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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years ago

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Cristina Scabbia x Diablo: Inside metal and gaming’s most devilish crossover yet

Outstanding hack-and-slash remaster Diablo II: Resurrected isn’t just about polishing up the beloved original’s relentless fire and brimstone. In a striking collaboration with Lacuna Coil songstress Cristina Scabbia and bizarro YouTube star Mark The Hammer, it’s inspired the latest crossover between video games and heavy music, too…

When Cristina Scabbia first picked up the joypad, she had no idea she was steering herself onto a path that would still be throwing up juicy side-missions three decades down the line. A young teenager in northern Italy during the mid-’80s first generation video game boom, the future Lacuna Coil frontwoman didn’t have the spare cash for the cutting-edge equipment of the time, whose 128-colour palettes and blocky two-dimensional sprites felt utterly futuristic. When a local friend powered up David Crane’s 1982 masterpiece Pitfall! on their Atari 2600, however, it opened the doors to another world.

“I’ve been a gamer for quite a while,” her eyes light up at the memory. “I love video games. I love what you can learn from them. I love the stories they tell…”

Few games are as darkly compelling as Blizzard Entertainment’s legendary Diablo series. Bringing to life the dark fantasy realm of Sanctuary – a midpoint between the High Heavens and Burning Hells – its trio of classic titles chronicle the eternal conflict between mankind and the demonic legions led by Diablo, fearsome Destroyer Of Souls. When David Brevik’s original landed in 1996, it was a literal game-changer for the industry, raising the bar in terms of depth and detail, storytelling and character-building. 2000’s Diablo II raised it again, still revered by hardcore gamers as the greatest action-RPG of all, while 2012’s Diablo III brought the franchise into the modern era.

Fittingly, it’s against that shadowy backdrop that Cristina joins us today, to discuss Start Again, her musical collaboration with the minds behind thrilling 3D, HD remaster Diablo II: Resurrected.

Speaking from her high-backed gaming chair in front of an impressive PC set-up this morning, she looks ready for battle. A laid-back, dressed-down counterpart to her imposing onstage alter-ego, she is surrounded by stacks of proudly-displayed paraphernalia, from a plushie of Gremlins’ Gizmo and photos of her band, to figurines of her favourite virtual characters, spare controllers, and the ubiquitous energy drink refrigerator.

Anyone familiar with Cristina’s Twitch streams wondering if this might be a carefully-arranged studio space should think again. “It’s actually part of my living room,” she laughs. “There’s this big table that was supposed to be for dinners with friends, but as we would go out to eat instead, I decided to use it for something that I like, and filled it with computers, monitors and consoles.

“It’s where I play. It’s where I stream from. It’s the safe space.”

Diablo’s heroes work best when joining forces, and 30 minutes further north, in the town of Saronno, we meet Marco Arata – AKA YouTube sensation Mark The Hammer – Cristina’s collaborator on Start Again, and a playful like mind. “I was three years old when I first played on a Game Boy,” he smiles into the light of a bank of monitors, “and I never stopped.”

For readers not in the know, Mark is the uber-talented multi-instrumentalist who’s gained a reputation for uploading incisive, tongue-in-cheek videos to YouTube like Irritating Guitar Lessons and How To Create A Black Metal Song… Without Any Talent. Learning piano aged eight, he quickly graduated to electric guitar, bass and drums. He’s since been picked up as the live guitarist/keyboardist for Italian pop-hip-hop icon J‑Ax. The main Mark The Hammer YouTube channel has more than half a million subscribers, while its English-language alternative boasts close to 100,000.

Both accomplished, analytical, artistic minds, it feels key to Start Again’s success that the duo see gaming as a chance to switch off – less interested in graphics and game engines than narrative drive and world-building.

“Whenever you listen to a song as a musician, you have your brain working, thinking about what exactly is going on,” explains Mark. “I’m a big fan of acting and drama, too, and the same thing applies when you watch a movie. But when you pick up that game pad, you’re able to relax and [switch that part of your brain off]. It’s the only thing in my life that I can really say is completely relaxing.”

“I know that some people prefer creating groups or being part of a competition,” agrees Cristina, noting that Diablo, in particular, fits her play style “but I’m more of a selfish, solitary player. I don’t want to feel that competition while I play. I want to be able to relax and do things at my own pace, to have my own rhythm. I don’t necessarily think of games as an escape. For me, it’s a different world that I want to be part of, [parallel to] the real world. It’s not that I want to [run away and] live in the video game world. But when I’m playing, I want to stay there, I want to focus on what’s happening – I want to absorb all the vibes. It’s not just something that you’re watching: you’re part of it. You can choose your character. You can increase your power. You can pick your path and select your sides.

