Category Archives: Reviews

Out Last Month: Pigs – You Ruin Everything

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Pigs – You Ruin Everything (Solar Flare Records, 11 April 2012)

Well, good morning. Another new day, another day closer to the weekend. The real shitty part is, though, I spent about half of yesterday convinced that it was actually Wednesday, which made me real depressed when I realized it wasn’t. Things were looking up as quitting time was approaching, but then when a departing coworker announced “See you all tomorrow – hey, tomorrow’s Wednesday already!” in a way-too-cheerful voice, well that made it about a hundred times worse. I was feeling pretty pissed off, and decided I needed something to listen to that’s equally pissed off, or who knows, I might have ended up breaking something.

So how has your week been so far? If it’s anything like mine has been, maybe you need some angry music too. Here’s what worked for me, I hope this will help you as well.

I’m going to start out by assuming you’re already familiar with Unsane, that groundbreaking blend of classic NYHC and noise rock, which is still going strong after nearly a quarter-century? If you aren’t, I’d suggest you correct that oversight real quick!

If you do know the band, you’ll be glad to hear that not only did they put out a new album earlier this year, but bassist Dave Curran (who’s been with the band since 1994) has a new side-project called Pigs, who also just released a new album. And, you’ll be even gladder to know that it sounds awesome!

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In Case You Missed It: Fire in the Cave – Self-Titled

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Fire in the Cave – Fire in the Cave (28 February 2012)

 
Happy Friday!! I’m so ready for the week to be over so I can get my ass home! No more school for a few months, no more work for a few days, nothing to do but kick back and… do all the shit I need to take care of around the house, that I’m unable to do during the week. Sometimes it feels like I barely get a single minute to myself, to relax or whatever. I’ll be honest with you — I’m always amazed (and, I’ll admit, sometimes a little jealous) when I hear about one of my colleagues in the music-writing world being in a band, on top of the writing and also having a “real” job and whatever else they’ve got going on. I hardly find the time to go to shows as often as I’d like, let alone to be able to rehearse beforehand, or even to put in the effort to recruit a bunch of people to even get started in the first place! But like I said, there are some people out there that manage to do it all, and I definitely respect that.

Case in point is Jarad Oates, editor/writer for Orlandooom!, plus an occasional guest columnist for … well, as far as I can tell, pretty much every other Florida-based music-related publication in existence. In addition to all of that, he’s also a member of Orlando swamp-metal warlords Fire in the Cave, for whom he contributes caveman-esque (no pun intended) bellowed vocals. A couple of months ago, that band self-released a self-titled EP, and I’d like to share that with you now.

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Happy May Day! (Review of Krampus – Shadows of Our Times)

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Krampus – Shadows of Our Times (Self-released, 31 March 2011)

Happy May Day! Also, happy International Workers’ Day, for those readers lucky enough to live someplace that celebrates that holiday — I hope you’re enjoying your day off work as much as I am not enjoying my day not off work. Which is to say, quite a lot. But there’s nothing to prevent me from imagining I’m someplace else; I do it pretty much any other day, anyway!

Now, to be honest, as an American I really don’t know anything about May Day celebrations except for what I’ve seen in movies, so basically I am picturing a bunch of people in old-fashioned clothes, dancing in a circle with a bunch of ribbons tied to a pole, while playing some folk songs. There’s lots of flowers and happy shit all around, and people are celebrating springtime and nature and generally acting like a bunch of hippies. Actually, that sounds pretty fucking lame.

So naturally, in my imagined celebration, I need to make some serious modifications. First of all, any hints of happiness and dancing has got to go. That would just make me more depressed, and frankly, I’d be better off just being here at work, totally miserable. No thanks. We can swap out the folk music for some folk metal, and instead of the springtime celebration of nature… well, I don’t mind the pro-nature sentiments, but I need everyone to be all pissed-off about it, like they’re ready to smash someone’s face in.

Then it hit me — some really angry folk metal that’s rooted in pagan celebrations and violently pro-environment while being equally anti-humanity, that sounds awfully familiar. Time to break out some Krampus!

