Nasty_Cabbage

NP: Dolmen Gate - Gateways of Eternity ▶︎ Gateways of Eternity | Dolmen Gate (bandcamp.com) Marcolin era Candlemass is pretty easily identifiable as the primary source of influence. You could probably point to a little Trouble or Pentagram here and there. I do enjoy some of the Marcolin Candlemass albums, so this is a pretty easy going listen for me. The songwriting is excellent on this, even if I'm not a fan of echo laden Solitude Aeternus style production. The vocal layering is frustrating since the singer clearly has the pipes to carry her weight through the style. It's the same sort of frustration I feel when I hear the early Fates Warning albums with John Arch. They should really just trust their vocalist enough to leave the mix a little rawer and pick up a lot more of the inflections that the production seems to smooth over. Still definitely my kind of doom. B+ from me. Mayhem have had such an interesting career. I'm one of those nutcases who will actually defend A Grand Declaration of War onward era Mayhem. This album in particular seems to love making use of rests and what I would call very loud silences in the guitar work. It tends to push Attila's rangy growls a little further to the front, but in return we get erratic quick lashing riffs that actually finds me listening to the rests as intently as the notes themselves. You don't get into the listener's head like that without long years of experience and high confidence in your songwriting.

NP: Mathilde - 32 Décembre ▶︎ 32 Décembre | Mathilde (bandcamp.com) According to their press blurb "Mathilde is a band that mixes Black Metal, Death Metal, Progressive Metal and Doom." Alright. Prog for sure. I could even hear doom in this, if only because doom encompasses a lot of styles. The other two, though are kind of a stretch, and it's mainly the vocalist that's throwing off the whole vibe of the thing. No death growls, no black metal shrieks. Instead we have a very hardcore style of delivery from a male vocalist whose actual singing voice is probably a low tenor. Way too hardcore for my liking, but even Progenie Terrestre Pura use distinctively black metal styled vocals. Thing is, I actually like this album. The material here is very well thought out, and compositionally ahead of a ton of other bands that do this sort of thing. I showed up looking for the wrong thing maybe, but the prog is definitely keeping me with it. It's impressive enough to warrant a few extra spins at least before rendering my final verdict.

NP: Eternal - Cryptic Lust ▶︎ Cryptic Lust | Eternal | Raw Skull Recordz (bandcamp.com) Kind of a shame they have such a generic name. The material is quality, but you're going to run into trouble with people not being able to find your stuff with a name like that. Then again I guess if Carnage came onto the scene today they'd probably have the same problem. I definitely dig the Entombed-style font though. Always makes me happy to see it. In any case the material is good, and surprisingly it's got a little more in the way of variety than just pure Entombed worship. It doesn't stray too far though. We're deep in Swedeath country here.

I'll second this suggestion. It's not quite as catchy as Dissection were at their best, but what it loses in that department it more than makes up for in depth and quieter shifts in the guitars. For me at least, that creates a ton of replayability. NP: Fantasma - Abomination of Human Pestilence ▶︎ Abomination of Human Pestilence | Fantasma | Narbentage Produktionen (bandcamp.com) This one's growing on me. It's only an EP, but it shows a lot of potential.

Yeah, see. That's exactly the type of drama I just don't have any patience for. I don't really flip out over it, and usually just sorta say to myself, "Well, it's their site. They can run it how they want, but I'm out". My guess is that I had heard of the site somewhere along the line and instinctively avoided it. The self appointed grand inquisitors of the internet are some of the most insufferable people around.

I'm kind of out of the loop for the big metal websites. Are Metalsucks the big bad guys for a lot of metalheads? What did they do? Only site I've ever just stopped myself from checking in on was a long time ago, and it was due to them refusing to cover a band over some beef with a former band member causing unnecessary drama. I liked the band, but even then I wasn't going to sift through all the dramatic bs and just stopped frequenting the site. It wasn't a boycott or anything. I just have no patience for the non-musical aspects of the members.

NP: Obscurial - Heretic ▶︎ Heretic | Obscurial | Violence In The Veins (bandcamp.com) Second full length from these death metal guys out of Malaysia. First track kicked in and I thought I was going to hate the guitar tone, and, while it is a little tinny, they manage well and get more than enough heaviness out of it. The musicianship isn't flashy, but the riffs and pacing changes are right on the sweet spot.

NP: Nightwalker - Grimoire Tenebrarum ▶︎ Nightwalker - Grimoire Tenebrarum | Amor Fati Productions (bandcamp.com)

I'll bet Carcass makes a mean bloody mary.

