What Are You Listening To?

[Arioch]

Coroner - R.I.P. (1987)

 

[Miss_Teala]

26 minutes ago, JamesT said:

Fantastic choice!  Stratovarius is always a good call.  "Forever Free" is my favorite song from them overall, but they have so many great tracks.  

Oh yeah, they have a lot of great songs;
"Black Diamond" and "Eagleheart" are great too!
It's hard to resist headbanging to their songs in general.

[markm]

Obituary/Dying of Everything (23)

[Arioch]

Recipients of Death - Recipients of Death (1988)

 

[JonoBlade]

3 hours ago, markm said:

NP Ahab/The Coral Tombs (2023)-funeral doom tag, but sounding more death/doom....what's this? I'm hearing a lot of melodic, clean singing...first time with these guys, really. It's doom. 

Damn I actually bought this but totally forgot about it. 

Probably no time to load it up after Trouble - The Skull before I knock off for the week, but will try and remember.

I really liked some of the earlier Ahab stuff, but the 2023 one can't have blown me away otherwise I would come back to it.

Hmm, my AOTY list is going to look pretty flimsy as usual. I listen to a lot of new stuff but quite often it is not actually from the current year.

[markm]

Lo!/The Gleaners (2023)-sludge, post metal, etc. 

[markm]

I've been paying attention to Andy Synn 's (NCS) end of year lists for a few years. Tastes notwithstanding, he publishes a wide range of metal from different genres and it often gives me a broad brush of the year's metal and gives me albums to check out. The above Lo! was from his critical 10 NP-Witch Ripper-The Flight After the Fall. Interesting stoner/sludge-ish album that's easy on the ears. 

[FatherAlabaster]

15 hours ago, markm said:

First of all, thank you for inspiring me to give it a good listen-the it being BAN's masterful album -Disharmonium - Nahab, which I set about to digging into today and let just say-I LOVE THIS FUCKING ALBUM. Phew, glad I got that off my chest. 

So, I managed to avoid the hipster, I mean the  hamster wheel for 11 out of the last 12 months and I am officially back to the MarkM metal immersion program looking for the best metals available over the past year. 

One of my missions is to find the indispensable death metal albums of the year. I have determined that proggy or not, I think the new virtuosic and inventive and infectious Horrendous and the very cavernous  Phobocosm album that is indeed plodding, but I believe also has rewards waiting for me to mine will surely make Mark's 23 deathy list.  Today I also spent time with Outer Heaven and I have decided that this will also help round out the slightly more technical but brutal uber DM heavy lifters for me. 

On the noise front, Khanate whom I may revisit at some point is a no as I said yesterday, but the rather hyped Body Void/Atrocity Machine gets a yeah baby from me for horrific, torrential nihilistic pain. The first music association I had was sludge like Indian/From All Purity and Primitive Man. Shoot, maybe something like Extreme Noise Terror. This is music to slit your throat to. It's noise doom with piercing atmosphere that also make me think of the super heavy post metal band LLNN. Anyway, I'm not sure I really need this in my life, but I get why it's getting plugged in a lot of lists right now. The screamer in this band is really, really suffering unfathomable pain or he deserves an Oscar nomination. 

But back to Disharmonium - Nahab, I didn't love Hallucinogen. I mean, it wasn't a bad album per se and I might have been enthusiastic had it  been recorded by by mere mortals, but for BAN it was too melodic and approachable somehow, at least for these ears. Really, is there a shortage of star struck atmoblack bands out there?!

Conversely, while I learned to love Disharmonium part 1, it was so swampy, and thick and dense , it made me work harder than usual to penetrate the BAN goo, and hey, that could be a good thing.

All that said, Disharmonium - Nahab  Agonal Hymns, one listen in, is probably my favorite -time will tell- since the 777 trilogy back in 2011-12. I'm hearing reverberations from their early Works which Transform God industrial era with some very inventive shit going on. After the first track which sounded much like part 1, I was impressed with the range of inventive hellscapes. In fact, I'm reminded of my wife telling me when I first bought TWwTG, that I was listening to pyscho serial killer music which, you must admit, when done inventively is sort of an amazing compliment.

F.A., hang on for a minute. The noises coming from my basement or so annoying. SHUT UP DOWN THERE! I can't seem to find my Hannibal Lecter mask at the moment, and the blood is ridiculous to clean properly. Torture really isn't all that it's cracked up to be. 

