Good day, readers. Here to start off the week properly I’ve got a pair of albums that live somewhere in the vicinity of post-hardcore, both by Swiss bands (well, one of them is more of a Swiss-Swedish hybrid), and both of which are coming out very soon. Get ready!
Closing out the week, and continuing to work my way through some more of last year’s releases — today I think we’ll explore some Chinese music. Specifically, the music of one particular band from the city of Dalian, which is located at the northern end of the Yellow Sea, just across the bay from North Korea.
I’ll be sharing their three most recent albums with you this afternoon. But it may be worth noting that this group has been active and productive for more than two decades now — and the material we’re covering will actually be their ninth, tenth, and eleventh albums! So if you like what you’re hearing, please feel free to continue digging into it on your own.
Good afternoon! Here’s another highlight from last year, as I continue to work through getting caught up on stuff we missed talking about here: the latest release by this band from Saarland, Germany — located on the Saar river and right near the border with France. And while we’re on the subject, I’ll throw in their debut from four years earlier, for no additional charge!
Hey there. Here we are, midway through yet another week. And time once again to catch up on a couple releases from late last year. The first comes from a Portuguese instrumental post-rock/ambient/doom quartet, the other from a Californian post-doom/ambient/stoner-doom quartet — and both are absolutely worth checking out (otherwise why would I waste the effort talking about them or expect you to do the same reading about them)!
Hey! Everywhere I turn, the whole internet is buzzing about Venom Prison.
So let’s talk about Venom Prison.
Ok y’all, it’s Monday… time for some nerd shit.
Dungeons & Dragons has been called the most effective introduction to the occult in the history of Man.
It is a fantasy role-playing game that teaches demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex, perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, Satan worship, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination, and many other occultic themes… all in living color.
Ready to get started? Roll for initiative…
Good morning, and here comes some more music for you all to start off your week with!
Don’t worry, I know how to operate a calendar, and I realize it’s Tuesday. But yesterday was a federal holiday here in the U.S., as well as a snow day, so we lazily decided to have ourselves a nice extended weekend.
But today we’re back on track, and I would like to call your attention to an album I particularly enjoyed when it came out last summer. Again, I assure you, I do know how calendars work, and I do realize we’re now into the third week of the new year. Within the next few days I promise the first review of a new 2022 release will be coming! But we’ve still got plenty of older ones to cover that you shouldn’t miss out on.
Like this one: the fourth album overall (and the first in 27 years!) by San Franciscan band Mordred — who, by the way, will be playing their first hometown show of the year this coming weekend, alongside fellow local thrashers Death Angel. Details on tickets (both in-person and live-stream) to be found below.
All right, y’all — today I’ll be treating you to two heaping helpings of fuzzed-out instrumental goodness, courtesy of la famiglia italiana who constitute the trio Prehistoric Pigs.
Good afternoon. Now comes the part where I would like to draw your attention to Texan ‘postgazecore’ (or something like that) band, Glassing — specifically the last album they released in 2019 and the one that just came out last month.
Enjoy!
My first exposure to Rebreather, from Youngstown Ohio (right across the state border from here via the turnpike), was August 2013 in neighboring Kent Ohio — where they performed at that summer’s Blackout Cookout.
Unfortunately no images survive from that performance, because all my show photos were stored on a Facebook account which no longer exists. But it was a pretty eventful day, where roughly a dozen different bands alternated sets on stages at opposite ends of the venue. Rebreather closed out the night, at which point we were all so completely exhausted and dead to the world, that we could hardly even focus on what was happening. But damn. Even now, eight years later, I can still remember badly wanting to hit the road to get back home, but being sucked in and transfixed by the abject heaviness emanating from that stage.
Luckily, I would eventually see the band multiple times in Pittsburgh and Ohio, so at least once or twice got to experience them while fully awake and slightly more lucid. Anyway, fast-forwarding to 2021, the band has just put out a brand-new record that any fans of noise-rock or grunge or fuzz or post-rock should have on their wish list for Santa!
Valley of Steel 