Category Archives: Videos

Body Count – Carnivore (2020)

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Body Count – Carnivore (Century Media, 06 March 2020)

 

In these strange days of isolation and distancing, we’ve all had to make varying degrees of adjustments to our normal routines and how we do things in our daily lives. While it might not be as significant or essential as some other aspects, entertainment and keeping ourselves mentally occupied is still an important part of everyone’s hierarchy of needs, and how we manage to entertain ourselves has been drastically altered as well. No more movie theaters, no more live events, everything is either premiering on televisions or streaming online nowadays.

And then of course there’s still social media, which is pretty much the only way anyone can be social right now, and between the anxiety and the frustration of being cooped up inside, you can tell things are getting a little nutty out there. One place where this is plenty evident is on Twitter, which lately has been featuring that guy from Tr**t desperately shouting from the void of irrelevance at anyone who will give him or his one-hit-blunder band any amount of attention. As much as I hate playing into this charade by giving it any press, I have to admit it has been pretty amusing to watch. Especially about two weeks ago when it blossomed into a pseudo-feud with the Original Gangster himself, Ice-T:

 
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of media and entertainment and such, that seems like an ideal segue into a look at what Body Count, Ice‘s hardcore/crossover/thrash band of the past three decades, has been up to lately. Specifically, why don’t we go listen to brand-new album Carnivore, their seventh overall and the first since 2017’s Bloodlust…

 

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Wrekmeister Harmonies – We Love to Look at the Carnage (2020)

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Wrekmeister Harmonies – We Love to Look at the Carnage (Thrill Jockey Records, 21 February 2020)

 

Hello there, readers. It’s been a little while since we’ve been in touch, I know. That sucks — and it makes very little logical sense. We’re coming up on the conclusion of a second full month of work-from-home quarantine, and with nearly two extra hours per day that formerly would have been spent driving to and from work (and with nowhere else to go, aside from the rare shopping trip for pandemic essentials such as bird food and wine) it seems like I should have plenty of time to spend listening to music and subsequently writing about it for all you fine folks out there. But as bizarre as it sounds, even when there’s nothing else to do, it sometimes feels like there’s less spare time than there used to be. Even though I can literally roll out of bed and throw on a random t-shirt en route to my desk chair a mere three feet away — well, to be honest, it’s probably more of a mental and emotional thing than an actual shortage of available time. Because things are so stressful now, and uncertain and confusing and scary and depressing.

However, a lack of engagement with hobbies or things that bring you enjoyment, due to a lack of motivation due to a general feeling of malaise, often has a tendency to continue spiraling further into deeper levels of depression. I know this very well from plenty of experience. And I am determined not to let this turn into another months-long mental health hiatus. So here is an album I’d like to share with you all today. I hope you enjoy it and I hope however dismal your day might be currently, that this may bring some amount of light into it. Please feel free to react in the comments section below or via any of the various Valley of Steel social media outlets linked either on the far right or the bottom of this page. Thanks, and stay safe out there!

 

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Today is the Day – No Good to Anyone (2020)

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[Mr. Smalls Theatre, Pittsburgh PA, 10 March 2013 – photo by Valley of Steel]

Today is the Day – No Good to Anyone (29 February 2020)

 

Just like this article from Monday, here is another album that had been released at the end of February, by an artist who subsequently headed out on a major tour to promote said album, only to end up with numerous scheduled dates canceled mid-trip and being unexpectedly forced to return home.

The artist we will be discussing today is none other than Today is the Day, the highly experimental trio that for decades has featured founder/guitarist/vocalist Steve Austin and a pair of constantly revolving doors for his supporting cast. This new record No Good to Anyone is the band’s eleventh full-length release, and the first since 2014’s Animal Mother.

 

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Humulus – The Deep (2020)

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Humulus – The Deep (Kozmik Artifactz, 28 February 2020)

 

If you couldn’t tell from the band name (humulus are the plants which grow the flowers we refer to as hops), that very cool cover art of a cephalopod holding up a beer bottle may clue you in: this Italian trio is birra-obsessed.

In fact, in the first ten years since their formation, these Lombardi gentlemen have put as much passion and effort into the development of their own self-titled brew as they have into creating three albums and EPs. So while their sound on this fourth release The Deep (released just a few days ago) may superficially resemble the style universally known as “stoner rock,” wouldn’t it make much more sense to call this “alcoholic rock”?

 

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Konvent – Puritan Masochism (2020)

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Konvent – Puritan Masochism (Napalm Records, 24 January 2020)

 

Good afternoon, readers. How are things where you are? Here, we’ve had a few pleasant and sunny days in a row, which is certainly a rarity. But today is a typically dismal and dreary Tuesday. So fittingly, it’s time to listen to some dismal and dreary music.

