What Are You Listening To?

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Corrosion of Conformity - On the Hunt 

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

54 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Corrosion of Conformity - On the Hunt 

 

....excellent and faithful cover.....but I gotta stay with the original....

 

RAHVN - Devouring The Trail

....this is not very much like LYNYRD SKYNYRD.....

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

SUPERSUCKERS - Live

....fuck yeah......

[GoatmasterGeneral]

14 minutes ago, MarkhantonioYeatts said:

....excellent and faithful cover.....but I gotta stay with the original....

 

RAHVN - Devouring The Trail

....this is not very much like LYNYRD SKYNYRD.....

I'll agree the original won't ever be outdone. But I do like that COC cover all the same.

 

LLYR (Canada) - Through Blood and Fire Where Chaos Reigns

 

Avskräde (Sweden) - Undergång

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

THE CRAMPS - Off The Bone

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

....WhiteNoise....you should enjoy this version.....

 

DIXIE WITCH - On The Hunt

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Inquisition - Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan

[markm]

On 12/30/2023 at 10:50 AM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I happen to know Cody, the guitar player who writes all their songs. He's a Long Island boy like me, although a Gen-X'er. So I listened to his new album while giving him and some of our other friends my thoughts via group text last night. 

This album is much catchier than the last one. By far the best thing they've done to date. Did not take me multiple spins to get into like the last one 4DF. This one was immediately compelling. It's not an easy feat to be "prog" and write interesting unpredictable songs that I find appealing and can follow along with. But they've pulled it off here. He has a much better guitar tone on this one too which is a big thing for me. They recorded this "live" in studio and then added an extra guitar track later, and there's also a third guitar track in spots where there are leads. There's also a much appreciated audible bass that doesn't generally mirror the guitar riffs which adds quite a bit I think.

This isn't my main niche sub-genre of death metal, the prog-brutal space, but with this album I think they've totally transcended their niche. The new vocalist Will Smith (no relation) who was pretty one dimensional with his super low gutteral burps and grunts and was something I basically just sort of tolerated on the last album, has now made a conscious effort to expand his repertoire of sounds. He's added shrieks and yells and stuff now too. This opens up their whole sound and now you can't even really pigeonhole them in the "slam" space anymore, they are now simply death metal, or maybe even progressive death metal.

Bottom line this is a really good record, they're getting some press and recognition and accolades with this one finally which I think are well deserved. I dare say guys like you and FA and even Doc would really enjoy this album. And yet even a neanderthal like me can dig it too.

 

Cody of Afterbirth Interview Beaver Mosh

 

Thanks for that. I wanted to take some time to see some of the interview you posted-I just watched the first 30 minutes of the video. Cody seems like a down to earth, articulate guy, naught a broootal demon degenerate. Like, kind of a normal dude.

Anyways, cool that you have a relationship with Cody. Given your immutable tastes in all things filthy and corrosive, it demonstrates the strength of a personal connection. As the guy for whom anything after Leprosy in Death's discography is too proggy and technical, I can't image there would be any way this album with it's prog, and gasp post/ambient, gag/alternative influences would see any daylight in the GG rotation. It's an interesting listen and just might get a purchase from me even though this is far out of my usual metal habit. 

I'd been dipping my toes into this album prior to your post since Afterbirth have been just bathed in praise during list season and as you know, I like to check out anything from any style if I think it might be something new in heavy music I might be missing that might strike my muse, particularly at the end of the year when the dust starts to settle from endless releases. I'm sort of intrigued by this so called sub genre of brutal progressive/technical DM. My sense of "brutal DM" was absolutely NOT THIS. 

For any new browsers, the GG is a real person and someone who I'll always know by his former online doppelganger, Whitenoise  and further, with whom I date back in time with another forum at a site called Metal-fi. We both apparently started listening to extreme metal in our 40's. But while I was a causal fan back in the day, GG as he's affectionately known here, the quintessential New York metalhead lifer, was plugged into the underground since the dark mediaeval times of the mid 70's (that would be the 20th century, kids) or something, whereas I consider myself a music fan first and foremost, who happens to like rock, metal and some punk more than other forms of music but I don't adopt "metal head" as my tombstone title epitaph.

The GG and I got to meet IRL at mi casa and he was nice enough to introduce me to Maryland Death Fest before Covid and let me hang out with him and Surgical Brute and their extremo crew. I started listening to death/black in the aughts by way of the internet and usually opted for well known albums I'd see on blogs. So that was a lot of middle of the road DM and second wave Black like Kataklsym, Dark Tranquility, Gorgoroth, Satyricon, those early seminal Darkthrone albums, Immortal, Emperor and Opeth and began gravitated to the OSDM revival later on the late aughts/early 20-teens. GG also used to share these death and black lists which I used to go back in time and put together a DM classic library a few years ago. But, I'm really more of a voyeur than a hardcore enthusiast.   