“There are things about this world that non-gamers could never really understand…”

Like all the best quests, it began with a message from out of the blue. Mark recalls the sense of absurdity, watching an email drop into his inbox that he couldn’t quite believe was real. “I remember opening the message and seeing that it was an opportunity to write [a song inspired by Diablo II] for the release of Diablo II: Resurrected. Oh, yeah, and you’ll have Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil doing vocals. I was just like ‘What?!’”

Having dropped video game soundtrack cover albums Hammer Games Vols 1 and 0 in 2015 and 2016 respectively, Mark had pedigree in the field, but he struggled to comprehend the opportunity for such a high-profile collaboration.

“This is the game that I bought as a 14-year-old when it first came out back in the year 2000,” he fishes out his original CD-ROM jewel case for an unsubtle flex, “and you’re asking me to write an official song to go with it? That in itself is mind-blowing. But to be able to do that with the greatest singer in Italian metal?! I thought it was some sort of strange spam at first. When I realised that it wasn’t, it became amazing on so many levels.”

Not a huge fan of YouTube (nor, presumably, of the hack-and-slash sub-genre), Cristina’s manager didn’t quite know what to make of the invitation. Fortunately, having followed one of Lacuna Coil’s old guitarists through a laptop screen and into Sanctuary all those years ago, and already a fan of Mark’s videos, she didn’t take much convincing.

“I was just like, ‘Mark The Hammer? I follow him!’” she grins. “Then, when they told me the project was to write a song for Diablo II: Resurrected, I immediately said yes. If you look back at interviews that I did years ago, whenever they asked me what dream I had or what is missing from my body of work, I’ve always said that I’d like to write something for a video game. When this came along, it was like, ‘Hello…’”

Cristina admits that she struggled with writer’s block over lockdown. Having watched her native Italy become one of the first countries crippled by the spread of COVID-19, she was unwilling to create music with the power to transport her back to those most troubled of times. Compared to the glacial pace of the music industry over the last 18 months, however, dropping in at crunch time in a massive game’s release schedule came as an invigorating change of pace. The first message exchanged between Cristina and Mark was on August 23, with the song due online to coincide with Diablo II: Resurrected’s launch exactly a month later.

“When you have a deadline, it can either throw you down or really speed everything up and add an excitement,” Cristina muses. “For us, it was definitely the latter. We were perhaps a little bit tense about not knowing each other. Any time you’re working with someone new, you ask yourself these questions: ‘Is he going to be nice? Is he going to be an asshole? Is he going to have the same ideas that I have? The same creativity? The same speed?’

“As soon as we started to text, though, I realised that Mark was really relaxed, really funny. He’s like me. We would send and receive messages in the middle of the night, and get immediate replies. It was like we’d opened the floodgates on an ocean of ideas.”

A high level of fandom was pivotal. Diablo’s angels and monsters – Greater and Lesser Evils – seem like characters lifted from metal album covers to begin with, and the chaotic action that spills from the streets of Tristram and the slopes of Mount Arreat that go down into the depths of Hell could hardly be better suited to metalheads who’re never happier than when throwing down in the pit. Cristina and Mark’s preferred player classes – Sorceress and Barbarian, respectively – even mirror their onstage personas. To simply phone in the sort of crowd-pleasing banger either of these musicians could write in their sleep would be to do the project a deep disservice.

Cristina reckons that if Diablo were a band, it would be either Judas Priest – all OTT outfits, pointy edges and demonic imagery – or Rammstein, spewing sheer pyrotechnic bombast. Mark contends that the larger-than-life, battle-obsessed aesthetic of Iron Maiden might be a better match, pointing out that many of the most monstrous iterations of Ed The Head wouldn’t look out of place in its deepest dungeons. We’d argue that the ominous, folky atmospherics of peak Opeth even more closely evoke the playing experience, echoing Matt Uleman’s iconic original score.

In the same way that Diablo II: Resurrected marks an upgrade for players in 2021 while maintaining the original’s dark heart – dynamic lighting, three-dimensional rendering and high-definition presentation bringing the action sharply up to date – this song needed to pay respect while still packing enough heft to make an impact on metal fans in 2021.

“Diablo is such an iconic game,” nods Mark. “I knew the original score. I knew the original atmosphere. I knew where it had to go, more or less. But it was a challenge to make something new while paying respect to the original. There were parts where I wasn’t sure where I was going, but as soon as Cristina got really into the project and added her vocals, it felt like everything [clicked].”

