Nasty_Cabbage

1 hour ago, MarkhantonioYeatts said:

ZAO - Live From The Church

 

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.

2 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

I assume none of y'all enjoy stouts, porters, pale ales, dark ales, IPAs, DIPAs, ESBs, Kolschs, dubbels, trippels, quads, saisons, wheat beers, barley wines...

For that matter, considering the majority of beers out there have some degree of citrus or dark fruit flavor to them, what the hell kind of beer do you "real beer doesn't have any fruit flavor in it" guys actually drink?

 

Obscurial - Heretic

Preview tracks for the new Obscurial album due out next week

https://obscurialmusic.bandcamp.com/album/heretic?from=fandiscflw

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.

20 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Holy shit, did Dave die or something?

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.

4 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

https://necrot.bandcamp.com/album/lifeless-birth?from=discover_page

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..."

7 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Meat Spreader - Mental Disease Transmitted By Radioactive Fear, Polish goregrind

 

I really don't like braunschweiger, but this stuff is pretty good.

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Cool haircut though, wish I could pull that one off, but I think I'd probably get funny looks and snickers out at the supermarket. I remember liking a Kroda album once, maybe I'll dial this new up. OK, I see now this is just a compilation of tracks from two splits from back in '05 & '06. But I'll still give it a shot, why not? I'm only listening to the new Coffins album again for the 479th time in the last month.

Kroda - The Legend and the Hammer... Ukraine 2023. Four minute ambient intro, never a good sign. The music sounds pretty good though now that it has finally started. Could live without the recorder tbh. But it's not a deal breaker. The fuzzy production makes up for it.

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.

5 hours ago, Yannis said:

Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery

 

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.

8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Mater Dolorosa. Latin noun phrase: sorrowful mother — used especially for depictions of the Virgin Mary grieving over her dead son. It's an iconic thing in predominantly Catholic countries like Spain where the band is from, there are hundreds of paintings and statues of the grieving Mother Mary, "Mater Dolorosa." Literally translated the word "dolorosa" means painful. 

From Wikipedia:

Our Lady of Sorrows (Latin: Beata Maria Virgo Perdolens), Our Lady of Dolours, the Sorrowful Mother or Mother of Sorrows (Latin: Mater Dolorosa), and Our Lady of Piety, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows or Our Lady of the Seven Dolours are names by which Mary, mother of Jesus, is referred to in relation to sorrows in life. As Mater Dolorosa, it is also a key subject for Marian art in the Catholic Church.

The Seven Sorrows of Mary are a popular religious theme and a Catholic devotion. In Christian imagery, the Virgin Mary is portrayed sorrowful and in tears, with one or seven swords piercing her heart, iconography based on the prophecy of Simeon in Luke 2:34–35. Pious practices in reference to this title include the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows, the Seven Principal Dolors of the Blessed Virgin, the Novena in Honor of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, and the Via Matris.

The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is liturgically celebrated every 15 September, while a feast, the Friday of Sorrows is observed in some Catholic countries.

 

 

 

 

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.

NP: Dolorosa - Summoning Ancient Bleakness

▶︎ Summoning Ancient Bleakness | Dolorosa | Canti Eretici (bandcamp.com)

Odd name, but memorable I suppose. Also interesting to take an older painting and make it black and white for the cover. Musically it's a quality effort without much I could really identify as a strength or a weakness.

NP: Ynkleudherhenavogyon - Honan Bleydh

▶︎ Honan Bleydh II | Ynkleudherhenavogyon | Urtod Void (bandcamp.com)

Well there's a keyboarding excercise for you. I actually like the brighter guitar tone layered over the typical fuzzy stuff. I'm not 100% on whether the drumming is programmed or not, but given the clarity of that top layer I'd say it's a possibility. Any case, arthritis inducing band name aside, I'm kind of enjoying this. Very straightforward as far as rhythm goes giving the whole thing a cool hammering metronomic sound that works well with the driving mid-neck guitar melodies.

10 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Alright now Cabbage, what kind of dumbass nonsensical drivel is this?? We all slow down as we age?? Older people complain about how some people talk too fast?? Fuck you bruv, you can slow down to a crawl when you hit 40 if you like, but this old geezer's only getting leaner and meaner and faster and faster and more brutal with each passing year. By the time I'm Doc's age I'll be moving at light speed bruv, Mach 874,030. 😎

So you went with the mount and not the rpg launcher? I totally get wanting your dex build to finally pay off, but for me the choice between an rpg launcher and something cool that's not an rpg launcher isn't a choice at all.