OK, back....just had to take care of something. Anyway, doing a little research, I found Stereogum has a list of obscure "best metal of of the year" that I'm checking out, much of it experimental, challenging, or tangentially metal. I only recognize two names-one being Jute Gyte. And you'll never guess their album pick for #1.....apparently you have impeccable taste....

https://www.stereogum.com/2245459/the-10-best-metal-albums-of-2023/columns/the-black-market/  

I really enjoy this post. Cheers.

I'm happy to hear the vocals more prominent on a BAN album again. I would probably feel more connected to the last couple if the vocals were more prominent. And I love the melodies scattered throughout. 

Also happy to see this list from Stereogum, thanks. I didn't know Anachronism had a new one out. I'm listening now and it kicks ass. I really liked "Orogeny" but this one is grabbing me more off the bat. You might dig them too, if you're looking for DM that isn't plodding. Three others I recognize and descriptions that have me interested in some others. I've been slowly getting back into tolerating new music over the past several months. I guess the whirlwind of moving over the summer threw me for a loop. It's been weird to be this disengaged from listening to stuff for this long. Glad I'm coming back around. It helps having better stuff to listen to.

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab  ...phenom. Goatmaster is missing out. That's ok though.

Jute Gyte - Unus Mundus Patet   ...some truly gripping stuff and some that I need to come back to. 

Khanate - To Be Cruel  ...honestly I was hoping for something more extreme than this. The music is, dare I say, kinda boring. Not quite a soundscape, not hearing riffs either. Vocals hit me as a little contrived. Give me real riffs and Edgy 59 on vocals. 

Anachronism - Meanders  ...man this is good. 

[Thatguy]

26 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Anachronism - Meanders  ...man this is good

Listworthy

 

4 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Hmm, my AOTY list is going to look pretty flimsy as usual. I listen to a lot of new stuff but quite often it is not actually from the current year.

Me too. I like finding good stuff that is not the latest shiny toy.

 

28 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

the music is, dare I say, kinda boring. Not quite a soundscape, not hearing riffs either

It didn't engage me at all.

[FatherAlabaster]

8 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

It didn't engage me at all.

And how could it have... there's nothing much there. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

26 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I'm happy to hear the vocals more prominent on a BAN album again. I would probably feel more connected to the last couple if the vocals were more prominent. And I love the melodies scattered throughout. 

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab  ...phenom. Goatmaster is missing out. That's ok though.

Jute Gyte - Unus Mundus Patet   ...some truly gripping stuff and some that I need to come back to. 

How can one be "missing out" on something they know they don't like? I listened to about half of the disharmonic album in question and it wasn't accessible or straightforward enough for me. Very much like Jute Gyte, which I don't even have to sample to know it's rubbish (to me). I'm aware that to a bunch of you guys "straightforward" is generally seen as a negative, but for me it's a huge positive. I did truly fall in love with Hallucinogen, by far my favorite of their albums. The retro 80's style leadwork and the buried vox were perfect for me. They have several other records I'll play from time to time, but the new one didn't do anything at all for me, I couldn't even get through it. With a name like Disharmonium I wasn't expectig much anyway. I won't disparage it or anything because you guys obviously like it a lot, but I can assure you I'm certainly not "missing out" on anything. "Missing out" would be like if Archgoat dropped a new full length and I somehow missed hearing about it.

 

NP:  Baphomet's Blood - In Satan We Trust, 2016, the Italian Motörhead.

 

Motörhead - 1916, 1991, the English Motörhead.

 

[FatherAlabaster]

14 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

How can one be "missing out" on something they know they don't like? I listened to about half of the disharmonic album in question and it wasn't accessible or straightforward enough for me. Very much like Jute Gyte, which I don't even have to sample to know it's rubbish (to me). I'm aware that to a bunch of you guys "straightforward" is generally seen as a negative, but for me it's a huge positive. I did truly fall in love with Hallucinogen, by far my favorite of their albums. The retro 80's style leadwork and the buried vox were perfect for me. They have several other records I'll play from time to time, but the new one didn't do anything at all for me, I couldn't even get through it. With a name like Disharmonium I wasn't expectig much anyway. I won't disparage it or anything because you guys obviously like it a lot, but I can assure you I'm certainly not "missing out" on anything. "Missing out" would be like if Archgoat dropped a new full length and I somehow missed hearing about it.

