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xmystophalesx · 2 years

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Best New Heavy Metal Releases Week of October 28th, 2022

Yet another insane amount of new releases and, to be completely honest, it looks to be the same, if not even more, next week. Continuing trying to keep this short as possible, especially when the list of albums is this long. Let’s get to a few of the highlights.

Charon’s Claw-Streets of Calimport (Heavy/Thrash)**

Bay Area Thrash metal with a good dose of Heavy/Speed metal thrown in and all formed in the Greek Heavy Metal Scene? Yes, thank you!

Morbikon-Ov Mournful Twilight (Melodic Black/Thrash)**

Melodic Black Metal that hits all the right notes at all the right times. I listened to this way too many times considering the amount of releases this week. When you have members that have resumes that include Iron Reagan, Municipal Waste, Soilwork and ….And Oceans, was there any chance this WASN‘T going to be good?

Abyssic-Brought Forth in Iniquity (Doom/Symphonic)**

Not normally my thing, but the re-playability of this album is off the charts. You will find new things throughout subsequent listens for quite some time. Next level songwriting throughout.

Royal Hunt-Dystopia Pt.2 (Heavy Progressive)**

A band that REALLY should be better known. Fantastic album after fantastic album. One of those bands that has the Khemmis problem. Thoroughly enjoy while playing and somehow they slip your mind when they aren’t.

Clamoris-Opus Limbonica (Melodic Death/Symphonic)**

When it comes to mixing symphonic elements with Melodic Death Metal, it doesn’t get any better than this. Seems to be the week for symphonic elements being added (Dimmu Borgir also re-released a remastered version of PEM this week) and Clamoris and Abyssic are both a masterclass on how to do it perfectly. If you like the added depth of symphonic elements, this is a no brainer.

That will do it for yet another week. Music is the passion of the soul. Enjoy every moment. Until next week and, as always,

BANG THY HEAD!!!

All worthy of a listen if you like the genre

*= standout in that genre

**=best of the week regardless of genre

Best of the Week

Charon’s Claw-Streets of Calimport (Heavy/Thrash)**

Blind the Eye-The Lion of Lions (Melodic Death)**

Morbikon-Ov Mournful Twilight (Melodic Black/Thrash)**

Inner Urge-Consume and Waste (Heavy/Power)**

Abyssic-Brought Forth in Iniquity (Doom/Symphonic)**

Royal Hunt-Dystopia Pt.2 (Heavy Progressive)**

Theotoxin-Fragment: Totenruhe (Black)**

Clamoris-Opus Limbonica (Melodic Death/Symphonic)**

Jordfast-Av Stoft (Melodic Black)**

Standout in their Genre

Bavaustrian Metalbrothers United-Fall into Oblivion (Black/Death)*

Implore-The Burden of Existence (Death/Black)*

Them-Fear City (Heavy)*

Blakk Ledd-Heavy Metal Fans (Heavy)*

Ravage Red-Decay (Melodic Death)*

Obsidious-Iconic (Progressive Death)*

Solitude Within-When Kingdoms Fall (Symphonic Metal)*

Therion-Leviathan II (Symphonic)*

Aggressive-Collapse (Thrash)*

Intent-Exile (Thrash)*

Defleshed-Grind Over Matter (Thrash/Death)*

Officer X-Hell is Coming (Hard Rock/Heavy)*

Noctem-Credo Certa Ne Cars (Black/Death)*

Atrocia-Contamination (Death)*

Mindahead-6119, pt 1 (Progressive)*

Lastbreath-Vendetta (Thrash/Hardcore)*

Dusk of Delusion-Corollian Robotic System (Heavy/Groove/Progressive)*

Sickrecy-Salvation Through Tyranny (Grindcore)*

Slaughter the Giant-Depravity (Melodic Death)*

Spitfire-Nightmares (Thrash/Speed)*

Worth a listen if you enjoy the genre

Flesh Shrine-The Grand Apostasy (Death)

Flesh Prison-Surrender (Death/Doom)

Stormheat-Rewind of Time (Heavy/Speed)

Orvel 69-Pepeo I Prah (Heavy/Hard Rock)

Onward-Of Epoch and Inferno (Heavy Power)

Hiss From the Moat-The Way Out of Hell (Death/Black)

Spell-Tragic Magic (Heavy/Hard Rock)

Darkmage-Tales From Solitude (Black)

Michael Bormann’s Jaded Heart-Power to Win (Heavy/Hard Rock)

Antropofagus-Origin (Technical Death)

Teratoma-Chaosmakers (Death)

Darkthrone-Astral Fortress (Black)

Exessus-Asynapse (Thrash)

Ground-Habitual Self-Abuse (Thrash/Crossover/Grindcore)

Triskelyon-Downfall (Thrash)

Vanguard-The Power that You Hold (Thrash)

Morbikon had the album I just coming back to over and over again. Isabella agrees wholeheartedly so with 4.75/5 Morbikon takes this weeks top spot!