My sense of technical brutal DM; my personal reference point coming into it in the aughts would include bands like Nile, early Cryptopsy, Suffocation, maybe Demigod era Behemoth. I'll occasionally check out newer tech death but typically the usual fare of Archspire, Artificial Brain and modern tech death is my least favorite DM genre. And, "The General" despises the genres about 100 times more than I do-LOL. Which brings me back to the post about Afterbirth and the word that comes to mind is-ironic. 

So, I've been listening to this Afterbirth and Wormhole and Afterbirth, in particular are definitely a different brand of  tech/prog DM. IDK, if it's the "brutal"  or the "slam" tagline (not gonna lie, I don't really have a handle on what Slam means haha), but it's not the sort of modern slick hyper produced sound I associate with techdeath. 

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

HOOKERS - Blasted From The Caskets Pt. 2

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Inquisition - Nefarious Dismal Orations

[JamesT]

Primal Fear - Self-titled debut

Primal Fear - "Unbreakable"

Ralf always delivers the goods with the vocals!

[SurgicalBrute]

2 hours ago, markm said:

(not gonna lie, I don't really have a handle on what Slam means haha

It's a specific kind of brutal death that, much like deathcore, is basically known for it's focus on breakdowns. The styles are actually pretty similar, but if you listen to them side by side, slam tends to sound more "bouncy" if that makes sense.

 

Hellcrash - Demonic Assassinatiön

...topnotch blackened thrash that's definitely in the running for one of the best of 2023

https://hellcrash.bandcamp.com/album/demonic-assassinati-n

2 hours ago, markm said:

Cody seems like a down to earth, articulate guy, naught a broootal demon degenerate. Like, kind of a normal dude

Honestly, he's one of the most even keel, zen-type dudes you'd ever meet..and his musical tastes go extremely wide...He's the type of dude who can find something to like in the weirdest releases

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

HOOKERS - It's Midnight...The Witching Hour

 

[markm]

Dying Fetus (first time Dying Fetus listener)/Make Them Beg for Death 2023(I've also never listened to single solitary Cannibal Corpse album). The term I'd use for this is-generic. 

Krallice/ Mass Cathexis 2 - The Kinetic Infinite (2023)-on F.A.'s reco-wow, this was really interesting-much more, uh, brutal than I was expecting. Damn you F.A., I don't need another '23 purchase but I'm digging on this. 

Convocation/No Dawn For The Caliginous Night (2023)-Funeral doom (ish)

Fires in the Distance/Air Not Meant for Us (2023)-Melodic Death Metal-ethereal doom inflected melodies with lush keys. 

Godthyrmm/Distortions (2023) Doom-With it's MDB pedigree, I was hoping to like this better than I did. It's a pass for me. Trad doom used to be one of my favorite genres, but so many of the newer trad doom bands like Pallbearer, Khemis etc. don't connect with me beyond a cursory listen.

Smoulder/Violent Creed of Vengeance (23)-One of the better power metal albums I've listened to recently, but doesn't hit hard enough, the vocals are too pretty. I want more rough in power metal.

Mutoid Man/Mutants (23)-Been meaning to check these guys out for a while. I don't always connect the dots with band members who play in multiple outfits, but sometimes you recognize a sound that's just a little too familiar. Stephen Brodsky plays in any number of experimental/alt outfits like Cave In and Old Man Gloom. His stamp on Heavy Pendulum (2022) is instantly recognizable in this album-rock, punk, metal, prog, what some would call metalcore I suppose. Heavy Pendulum had this 90's grunge influence I like. Whereas Mutoid is more cerebral, wacky, high anergy, catchy but ultimately annoying to this listener. There's a Voivod comparison to be made, but I like Voivod more. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

7 hours ago, MarkhantonioYeatts said:

THE CRAMPS - Off The Bone

I'm thinking we're likely the only two Cramps fans here. If ole Lux hadn't died they'd probably still be cranking out albums. Wish I would've caught them live back in the day, they must have played NY lots of times. 

 

The Cramps - Flamejob, 1994. Really not sure what my favorite Cramps record is, they don't really have any bad ones. This is the one I probably play the most. For a long time I just had the GMFBP comp, and my buddy had the STLTU debut album. I never really explored the rest of their catalog til I had internet years later in the 00's.

 

Peter Pan Speedrock - Rocketfuel, 1998

 

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - The Audacity of Hype, 2009

 

[markm]

NP: Hellcrash - Demonic Assassinatiön (from Surge's post above). Yup, this is pretty bad ass.

[Thatguy]

2 hours ago, markm said:

the GG is a real person

Oh no he's not. He is an entity conjured by our base desire for crappy sounding BM ugliness.