NP: Chainsword - Born Triumphant ▶︎ Born Triumphant | Chainsword (bandcamp.com) Polish dm. The expected Bolt Thrower and Vader are in here along with a few tricks to vary things up. Otherwise the album knows what it is and fully embraces the idea that doing something unoriginal extremely well will always beat doing something original poorly. Fans on the subgenre, myself included, will enjoy.

NP: Vircolac - Veneration ▶︎ Veneration | Vircolac | Dark Descent Records (bandcamp.com) I'm not 100% sold on this one. It's holding my interest though. The (basically) a capella opening track actually won me over after my initial misgivings. The album is definitely kind of an in-between for black metal. Sometimes they sound like they want to dive head first into murky uncomfortable atonality and sometimes they sound like they want nothing more than to put their foot on the gas and make the sort of howling desolate black metal that their stronger chord progressions lend themselves to. Beneath it all though is a solid metal center holding the thing together, so I'll definitely be returning to this one, perhaps with a clearer head.

Man, it feels like forever ago that I first heard these guys. I had a friend who was a good guy, but definitely had a habit of trying to proselytize his Christian listening habits. I knew it was pretty much his absolutely insane mother that had forbidden non-Christian music in their home. The situation with her was complicated and wouldn't do to get into here, but he definitely did his research in looking for bands that he and I could both listen to. I think he could tell that I just wasn't taking the bait with Creed or other particularly popular Christian bands at the time, and that eventually led to him introducing me to Zao. I was honestly a little indifferent and found them a little boring, but whatever. Made a suitable soundtrack to driving around and generally getting up to no good in small town country. I'm sort of surprised to see they're still around honestly. NP: Slug Gore - They Slime! They Ooze! They Kill They Slime! They Ooze! They Kill! | Slug Gore (bandcamp.com) I will never understand the seeming connection between certain parts of extreme metal and dub-noise-rave whatever electronica. The entire first track of this album is a techno track, and it threw me for a loop because it really doesn't play nice with honestly fairly capable and energetic grindcore. I can respect the art of arranging, and I understand that a choosing from a whole spectrum of audible sound could open things up as far as songwriting is concerned. It also seems like it helps keep a bead on an idea and the song as a whole during the whole brain to writing to performance journey, but I just can't get excited about it. Maybe others are hearing something that I'm not. It's happened before. Still, despite my best efforts I can's get into it. These guys sound like they'd be fun to see live in some squalid hell hole of a venue though.

For real. I can't drink any significant amount of alcohol anymore, but when I could it was fairly apparent to me that the world of beer is a big one full of all different kinds of styles and flavors. I enjoyed stouts, saisons, the occasional fruit beer, and sometimes even a good sour. We all know that cheap mass produced swill is bad, but just condemning fruit(y) beer outright is kind of foolish. Hell, the producer of one of the most recognizable import stouts out there (Samuel Smith) makes an incredible peach beer that's absolutely delicious and worth trying for anybody who can find it. NP: Rogga Johansson - Otherworld ▶︎ Otherworld | Rogga Johansson | Iron Blood and Death Corporation (bandcamp.com) Nice. It's cool to see that after the metalcore headache that subsumed most of the Gothenburg/Slaughter of the Soul sounding melodeath tropes, the subgenre's most adamant practitioners tend to revert to Edge of Sanity leanings which, in my personal opinion, make for a much more robust songwriting palette and have a ton more room for experimentation. This stuff isn't exactly top-tier melodeath, but it gets the job done if that's what you're after.

Erytrosy - Incomplete Minds ▶︎ Incomplete Minds | Erytrosy | Necroeucharist Productions (bandcamp.com) Bit of a minor classic here from '96. I love that older sounding death metal guitar where you get that really nice chunk from the muted riff attacks bolstered by only slightly less muted single string discordant through lines.

Given the amount of noise he makes in almost everything else he does I doubt he would choose his passing to be the one thing he ever did quietly. NP: Occult Blood - st/st ▶︎ Occult Blood - Occult Blood | Occult Blood | FORBIDDEN KEEP RECORDS (bandcamp.com) "Alright mister Occult, everything seems to be in order here. If you'll just sign we'll be happy to certify this inspection as a B from the black and death metal safety administration." "Why a B? I thought you said it was perfect." It is, but if we issue too many As we wouldn't secure a funding increase for next year, when we're really going to need it. Word on the street is Lamb of God is going to release a concept album "reimagining" George Elliot's Middlemarch, and we need to be able to fail some establishments if that's allowed to happen. "... I'll take the B then."