“Mark’s involvement was crucial,” Cristina presses. “Looking at that original soundtrack, I was thinking, ‘This is such a classic – it’s so iconic – but it’s not singable.’ It felt like putting a voice over the top would ruin it. But as soon as I heard the music that Mark had written, it changed everything. He made it singable. He created so many different parts, that offered so many different scenes, so many different moods. There are atmospheric parts, but there are also heavier parts. It’s like a journey, from beginning to end…”

Part sweeping re-score, part fan’s perspective love letter, part limb-swinging metal banger, the finished track feels like a striking bridge between worlds. Is the aim for fans who’ve yet to discover the pleasures of metal or gaming to be able to walk across it?

“The worlds of metal and gaming have always been strongly connected,” reckons Cristina, highlighting the fact that they’re both tightly-knit outsider communities fascinated by the dark and fantastical, which can appear intimidating to outsiders looking in. Although she and Mark will happily welcome new fans, the main priority was to write a great song, hopefully tightening the bond between communities that already exists. “It’s a lifestyle,” she gestures. “If you see a metalhead, there’s a strong chance you’ll be able to talk about games – or vice-versa.”

Indeed, the lines have increasingly blurred over the last couple of decades. Countless rockers found their way into the world via the legendary Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks. The Guitar Hero franchise brought songs as unusual DragonForce’s Through The Fire And The Flames, Lamb Of God’s Laid To Rest and Slayer’s Raining Blood – not to forget Lacuna Coil’s Closer – into the non-metalhead sphere. Celebrities as high profile as Tenacious D’s Jack Black have spearheaded their own digital-metal crossovers, while Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows cropped up as a playable character in Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4. Gamers have even increasingly taken to wearing branded T‑shirts a la those of their favourite bands, enabling them to recognise each other on the street.

On the other side of the coin, bleeding-edge artists like The Armed, Refused and Run The Jewels have recently been inspired to write specifically for games. Svalbard’s Serena Cherry just started a one-woman black metal side-project called Noctule, dedicated to her favourite epic RPG. Hell, Cristina even tells us that pounding compositions by djent-influenced video game soundtrack maestro Mick Gordon are amongst the most listened on her personal playlist.

It’s down to a change in perspective, Cristina reckons, where intelligent eye for detail is now considered every bit as cool as a debauched hell-raiser attitude. Games’ intricate storytelling and epic design are recognised as on par with the finest parts of cinema, and e‑sports competitions regularly boast larger prize pots than those of their athletic counterparts.

“I was always part of the nerd world,” she says, with more than a hint of vindication. “A few years ago, it felt like it was almost something to be ashamed of to admit that you’re a nerd, as if you had this weird, ridiculous aura. But now, everybody – all these people who were never interested – seem to want to be involved in this world. I [sometimes think], ‘Nah, you need to prove you’re really into it…’”

She’s not kidding. As if that massive cache of gaming equipment – from the original PlayStation to countless Game Boys and computer components – wasn’t proof enough, Cristina has even appeared as playable character The Shadow Sorceress in Iron Maiden’s ever-evolving Legacy Of The Beast mobile game. “It was such an honour, such a pleasure to create my own character and give all the directions for the outfit, which was basically the outfit I was wearing on the last Lacuna Coil tour before lockdown,” she grins.

Going even geekier, Lacuna Coil also just launched their own Horns Up tabletop card game, where players must fight their way to the front of the stage. “It’s something we’re all really interested in, but particularly our bassist Maki [Coti Zelati],” Cristina continues. “Every card is related to metal clichés. We even gave our fans the opportunity to see themselves on one of the cards…”

Although Lacuna Coil maintained their high-drama presence with September 2020’s Black Anima: Live From The Apocalypse stream and June 2021’s live album of the same name, Cristina was keen to use the time off to introduce fans to her character away from the band, emboldened to set up her own channel on Twitch.

“I just wanted to learn new things which could enrich my baggage of knowledge,” she enthuses. “I’m already singing, already writing, but I don’t want to fixate on those. Life is made up of so many different things that can enrich my music and my creativity. I was already a Twitch user, watching other people play games, but I didn’t know what my purpose was. I almost felt scared at first. I am a singer. I am somehow an entertainer. I like to talk, which is clear. But it’s different when you’re talking to a lot of people for a couple of hours – or more!

“Eventually, I decided to keep it as informal as I could so that people could see how Cristina is at home. Cristina isn’t just the singer of Lacuna Coil: I have a house, I have a life, I have passions, I have my own personality. I just wanted people to discover that. Luckily they also like this quirky side of me, which feels like the opposite that dark goth lady that so many people know. As much as I didn’t have purpose in the beginning, there’s now such a strong community every time I go online – such a clean place to exchange good vibes!”

