger post black feel to me.

I stopped by there recently but it's been months before that. I use my school district's Google account and currently use a work issued laptop so certain cites are blocked like porn (😆)and Reddit of all things. So, it's just not convenient and as I'm always saying, I'm pretty lazy. I switched programs this and year and my class is in a community college so I'm not on a public school work PC so I actually can go to Vortex now but haven't bothered much. I used to check in on their top 10. I'll prolly do that towards the end of the year to see what stuff on their list I've missed. Also, I couldn't get into rating albums constantly. I got on with a few them OK but overall found it an insular, rather snark good ole boy's club. Never really felt the vibe.

On the one hand it was good to see them get their award and fire up the amps, but given the limited time and songs selected as you pointed out underwhelming. They're so old, I found it a little depressing. Guess I can't give up my mental image of the roaring machine from '84.

Good to see posting again. I had COVID symptoms for two months. It hyper charged allergy symptoms and asthma like symptoms I hadn't had in years. I went back to an inhaler for a while. I thought I had long Covid and then it went away after 8 weeks or more. It's no joke.

bummer

I'll probably keep repeating myself like a broken record but as a so so Darkthrone fan, meaning I like them but they'd not be in my top 10 bands of all time or anything, I love the their new album. It's just great, oozing great metal oooziness yet somehow feels off the cuff like they're just making it up on the spot.

I love Rasputin. After blowing and raking leaves, enjoying Heavy Seas Double Cannon DIPA massively hopped-this Baltimore double IPA has so much flavor. Problem with the double IPA's is you get addicted to the big flavor with the big calories I don't really need and the high alcohol content. And Founders Porter-thumbs up from me. Anyone tired Founders Dirty Bastard Scotch ale?

I've definitely tried some of those, but mostly IPA's. I usually look in the local breweries section to see what they have.

Just snagged a 4 pack on your recommendation. Oscar Blues quality has always delivered for me.