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khaos

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Satanism - Black Invocation of the Infernal Spirit EP, sick black/death from Detroit Michigan. Even at just 13:30 this motherfucker will likely deserve a place on my list. This is exactly the kind of shit I scour the interwebs for.

 

Satanism - Whore of Death EP, shit he has two 2021 EP releases, May & October. This one's only 11 minutes, I might just combine them and put them on my list as one.

 

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2 hours ago, True Belief said:

Stormkeep - Tales of Othertime.

One of the Black Metal albums of the Year. Superb.

I do love melodic black metal and I think musically/instrumentally this is mostly quite good, maybe even good enough for me to overlook some of the symphonic flourishes. But fuck me those Galder-esque cleans reminicient of his time in Dimmu Borgir are hard to take. But that's me.

 

NP: Liktjern - I Ruiner, Norway

 

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40 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Poor choice of band name, eh? Sounds like they've lost their erections and can't get 'em back.

 

NP: Altar of Gore - Obscure & Obscene God's

 

Good band though, ED notwithstanding. 

____

At The Gates - The Nightmare Of Being   ...ok, gosh, I actually like this. I was all set to be disappointed by another round of placeholder riffs in boilerplate songwriting, and here they've got songs that actually go someplace. 

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lingua Ignota/Sinner Get Ready-This is going to be a review of sorts...a black mass Penacostal sermon without any actual black metal....enter with caution.

Noticed this on The General's post of Decibel's best metal albums of 21. 14/40-in their top 20 which is interesting, so gave it another listen and decided to grab it. Interesting as there is no relationship between this album and metal Profound Lore label or no , which of course doesn't mean it's not a good album, it's simply not a metal album. It's an experimental, warped AF album that is alternately beautiful, disturbing and at first or second or third listen (IMO) excruciating to get thu. I'll explain....

So, those not in the know, Lingua Ignota, otherwise known Kristin Hayter is a classically trained, experimental multi instrumentalist artist (born in '86)  that has sub genre affiliations with classical and extreme music (note: I said extreme music, not extreme metal-which is sort of a head scratcher of a genre tag and I'll address in a minute) and a talented and tormented artist  who I'm currently fascinated by. 

The University of Google informs me that she played in metal garage bands in high school who later adopted the name, Lingua Ignota. She grew up Catholic, studied at Brown University and studied classical voice and piano. She claimed to who been an atheist at one time in high school, but then became obsessed it seems with Catholic iconography and spiritual possession-the notion of God or sprits speaking through your body or some such nonsense. 

Linguna Ignota came to my attention on her last remarkable album, Caligula as it had extreme metal influences- mostly vocally-but also in it's arrangements and builds up recalling Swans and brings in band members from metal/noise outfits The Body and Full of Hell and incorporated electronic elements and distortion, but essentially created with non metal instruments. There is also a strong classical music presence...no actual rock or metal however....experimental-yeah, for sure. 

All of this has me thinking of my recent post metal posts. (White-goat-general-noise-I will get back to you shortly in another post re: post metal) but, ya, thinking about what exactly is the nature of post rock, post metal, post black, black gaze and all the rest of such generally derided genres and further has me thinking of an early definition of post rock. (Linguna Ignota, BTW, is not post rock at all).

But, anyway, the definition paraphrased is that post rock uses rock instruments for non rock purposes which doesn't serve as a very useful definition for post metal (which, to me seem to be more about juxtaposing wandering melodic atmospheres with bursts of hardcore/sludge) ....but has me musing...

How about using non-metal instruments for for metal purposes? Does extreme music exist outside of metal or is the word "extreme"  proprietary of metal? Yes, indeed, I love rhetorical questions-haha.

Lingua Ignota's last album, Caligula fits the above category-certainly black metal or extreme music influences in a clearly non-metal album about the aftermath of an intimate sexually abusive traumatic relationship with revenge survivor anthems....like a mythical seething  Greek Goddess bent on destruction.  Haytner, apparently has survived multiple abusive/traumatic relationships and writes about themes of religious fanaticism/devotion and misogamy. So the girl might be pretty F'd U but makes some fascinating music....to me.  

Her new album is something else all together. Totally threw me for a loop. She goes to Pennsylvania and Pentecostal evangelisms-you know, those freaks who speak in tongues with exorcisms with snakes, etc.

If you've been reading, you may recall I mentioned her obsession with religious possession....the album is presented with a series of layered choral vocals, minimal harsh vocalizing, voice overs from televangelists and lots of Appalachian devotional music with Appalachian folk instruments. If that sounds like a stretch for the average metalhead, I completely agree....and yet it made Decibel's list and I like it. btw, Profound Lore picked her last album, Caligula but . I literally couldn't get through Sinner when i first heard it. 

So, I read a few reviews for some context and now "get it" and it makes sense.

Haytner, immersed herself in this backwards assed culture and taught herself how to play banjo and cello.   It's a macabre look at the ecstatic religious obsession of these groups that presents grotesque imagery imagery and an indictment of Evangelism but with an apparent love of their music.  What's difficult at first listen is that the album is rooted in Appalachian music with Haytner alternating beautiful and haunting music that seems to honor these traditions like a dark, brooding angel evangelizing (in mockery one supposes) about a cruel, angry God who punishes the faithful more disturbing than any DSO or Marduk album - in their superimposing of Satanic lyrics over biblical rantings.       

I'll just come full circle-this is not a metal album...more and more of these albums creep into metal lists. 

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Mercyful Fate "Don't Break the Oath"

I catch a lot of shit from my buddy for liking Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and I sorta get it, because the way that he sings in falsetto could be construed by most people as being a little gay, but you have to remember that Mercyful Fate/King's stage presence did a lot to inspire black metal, as did their lyrical subject matter. This is the reason why they're usually classified as at least being partially relevant to black metal despite really just being a classic heavy metal band from the infancy of metal's mainstreaming in the 80s.

I'll always like the two original Mercyful Fate studio albums. They really were black metal in lyrical tone, if not in sound, as black metal was just starting to be defined around that time. When I still wasted my time on Reddit, I would argue this sentiment a lot on there against new jack kids who think that they know everything because they listened to bands from the 2010s. Even George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher said that "Don't Break the Oath" is one of, if not his true favorite metal album of all time.

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1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

You know, I hadn't thought of that...

 

Hornwood Fell - Keres

 

In all seriousness though Doc the new HF is maybe not as impenetrable as your run of the mill dissonant black metal album (I suppose DSO are the flag bearers of that movement now) but I still found Keres to be a difficult and challenging listen. The heavy dissonance is not static, it comes and goes. First track I was just trying to get my bearings. I was kinda getting into the rythmic latter part of the 8 minute 2nd track but then that faded out and then they hit me with the dense and swirling 3rd track and nearly lost me. The little interlude in the middle which let me catch my breath actually saved me. 4th track started out a little rough but then again toward the end of the track I was starting to dig something they had going on and then of course it abruptly ended. Now I'm onto the 5th and final track which is as I suspected more of the same, which is to say a bit of a clusterfuck. Having trouble distinguishing one track from the next tbh but of course this is just a first impression. Probably a last impression as well. Everytime they shift into something I find interesting and accessible to focus on they yank it away from me and go all super disso. There's enough here that even I can see why someone like you might enjoy this Doc, (or Sweet FA) but at the end of the proverbial day they're just not musical enough for me. I'll stick to my low-brow knuckle-dragging shit that I can tap my foot to. But it was an interesting 44 minutes, I'm not at all sorry that I went for the ride.

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