NP: Mudshow - Destiny

▶︎ Destiny | MUDSHOW | HPGD (bandcamp.com)

Sludge. Feels like sludge is either the most or the least interesting genre between albums. I'm only on the first proper track though, so we'll see.

3 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

There's preserving culture, and then there's whatever this is. It looks like misguided essentialist nationalism to me. "Western influences" are "polluting" their artistic traditions. If you want logic, I think you'll be disappointed, but here are relevant quotes from one of the articles I read: 

"Musical, vocal and choreographic" works will be limited to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) to "conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm," said Dadayev, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS.

"Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," Dadayev said, per a translation by The Guardian. "We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people. This includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life for Chechens."

 

This is sort of like when I occasionally hear (usually an older person) complain about how some pundit/entertainer/whathaveyou online "talks too fast", and that you don't even have time to laugh at the jokes, accept this is like you gave that older person an rpg launcher and had to find entertaining videos for them at an acceptable speed since old man Mcgarret's known to be a little trigger happy.

We all slow down some as we age. It's just the way these things work, and for the record, most of the complaints about younger generation's lack of attention span and constant need for meaningless stimuli and it's effect on developing brains is very valid. Why you would make an insane rule like that is one question. How in the hell you intend to enforce it, though, is quite another. Maybe if they had faster music they'd be able to deploy in a timelier fashion.

NP: Brutalism - Solace in Absurdity

▶︎ Solace in Absurdity | BRUTALISM | Comatose Music (bandcamp.com)

Decidedly average brutal death. In the right environment I could see them having a sort of home-town hero status. I will grant them that their drum sound is much more tolerable than most others in their niche. Good to catch a buzz during the opening act, if not really a headliner.

2 hours ago, JamesT said:

Sonata Arctica - "Winterheart's Guild"

My favorite Sonata album.  Can't wait to check out the brand new release!

EDIT: Probably my favorite as well. I feel so conflicted about their material from Unia onward. So much of it is interesting and really brings what feels like a more authentic "folk" essence from that part of the world as opposed to what we're used to getting with most folk-power bands. It also takes a lot longer to really get it's hooks into me, and what we lose from albums like this in their bouncier and unabashedly power-cornball era is too much not to miss. Their identity as a band has clearly changed with good and bad on both sides.

7 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Local storage and physical copies are where it's at. No way I can rely on constant Internet connectivity and the enduring commitment of music and book publishers to artistic freedom, not to mention the ability of libraries and schools to keep carrying "objectionable" materials. Did you see that Chechnya just banned music outside the range of 80-116 BPM? 

Good lord. Why? Just why? I understand they've a long history of religious/cultural warfare from both in and outside their borders (primarily because I find it funny when some idiot with too much money and not enough brains decides they're going to travel through the territory of the Sunni hill tribes trying to buy an ancient jeweled dagger ostensibly from the source, and comes up missing), you have to perform some major league mental acrobatics to put into any quantifiable terms how the bpm figures into anything that makes any sense at all. Do they have a national tempo I'm unaware of? I'd love to hear the logic behind this. 

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

If you're in a position to really appreciate all the detail and spatial definition in the mix, it hits hard. The riffs aren't telling the story, it's all about interlocking rhythms and textures. Certainly my favorite of theirs, not something I need to listen to a lot, but it's an experience when I do put it on. Most stuff I listen to for detail I prefer on headphones, but this one is speakers all the way.

 Oh man. See that gets me excited to listen to it properly. I'm not in a position where I can listen to anything with speakers, and my headphones are... reasonable. That's usually the thing that gets the first cut when it comes to non-essential expenditures, as I just don't find myself listening to lossless or non-computer standard compressed music as often as I should. Gotta make due. It's a shame since I own so much physical media. That's more out of a paranoia that something I like might end up getting sanitized in the not too distant future. Hear me out okay. I know it's paranoid, and it has nothing to do with a political position, but if you'd have told my younger self that they'd be altering reprints of Roald Dahl and James Bond novels from their originally published text I'd have called you a liar. It's about preservation above posturing.