Without any further ado, here is Puritan Masochism by Copenhagen’s Konvent.

 

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Völur – Disir (2016), Ancestors (2017)

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Völur – Disir (Prophecy Productions, 24 June 2016)

 

Völur – Ancestors (Prophecy Productions, 02 June 2017)

 

Hey folks! The Shadow Frost festival that we talked about recently starts tomorrow and runs through the next day. Whomst among you are headed to Maryland for this event? That’s a pretty enticing line-up, huh?

So having said that, today seemed like an appropriate time to delve into a pair of albums by Torontonian trio Völur that I’ve been meaning to discuss ever since they first caught my attention several years ago. Not an ideal time to write about them, of course, as that would have been actually in 2016 and in 2017 (respectively) when they came out — but nevertheless, an appropriate time. Here we go!

 

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Suum – Cryptomass (2020)

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Suum – Cryptomass (Seeing Red Records, 14 February 2020)

 

Have you ever been tricked by an album cover? Like, you got totally drawn in by this mesmerizing artwork that so perfectly encapsulates a particular mood — but then you listen to it and the music sucks, or at least it completely fails to match up with your expectations based on its exterior?

Or looking at it from the opposite side: how often has poorly-designed and/or conceptually uninteresting imagery caused you to bypass listening to something, which for all you know could have ended up being your new favorite record if you had actually given it a chance?

Well, today we’ve got the rare treat of an album whose outward appearance exactly lines up with its internal contents, Cryptomass — the sophomore release from Roman doomsters Suum, which emerged mere days ago from the decaying catacombs illustrated above (and credited to the band’s guitarist, “Antonio Painkiller“), by way of Ohio’s Seeing Red Records.

 

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Necropsy – Exitus (2020)

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Necropsy – Exitus (Xtreem Music, 21 January 2020)

 

It’s hard to believe, but here we are in mid-February and once again the temperature here in Pittsburgh is right around 50° (that’s 10° to you non-Americans)! Believe me, I am not complaining one bit, but we’ve really had an atypically mild winter so far. But we can still get into the winter spirit if we so choose, by tailoring our musical selections accordingly. Frigid black metal often helps, but another way to embrace a similar mood could be with Scandinavian doomy death metal. That’ll be our agenda for today.

Formed over 30 years ago in the city of Lahti (southern Finland), and having undergone a couple name changes, several line-up changes, and even a decade-and-a-half hiatus; Necropsy re-emerged in the late ’00s, finally following up a long series of 1990s demos with full-length albums in 2011 and 2015.

This January ushered in the release of a brand-new 4-track EP, that showcases the band putting the brakes on its typical death metal tempos, transitioning into a somewhat slower and doomier style. And now that you’re all caught up on historical facts, let’s check out Exitus!

 

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Rat King – Garbage Island (2016), Vicious Inhumanity (2020)

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Rat King – Garbage Island (Within the Mind Records, 24 June 2016)

 

Rat King – Vicious Inhumanity (Within the Mind Records, 17 January 2020)

 

As much as I hate to admit it, during the almost eight and a half years I’ve been administrating this website, I have amassed a list of literally hundreds of albums I’ve hoped to find time to write about and share with you folks. Realistically I know I won’t ever get through ALL of them, but at the moment I am striving to keep up with the new ones as well as I can so it doesn’t get any worse; and if I can knock off an older one here and there while I’m at it, wonderful.

So having said that, here’s a record that just came out within the past month, as well as one that’s been sitting on my to-do list far too long. Both are by Seattleite trio Rat King, released on their own label Within the Mind, and both were recorded by the legendary Mr. Tad Doyle — but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. As you will soon discover. Please to enjoy!

 

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Sâver – They Came with Sunlight (2019)

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Sâver – They Came with Sunlight (Pelagic Records, 08 March 2019)

 

Here in the Valley of Steel we don’t pay much attention to what’s trending or getting a bunch of recognition elsewhere; all we care about is listening to what we enjoy, and (sometimes) writing about it.

But having said that, sometimes it’s also nice to feel vindicated and validated, when something we identify as “good” achieves recognition from elsewhere.

Case in point: They Came with Sunlight, the debut offering from Oslo trio Sâver — which upon its release about eleven months ago made quite an impression upon this reviewer, later to become firmly entrenched in our selection of last year’s best records.

Well, just a few days ago the band announced that the album had been nominated for a Norwegian Grammy. In fact, it was one of four from 2019 recognized in the Metal category by the Spellemann committee, for the award officially known as the Spellemannprisen.

And so, if you haven’t already become enamored of They Came with Sunlight, here’s your opportunity to see what all the fuss is about!

 

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