"Missing out" because I think there's a lot in there you'd actually like. More so than the last one. But I'm also saying it to needle you (in good fun) for your intransigent tastelessness, ya buffoon.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

"Missing out" because I think there's a lot in there you'd actually like. More so than the last one. But I'm also saying it to needle you (in good fun) for your intransigent tastelessness, ya buffoon.

Needle away my friend, I rather enjoy it. It's when I needle people and they don't needle back when I wonder what their problem is. I did try listening to the album when you mentioned how much you liked it some weeks back, but I found it was a load of angular, atonal, inaccessible noise so I had no choice but to abort. Never the less I'm sure I'll take another whack at Disharmonium one of these days. But not right now, it's list season and I should probably get started relistening to all the shit I did like this year (and there's an absolute shit ton of it this year).

 

[SurgicalBrute]

5 hours ago, markm said:

I've been paying attention to Andy Synn 's (NCS) end of year lists for a few years. Tastes notwithstanding, he publishes a wide range of metal from different genres and it often gives me a broad brush of the year's metal and gives me albums to check out. The above Lo! was from his critical 10 NP-Witch Ripper-The Flight After the Fall. Interesting stoner/sludge-ish album that's easy on the ears. 

Unfortunately, with respect to Andy, the fact that he covers a lot of stuff doesn't really change the fact that his lists tend to be somewhat...predictable.

 

NP: Sorcerer - Reign of the Reaper (Heavy/Epic Doom)

https://sorcererdoom.bandcamp.com/album/reign-of-the-reaper

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Old - Dawn of Darkness, Germany. Top 10 for sure.

 

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Top 10 for sure.

You'll have forgotten by the time you do your lists in February.

[markm]

1 hour ago, SurgicalBrute said:

Unfortunately, with respect to Andy, the fact that he covers a lot of stuff doesn't really change the fact that his lists tend to be somewhat...predictable.

 

NP: Sorcerer - Reign of the Reaper (Heavy/Epic Doom)

https://sorcererdoom.bandcamp.com/album/reign-of-the-reaper

I'll be looking forward to your list as you always uncover some true underground gems for me.

Suffocation/Hymns from the Aprocrypha (23)- pretty darn solid

[thrashinbiker]

21 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I remember sitting in my two-tone silver on charcoal Pontiac Grand Prix in the freezing cold in the parking lot of a night club called Cheers. We were out there smoking a bowl in between sets of whatever cover band was playing that night while listening to Kill 'Em All out of a boom box in my lap because my car stereo had taken a dump. This would have been sometime during the winter of '83/'84. That's one of my Metallica moments. I can't listen to anything from Kill 'Em All without being right back in that freezing cold car in my mind. I'm sure the car would have warmed up after a few minutes but by the time the heat would have been really cranking we had to get back inside to catch the next set.

My other indelible memory of Metallica was from 1985. My buddy (yup, same dude from the freezing cold parking lot 18 months earlier) met these two Irish nannies, Lucia and Imelda, while waiting for a train at the train station. They had come over to Long Island from Waterford, and were staying with some upper middle class Irish/American families taking care of their kids Mon - Fri, and then on the weekends they had off and would get together looking to party. There were like 5 of them, they all knew each other from Waterford, but we mainly hung out with those first two we'd met. One Friday night we had picked 3 of them up at the train station. (that was the meet-up spot, I have to assume because they didn't want the nice well-off families they were staying with to see the two scruffy long-haired dudes they were keeping company with) I remember driving us all down the avenue, and me being the flaming idiot (that's pronounced ee-jit in Irish apparently) that I am, thought I'd impress the girls by playing my cassette of Ride the Lightning as loud as it would fucking go, windows wide open. In my memory it was sort of like that scene from Wayne's World where they're all headbanging in the car, except in our case we were headbanging to For Whom the Bell Tolls, and not Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't think the girls in the back were enjoying it as much as we dudes were though, because Lucia (pronounced Loo-chee) who was sitting next to me, calmly reached over popped out my cassette and tossed it right out the window. 

Absolutely great story @GoatmasterGeneral and apologies for the delay in replying - I wanted to ensure I had a few minutes to consider and respond. 