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dolphinshark · 7 years

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As usual, this list goes to 11.

11. Brutus - Burst

As is tradition, my #11 slot goes to a metal-adjacent album that grabbed me, and this year that would be the female-fronted Belgian post-hardcore band Brutus, with their infectiously raw debut album. Equal parts catchy, energetic, and dreamy, this record has me excited not only about the future of this band, but of the future of post-hardcore in general.

10. Incantation - Profane Nexus

The death metal legends are back with one of their strongest albums in years, the perfect combination of death/doom, full of crushing riffs, inhuman growls, and unholy filth. This record wallops you over the head and doesn’t let up.

9. Psudoku - Deep Space Psudokument

Of course, everyone’s (my) favorite space-y jazzsurfgrind band from the future was bound to make my list, back again with another truly insane mix of every genre you can think of and several you can’t. Frenetic and unrelenting, this album is worth unpacking.

8. Pallbearer - Heartless

Further honing their impeccable doom / hard rock / trad craft, the Arkansas quartet has delivered another classic that sees them expanding their instantly recognizable palette of soaring riffs, sludgy production, and primal feelings. Adding more synths to entice me even more just seems unfair at this point.

7. Mutoid Man - War Moans

Sometimes I just want a fun metal record, something upbeat and catchy with a snarling grin. This record, with its clean vocals, quick tempos, and kickass attitude, provides that in spades. I don’t really know how to skateboard (the closest I’ve come is when TWG kept one in our apartment in college, and we’d slowly roll around our urban loft’s cement style floors), but when I listen to this, it makes me want to learn.

6. Slagmaur - Thill Smitts Terror

Okay, so imagine if Blut Aus Nord wrote songs about Grimm’s fairy tales, or if Alice In Wonderland were about a trip to Hell’s blacksmith. Fully embracing the theatricality and performativity of the best black metal, this record is equal parts terrifying and entrancing. The production and tone is gorgeously, enormously infernal, like Phil Spector’s Wall Of Satan.

5. Wolves In The Throne Room - Thrice Woven

A return to form after a perhaps ill-advised sojourn into electronics, this record proves that the classic purveyors of “no, black metal can be pretty, too” can still make eerie, beautiful cultish music of dark forests with the best of them. The synths are much better incorporated here, and the songs burn with a ferocity that’s nice to see. For anyone in need of a soundtrack to some sort of pagan effigy burning, look no further.

4. Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

This introspective, meditative, incredibly moving record, consisting of one 83-minute track, is more than just one of the best metal albums of the year; it’s a testament to the immense power of grief and loss. Former Bell Witch drummer and founding member Adrian Guerra died during the writing process on Mirror Reaper, and there’s a moment about halfway through where Guerra’s vocals from a previous album’s sessions appear, resulting in a powerful moment of grief, but also hope.

3. Krallice - Loüm / Go Be Forgotten

Krallice is truly on a hot streak as of late, releasing these two incredible records (and a third excellent one, Prelapsarian, in late 2016) in one calendar year. Endlessly inventive in exploring the limits and pushing the boundaries of extreme music, it certainly seems like Krallice can do no wrong right now. Loüm, released in October, features Neurosis bassist Dave Edwardson on lead vocals, and it’s perhaps the more chaotic and dynamic of the two. Go Be Forgotten, on the other hand, feels more icily propulsive, with its heavier emphasis on synths and a tighter focus overall. Releasing these two on a typical schedule would be impressive, but both in one year is unreal.

2. Power Trip - Nightmare Logic

The finest purveyors of throwback thrash revival, the Texas crossover group put out another classic full of speed, drive, and power (lol get it???). I honestly feel like this album could stand up to anything from the Big Four; its combination of catchiness, headbangability, and pure, raw attitude will have me listening for a long, long time.