6 hours ago, MacabreEternal said:

Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury (2013)

 

Man, people were all over this album when it came out; I mean really hyping this thing to the moon and back. I went through the whole thing once and came away enjoying it, but it didn't level me the way it had so many others. Might give it a second chance here soon.

11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Who said this was black metal? This is death metal. No mention anywhere on the Youtube vid about any black metal. 

 

SRUIN227

Refracture, the process of light deviating as passed through a medium. A similar concept explored by US necromorphed death metal disfiguration Aberration (formed by members of Void Rot, Suffering Hour and Nothingness among others), who finally present their long awaited debut offering "Refracture", a mind-bending, obliterating displacement of mutated dark death metal tonnage set to permanently reshape the lineaments of experimental and underground USDM. But there is no light contemplated in Aberration's contorted audial design, only darkness, and specifically, rather than light, the self, consciousness is passed through a perceptive medium of surrealism, and is refractured into "other" self, the core concept of all abominations. Bands like Antediluvian, Portal, Hissing and Altarage are no new comers to the art of death metal defilement through the ritual of perceptive and deceptive psychic mind wars, but what Aberration have accomplished with "Refracture" defies definitions and ads an ulterior progression to the end of death metal and of music as we know it. With dissonance used as a weapon and compositional surrealism metastasized into a ravenous dissociative medium, "Refracture" tunnels through the listeners brain like a psyche-boring destructive mass, devouring conscience and ravaging synapses through the sheer force of musical absurdity. An anti-reality is achieved through its sideways-moving sprawl and its labyrinthine, shapeshifting pace, with the listener's senses and mind used as helpless hosts in which a mutant parasitism is unleashed into a form of absurd, demented and frenzied perceptive devourment.

Oh, I found it on a site that claims to only deal in black metal specifically. Can't really blame 'em for letting a few dubious submissions slip through sometimes. Seems like it's just one or two dudes really running the thing, and they're trying to do some pretty comprehensive coverage. Not really advisable for a small or non-existent staff, but I always admire the spirit of endeavors like that and I've managed to pull a few things from there that I wouldn't otherwise have been aware of.

That is indeed a hell of a blurb. I think maybe we need a more metal term for lily gilding in this manner: Lamb-gutting? Liver-grating? Limb-graveling? Any suggestions?  

20 minutes ago, Arioch said:

Attic - Return of the Witchfinder (2024)

Heavy metal with a pinch of black and King Diamond vocals. The album's intro, even though it's based on music from The Witcher 3, is sumptuously macabre.

 

I'm not one to deny Mr. Diamond's titanic influence. His solo stuff and Merciful Fate are both deserving of their cornerstone status in the genre. I always had a hard time with where exactly his range switches up to falsetto. It's a neat hat trick to be sure, and a staple of this style, but it often sounds to me like it's jumping into and out of falsetto mid-melody, rather than accenting the big end notes. Still cool, but it's probably why I sometimes prefer the admittedly much less showman-like style of Witchfinder General or Pagan Altar.  

NP: Abberation - Refracture

▶︎ Refracture | Aberration (bandcamp.com)

Don't know how this gets in under black metal. I gets they have to categorize it somewhere. This is right off the Impetuous Ritual branch. The opening track, at least, is about how I like to take this stuff: a trudge through several varieties of foul, noisy, clattering, but structured metal. I'll take it.

Μνήμα - Καταραμένα Λείψανα

▶︎ Μνήμα - Καταραμένα Λείψανα | His Wounds (bandcamp.com)

There's something weird going on with the guitar tone here. We're all familiar with the sound of demos or albums where, either due to lower quality equipment or reverence for the old guard sometimes guitars will fuzz out at the top of the recordings ability to capture sound. The guitars on this are doing that in far too consistent of a rhythm for it to be just a quirk of the low budget recording. It almost sounds like it's the bass at the bottom end that clocks the mic on every note it plays beneath the guitars. I don't know what could be kicking the guitar over the top of it's necessary use, though. Kind of odd. Any case this stuff is about as raw and DIY as it gets in this day and age, and I find myself in that very specific headspace it takes to really enjoy it more frequently as of late, so good on them. Vocals occasionally get somewhat comical in parts though. Not a deal breaker, but definitely a drawback.