I had to Google a Pontiac Grand Prix as I have never seen one in the flesh, as it were.  The '66 and '77 models look awesome, though I didn't sit there and search through them all. 

If you read my entry in the "music that shivers me timbers" thread, you will know that my uncle introduced me to metal and as we grew to be friends, I was allowed use of his Pontiac Trans Am (his pride and joy and it was on land he rented, not public roads) and used to flay those fucking tyres to metal, which was class.  Being a Brit, my knowledge of Pontiacs is largely limited to the Trans Am (my uncle and, of course, Smokey and the Bandit) and the Firebird (Knight Rider).  Also, as you know, I am a biker rather than a car enthusiast, so I naturally don't really look at cars, however, due to the link to my uncle, and also your story, I will have to have a read into Pontiac's history.  

I will try to be as short as possible - the rest of your story is fucking quality.  Did you ever keep in touch with the girls or was it one of those fleeting things that just dies off?  It's funny how us longhairs, past and present, are seen as the bad ones, yet we are the best fucking dudes on earth for sure.  Either way, it sounds like a great time you had, man.

Finally, I am interested, as a lowlife Brit, what was it like being a metalhead in (I think?) New York in the eighties?  Was there any kind of acceptance at all?  I have read NY is a pretty chilled out/permissive state, however I have never been there (though I have been to the US several times) so I just wondered.  I know you said the girls were seemingly wanting to not be seen by their employers with you, but that's the middle class for you.  I am more interested in day-to-day stories.

It's funny, as though I have lived in other parts of the UK as an older dude, I am back here where I grew up, and even some 7-8 years later than your story, me being a metalhead and having long hair was certainly the exception to the rule and, while I wasn't exactly popular anyway, parents used to drag (yes, DRAG) their children away from me as if I were some horrendous influence on their innocence, haha.  I didn't give a shit then and less so now.  

Finally, yes, it is eejit if you are Irish.  The names you have to contend with are pretty simple, fortunately.  Try Saorise, Tadhg, Nimah, Siobahn and Aoife  

[RelentlessOblivion]

Cryptic Slaughter - Convicted

[JamesT]

13 hours ago, Miss_Teala said:

Oh yeah, they have a lot of great songs;
"Black Diamond" and "Eagleheart" are great too!
It's hard to resist headbanging to their songs in general.

Ah yes, how could I forget "Eagleheart"??  Thank you for the reminder!  Such a great band.

[FatherAlabaster]

Katatonia - Dead End Kings

Katatonia - The Fall Of Hearts

Katatonia - Night Is The New Day

 

[markm]

Ulthar/Anthronomicon and Helionomicon (2023)-Holy shit, talk about sensory overload. Impressed. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

You'll have forgotten by the time you do your lists in February.

I've been making a conscious effort to listen to stuff from earlier in the year for a few weeks now, but I start working on my list in earnest at Christmastime. It just takes me til February to post the damn thing because I've got over 100 albums on my 'short list' to listen to and attempt to rank. I'll cut off about 30 of them relatively quickly, but then I'll still have 75 I just can't part with. I can't just do a top 10 pseudo-black post-metal albums and call it a day like you do, because I find it too difficult to choose between all these killer albums. My black metal list alone has 64 entries (so far) which is obviously a few too many for a best of, but it pains me to leave off so many really good ones.

 

1 hour ago, thrashinbiker said:

Absolutely great story @GoatmasterGeneral and apologies for the delay in replying - I wanted to ensure I had a few minutes to consider and respond. 

I had to Google a Pontiac Grand Prix as I have never seen one in the flesh, as it were.  The '66 and '77 models look awesome, though I didn't sit there and search through them all. 

If you read my entry in the "music that shivers me timbers" thread, you will know that my uncle introduced me to metal and as we grew to be friends, I was allowed use of his Pontiac Trans Am (his pride and joy and it was on land he rented, not public roads) and used to flay those fucking tyres to metal, which was class.  Being a Brit, my knowledge of Pontiacs is largely limited to the Trans Am (my uncle and, of course, Smokey and the Bandit) and the Firebird (Knight Rider).  Also, as you know, I am a biker rather than a car enthusiast, so I naturally don't really look at cars, however, due to the link to my uncle, and also your story, I will have to have a read into Pontiac's history.  

