You've all heard the complaints of outsiders about the vocals in Extreme Metal: "can you understand what he's saying?" "I like the music, but the vocals are too much." "There's too much screaming!". Guttural vocals are so common in modern Metal, that without them, something just seems "off". Take Inquisition for instance, great traditional Black Metal, but with the most boring and flat-sounding vocals ever. Sort of like really amateurish throat-singing. The vocals in Blood Revolt divide fans in the same way. I would describe them as halfway between singing and (loudly) spoken word. While these vocals do create a strong contrast against the music, they give the rare pleasure of being completely understandable, as well as providing actual dynamics.
About the instrumentals, they're pretty damn straight-forward. What you have here is some blazing fast Black/Death, not unlike later Angelcorpse. There's also a pretty significant Doom influence to break up the blast-beats. The production is really dry, really live, and really brittle (but in a good way). Overall, a pretty interesting new take on an exhausted genre hybrid.
This is it, the one that started it all (for me, anyways). Before this, I just didn't know how good TRVE KVLT could sound. While not my first Black Metal album, it was the first taste of the low-fi, stripped-down variety, which is really the essence of the genre.
For me, Black Metal starts with the early Norwegian scene, and not with Venom. Venom gave it a name, but stylistically, they were nothing new, just sort of a heavier, satanic Motorhead. Other bands developed it further in the 80's, but it wasn't until albums like this in the early 90's that Black Metal really developed a unique sound and became easily distinguishable from Thrash, Grind, and Death Metal. That's just how I feel about it.
Among other reasons, I mainly listen to Black Metal for it's duality of beauty and ugliness. This album was the first to show me that was possible. How is it that music can have moving, trance-like melodies and still spew hatred? How can it be both therapeutic and depressing? True Black Metal like this does that for me.
Before every hipster and his girlfriend couldn't stop talking about them after they saw that awful internet doc, before the goat head fiasco in Poland, and before the legal battle with singer-turned-fashion guru Ghaal, Gorgoroth were legends of the scene (a cult band within an already cult music). This EP is why.
Well, it looks like I've finally gotten around to writing the companion to my first Sentenced post. While this one also differs greatly from their later Suicide Rock bore-a-thons, it doesn't sound at all like their second album either. Sentenced has seemingly been 4 different bands in their career, with only the first two being good.
There's really nothing like early 90's Scandi-Death Metal: the sludginess, the buzzsaw guitars, the balance of darkness and aggression. While decent, these new "throwback" bands just can't reproduce that old sound. I always find myself reaching for those old standards. Shadows of the Past is that old standard. Let the promise of the killer cover art reel you in...
I would definitely say Bat for Lashes is the best Pop act going now, so it's no surprise that I've been pretty stoked on Natasha Khan (her real name) for over a year now. Actually, I was obsessed for a good six months until I finally discovered Kate Bush, and Natasha kind of took a back seat. Still, there's a place in my heart for her music and I pretty regularly listen to both albums.
Many critics have called her "the second coming of Kate Bush", which does have some validity to it; but I'd say she's more of compromise between melodic nature Kate and the simpler and more rhythmic moments of Bjork. Her music does sound very English in that it's both romantic and dreary, which, I'm always a sucker for.
On this, her first album, her voice is under-controlled, but does lend a warmer, more human quality that her second album sometimes lacks. The production is very ambitious, from the musical saw on "Horse and I", to "Priscilla" with it's sole percussion being claps and stomps. Of course, the driving force behind any type of Pop music is melody, of which this album does deliver. Every song here has memorable hooks, except for a couple "experimental" (filler) tracks at the end. I made sure to upload my own copy, as it has the bonus "I'm on Fire", which is arguably the best song on the album, and way better than Springsteen's original.
So, I finally have a job now after a year and a half of unemployment. Why should you care? Because this means my posts might get much less "wordy" and just generally shorter. Don't worry though, I'll still be posting on a regular basis. I'm also not going to sell out to sponsorship or antagonize my readers like JGD does, either. I encourage all of you to send me stuff that you're really stoked on, and comment more, as it's still kind of a ghost town here.
