Happy New Year! As promised, we’re finally starting to dive into some new releases that are coming out. Today I also wanted to catch up on a slightly older release that I missed writing about the first time around, because — well, because 2020. Time to get fuzzy…
Hello out there, readers! Today our mission is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly grab our headphones and listen to some cosmic death metal and cosmic black metal!
It’s been about three and a half years since the last time we checked in on these Danes, shall we see what they’ve been up to lately?
Good afternoon and Happy Monday, readers. Just one quick question: do you — in the words of Ol’ Dirty Bastard on his groundbreaking 1995 album Return to the 36 Chambers — “like it raw“?
If so, I’ve got two brand-new releases that just may be right up your alley, both of which came out on Bandcamp just a few days ago, and both of which represent black metal of the RAW variety…
Good afternoon, friends! I’m going to start today with a brief bit of explanation/clarification: the band we’ll be discussing and listening to is one who’ve never been featured on this website before. Long-time readers with unnaturally exceptional memories may note that approximately five years ago I wrote about a split record, half of which was attributed to a band called Soothsayer, who were primarily of the neocrust persuasion (with some blackened and ambient-doom influences thrown in). That band was from Pittsburgh — roughly 30 miles from where I lived.
Well later that same year, I happened to hear about an upcoming release from a band called Soothsayer, essentially an ambient-doom group (with some blackened and crusty influences thrown in). This “other” Soothsayer resides approximately 3300 miles further away in Cork, but their material was equally successful at catching my attention and interest. Unfortunately, I never managed to find a chance to write about it — until now, on the eve of “Irish Soothsayer” releasing their debut full-length.
So okay, here we are. Exactly fifty-one weeks into mandated quarantine working from home, and truly starting to lose my mind from cabin fever. Looking forward to my wife coming home from work each day with stories of interaction with other human beings, since I’ve all but forgotten what that feels like.
2020 was — well, probably better to not even bring that up at all. You get it. So as a result, I found myself taking nearly two full months into 2021 just catching up on stuff I hadn’t gotten around to listening to, just to get my Top 20 list finalized. Managed to get that online about a week ago. So naturally, now I’ve begun the daunting task of working my way through 2021 releases that I’ve missed so far.
Which brings us back to the original purpose of me writing these words and you reading them: letting you know about something you may wish to cram into your ear-holes. In particular, today I’ve got a split release for you, fresh off the presses of Sleeping Village Records, the relatively new label run by the fine folks who brought you Sleeping Village Reviews.
Don’t forget that this is supposed to be a two-way street: I write words about music that I’ve enjoyed listening to, you folks read those words and listen to that music, and then you can leave a comment about how much you also enjoyed listening to it! For the sake of my sanity! Thanks for stopping by!
Good afternoon! Another week almost over, are you excited? Probably not so much, huh? It hardly makes a difference, since the days all just run together anymore. Hard to believe we’re coming up on three whole months of this quarantine, shelter-in-place, work-from-home, whatever you want to call it.
But on the other hand, it’s starting to feel like this is the way life has been forever — it’s getting hard to remember a time when things used to be different. Remember going out to restaurants, bars, wineries? Remember live entertainment? Sometimes there would even be entire events dedicated to bands performing music for large crowds of people, entire festivals. Remember those? Remember crowds of people?
It was exactly two months ago today that Ripplefest was supposed to happen in Germany, what would have been an all-day raging affair hosted by Ripple Music. I wrote up a thing announcing the event just a few weeks before the entire world flipped completely upside-down.
That event is tentatively being rescheduled for August, with a line-up yet to be announced. I hope, for the sake of everyone involved, that it works out this time. I hope, for ALL our sakes, that things are back to normal by then.
Originally scheduled to play at the festival in March were two American bands, Horseburner and Howling Giant. I’ve written about each of them before (here and here), but in February’s Ripplefest post I also mentioned that both bands had released excellent albums last year, and that reviews of both would be coming up soon.
The festival might not have taken place as planned, but at least I can fulfill that one small promise. And at least you can treat your ears to these bands in pre-recorded form…
Good afternoon! I’ve got a surprise in store for you today. Usually single-person recording artists leave a lot to desire as far as the quality of material AND sound quality are concerned. The same can often be said for musical entities with strong political leanings: no matter how valid their point may be, if all they are bringing to the table is a clone of raw punk or lo-fi black metal that’s already been done to death a million times, it’s unlikely to really grab my attention.
With Adzes (named for the primitive wood-hewing implement), self-described by its lone member as “anti-capitalist sludge,” what we find is lacking in quality in neither of those areas. Below we’ll take a trip through a pair of EPs he put together last year, followed by the project’s debut album which is set to be unfurled at the end of this week. Enjoy!
Hey, folks. Better make sure you’ve got yourselves strapped in, because we’re taking a trip in the “Way Back Machine.” Although Of Gods and Men, the debut full-length album of Long Beach (Nassau County NY)’s Maelstrom, was released mere days ago, this is a story that starts off much, much earlier than that.
Here at Valley of Steel I first became aware of this trio back in October 2012, when I checked out ThrashHead Magazine‘s second A Gallery of Rogues compilation. (As an aside, the magazine doesn’t appear to exist anymore but that 45-song collection is still free to download.)
At that time, one of the tracks that I pointed out as a highlight was “Arise” — which also appeared on the band’s EP It was Predestined, which was being re-released that same month by IME.
I hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but the mini-album had initially been released independently several years earlier (in 2008), by a newly-reformed Maelstrom. The group had called it quits fifteen years prior to that, after having produced a pair of demo tapes (in 1989 and 1991) that collectively featured the original recordings of the three songs that would later become It was Predestined.
The EP, out of print by now, had grabbed my attention back in 2012 just as much as that first song had done — and so when I recently learned that there would finally be a full-length record (32 years after the band was founded), well, that was certainly some exciting news I just had to share with you lucky readers.
Hello, all you shiny happy socially-distant people! It’s Tuesday! Not that days or any unit of time or any anything has any real meaning anymore.
Today we’re going to talk about a band I’ve been meaning to share with you folks for the past three-plus years, since they released their debut EP. And then I’ve REALLY been meaning to get around to writing this for the past three-plus months, since they released their debut LP. But here we are.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I don’t have a to-do list with well over 900 items piled up, or act as if I will ever be able to “catch up” in this lifetime, but let’s just keep plugging away at this a little bit at a time, right? For now, please enjoy the Midwestern sludgey juggernaut that is Former Worlds.
Valley of Steel 