Even the persistent undertones of sexism and misogyny that have plagued gaming, she pushes, are a speed bump to be put in the rearview, comparable to what she experienced when first making her name in heavy music.

“In metal, I encountered the same problem,” she explains, bluntly. “[Women becoming a major presence in the community] was something new, and when something is new, people have suspicions and doubts. They don’t know how to deal with it. But there are a lot of female gamers now, and a lot of females in metal. It’s been normalised, which it should be, because games and metal are for everyone.”

As the world comes back up to speed, hectic schedules mean that attention is turning away from screens, and back towards studio and stage. Mark is churning out more and more top-class YouTube content. Cristina has a packed diary, with a tribute concert for late collaborator Franco Battiato at the spectacular Arena di Verona this week, and another secretive collaboration in the works, not to mention writing for Lacuna Coil’s 10th LP, which has just begun – her creative fires reignited by bringing Start Again to life.

Having dipped toes in the video game world, though, they’re both keen to return.

“I really hope we do,” Cristina says. “As a fan of video games, it’s such a great chance to bring together these different passions in your life. There are so many different things I’d like to do, and places I’d like to explore in this world, but time is limited!”

“I loved the challenge here, and the process of collaboration,” nods Mark. “If we could work together again when it comes time to make Diablo IV, that would be amazing. I’d love the opportunity to have my own playable character in an Iron Maiden video game, too, but I’m not sure that’s achievable!”

“I thought the same thing,” grins Cristina, ever adventurous, as we wave farewell. “Never say never!”

Diablo II: Resurrected is out now on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S and PC.

#Cristina Scabbia #DoD collaborations #2021 interviews #diablo ii resurrected

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happymetalgirl · 4 years ago

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October 2020

Six Feet Under - Nightmares of the Decomposed

I wrote a full-length review of this disaster of an album earlier in the month, and yeah, wow. Between the phoned-in performances from the instrumentalists who have proven themselves far above this joke of a band and the half-assed production this would have been a pretty crappy album even without Chris Barnes’ milk-aged vocals. But he’s here, and he’s managed to actually get worse too, gasping his way through the whole album and littering it with these ludicrous “high” squeals that would make Smeagol sound like a more competent death metal vocalist. It’s the worst thing I’ve heard all year, and what’s worse, I don’t think Six Feet Under is stopping.

1/10

With that out of the way, let’s cleanse the pallet right away with some really good shit.

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Ever reliable in his artistically integrity, explosive former Dillinger Escape Plan frontman, Greg Puciato, has been pretty sonically and artistically adventurous since the honorable dissolution of the iconic mathcore outfit, his most notable music project being the ethereal, synth-heavy The Black Queen. This year, however, Puciato has gone fully solo for a full-length project, and something told me to get ready for a wild ride, and boy was I right on that hunch. Borne out of an exponentiated process of songwriting that produced songs Puciato deemed unfitting for any of his current projects, what was planned as a small release to ship these songs out of the writing room eventually spiraled into a full-blown debut solo album clocking in at over an hour. A lot of solo projects play like clearly indulgent amateur hour sessions from an artist whose ego has been boosted pretty well from significant success from their main project, leading them to overconfidently try their hand at music they have no business trying it at. And it’s often approached under the understanding that it is a victory lap, more or less, and a satisfaction of creative impulses for the sake of it. Sometimes the resultant material is clearly inspired and showcases a side of an artist that certainly deserves some spotlight. Other times it feels like being trapped in an awkward situation with an acquaintance where they just show you all their newest pedals and production software and you’re just stuck there watching them fiddle around while you nod along and offer the occasional “wow, that’s pretty crazy” every now and then while they don’t pick up on the obvious cues that you are just waiting for them to finish playing with their toys. While Puciato was open about this album being borne from the very creatively borderless mindset that so often damns solo projects, Child Soldier: Creator of God is an actual realization of the type of grand, genre-spanning album that so many solo artists envision themselves making and set out to create, and it’s hardly a whimsical, amateurish crack at the styles within either. Puciato’s foray into sludge metal, industrial rock, harsh noise, darkwave, synthwave, and shoegaze, (1) makes for a hell of a dynamic and exciting track list, and (2) shows a much deeper than average respect for and relationship with the styles being played here. This isn’t some frontman thinking his charisma can carry him through a whole rap solo album; this is a well-rounded artist (also a hell of a frontman, no denying that) giving the most comprehensive look yet into his creative mind. The album leaps around in patches of different styles, strung together mostly by ambient connective tissue of various types, all with a great attention to detail paid to both texture and progression. We get early patches of smooth ambiance, but also aggressive industrial and sludge metal, eventually moving to more soothing and meditative synthy stuff around the middle, finishing with some serene, Have a Nice Life-esque shoegaze. But really there’s no way to sum up this album stylistically without breaking down every single song on here, and that would just ruin the fun and the experience. You really just have to experience it for yourself.