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The “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week: Mind Structure

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Good evening, readers!  Well, another Monday has come and gone.  That’s okay by me; coming back to work after a three-day weekend is never fun, and I am glad to get it over with as quickly as possible.  Before the end of the day, though, I need to check in with the “Sign Me to Roadrunner Records” website to find something good to listen to, so that I can share it with you!  Today, I found a message that I’d received from Mind Structure, a band whose members come from the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv (Київ) and Kryvyi Rih (Кривий Ріг) asking for a review of their music.  Now, I’m familiar with Kyiv (also called “Kiev”), which is the capital of the country, but Kryvyi Rih was brand new to me.  Thankfully, I have Wikipedia to help me; it informs me that this city is located in the middle of a large iron mining region, and in fact, that it’s one of the most important locations in eastern Europe’s steel industry.  Sounds like a place I can relate to!  Besides that, I had such success listening to Ukrainian black metal last week, I figured it would be a good idea to check out someone else from that country.

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Out Last Month: Ea – Self-Titled

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Ea – Ea (Solitude Productions, 5 March 2012)

 
Time to breathe a huge sigh of relief. As of midnight last night, school’s out for summer! I feel a bit dazed, and a bit numb. I’ve been out of high school for fifteen years now, so it’s refreshing to know I should only have about one more year to go before I finally complete my degree. But honestly, I don’t want to think about that right now. I don’t want to think about anything at all if I can help it. I know I can use a bit of work on my time management skills, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been up until past four in the morning Thursday night trying to get stuff caught up. Let me tell you, it’s pretty surreal to be getting ready to go to bed and to hear your alarm clock telling you it’s time to get up for work. I didn’t have to get up for work yesterday; I had the day off and took advantage of that to head out to the physical campus to take some final exams, as well as getting some last-minute homework turned in, but nevertheless it is weird to be getting into bed at around the same time I had gotten out of bed the previous day!

All of that made for a pretty interesting Friday, but I am just totally relieved to have all of that over with — at least for the next few months. And as I said, I really don’t want to have to do any thinking, or anything at all that might be mentally taxing. I just need a few days to recover, I think. On the upside, I will probably be spending more time writing blog posts, so you’re welcome for that! For now, though, I just want to curl up in this chair with a bottle of wine (an Argentinian chardonnay from Bodega Elena de Mendoza, if you were curious), and my headphones, and listen to something that doesn’t really require any mental effort. My plan is just to close my eyes and let my consciousness drift off into some state of complete numbness.
 
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Just Released: Anhedonist – Netherwards

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Anhedonist – Netherwards (Dark Descent Records, 10 April 2012)

 
Good morning, Readers. Do you think I’m strange? Wait, don’t answer that. What I mean is, does it sound strange to you if I say that listening to some of the darkest, most mournful and depressing music actually makes me feel better? Here’s an example: last year I listened to a stream of Loss‘s critically-acclaimed album Despond, when that was made available shortly before the album’s release. I thought it was really good stuff — but shortly after that I was reading some reviews on some of the blogs I frequent, and admittedly I was confused by what they were saying. Stuff like how the experience took the listener to a really dark place, filled with torture and anguish and misery. I remember thinking to myself, I should really go back and listen to that again, because I remember coming out feeling peaceful and uplifted.

So with that in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two possible things happening here: either I am totally strange, with some sort of abnormal personality disorder… or else being at work (where I do quite a bit of my music listening) is such an awful and soul-crushing experience, that listening to aural expressions of pure melancholy actually can brighten that environment. I don’t know, probably it’s a little bit of both.

In any case, I’ve developed quite a taste for the doomier side of music. I love doom metal, I’ve found that I generally prefer death/doom over standard death metal, and just within the past year or so I’ve discovered a strong passion for Funeral Doom. So, the next logical step would be a Funeral Doom plus Death Metal hybrid, right? Of course it would. I propose that it would be called Funeral Death. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Anhedonist.
 
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Out Today: Agruss – Morok

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Agruss – Morok (Code666 Records, 26 April 2012)

 
There seems to be a growing trend in the American Black Metal scene that revolves around combining atmospheric post-black-metal sounds with a pro-nature, anti-technology attitude. This has been discussed ad nauseam all over the internet (perhaps best exemplified here), and frankly, I don’t give a shit. This may seem like an oversimplification, and you might say I’m being too broadly dismissive, but I say to hell with all of it. That whole movement comes across (to me) as a bunch of whiny neo-hippies saying yay to peace and love and flower power, with all the conviction and determination of that whole stupid “Occupy Wall Street… Until it Starts Getting Cold Outside” slumber party that was such a big deal last year, while it was the cause du jour.

Well, here’s a review of something totally different: a band who use black metal as the medium for expressing their rage against modern technology and the destruction of nature!

