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."

NP: Blood Eclipse - Небесная Кровоточащая Луна ▶︎ Небесная Кровоточащая Луна | BLOOD ECLIPSE (bandcamp.com) Based on the relatively slow start I thought I was about to get some blackened doom, but it moved into regular ol' black metal soon enough. Occasional effect flourishes are fine for me as long as they know when to get out of the way. I was wary at first also because they chose to include 'gothic' in their genre description. A part of me wishes that bm would drop that tag entirely as it's a fully established subgenre of rock at this point. Just call it black metal and don't set yourself up for misgivings from most black metal fans.

You know, a ton of ink has been spilled over the years exhaustively cataloguing and over-dissecting the often less than subtle phallic imagery in the designs of H. R. Geiger and Beksinski, and why it's so often associated with terror and the fear of the angry young men in our society with their capacity to use force to indulge their basest impulses. I can fully admit that a lot of it makes sense. Then I see things like this and the part of me that I've tried to push down in the interest of listening to all perspectives offered, which feels offended and hurt by these sorts of broad assertions just quietly tries to come to terms with exactly what I'm seeing and says "and yet..." I really don't like braunschweiger, but this stuff is pretty good.

If I go with anything but Midwestern Yuppie Agg. Lobbyist in my haircuts I look ridiculous. That haircut is so far away from what I can pull off it might as well have been from The Fifth Element or something. The whole depiction of him and his weapon (which is emphatically not a scimitar) and the band logo says early eastern European forgotten empire to me, but the fact he's guarding a poppy field places him as possibly Turkish. I really couldn't be sure since my historical knowledge is very limited in this area. Then again it could be based off an already established fantasy world that draws from all over the place culturally like the Witcher stories. Fantasy authors absolutely love doing this sometimes at the expense of the plots cohesiveness. I think the only thing they like doing more is making up their own pantheons. It's tempting, and fun to write, but it can really bog down your exposition and first act. Brandon Sanderson is really bad about this, especially because his books are largely PG rated YA affairs, and I suspect sometimes written with a film/show adaptation in mind. Agreed about the intro. At least it's on it's own track so the skip button works just fine.

NP: Ignominious - Death Walks Amongst Mortals ▶︎ Death walks amongst mortals | Ignominious (bandcamp.com) Come on guys. There was no need to be redundant with the album title, especially with a good diy but well executed production and almost no fat on the songwriting.

NP: Kroda - The Legend and the Hammer ▶︎ The Legend and the Hammer | Kroda (bandcamp.com) Not bad, although I'm still not sold on the metalness of having a sword with the words "Poppyflowers are Blossoming" on the side. Maybe he's the security for an opium den or something.

NP: Bombarder - Sa Dna Groba ▶︎ Sa dna groba | Bombarder (bandcamp.com) New stuff sounds surprisingly good. Too bad about the drum programming, but them's the breaks. Still nice to hear they've still got some youthful energy, and the leads are (as expected) pretty light, but much improved from their early days. One of very few bands who can accommodate modern production standards without sounding like old dogs learning new(ish) tricks in lo-fi. I remember when they got Akerfeldt for a few albums everybody I talked to was blaming them for somehow sucking the heaviness out of Opeth and Mikael. The man's main musical love has always been prog-metal, even dating back to old school Opeth whose primary influence was almost certainly Edge of Sanity's Crimson albums. Opeth is his pet band at this point, and I thought it was nice to hear him let his death growl off it's leash a little in Bloodbath while Opeth drifted towards krautrock, Camel, Hawkwind, and King Crimson territory.

NP: Horndal - Head Hammer Man ▶︎ Head Hammer Man | Horndal (bandcamp.com) Now this I really like. I believe I've spoken prior at length about my enduring love of Lair of the Minotaur. This is giving me the same sort of mood. You could probably run down all the influences at play here and you'd end up thinking this was some sort of half-assed Saxon wannabe with harsh vocals much like breaking down LotM would make you think of groovy sludge with some old school Omen and Brocas Helm for good measure. Both counts would be incorrect. This album is concerned with one genre and one genre only: metal. Thorough dissection beyond that is unlikely to yield any interesting results. The forward thrust of the album is riff-centric with some minimal flourishes here and there, but these are all irrelevant compared to the important questions: Is it metal, and is it heavy? All other concerns are tertiary. It doesn't have the same gritty crackling guitar tone of LotM, but the ethos is similar.

NP: Gvillotine - Hell is Other People ▶︎ HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE | GVILLOTINE (bandcamp.com) While I can empathize with the sentiment expressed in the album title, this is a little too Relapse-grindy for me.

NP: Sacrificial Vein - Black Terror Genesis ▶︎ Black Terror Genesis | Sacrificial Vein (bandcamp.com) Alright something's happening in Minnesota. This is probably the fourth or fifth band I've heard from the twin cities area that seems fascinated with taking the somewhat languid pacing and atmosphere from bands like Abyssal and blending in all kinds of different extreme influences. For some reason they seem to love their slowly mounting barre chords and using them to create an atmosphere of dread. It's not as chaotic as portal, and it's not as predictable as Deathspell has become. It's not a sound you'd typically think to headbang to, but the songcraft and careful dynamics between dissonant softer moments and fire and brimstone blackened vocals, clanging sustained guitars, and most of all that strange feeling of hearing or seeing something you're not supposed to seems to have taken root in Minnesota of all places. I'm here for it. Feels like it's been a while since we saw a true localized sound come into it's own, and maybe it won't happen, but the ground here seems suitably arable. All good signs to some one like myself.

Well yeah. I'm familiar with some of the more moribund doxology that comes with some aspects of traditional Catholicism. It just struck me as odd because even among fervent Christians these days Dolores is something of an old lady name similar to Gretta or Ethel in terms of association. It's not that I don't expect to occasionally run into oddities when dealing with bands coming from a place where religion occupies a much more pronounced role within the culture, but it's still kind of difficult to shake the cognitive dissonance, like meeting a central american person named Jesus.