9/10

DevilDriver - Dealing with Demons I

Embarking on a conceptual double-album, Dez Fafara and DevilDriver’s first installment in the pair is a scoop of the, indeed, slightly above average, but unfortunately still plain and predictable modern groove metal they always offer up. I’ll give the band credit for keeping the pace up and clearly putting substantial energy into the performances on this album, while also trying to squeeze in a few shake-ups to their sound, like the clear Gojira-inspired riffage on the opening track. The album loses steam, unfortunately, as its punches lose their impact as it goes on.

6/10

Anaal Nathrakh - Endarkenment

While certainly cultivating a unique sound, Anaal Nathrakh’s unholy fusion of nasty modern blackened grindcore with sweeter metalcore and melodic death metal elements has its mixed results. And while that might at first sound like a relatively critical assessment of the Brits’ eleventh album, I’d say that there is actually a lot to enjoy and take in for at least the interesting mix of styles, most of which are hits rather than misses as well.

7/10

Enslaved - Utgard

Having been a fan of a good amount of their recent output, especially 2015’s In Times, I came out of Utgard moderately disappointed with how infrequently Enslaved galvanized their potent brand of Viking folky, progressive black metal effectively; the few moments the band do channel their strengths cohesively and purposefully left me wanting more rather than savoring those moments.

6/10

In Cauda Venenum - G.O.H.E.

It’s hard to, and indeed seems kind of in just to, sum up a heaping prog metal serving like G.O.H.E., comprised of two 22-minute halves, in a capsule review, but that is kind of the format my current busy circumstances have forced me into. French outfit In Cauda Venenum made a self-titled debut in similar two-long-track fashion back in 2015, and the band’s gothic and somewhat theatrical brand of atmospheric post-black-metal is continued on their sophomore effort here, drawing the obvious comparisons to Opeth and Katatonia, as well as Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Numenorean, and Sólstafir, and apart from the more frequent sample usage and extra drawn-out songs, there really isn’t that much to differentiate In Cauda Venenum stylistically. The band’s second album, unfortunately, resembles so many others in the field with big aspirations and the same inadequate means of getting there.

5/10

Apparition - Granular Transformation

A much more bite-sized early two-track offering, Apparition’s debut EP offers a more promising glimpse into a heady, atmospheric, yet still visceral manipulation of modern death metal that I would be curious to hear in a more long-form format. In a genre as extreme as death metal in recent years has been, finding artists effective at working with negative space can be difficult, but the two songs on Granular Transformation showcase a formidable dexterity from Apparition that I think can take them places.

6/10

Molasses - Through the Hollow

While indeed marred by some rough performances on songs with sometimes more desert to cross than water to make it there, there’s an undeniable occult hypnotism about the Dio-era-esque doom metal hollow that Molasses ritualize their way through.

7/10

Death Angel - Under Pressure

While certainly an odd choice on the surface, Death Angel’s acoustic EP and cover of the famous Queen song actually comes out pretty alright. The acoustic version of Act III’s “A Room with a View” comes off with the energy of something like Rush whenever they went acoustic, and the original acoustic cut, “Faded Remains” isn’t too bad either. The acoustic format did not, however, mask the drabness of “Revelation Song” from last year’s overall disappointment, Humanicide.

6/10

Necrophobic - Dawn of the Damned

The Swedes’ melodic brand of blackened death metal is nothing if not thorough on the quintet’s ninth full-length, Dawn of the Damned, covering all the ground that their fans expect their style to cover and doing so with more compositional and performative stamina than their average contemporary. While the band’s broader compositional approach is akin to the beating of a dead horse, I can’t deny it produces some tasty motifs in the process.

7/10

Bloodbather - Silence

After coming onto the blossoming metallic hardcore scene in 2018 with a standard, but potent enough 14-minute EP, Pressure, Bloodbather are back with another 14 minutes of similar, yet less promising material, doing little to set themselves apart from or on the same level of the likes of Jesus Piece, Vein, Knocked Loose, or Harm’s Way.

5/10

Infera Bruo - Rites of the Nameless

The Bostonians’ fourth full-length is, at the very least, a rather well-executed forty minutes of modern black metal a la Craft or Watain, but beneath the seams the band’s progressive tendencies twist what would otherwise be a fresh, but standard, slab of black metal into a more head-turning offering of the usual shrieks and blast beats.