How is that different, you ask? Well for starters, the band Agruss is from the town of Rivne (Рівне), Ukraine, just a short distance away from one of that country’s nuclear power plants. Furthermore, that town is only about 400km away from the town of Chornobyl (Чорнобиль), or more commonly known by its Russian name Chernobyl (Чернобыль). As you are probably aware, that town — now almost completely abandoned — was very close to the site of another Ukranian nuclear power plant, until an explosion occurred there, releasing nuclear contaminants all over the surrounding area. That disaster occurred in 1986, on the 26th of April. (See what they did there?)
 
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Now Available for FREE: Basement Torture Killings – The First Cumming

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Basement Torture Killings – The First Cumming (Self-released, Summer 2008)

 
London-based deathgrind/goregrind band Basement Torture Killings are also sometimes referred to by the acronym BTK — not coincidentally, the same initials used by serial killer Dennis Rader (in which case the letters stood for “Bind, Torture, Kill”). With this sort of pedigree, and with song titles such as “Drill Bit Erotica,” “Cut, Drained and Disposed,” and “Necrophiled and Cannibalised,” your first reaction might be — as mine was — to expect them to be one of those super-extreme-brutal-death-wacko bands. You know, where the whole thing sounds so muddled and the guitars and bass are both equalized so low that you can’t distinguish between them? And usually the vocals sound more like a handful of crickets tossed into a bunch of stomach acid inside a blender set to “puree”? I don’t know how people listen to that sort of thing, to be honest, and if you’re with me on that, then you’re in for a pleasant surprise just as I was when I first heard BTK’s music.
 
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In Case You Missed It: The Noumenon – Apocrypha

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The Noumenon – Apocrypha (Self-released, 13 December 2011)

Well, would you look at that — the week’s halfway over already. But then again, that means there’s still half of it left. And I’ve got a terrible fucking headache. Feeling lousy seems to be a common problem this time of year though, especially living in a city that’s notorious for its unpredictable and ever-shifting weather patterns. The past couple mornings the temperature has been hovering just above freezing level, but it’s supposed to go up about 25 degrees higher by the time I leave work this afternoon. It’s hard to get adjusted to stupid shit like that, and the fact that every day this week has had high or very high pollen levels has not helped things one bit. But, whatever. I can sit here and whine and bitch about it, but that won’t do me any good — so instead I’ve decided to take some allergy pills, drink a shitload of coffee, and throw on my headphones with some loud fucking metal music until I can’t feel anything anymore.

Fortunately, I find that today I’ve got a new CD with me, Apocrypha by Edmontonian band The Noumenon, which is pretty much just what the doctor ordered…
 
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Out Last Month: Tribune – Elder Lore / The Dark Arts

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Tribune – Elder Lore / The Dark Arts (Corpse Corrosion Music, 20 March 2012)

Whenever I discover a new band, I usually try to learn as much as I can about them, including where they come from. If it’s a country or a city I’m not especially familiar with, occasionally I’ll hit Wikipedia and see if there are any interesting facts to be learned there. Maybe I’m just a major dork, I don’t know. Whatever. Sometimes I like to look at a map of where a band comes from, just to see where it is in relation to things I do know about. This is how I discovered that the city of Burnaby, British Columbia, is right next to Vancouver, near the Pacific coast and just above the U.S./Canada border. Playing with the settings a bit, I found myself looking at a topographic map of that general area. In this way, I found that Burnaby is surrounded by a few lakes, and most of the land seems to be pretty close to sea level anyway. From that I would surmise that there just might be a good bit of swamps or marshlands near that area.

Now, I wasn’t just randomly seeking out information on the geographic characteristics of various cities in Canada. No, I was learning about Burnaby because it’s home to the band Tribune*, to whose recently-released double-EP Elder Lore / The Dark Arts I had just been listening. The blend of riffs and vocals they incorporate into their particular version of death metal might give you the impression that they come from the same backwater bayou country as Down or Crowbar, rather than the frozen tundra of British Columbia, which is what set me on that particular path of research. But anyway, hometown notwithstanding, these guys have put together a combination of styles that I’ve decided to call stoner/death metal. You just need to check it out to see what I mean.
 
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* By the way — I don’t know if it’s a Canadian thing or what, but I’ve learned that the band’s name is pronounced differently than I originally thought. It’s actually supposed to be “TRY-bune” (as in “tribunal”), rather than “TRIB-une” (as in “tribute”).
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