1. Elder - Reflections of a Floating World

Sometimes you find a band that feels specifically designed in a lab to appeal exactly to your sensibilities. For me, Elder is one of those bands. The Boston trio explore stoner/doom heavily tinged with prog and hard rock. It’s clean singing, plenty of mellotron, and riffs for days. The songs are long and complex, but the album doesn’t really engage in typical 70s prog pompousness (not that I mind that—see: my endless collection of Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, etc.). Instead, it ebbs and flows naturally and dynamically, engaging in aural worldbuilding that evokes imaginary landscapes befitting the sublime album artwork. Elder captured my #1 metal spot two years ago with 2015′s Lore, and here they are again. Watch out folks, we’ve got a dynasty on our hands.

#2017 In Music #BIH #Brutus #Incantation #Psudoku #Pallbearer #Mutoid Man #Slagmaur #Bell Witch #Wolves In The Throne Room #Krallice #Power Trip #Elder

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theplaguezine · 6 years

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NUCLEAR ASSAULT

Interview with John Connelly by Daniel Hinds

(conducted May 2003)

The melding of hardcore and thrash metal, aka 'crossover,' was the hot ticket back in the mid to late 80s. Bands like the Crumbsuckers, S.O.D., D.R.I., Agnostic Front and The Accused all had ties to both metal and hardcore and managed to really bridge both fan bases. After an early departure from Anthrax, bassist Dan Lilker joined up with three other guys with similar tastes and formed Nuclear Assault, a hard-hitting band that could rock out the most serious political topics one second and then fire off a total goof the next. Speed and concrete heaviness were the foundation, but it was the keen songwriting and human anger that really gave Nuclear Assault its unique voice. Vocalist John Connelly explains the whys and hows of this seemingly unlikely reunion… How's the tour going? Aside from the fact that everyone caught the flu on the warm-up tour, pretty good. (laughs) Yeah, it's novel. That's the difference between traveling in a van and traveling in a tour bus. In a tour bus, you get to watch the flu go from person to person gradually over the course of a week or so. In a van, it kind of hits everyone at once. What made you decide to get back together now? I think just enough time had passed that we were all ready to do this again. Being in a band is kind of like being married to three or four other people. You know how many marriages work out these days - not many. People who stay in a band long enough to do anything, you tend to be talking about some pretty determined people. So after ten or twelve years, everybody's like, we're not getting along well anymore, let's pack it in and shut it down. Enough time had gone by, everybody was ready to get back to work. I read an interview from 1999 where you said there was no chance of a Nuclear Assault reunion, that you just weren't interested in playing that kind of music anymore. I tried a few other things and had a lot of fun with other projects. Unfortunately, this is what I'm really good at writing. I can either do something else half-assed or I can do something well and if I'm going to do anything, I'd rather do it well. How is writing going for the new album? We're having a lot of fun with that. Danny and I were getting together before he moved up to Rochester once a week and it was just like the old days. Back in the day, we'd get together on his front porch and write music over a twelve-pack of Meister-Brau. Except we can afford something a little better now, like Budweiser (laughs). Are you handling the lyrics? More or less I have to. Because I'm singing and playing at the same time, I have to be really conscious of coordinating the two. Some things I cannot do at the same time. I cannot do a really complicated vocal riff while I'm doing a really complicated guitar riff. Or sometimes I can, it depends on the pattern of the picking or how the syllables of the words are laid down. They've got to interlock in a way that is compatible for me to do. So the guys generally leave the lyrics up to me because it's part of the melody situation and they go hand in hand. Will you keep the socio-political bent to the lyrics from the old days? Absolutely. That's always been one of our trademarks. That's a Nuclear thing. Where was the live album [Alive Again] recorded? It's a little complicated. We did a show at a place called Jared's in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, I'm really not exactly sure which state. Apparently there is a thing called adult-onset asthma which I was acquainted with that night. So about an hour before I go on stage, I all of a sudden can't breathe, so the music was recorded then but we couldn't use a lot of the vocal tracks. So those had to be redone at a later date. On the plus side, we did try to keep things as close to reality as possible. The vocal tracks were recorded in one pass, song to song, the same way we do a live gig. At the end of a work day, at the end of a work week, after a four-hour train ride to get to where we were recording. So you had all those same factors going - you