7/10

Touché Amoré - Lament

While somewhat shaky in their compositional exploration in their fifth LP, the firmness of their emotive post-hardcore foundation allows for Touché Amoré to build upwards relatively steadily without losing that raw vulnerability that has made them so captivating to begin with.

7/10

Gargoyl - Gargoyl

This is the self-titled debut from Bostonian four-piece Gargoyl; a novel blend of dirty nineties grunge and gothic prog metal, Gargoyl come through with one of the more impressive genre fusions of the year, meeting the lofty sufficiency for dexterity with excessive vocal harmonies in a manner so uncanny that would make habe to Layne Stayley proud. While there is the expected room for improvement on the compositional end that many debut projects come with, Gargoyl have laid the groundwork for themselves fantastically and started off on a good foot.

7/10

Crippled Black Phoenix - Ellengæst

Through creative gothic flair and full-bodied guest vocal contributions that bolster the somber atmosphere beyond the typical post-metal album, the UK band’s most recent offering of “endtime ballads”, despite its few low points that undo its otherwise immersive atmosphere, serves as one of the more engaging releases under the broader post-metal umbrella of the past year.

7/10

Wayfarer - A Romance with Violence

The Denver-based quartet follow up 2018’s strong emotive case for the potential for evoking cathartic power of the atmospheric black metal which has so saturated the American scene to the point of numbness, their Americana-tinged third LP, World’s Blood, unfortunately, with a fourth LP whose compositional homogeneity and mere few intermittent bursts of enthralling atmospheric instrumentation more represent, rather than advocate the merit of, the saturation of the American atmospheric black metal scene.

6/10

Armored Saint - Punching the Sky

Though I think the structural homogeneity and John Bush’s similarly limited vocal delivery holds it back, with crunchy bangers like “Do Wrong to None” and “My Jurisdiction” alongside more tempered tracks the clearly grunge-influenced “Lone Wolf”, Bush and company provide a relatively stylistically diverse traditional heavy metal album for an age that could use more contemporary representation of classic styles (beyond the entire stoner metal genre LARPing as Black Sabbath too).

7/10

Spirit Adrift - Enlightened in Eternity

But it's not just the old guard representing their era of classic heavy metal robustly; a year and a half after their energetically melodic third album, Divided by Darkness, which took a triumphant melodic approach to classic heavy metal and doom metal similar to that of Khemmis on their excellent third album, Spirit Adrift ease up a bit on the hyper-soulful approach to guitar melody that had led me (and others I'm sure) to draw the comparison to Khemmis, and instead dive deeper into the headspace of the genre's earliest progenitors to achieve that unabashedly glorious rallying cry that is evoked by the very front cover of Enlightened in Eternity. While I am personally pretty partial to the very vulnerable and heartfelt melodic approach that characterized Divided by Darkness, the effectiveness with which Spirit Adrift are able to wield the sometimes Maiden-esque, sometimes Testament-esque sounds of the 80’s on this album is undeniably impressive.

8/10

Fever 333 - Wrong Generation

Providing the correction to this generation’s answer to Rage Against the Machine (after Prophets of Rage’s insufficient attempted revival) Fever 333 follow up last year’s debut of heavy, fired-up and modern take on rapcore with another 14 minutes of righteous anti-racist hardcore anger that’s attuned to the issues to a level that I wish more artists would at least express in their art. While the EP is 18 minutes long, the last two songs, “The Last Time” and “Supremacy”, don’t match the sonic energy of the first six tracks. The somber piano-led snippet-length ballad, “The Last Time”, should have been the conclusion of the album, but the closing track, “Supremacy”, while as conscious as the tracks before it, is basically a late-stage formulaic Linkin Park track that flatters neither of the two bands. Despite botching the landing though, Wrong Generation is a ripping batch of songs that well represent the current unrest and provide a positive hypothetical idea of what it might be like if Rage Against the Machine were in their prime and active today.

7/10

Mörk Gryning - Hinsides Vrede

The Swedes return from their 15-year disillusioned absence from the studio with a concise and clearly renewed enthusiasm for the energetic black metal that they put forth on Hinsides Vrede. Dynamically bolstered by folk-metal compositional tendencies and more than a dash of that famed Gothenburg melodicism (I know they’re from Stockholm and in fact their melodic approach often does heaven to that of their close neighbors from Uppsala, Watain), Mörk Gryning’s seamless return to music finds them jumping into the modern black metal scene’s advanced compositional rubric with relative ease.