[markm]

Fires in the Distance/ Not Meant For Us (2023)-Did somebody say 90's alternative rock? OK maybe not, but throw in some grunge and sludge and imagine an album with hooky, memorable tracks....and yeah....this. You could do far worse for a hit of punchy 90's nostalgia. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, markm said:

Thanks for that. I wanted to take some time to see some of the interview you posted-I just watched the first 30 minutes of the video. Cody seems like a down to earth, articulate guy, naught a broootal demon degenerate. Like, kind of a normal dude.

Anyways, cool that you have a relationship with Cody. Given your immutable tastes in all things filthy and corrosive, it demonstrates the strength of a personal connection. As the guy for whom anything after Leprosy in Death's discography is too proggy and technical, I can't image there would be any way this album with it's prog, and gasp post/ambient, gag/alternative influences would see any daylight in the GG rotation. It's an interesting listen and just might get a purchase from me even though this is far out of my usual metal habit. 

I'd been dipping my toes into this album prior to your post since Afterbirth have been just bathed in praise during list season and as you know, I like to check out anything from any style if I think it might be something new in heavy music I might be missing that might strike my muse, particularly at the end of the year when the dust starts to settle from endless releases. I'm sort of intrigued by this so called sub genre of brutal progressive/technical DM. My sense of "brutal DM" was absolutely NOT THIS. 

For any new browsers, the GG is a real person and someone who I'll always know by his former online doppelganger, Whitenoise  and further, with whom I date back in time with another forum at a site called Metal-fi. We both apparently started listening to extreme metal in our 40's. But while I was a causal fan back in the day, GG as he's known here, the quintessential New York metalhead lifer, was plugged into the underground from since, the dark mediaeval times of the mid 70's or something, whereas I consider myself a music fan first and foremost, who happens to like rock and  metal some punk more than any other forms of music but I don't adopt "metal head" as my tombstone title epitaph.

The GG and I got to meet IRL at mi casa and he was nice enough to introduce me to Maryland Death Fest before Covid and let me hang out with him and Surgical Brute and their extremo crew. I started listening to death/black in the aughts by way of the internet and usually opted for well known albums I'd see on blogs. So that was a lot of middle of the road DM and second wave Black like Kataklsym, Dark Tranquility, Gorgoroth, Satyricon, those early seminal Darkthrone albums, Immortal, Emperor and Opeth and began gravitated to the OSDM revival later on the late aughts/early 20-teens. GG also used to share these death and black lists which I used to go back in time and put together a DM classic library a few years ago. But, I'm really more of a voyeur than a hardcore enthusiast.   

My sense of technical brutal DM; my personal reference point coming into it in the aughts would include bands like Nile, early Cryptopsy, Suffocation, maybe Demigod era Behemoth. I'll occasionally check out newer tech death but typically the usual fare of Archspire, Artificial Brain and modern tech death is my least favorite DM genre. And, "The General" despises the genres about 100 times more than I do-LOL. Which brings me back to the post about Afterbirth and the word that comes to mind is-ironic. 

So, I've been listening to this Afterbirth and Wormhole and Afterbirth, in particular are definitely a different brand of  tech/prog DM. IDK, if it's the "brutal"  or the "slam" tagline (not gonna lie, I don't really have a handle on what Slam means haha), but it's not the sort of modern slick hyper produced sound I associate with techdeath. 

 

 I despise tech death with a passion and I don't consider Afterbirth tech death at all. Progressive yes, at least here in their second incarnation, but not technical. Not that Cody is some kind of a slouch on the guitar, but he'd be the first to tell you he's no super technical guitar wizard and his music doesn't feature a lot of extended solos or endless tweedly deedly guitar noodlings. He tells his musical story with some cool, out of the ordinary riffs (rather than endless solos) and that's the strength of Afterbirth for me, they don't sound like any of the death metal you'.ve heard a million times before. They don't write boring predictable songs, but yet they don't ever get all weird and super dissonant or hard to decipher either. They're quite accessible. Cody is not afraid to bring in all his various influences from well outside of extreme metal, and the result is an album that takes you on a journey to all kinds of different places that other death metal bands would never think to go. But they keep it heavy, it's never weak or fluffy or or "pretty" (although they do touch on an ambient sort of movie soundtrack type of thing briefly)

They're definitely doing something a bit different than the rest of the death metal crowd. A super slick modern plastic production wouldn't help this material I don't think, and fortunately the band is smart enough to understand this. They didn't go the cavernous wall of noise route either which surprisingly is a nice change of pace from most of the death metal I generally listen to. They just have an organic, straightforward, live in the studio sound, they didn't throw on a myriad of guitar solo overdubs and shit although there is a second guitar track throughout, and he uses some effects on it so it's not truly live in studio.