had fatigue, you had not stopping and re-recording. Just do the tracks and make it as close to a live recording as you can. Why did you release it on Screaming Ferret? I don't know. (laughs) I honestly don't know. They just showed up and said, 'Hey, we're going to do this,' and we're like, 'Okay.' I can't say much more about that. (laughs) Do you have a label yet for the studio album? Not yet. We still have to do a demo tape and see what if any interest there still is for this kind of stuff. Without sitting down and talking with the other guys, I know there are definitely some people that we DON'T want to work with, because they are the same people who in the past screwed up what we were trying to do. Are you getting a lot of younger kids at the shows or mostly fans from the old days? Right now, we're seeing a lot of older people. Let me rephrase that - right now we're seeing a lot of our contemporaries. (laughs) Young kids, yeah, there are some. For some strange, bizarre reason, that kind of music is coming back wit the kids these days. They are going back and discovering where the nu-metal bands got their influences from. It's more prevalent over in Europe, but it seems the crowds in Europe have always been more open-minded and aggressive in listening to stuff. In America, I hate to say this, the kids I see at shows when I work as a bouncer or tour with other bands, they don't know anything. Their knowledge doesn't go much further back than Green Day. The crowds in Europe do seem to be more knowledgeable about where stuff comes from. Some 17-year-old at the Wacken festival over the summer was asking me about all the old bands - not just the big names like Exodus, Overkill and Anthrax, but like pretty obscure stuff that kids these days in America don't know anything about. Seems like you have always kept busy, recording and touring. What keeps you going after all these years to keep making and playing music? Just this dogged, stubborn determination that I can actually, possibly someday write a decent album. I don't know, it's just something I enjoy doing. It's a bizarre way to make a living, if you can even make a living at all. (pause) I think it's some kind of mental defect. Do you have any other new projects coming up? Musically, it's just Nuclear Assault. I've always thought it was a bad idea to more than one thing at once. It creates a lot of tension inside the group. You have people wondering if you are contributing everything you should be contributing to this or are you being distracted by your side-project. Seems within the last decade, the metal scene has grown quite a bit and become a lot more diverse, yet the individual bands seem to be a lot more limited in their scope. Would you agree? What do you see as metal's future? There was a time when a thrash metal band could walk on stage and do a speed metal song, do a ballady type of song that was still heavy, do something technical and nobody batted an eye. After a while though, bands tried to chase down that heaviest sound. There's nothing wrong with that for one or two songs out of three or four, but when you had bands walking on stage and tuning down to D or C# and doing the fast flurry drum beats through an entire ten-song set, there's absolutely no variation in texture to what you're doing. You're slamming the throttle to the firewall from the moment you start to the moment you end. I don't remember who started doing that but other bands started doing it also and it was like a dog chasing its own tail. There's a limit to how far you can take that before (1) you realize that every song sounds the same as the rest of the stuff that you're doing and (2) every band in that genre sounds virtually like every other band in that genre. So it has a very homogenizing effect on the music, much in the same way that with mainstream pop music, you have one band hitting big for a record label, so the other labels go out and hire people to do the same type of music. They hire songwriters to write the same kind of music and before you know it, you've got Britney Spears, Christina Aguivv-v-v-v-wuh and whoever else is the blonde bimbo of the day. You listen to the music back to back and tell me what the difference is - I can't hear it. Except maybe that Shakira is the one that occasionally lapses into Spanish. As far as heavy metal is concerned, there was a time when you had Anthrax, you had Overkill, you had Slayer, you had Megadeth, you had Metallica, us, all these classic bands, and it was no problem telling one from the others. They had their own sound, even if the writing style on given songs was similar, the way that they handled that particular style was totally different from the others. That diversity started to go away and personally I think that's when the scene started to die. Do you see any hope for the future? I don't see how it can get much worse. With the Internet and downloading of music, in a lot of ways it's the death knell of independent music. Everybody is saying, 'Oh well this way, you can put your music on the Internet and billions of people can hear your music!' Yeah, they can hear it and download it, but there's no financial incentive for somebody to do that. It's one thing for Courtney