7/10

Zeal & Ardor - Wake of a Nation

Having covered their output since their debut and being a big fan of Manuel Gagneux’ project, it pains me to say, especially given the noble pretext and occasional momentary flashes of sobering messaging, that this six-song mini release really doesn’t capture the unique sonic pallet that has made Zeal & Ardor such an interesting act to listen to for the past few years in the most flattering light. The title track is possibly the least of the offenders here, but all the songs here function by taking a little snippet of sound that samples Zeal & Ardor’s broader stylistic range, and drawing it out across these short, but all too minimally composed tracks in such a way that they lose their momentum very quickly. Like I said, I wholeheartedly appreciate, sympathize with, and support what Manuel Gagneux is doing to lend his band’s platform to the addressing of the dire issue of today’s racism through musical means with this project, and when its social motivation is at the forefront, it’s at its most potent, but musically, unfortunately, it’s just desperately underwritten in a way that doesn’t fairly represent how accomplished Zeal & Ardor really are with their sound.

5/10

Sevendust - Blood & Stone

The flashes of crushing grooves reminiscent of their earlier work on Blood & Stone that highlight how well Sevendust can harness nu/alternative metal to execute pummeling attacks with the right crunchy guitar tone, unfortunately, don’t come frequently enough on their twelfth LP to mirage the exhaustion that has come of the band’s writing process after such frequent, unrelenting output and the all too apparent desperate need for a recalibrating, refreshing break, which they certainly deserve for their tenacity.

5/10

Undeath - Lesions of a Different Kind

In one of those cases where the ridiculously gratuitous album cover actually represents the album’s sound quite well, Rochester, New York five-piece, Undeath mince neither words nor sounds on their debut LP in their 100% upfront, no-nonsense, and wonderfully nasty delivery of death metal. Eschewing even the slightest sense of snobbery or pretense for aimless ambition, the band simply compile the genre’s tried and true elements of bellowing growls, filthy riffs, mean-ass down-tuned chugging, and blood-pumping double-bass with blast beats into an addictive slab of raw, uncured death metal that serves as a testament to the merit of not overthinking shit.

8/10

Griffon - Ὸ Θεός Ὸ Βασιλεύς

On their sophomore LP, Parisian quintet Griffon channel the world innovative ethos that has become rather prominent in their scene into a somewhat short, but definitely sweet offering of modestly ambitious black metal that captures much more effectively than most albums of similar style and lesser imagination, the divine grandeur that the genre so often tries and fails to embody.

8/10

Bring Me the Horizon - Post-Human: Survival Horror

After taking the hard left into current pop music trends very transparently on their controversial, which was at least partially intentional on their part, and ultimately really patchy, but not wholly awful, 2019 album, amo, Oli Sykes and co. walk it back substantially for this smaller release here, back to That's the Spirit, even Sempiternal, a prospect that might get a lot of the band's more long-time, metalcore-centric fans excited, but I would suggest those fans temper their expectations of Post-Human: Survival Horror. The band reunite with the anthemic metalcore/deathcore that put them on the map for a good chunk of this album, and the intro track, "Dear Diary,", might even give some false hope of the prodigal sons returning home. But songs like the cookie-cutter single, "Teardrops", provide strong evidence that, while the band have re-embraced their old aesthetic, they have not kicked the pop vocal or compositional habits. And the project really does run out of energy in its final third because of this compositional homogeneity. I do want to highlight the song, "Kingslayer", which features a very in-form Babymetal (I loved their album last year), because their fun, not-so-serious approach to the crossing of J-pop and metal music in their feature on this track among the other songs around it provides a contrast to the more formulaic, disinterested radio pop swagger that Bring Me the Horizon have been trying to jam into their sound that could perhaps inform Bring Me the Horizon's artistic approach to integrating pop music if they really are so hellbent on doing so. Ultimately though, as much as they want to move into newer territory, this trajectory-revising release shows just how much more solid Bring Me the Horizon are in their metalcore territory than they were on amo. It had its predictable hiccups, but this thing wasn't too bad.

7/10

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

With the slow, sludgy, down-tuned riffing of the menacing opening title track and the similar chug of “Vengeance & Ruination” being the sole exceptions, the remainder of Pallbearer’s fouth full-length largely sees them operating in the same niche they have in their three previous albums. And while this could invoke accusations of playing it safe, the brimming heartfelt sorrow and resistance to succumbing to despair across Forgotten Days is enough to wave that away, as Pallbearer showcase just how emotive doom metal can be.