The low gutteral vocals seem to be a bit of a sticking point for quite a few of the more casual death metal fans, but for anyone who's into stuff like Demilich's Nespithe for instance, these Will Smith vox won't be any problem. Will Smith of course is the vocalist who was "poached" from Artificial Brain after Afterbirth's original vocalist Matt Duncan died in 2016. Also I should probably clarify that the "slam" tag was more of  leftover from their first incarnation of the band back in the early 90's when they were teenagers and pioneers of brutal death metal that dropped two demos before breaking up in '95 for 18 years. Their "prog" era just started in 2013 when they got the band back together. But they kept the super low gurgly gutterals so I think that's probably the biggest reason why they still get the "brutal" tag, for the vocals. Because I think their music has really evolved too far to be considered just brutal death metal anymore.

 

Ok back to my ugly music now:

Guts - Decay, Finland, modern old school styled death metal that might be just a little too catchy for its own good. Not nearly as ugly as I'd like from my Finndeath, but it is a damn good groovy dm record.

 

Mortuary Ghoul - Friends With the Dead, Ohio. Now this is more like what I think of as ugly brutal death metal. Mortician worship. 

 

[Arioch]

Happy metal year 2024!

First musical listen of the year:

Tetragrammacide - Typho-Tantric Aphorisms From The Arachneophidian Qur'an (2023)

Nasty Indian death metal band.

 

[Arioch]

Invocator - Excursion Demise (1991)

 

[JamesT]

7 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 I despise tech death with a passion and I don't consider Afterbirth tech death at all. Progressive yes, at least here in their second incarnation, but not technical. Not that Cody is some kind of a slouch on the guitar, but he'd be the first to tell you he's no super technical guitar wizard and his music doesn't feature a lot of extended solos or endless tweedly deedly guitar noodlings. He tells his musical story with some cool, out of the ordinary riffs (rather than endless solos) and that's the strength of Afterbirth for me, they don't sound like any of the death metal you'.ve heard a million times before. They don't write boring predictable songs, but yet they don't ever get all weird and super dissonant or hard to decipher either. They're quite accessible. Cody is not afraid to bring in all his various influences from well outside of extreme metal, and the result is an album that takes you on a journey to all kinds of different places that other death metal bands would never think to go. But they keep it heavy, it's never weak or fluffy or or "pretty" (although they do touch on an ambient sort of movie soundtrack type of thing briefly)

They're definitely doing something a bit different than the rest of the death metal crowd. A super slick modern plastic production wouldn't help this material I don't think, and fortunately the band is smart enough to understand this. They didn't go the cavernous wall of noise route either which surprisingly is a nice change of pace from most of the death metal I generally listen to. They just have an organic, straightforward, live in the studio sound, they didn't throw on a myriad of guitar solo overdubs and shit although there is a second guitar track throughout, and he uses some effects on it so it's not truly live in studio.

The low gutteral vocals seem to be a bit of a sticking point for quite a few of the more casual death metal fans, but for anyone who's into stuff like Demilich's Nespithe for instance, these Will Smith vox won't be any problem. Will Smith of course is the vocalist who was "poached" from Artificial Brain after Afterbirth's original vocalist Matt Duncan died in 2016. Also I should probably clarify that the "slam" tag was more of  leftover from their first incarnation of the band back in the early 90's when they were teenagers and pioneers of brutal death metal that dropped two demos before breaking up in '95 for 18 years. Their "prog" era just started in 2013 when they got the band back together. But they kept the super low gurgly gutterals so I think that's probably the biggest reason why they still get the "brutal" tag, for the vocals. Because I think their music has really evolved too far to be considered just brutal death metal anymore.

 

Ok back to my ugly music now:

Guts - Decay, Finland, modern old school styled death metal that might be just a little too catchy for its own good. Not nearly as ugly as I'd like from my Finndeath, but it is a damn good groovy dm record.

 

Mortuary Ghoul - Friends With the Dead, Ohio. Now this is more like what I think of as ugly brutal death metal. Mortician worship. 

 

Really enjoying that Guts album, Mr. GG!  Fantastic recommendation!  I saw the descriptor "groovy", and I was immediately interested.  The production sounds great as well.

Any new releases that you're particularly looking forward to for this new year (whether officially confirmed or just anticipated)?

Edited January 1 by JamesT
Misspelling

[Arioch]

Invocator - Dying to Live (1995)

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

CRUCIAMENTUM - Obsidian Refractions

 

1 hour ago, JamesT said:

Really enjoying that Guts album, Mr. GG!  Fantastic recommendation!  I saw the descriptor "groovy", and I was immediately interested.  The production sounds great as well.

Any new releases that you're particularly looking forward to for this new year (whether officially confirmed or just anticipated)?

Nope. I don't really do the anticipation thing, I'm happy to be surprised when shit drops. I actually hate when I find out a band I like is working on a new album months in advance, especially when they put all or part of it up on Youtube and then I have to wait for it. I don't like to wait.

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

HOOKERS - Satan's Highway