Love to say, 'Oh the music should be free, let's put it all on the Internet' - she already made her money off the music business, working for mainstream major labels who have marketed your records the traditional way. It's a little hypocritical for her to say that music should be free on the Internet now, isn't it? As far as people pointing fingers at the record companies and saying that they are bloated and they gouge the musicians and they gouge the people listen to music - yes, all these things are very true. It's indefensible, there are still lawsuits pending on some of this stuff, in regards to what are called 'slavery contracts' and price setting by the major labels. But the thing is when the record companies were making a lot of money and didn't have to worry about a piracy rate that approaches something like 40% of their business, they were able to be a little more experimental and a little more aggressive in terms of hunting down something new and something different. They didn't mind taking 50 or 100 grand and sinking it into a band that nobody had ever heard of, that didn't sound like anything anybody had ever head of, and throwing it against the wall and seeing if it stuck. Whereas now, with the 40% rate piracy, their thinking is, 'We're only going to put out the stuff we know is going to sell millions of records.' And again this has a very homogenizing effect on the music. From an artist's viewpoint, I have a problem with my stuff being downloaded without my permission, without so much as a by-your-leave, especially because, you know what? I'm not one of the big artists. Every once in a blue moon, I'll get a check from somewhere, whether it's ASCAP or god forbid one of the record companies remembering that they're supposed to pay us now and again. And it's never a big check, it's like maybe $100, but it always seems to come at a time when I'm looking at a bill and trying to figure out how to pay it. Or I have to take one of the cats to the vet or maybe I want to take my wife out to a nice dinner somewhere. If anything, all this stuff contributes to hurting the smaller acts, the smaller musicians, the guys who don't sell millions of records. This is just going to contribute to an environment where the only stuff that's getting put out is stuff they know is going to sell huge. And that's the world I don't want to live in! "And now, the next O-Town clone band, following the next N'Sync clone band, and next we'll have the new Madonna." Yay, great... Someone please slit my wrists now. (laughs) I always think of bands like Blue Oyster Cult, who didn't even have a hit until their fourth album. In today's climate, they would never be allowed to stick around that long. They would have maybe put out their first album. Maybe. Actually it's good that you mention that because classic rock is the other field where band's were allowed to sound independent of each other. Blue Oyster Cult, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Kansa, Bob Seger, all these guys, Jethro Tull - you couldn't mistake any of these bands for the others. That was a really diverse and exciting time. It was cool to find out somebody was putting out a new album because you knew you'd be getting something new and different. Do you have the rights back to the early Nuclear Assault albums yet? Not yet. This all gets very complicated and to be honest I don't know all the ins and outs. I know some of our albums got sold to a third party, again without involving us in the process at all, and we don't know how to get a hold of these guys. Our attitude is, well, if you've been selling these records, don't you kind of owe us a paycheck at some point? (laughs) They're supposed to pay us for that, technically and theoretically, although of course no record label ever does. Tim from Screaming Ferret is looking into it because I know he'd like to release a lot of the back catalog. If he can pull it off, great. Looking back on the early records, my favorite is still Game Over. What your feelings about the albums these days? Well, I know that my voice has gotten a lot better over the years. Live, it's a lot stronger and in the studio, it's a lot stronger. A lot of that has to do with the fact that for a while I was doing a blues band. It really reinforces your basics. If your basics aren't solid, then you don't have anything. It's like anything else - you listen back to it and hear certain things that you would have loved to have done differently or fixed. On the whole, there are some albums that I like a lot and I liked them a lot at the time. There are some albums that I'm not crazy about that I wasn't crazy about at the time. How involved are you with the production side of things? Very heavily. Everybody in the band is very much involved with the sound that their instrument is making on the album. When the time comes to mix the record, everybody is there giving input. It's not the case of the four of us sitting back and listening to a producer and going, 'Uh-huh, yeah, okay, we'll do it your way.' Not at all. And that has driven a couple guys crazy until they got used to working with us. Hey, when this goes out, we're the ones whose name is on it. Nuclear Assault Official Facebook

