Clouds Taste Satanic – To Sleep Beyond the Earth (2014), Your Doom has Come (2015)

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Clouds Taste SatanicTo Sleep Beyond the Earth (Kinda Like Music, 01 May 2014)

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Clouds Taste SatanicYour Doom has Come (Kinda Like Music, 01 September 2015)

 

Well as I had predicted, I didn’t manage to get any writing done yesterday. I still don’t know if I’m fully recovered from the night before last, but in any case, here we are. I will just say this: it was totally a surreal experience, and if you happen to live near any of this tour‘s few remaining stops, or if either of these bands should come anywhere near you in the future, DO NOT miss the opportunity. Seriously.

So anyway, speaking of things that are surreal, today I’d like to talk to you about a pair of albums that have been released over the past two years by my all-time favorite band-whose-name-was-adapted-from-the-title-of-my-second-all-time-favorite-Flaming-Lips-album, namely, Brooklynite instrumental doom ensemble Clouds Taste Satanic.

 

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Person or Persons Unknown: Six Questions with Grisly Amputation/Vulture Guitarist Gene Fikhman

  
Person or Persons Unknown

 

Six Questions with Grisly Amputation/Vulture Guitarist Gene Fikhman

by Mrs. Valley of Steel

 
 
My second Person or Persons Unknown is with Gene Fikhman, guitarist for Grisly Amputation and Vulture (one of my personal favorite bands EVER), horror and gore movie enthusiast, and all around cool and collected kind of guy. I must admit that I don’t know Gene very well, but in my personal interactions with him it has always seemed like he was the type of person who knew lots of information once you scratched the surface. I’ve had a lot of men in my life that are like this — in fact, I am married to one — and it’s been my personal experience that you are never disappointed when you get to know these kinds of guys. They are usually extremely intelligent, full of useless knowledge, helpful in all kinds of situations and hell to play trivia against. This is what made me want to interview him, not about just GrisAmp or Vulture, but about him personally so I could see if I was correct and I think you’ll see from this interview that I wasn’t disappointed. I hope you won’t be, either.

 
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Winter’s Wake Winterview: Vulture

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Good morning, folks! Winter’s Wake 2013 officially starts tonight! Words cannot describe how excited I am. I hope you feel the same way. I’ve still got a few more bands to talk about, so I’ll continue posting these throughout the day.

First up this morning is the “Steel City Sludge” band Vulture! You might remember that I had an interview with their drummer Kelly Gabany a few months back (you can read it here), but I checked in with her once more to find out what’s new in Vulture-land, and here’s what I found out:

 
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VOS Interview: A Drummer Double Feature! Molasses Barge vs. Vulture!

Hello folks, and a happy Friday to you! Just when it felt like it would never happen, the weekend’s finally here. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be an especially good one, because there’s a ton of amazing shows and events happening! I’ll have more on that later, so stay tuned.

One of them in particular stands out, though — tomorrow night at the 31st Street Pub is the first date on the joint headlining tour between Relapse Records artists 16 and Tombs. That by itself is reason enough to get excited, but opening the show will be two of my absolute favorite local bands, the heavy doom armada that is Molasses Barge and Steel City sludgelords Vulture!

I’ve only seen Molasses Barge once before (and it was over a year ago! — read more about that here), and (believe it or not) although I’ve been listening to Vulture for a long time, I’ve never had the chance to see them play live yet! So needless to say, I’m really looking forward to this show. I’ve already got my tickets (they can be ordered here) but if you don’t, it’s just twelve bucks when you show up at the door. More info on the show itself can be found here.

Anyway, in anticipation of this event, I decided to get a couple of interviews lined up. If you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you may have picked up on the fact that I often tend to focus on drumming while listening to music. It’s just the way I hear things, I guess — and I don’t know if it’s because I play drums (occasionally) or if I chose to play that instrument because it’s something I pay a lot of attention to.

In either case, the drumming in each of these bands’ genres is one of the main things that attracts me to those particular styles. So, it only seemed natural for me to talk to the two bands’ drummers. Here, then, are the questions and answers from Molasses Barge’s Wayne Massey and Vulture’s Kelly Gabany

 

 

 
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Coming Soon: Undersmile Reveal Cover Art, Track Listing, and More!

Well, would you look at that.  It’s early Monday morning, it’s cold and rainy outside, and I have to go to work.  What a miserable way to start the day.  Just when I was thinking I could really use something dark and dismal to match my bleak mood, so that I could feel a little better, check out this treasure trove of incredible news I just found on Facebook!

I’ve been bubbling with excitement about a new Undersmile album ever since it was announced, as I mentioned when I wrote about that announcement back in November.  (Check out that earlier post if you need a brief introduction to the band and some of their earlier work.)  Well as it turns out, Future Noise has just announced a ton of brand new details about that album, Narwhal, which is now scheduled to emerge on 28 May 2012.

At the top of this post you can admire the artwork that will be adorning the new record (by artist Tony Roberts, who has done work in the past for bands such as Conan and Electric Wizard), and further down will be the full tracklist, as well as information on where you can hear a couple of these tracks now — plus how you can preorder a copy of the album!

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Upcoming Shows: Maryland Deathfest (MDF X)

As everyone knows, almost all of the awesome metal tours and festivals take place over in Europe.  They’ve got Wacken Open Air in Germany, Download Festival at Donnington Park in England, Metalcamp in Slovenia, and what seems like millions of others — all with the most incredible lineups imaginable.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are pretty much just forced to contend with tours that have a far-too-high ratio of shitty-to-good, like Ozzfest or the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival.

Well, with a few exceptions, and probably the biggest exception each year is the Maryland Deathfest.  This weekend-long metal party is held annually in the city of Baltimore, which as everyone knows was named for the seminal 1970s metal band Sir Lord Baltimore.

This year, the Deathfest is taking place between the 24th-27th of May, and tickets are available for three out of those four days.  As we’ve recently discussed, Morgion had to pull out of their scheduled performance, but there is still a fuckton and a half of awesomeness in the lineup.

**Update (3 May 2012) — the official time-slot schedule has been released; details below**

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Just Released: No Anchor – Rope/Pussyfootin’ 7-Inch

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No AnchorRope/Pussyfootin’ 7-Inch (Self-released, 17 March 2012)

Good morning, readers. It felt like this week was never going to end, but it’s finally Friday! All we need to do is fumble our way through one more day, then the weekend will officially be here. Pretty awesome, huh? Although sometimes even just one eight-hour day still feels like it lasts forever, and besides that, it’s hard to get excited about anything this early in the morning, right?

Well don’t worry, I’ve got something to help you survive one more workday. Go grab a cup of coffee and get your headphones on, and brace yourselves for some grungey noise-rock all the way from Queensland! Brisbane’s No Anchor have just unleashed a brand new 7″ with four songs (three of which are free to download!) over an eight-minute span that should give you just the jolt you need.

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