Now, let's get to the actual music. Breach, to me, sounds like a slightly more "legit" and mathy version of Refused, like a mix of Refused and Botch. Although they never quite reached the success or quality that Refused did with The Shape of New Punk to Come. The comparison is also valid because Breach is also from Sweden and from the same era. That being said, they're not a rip-off band, they just play a very similar style. Also, definitely less Screamo-ish than the San Diego and Bremen bands were at the time. On this piece, you'll definitely notice the production is very "live" sounding, but still totally listenable. All in all, this is a pretty sturdy effort they put forth here of some super consistent mid-paced Mathcore.
Where do I start with this band? Probably the most underrated band in Death Metal. Not surprising when you figure that, for most of their career, they had no U.S. distribution until Earache this gem in 2004. I've had the privilege of seeing these guys live three times, which is a rarity outside of the midwest, and each time was just as good as the last.
They consider themselves an old-school Death Metal band, but to describe them as just that would be far too simple. I would say they're a Black/Death hybrid that happens to be super melodic. No one, including themselves, ever give them credit for how melodic they really are, but they're really the closest thing Mexico has to Dissection. Their supply of leads and riffs seems to be endless, with some songs approaching 10 minutes. Surprisingly, the overall feel is a bit subdued, not quite as epic and bombastic as their Swede contemporaries, but hey, nobody's perfect. Basically, if you're a sucker for this style like I am, you should really enjoy this
You're just going to have to forgive me for not always being able to find something really obscure to post about. I'm not enough of a blog hound to be that consistent. Today, I bring you my first foray into full-on Crust, Extreme Noise Terror's "A Holocaust in Your Head". If you're unfamiliar with the genre, this beast of an album is the perfect place to start. This classic came out in a really pivotal time in extreme music ('89), but at the same time, was totally oblivious to it. While Black Metal, Death Metal, and Grindcore bands were getting tighter and more sophisticated, Crust bands like E.N.T. were totally content to caveman-bludgeon their instruments and write brutally simple songs. Pure sonic violence is what you can expect; this is about as heavy as Punk got, prior to the advent of Powerviolence. You'd still be hard-pressed to find something more guttural than this, without vocal effects and drum machines all over it. It's true that E.N.T. eventually became an unremarkable Grind band, like a poor-man's Napalm Death, but this is when they were at their Stylistic peak, before the cheesiness and the poor fashion choices. This is the essence of brutality.
I don't know about you, but when I search for a Black Metal album, I'm not looking for something particularly original or challenging; I just want something dark and cold to pull my spirit down to it's ugliest depths. Throne of Ahaz's Nifelheim does just that. This album serves as a missing link between the simpler, primitive styles of Mayhem and Darkthrone, and the more epic and melodic styles of Gorgoroth and Disseection. For being such a rare album for the so long, it's actually quite accessible by Black Metal standards: the riffs are easy to follow, the pace is varied, and the production is more "present" and less reverb-soaked than the norm. With that being said, this isn't at all some Dimmu-style slick fakery, it's just you don't have to "squint your ears" trying to hear individual notes, they're right there slapping you in the face. Overall, this is an excellent debut album that will speak to the eternal bleak winter that is your sex life.
Sometimes, youtube can be just as good a place to find new bands as any blog out there; such is the case with me finding this Chilean specialty. From the cover alone, you might think this is some straightforward Deathwish style muscle-flexing, but you'd be wrong. La Miseria brings together all the offshoots that Hardcore created in the 90's: Screamo, Metalcore, Melodic Hardcore, Mathcore... The only thing that's missing is Pop-Punk, which, you can rest assured, will never be posted here. They also blend all these sounds very nicely; all the influeces are distinct, but not choppy. The production is well and clean, which fortunately, is becoming more and more common with small-time bands like this. This is just a great little album that has the hardness, the variety, and the substance. Fans of Trial, Breach, Reversal of Man, and Loxiran should all find something to like here.