#Nuclear Assault #interview #may2003

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 2 years

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Dorsal Atlântica , 1990

#Dorsal Atlântica #Genre: Speed Metal Thrash Metal Hardcore/Crossover #Lyrical themes: Modern society values Poverty Spirituality #Brazil #Carlos Lopes #Cláudio Lopes #Toninho Hardcore

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riffrelevant · 6 years

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(By Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker*, Senior Writer/Journalist, RiffRelevant.com)

The most recent Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S. – specifically Saturday, Sept. 1 and Sunday, Sept. 2 – would see the inaugural Heavy Mountain Music & Beer Festival get underway in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina.

Over the span of those two days, in two different venue locations, The Mothlight and The Orange Peel, bands of varying genres would share their aural wares. I found myself in Asheville, as I often do, present and prepared for these back to back days of underground music.

The following is a brief take on those events, which began with a sold out Day 1 at The Mothlight featuring the bands BASK, TOKE, TEMPTATION’S WINGS, and GREEN FIEND.

GREEN FIEND

First to take the stage this evening before a standing room only crowd would be Charlotte’s GREEN FIEND, a band I was admittedly unfamiliar with prior to this show. My naïvety would not matter, for good music is always the ideal ice breaker, is it not?

This crossover metal quintet were more than ready to kick things off, diving right into things with a furious set of metallic genre-mashing mania. Taking bits from such stylistic stables as thrash, doom, hardcore, and sludge, GREEN FIEND fired the crowd up and set the bar high to reach for the night’s remaining acts.

Check out the fan-filmed video clip below (courtesy of Tym Ghoulston) of a GREEN FIEND original, “Weed And Speed“, and a follow-up that finds them sludge the crap out of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine“.

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TEMPTATION’S WINGS

Next up were AVL’s own TEMPTATION’S WINGS and tonight’s gig was one I was especially interested in, because it would be my first time seeing the band since they recently mutated into a quartet. Though I did not know it at the time (but did half suspect), I was about to be super damned impressed.

Now possessing a dual guitar set up, that arrangement has resulted in a much fuller, thicker overall sound for the guys. It also allows for a lot of interplay between the guitars and is clearly a step in the right direction for the former trio. In the pictures shared here, you will notice a burlap sack on a stand that is eventually revealed to be the “decapitated” head of Medusa during their playing “Lair Of The Gorgon Queen“.

The guys also debuted a handful of new songs, revealing that they seem to be exploring some intense psychedelic elements in their current song crafting. It will be quite interesting to see and hear where their next album musically goes, after the breakthrough success of 2017’s powerful prog-doom effort, ‘Skulthor Ebonblade‘.

Until then, check out this video of the entire TEMPTATION’S WINGS live set – courtesy of Will Bouton & FUGO Films:

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TOKE

With two down, there was now two to go, and next to commandeer the stage was Cape Fear’s own trio of amplified stoner doom ‘n sludge, TOKE. Always delivering dense, foreboding music with malevolent contents, the guys quickly unleashed an avalanche of crushing riffery.

Backing that onslaught was the plodding battery of the band’s rhythm section, one that pummeled and jarred every soul in the joint. TOKE wailed and wahhed away as only they do, slowly and with deliberate, harshly delivered drug worshiping lyrical themes and occult vibes.

Dig the live video rendition of “Legalize Sin” from TOKE‘s 2017 ‘Orange’ album streaming here.

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BASK

Next up to bat were the night’s headline act, another local act that I personally believe are one of the most underrated / overlooked bands of them all in today’s scene, BASK. This Asheville-based band are one quartet that does not get the due recognition that I think they deserve, their music is just simply freaking amazing.

That said, we were now being treated to a blend of alluring progressive rock merged with a psychedelic profoundness that changes you upon the hearing of it. Grandiose and epic in scope, the dynamic spectrum of emotion and touching qualities of this band’s music is something that is not easily malleable into words. Attempts to do so miserably fail to relate the enthralling sonic journey that these songs are able to take you on.

Whether live or on album, BASK never fail to astound and impress me, and their set ending Day 1 of the Heavy Mountain Music & Beer Festival was no different. They provided the perfect capstone to this evening’s other live presentations from GREEN FIEND, TEMPTATION’S WINGS, and TOKE.

Unfortunately, no live video from their set is available, but below is an official video from their critically acclaimed 2017 album, ‘Ramble Beyond’.

Make sure to check out our wrap up of Day 2 [LINK], it includes photo galleries for that day’s bands – EXMORTUS, YOUNG WIDOWS, INTER ARMA, BLACK TUSK and co-headliners, OBITUARY and HIGH ON FIRE – plus, an interview with OBITUARY guitarist, Trevor Peres [HERE]!

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*All photos and Temptation’s Wings live video courtesy of Will Bouton – FUGO Films & Photography

Heavy Mountain Music & Beer Festival: Day 1 – BASK, TOKE, TEMPTATION’S WINGS & GREEN FIEND [Live Videos] (By Pat 'Riot' Whitaker*, Senior Writer/Journalist, RiffRelevant.com) The most recent Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S.

#2018 #Bask #Doom #Festival #Fugo Films #Green Fiend #Metal #Review #Rock #Sludge #Temptations Wings #The Mothlight #Toke #Video #Will Bouton #YouTube

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wobc-fm · 7 years

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The Year In Extreme Music

words by Matt Grimm

2017 was a really great year for metal and extreme music. The political turmoil of the past year has led to a lot of bands to return to making political and angry music. We saw name-making releases from heavy music up and comers like Jesus Piece, Bell Witch, and Code Orange (If someone told me that in 2013 that Code Orange Kids would drop the “Kids” from their name and be nominated for a Grammy in 4 years I would have laughed in their face). 2017 also saw some excellent releases from genre mainstays like Boris, Converge, Obituary, and Krallice, still proving that they can make excellent and innovative music decades into existence. Here are some thoughts on 10 albums from the past year that I highly enjoyed, and hope you can too.