I will try to be as short as possible - the rest of your story is fucking quality.  Did you ever keep in touch with the girls or was it one of those fleeting things that just dies off?  It's funny how us longhairs, past and present, are seen as the bad ones, yet we are the best fucking dudes on earth for sure.  Either way, it sounds like a great time you had, man.

Finally, I am interested, as a lowlife Brit, what was it like being a metalhead in (I think?) New York in the eighties?  Was there any kind of acceptance at all?  I have read NY is a pretty chilled out/permissive state, however I have never been there (though I have been to the US several times) so I just wondered.  I know you said the girls were seemingly wanting to not be seen by their employers with you, but that's the middle class for you.  I am more interested in day-to-day stories.

It's funny, as though I have lived in other parts of the UK as an older dude, I am back here where I grew up, and even some 7-8 years later than your story, me being a metalhead and having long hair was certainly the exception to the rule and, while I wasn't exactly popular anyway, parents used to drag (yes, DRAG) their children away from me as if I were some horrendous influence on their innocence, haha.  I didn't give a shit then and less so now.  

Finally, yes, it is eejit if you are Irish.  The names you have to contend with are pretty simple, fortunately.  Try Saorise, Tadhg, Nimah, Siobahn and Aoife  

 

New York state is a tale of two cities. Majority of the state is a rural, pastoral wasteland of mountains, forests, lakes and cows. The southernmost part of the state has New York City and its 8 million people obviously, and then right next to it is Long Island which is the burbs where the people who work in the city come home to eat, fuck, bathe and sleep. I'm from the Burbs. About 30 miles out, (50 km's) just about a quarter of the way out to the end, roughly an hour from the city by car at night, 2 hours plus in the daytime, 3 hours plus in bad weather. New York and Long Island each had their own thriving club scenes in the 80's, multiple options of bands to go see pretty much every single night. Although out on the Island we had more cover bands making the rounds than all original acts. Shamefully, Twisted Sister was the biggest name to come out of the 80's Long Island metal club scene. (I know some people actually like TS but I'm not one of them) The place to go for big name metal shows back then was a club called L'amour "the rock capitol of Brooklyn" in Bensonhurst. But the clubs in the city proper (Manhattan) were a cornucopia of all kinds of wacky, weird and wild shit. From rock to new wave to country to punk to metal to performance art. You name it, they had it. I imagine it was probably something like London, we used to ride the train into the city just to walk around and look at the freaks. On the weekends we'd often hit the CBGB matinees downtown, then walk around the city afterwards seeing what kind of mischief we could get into.

 

 

Carnivore live at L'Amour Sep 15 1985 Peter Steele

 

So out in the suburbs, aka normieville, yeah the long hair, leather jackets, weed smoking and thrash metal was seen as subversive counter culture by most of the middle class old folks, who were our parents. But yet there was no shortage of long-haired leather jacketed headbanger metalhead youths at all the shows, they used to pack us in like sardines, you could hardly breathe down front at most shows. But just by virtue of having so many people all concentrated in one place, (20 milion people live within 50 miles (80 km) of NYC) there were a lot of different music scenes all running concurrently in the 80's besides just the metal and punk scenes I remember being a part of. In the city at night we didn't feel like outcasts with our long hair and leather jackets because the Village was literally chocka with all manner of freaks and weirdos. But back home out in the burbs in our regular daily lives we had to contend with "why don't you cut your hair?" and "how can you listen to that trash metal crap?"

 

OVERKILL "WRECKING CREW" LIVE @ L'AMOUR BROOKLYN, NY 3.7.87. This was 18 months before I got married so I'm sure I was there that night in March with my bullet belt on. 

 

My '81 Grand Prix looked like this right down to the stupid plastic spoke hubcaps. Got it used from the dealer 2 years old wiff 40k miles on it back in the days when cars were cheap and lots of people used to trade them in for a new model every two or three years. And no, we lost touch with those Irish girls many years ago, their visas eventually ran out and they returned to Ireland to be grown-ups and start families I imagine. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Hacavitz - Jun K'aal Xiutin (Comp) Mexico

 

Splintering Lightning Spear - Ice Shatters as Thunderbolts Break the Night Sky, rbm Canadia

 

[Thatguy]

7 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I can't just do a top 10 pseudo-black post-metal albums and call it a day like you do, because I find it too difficult to choose between all these killer albums.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think deeper, not longer.😜