Tag Archives: Monsterworks

Giant of the Mountain – Moon Worship (2014), The Empty Quarter (2016)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

cover

Giant of the Mountain – Moon Worship (self-released, 25 February 2014)

 

GOTM cover

Giant of the Mountain – The Empty Quarter (Burning Dogma Records, 27 May 2016)

 

Emerging from the Plano/Dallas region of northern Texas way back in 2008, the beast known as Giant of the Mountain was formed by guitarist/vocalist Cody Daniels along with Randi Matejowsky, who soon switched from guitar to drums. The pair worked with a series of different bassists as they unleashed a couple EPs and a full-length album over the next several years. By the band’s fifth anniversary in 2013, they had joined up with Alexander Salazar on bass and doubling as a second vocalist — and this is the line-up that remains intact to this day. This threesome recorded and released the album Moon Worship, a masterpiece of progressive-death insanity, a little over two years ago, and now they’re back with the brand-new EP The Empty Quarter which comes out at the end of this week. If you aren’t already on the GOTM bandwagon, keep on reading to find out what you’ve been missing!

 

Continue reading →

Advertisement

Monsterworks – Album of Man (2013)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

image05

Monsterworks – Album of Man (Mortal Music, 28 March 2013)

 

So I just realized in a few more days this year will be half over — and I also realized that I’m nowhere near halfway through writing reviews for LAST year’s top albums list… yikes! If I don’t want to still be working on these when I’m supposed to be putting together THIS year’s list, I guess I’d better get moving at a quicker pace. So here’s another one for you guys.

Monsterworks from London, England (formerly New Zealand) have been making crazy mishmashes of awesome music for nearly twenty years, and during that time they’ve released roughly seven hundred albums and EPs. I don’t know the exact number, but I’ve heard that they’ve done two more (Earth and Universe) since the one I’m currently writing about (which was only fifteen months ago) and they’ve just announced that they’ll have ANOTHER two (Overhaul and Existence) by early next year. Seriously.

I’m sure I’ll get caught up on all of that some day. Maybe. But for now, let’s talk about Album of Man, which came out last March.

 

Continue reading →

The List of 2013 Year-End Lists

Posted by valleyofsteel on
Photo Collage - 2013 Shows - by Mrs. Valley of Steel

Click for full-sized image

 

Hey folks — a very Happy (Belated) New Year to all of you! 2013 definitely turned out to be an interesting year for me, with lots of big changes, new projects, new responsibilities, etc., but an unfortunate side-effect of some of that was (as you’ve surely noticed) that the amount of time I’d been spending writing really tapered off as the year went on, to the point where I didn’t post
anything here for the last few months! Well, as you may have seen, I’ve started writing reviews of some new 2014 releases — and as time allows I promise I will also be sharing plenty of older stuff I’ve missed writing about, because believe me there has been a TON worth sharing!

But more on that later. As I started doing last year, I’ve once again put together a collection of various people’s “best of” lists from 2013. Admittedly I sort of got a late start on this (I didn’t even put out the open invitation until after most websites had already finished with publishing all their year-end stuff), but several people have answered the call and contributed some really interesting lists that you’ll want to check out…

 

Continue reading →

Another Mortal Music DR Coming Soon: Monsterworks

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Well holy shit, check this out.  It’s just like they say: speak of the devil and he appears at your elbow.

In this case, “the devil” is Mortal Music‘s Digital Releases — their little gift packages containing a few tracks at a time from a particular band, and made available for free download for a limited time, eventually leading up to a full-length album from that band.

Just this afternoon I was talking about the fact that Ion Vein is getting the details straightened out for their second DR, and I had literally just hit the “Publish” button on that article, when an email suddenly popped up in my in-box telling me that Monsterworks has announced details for the release of their second DR!

 
Continue reading →

Music Makes Miserable Monday Mornings More Manageable

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Good morning, Readers!

I hope you are doing well today. Personally, I’m really not sure yet, really not quite conscious enough to even have a general positive or negative impression of today, so far.

But regular visitors here might be familiar with my often-stated opinion — an opinion that I understand is a bit controversial and unconventional (although I think many people secretly agree with me, but I just happen to be the only one brave enough to come right out and say it) — that Mondays completely suck.

But fortunately, there’s also a correllary to that particular theory, which is that Mondays suck just a little bit less when there’s good music, so I’ve found a few songs I’d like to share with you on this Monday morning, to try and ease the pain somewhat!

 
Continue reading →

Out Last Week: Monsterworks – Man::Instincts (FREE Download!)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

Monsterworks – Man::Instincts (Mortal Music, 10 July 2012)

 
Whoah.

Despite all my attempts to stay alert and focused on doing my job, I think I might have accidentally dozed off a little bit just now.

And let me tell you — I had one fucked up dream.

Picture this: King Diamond and his band, Chris Cornell and the rest of Soundgarden, Rob Zombie, Glen Benton and the rest of Deicide, and all four dudes from Mastodon somehow all met up at a party, where they ended up playing cards and drinking and having a good time, and suddenly they decided they wanted to collaborate on a musical project. All of them.

Naturally, with so much talent in the room, nobody could decide who should be the vocalist, so they figured the only fair way would be to let everyone sing — sometimes they’d take turns, or sometimes they’d all join together in like this massive heavy metal choir. Something like the chorus in the Blue Öyster Cult song “Extra Terrestrial Intelligence,” just on a much grander scale.

Another issue arose when it came time to start writing songs, since they all came from such diverse musical backgrounds. But this supergroup soon discovered that they at least had some influences in common — all the great old-school metal, proto-metal, and hard rock bands. So they let this sound be the foundation for their new music, and as they began working together on the songs, they found that the little bits of death metal, stoner metal, thrash, NWOBHM, and whatever else kept creeping into the writing process seemed to mesh together surprisingly well. (I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense — I told you it was a pretty crazy dream!)

 
Continue reading →