-Matt Grimm, WOBC Metal Director

Endon - Through the Mirror

I had never heard of or listened to Endon before I saw them open for Boris in October. I left that show absolutely speechless. This Japanese five piece combines elements of powerviolence, black metal, grindcore, and power electronics into pure chaotic beauty that I have never seen a band even attempt to do, let alone do perfectly. Opening track Nerve Rain is a 6 minute instrumental epic that slowly builds entirely off of one jangly riff, adding elements of distortion and stretching the song to the brink of snapping before suddenly ending and quickly transitioning into the next track, “Your Ghost Is Dead,” one of the most sonically punishing andbeautiful tracks i have heard all year. Vocalist Taichi Nagura pushes his voice to limits that arenot humanly possible (listen to 3:40-4:13 on Your Ghost is Dead to hear what I mean) and hekeeps it up throughout the whole album, with screeches that make your skin crawl. I havenever heard a band like Endon, and probably never will hear a band like them again. To find aband that can punish themselves like this is rare and makes this record incredibly special.Through the Mirror: https://endon.bandcamp.com/album/through-the- mirror

Power Trip - Nightmare Logic

Texas crossover thrash titans Power Trip had already proved themselves a force to be reckoned with in their blazing 2013 debut Manifest Decimation, yet somehow they felt the need to top that. On their 2017 sophomore record “Nightmare Logic”, an 8 track record that leaves your head banging for 32 minutes. Their pummeling, no-holds-barred take on crossover thrash paints a gory picture;with songs titled “Firing Squad,” “Executioner’s Tax,” and “Crucifiction,” all setting a dismal mood before getting kicked open with some of the most fun and circle pit-ready riffs of the year. Power Trip manages to capture the hardcore essence of crossover thrash without making it too cheesy, while simultaneously keeping the riffs and speed of peak ‘80s thrash, making one hell of a fun record which I could not stop listening to.

Nightmare Logic: https://powertripsl.bandcamp.com/album/nightmare-logic

King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

King Woman has been one of my favorite bands in doom metal for a few years now, as they take the heavy, deep, and gloomy aspects of doom and combine them with elements of shoegaze, alongside ethereal vocals from frontwoman Kristina Esfandiari. CITIOS builds on these sonics, laid out on the band’s first EP Doubt, and makes them even more sharp, with much improved production and lyrics. Overarching themes of Esfandiari’s religiously repressed upbringing are present throughout, with lyrics such as “Am I created in the image of my Father God?” on the track “Manna” and “If you’re a holy church I wanna worship” off of album centerpiece “Hierophant.” “Hierophant”, my favorite track of the album, quietly builds with haunting vocals and slowly picked guitar lines that drive the song before crashing into something that Wednesday Addams would slow dance to at prom, or something that sends chills up your spine that remain after the song ends.

CITIOS: https://kingwoman.bandcamp.com/album/created-in- the-image- of-suffering

Uniform - Wake in Fright

One of my favorite bands in industrial music today, Uniform’s second release is a total mind bender of clashing genres, which actually WORKS. Some tracks sound like “Hell Awaits”-era Slayer with a drum machine (“Habit”), others sound like Prurient DJing a Berlin nightclub (“The Lost”), others are just ear-piercing hardcore (“The Light at the End”, “Bootlicker”), and others sound like Psalm 69-era Ministry (“Killing of America”). This band is beginning to carve a unique niche in extreme music today, and I cannot wait to see what they are going to do in years to come.

Wake in Fright: https://unifuckingform.bandcamp.com/album/wake-in- fright

Devil Master - Inhabit the Corpse

‘80s Japanese hardcore is one of my favorite subgenres of extreme music out there, and very few bands have replicated that style in the ‘2010s as well as Devil Master. Their 2016 Demo was 11 minutes of fun, creepy, hardcore, and this Halloween-released EP cranked the spookiness up even higher. The opening track “Inhabit the Corpse” opens with an evil and frantic guitar riff which is enhanced with deep and reverb-heavy vocals which are barked rather than screamed. With a run time of only 10 minutes, this record comes and goes in the blink of an eye before closing track, “Blood on My Shroud,”which ends with a piano outro played on a piano that has not been touched since the 1800s, leaving you with just a slightly unsettling feeling that rewards you with every listen.

Inhabit the Corpse: https://devilmaster.bandcamp.com/album/inhabit-the- corpse

Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

Bell Witch has always been a band focused on death and mortality, which has made them one of the best bands in funeral doom. However, “Mirror Reaper” puts that into a new perspective, after the passing of drummer Adrian Guerra in 2016. Now, with a single-track, 86 minute long album, Bell Witch channels this tragedy into serene doom metal, with gradual crescendos that take several minutes to reach a peak, moments of almost complete silence, and crushed vocals coupled with heavy, emotional bass and drum parts. This album is not something that you just listen to while quickly walking to class some afternoon. It is meant to be listened to in darkness or solitude; it’s meant to wash over you and be something you get lost in, and before you know it you’ve finished the album and you feel a sense of peace and tranquility remain.

Mirror Reaper: https://bellwitch.bandcamp.com/album/mirror-reaper

Red Death - Formidable Darkness

DC hardcore has had a hell of a resurgence in the past 2-3 years, with bands like Kombat, Protestor, and Pure Disgust doing the same thing today that Minor Threat and Void did in the early ‘80s, with even more intensity. Red Death has been one of those DC hardcore bright spots lately. Their first record, 2015’s Permanent Exile, was a crossover thrash ripper that I liked but had faded from my memory. Formidable Darkness, the band’s first release on Triple B Records, brings the same breakdown-heavy crossover thrash energy from the first album and cranks the production value and catchiness up by 11, with riffs that are catchier and more melodic than their first record but still pack a heavy punch.

Formidable Darkness: https://bbbrecords.bandcamp.com/album/formidable-darkness

Jesus Piece/Malice at the Palace - Split

Jesus Piece is one of the most important bands in hardcore today, both in terms of musical direction and in social relevance. Saying what needs to be said and not taking any BS from anybody, Jesus Piece released a split with Florida hardcore titans Malice at the Palace. It is the best release in hardcore of the year, period. Jesus Piece frontman Aaron Heard writes politically charged and active lyrics about life in America as a black man, talking about ignorance towards injustice. These are seen brightly in split standout “Deny Reality,” Heard takes aim at political structures ignoring the voice of minorities, saying “deny the chance of understanding / unaware of all you're damning” and how “in the age of information / The facts you still deny”, firing shots at President Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric. Couple that with a blastbeat heavy bridge and a breakdown that leaves you spinkicking in your dorm room, and you have one of the best hardcore songs of the year. MATP brings the same energy on the second half of the split, reminding me a lot of Expire-esque hardcore at its best. If you like hardcore, you will like this record. If you don’t like hardcore, I would still recommend this record just as one of the most important splits to come out of hardcore this decade.

Split: https://bridge9.bandcamp.com/album/split-10

Also, my favorite live video of 2017 was this video of an 8 year old girl singing with Jesus Piece at This Is Hardcore Fest

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Full of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy

One of the most prolific bands in extreme music, Full of Hell released their best album to date with “Trumpeting Ecstasy”, a 23 minute whirlwind of powerviolence, noisegrind, and overall chaos. All 11 tracks are very, very good, classic Full of Hell songs with much more impressive production, thanks to production by Converge guitarist/heavy music savant Kurt Ballou. However, what really blew me away was the final track “At The Cauldron’s Bottom,” a 6 minute epic that opens up like a traditional powerviolence piece and then slows down into something I have never heard Full of Hell do: mix sludgy drum fills and guitar riffs into something that chugs along slowly, rather than sprint by at a breakneck pace like the rest of the album. Full of Hell never fail to impress me, and they’ve topped themselves on “Trumpeting Ecstasy”.

Trumpeting Ecstasy: https://fullofhell.bandcamp.com/album/trumpeting-ecstasy

RAGANA - You Take Nothing

RAGANA, an Olympia, WA-based duo, combines black metal, doom metal, and screamo into something incredibly creepy but simultaneously beautiful. Taking as much inspiration from Punch as they do from Wolves in the Throne Room, RAGANA made black metal political and did so expertly. Each one of frontwoman Maria’s (last name unknown) lyrics hit harder than the last, as the instrumental parts in between her piercing screams add extra oomph to what she sings. While not the best album for fans of traditional black metal, I would highly recommend this record as a great place to start with innovative and active metal, as it is still palatable to newcomers to the genre.

You Take Nothing: https://ragana.bandcamp.com/

#the year in extreme music #best of #essay

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