8/10

Bleeding Out - Lifelong Death Fantasy

The very new act and fresh Profound Lore signing, Bleeding Out, certainly display more dynamic capability than your average local grindcore scene’s biggest names here on their 18-minute debut for the label, but as of now it is still just a glimpse of potential for more effective future implementation. It’s a good start, though, and I’ll be looking forward to a more long-form project from these guys.

6/10

Evildead - United States of Anarchy

Every year we get the resurrection of some long-inactive old-school band who seem to have found that missing spark at last; we’ve seen the return of smaller bands to the studio like Angel Witch or Sorcerer and long-awaited revivals of iconic acts like Possessed. This year, Los Angeles’ Evildead has seen fit to make their commentary on the massive ongoing sociopolitical upheaval. Despite my love for the 80’s thrash scene they were born out of, the combination of the utterly lame band name, logo, and covers for either their ‘89 or ‘91 albums never really made me want to check them out, but seeing the horridly cheesy and incoherent cover of United States of Anarchy (I mean how much more on-the-nose can you get), my morbid curiosity got the best of me. Maybe I’d be wrong to have judged them by their cover, plenty of my favorite 80’s albums have particularly goofy cover art. So what do we get from Evildead in 2020 with this fucking album? Well, it’s not as poorly performed as the past few Anvil albums I’ve had to review have been, but Jesus the lyricism is similarly cheesy 5th-grade-level stuff and smacks of silly political incoherence that essentially boils down to “enlightened centrism” with mix of that good ol’ Illuminati-conspiracy-theory belief that no political thrash album is apparently complete without. I mean there’s just basic acknowledgment of the prominent problems of the day and the fact that both major political parties are bad and that corruption is rampant all throughout DC, but Evildead not only barely scratch the surface, they apply the same level cynicism to the “both sides” they criticize with no substantiation to their criticism despite that mindset being a big reason for our being where we are right now, mixed in with the occasional conspiracy-paranoia about the shadowy underworld running everything, so no real solutions or even proper addressing of these problems. Like, the same level of criticism is levied at right-wingers and communists, like communists are at all why this country has gone to shit. And the generic Anthrax/Megadeth type of thrash instrumentation, while rumbly and mixed well to highlight its bass heaviness, doesn’t exactly make it easy to get past the commentary deficiencies on here.

4/10

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Rounding off their year (at least I think), with a long-teased collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, Thou finally present their massive sludge-doom sound in a much more flattering light than the previous cover albums this year did. Thou's original material continues to highlight just why their relatively stiff sound is much more cut out for that, original material, than for trying to bend beyond its flexibility to tribute grunge songs. And while Thou being back in their more effective department, Emma Ruth Rundle's contributions, beyond just her gorgeous and ethereally haunting vocals, to the album's atmosphere, dynamic, and structuring really take the collaboration to the next level. Not to say that Thou are completely overshadowed and relegated to the background on this record or that they don't contribute to a fair share of the legwork here; the workload is shared pretty equally, and both collaborators have their moments of prominence, but Emma Ruth Rundle's ever-present gothic/folky influence really directs the music in a way that plays to Thou's strengths in a way I'm not sure they would have been able to on their own. It's great work from both of them, and I'd be eager to hear Thou find more collaborations like this in the future that push them into doing more interesting things with their crushing doom sound, as opposed to the rather tepid collaborations with The Body.

8/10

Auðn - Vökudraumsins Fangi

Sadly, three albums in, Auðn have only barely exceeded the bare minimum for naturalistic atmospheric black metal, with no signs of significant improvement to be found. The Icelandic band earn points for their earnest delivery, but they never seem to fully make it out of the rut that the genre’s many contemporary acts have dug.

5/10

Botanist - Photosynthesis

The black metal traditionalists might have had to accept that the floodgates to bright ambience and serene shoegaze in the genre have been opened and that there's no going back now, but even as an avid Deafheaven fan, I'm sometimes momentarily surprised at just how heavenly some black metal has gotten lately, and this new album from Botanist is one of those albums. And while it sometimes slips into some of the current wave's typical ruts, the sheer blindingly illuminating aura of this album when it reaches those high points (and it does so frequently) is enough to pull it out from those gutters and high into the cosmos. Yeah, another splendid offering of nature worship from Botanist.

8/10

Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo

Making their return after over a decade, Mike Patton recruits both Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian for the long-awaited fourth Mr. Bungle album, which is titled in homage to the first Mr. Bungle demo which it is comprised largely of much clearer re-recordings of. Ever impressive, Mike Patton balances aggression and eccentricity like a tightrope walker on this project too, while his bandmates do the same with thrash metal’s natural adrenaline rush while pushing the genre into new compositional and stylistic territory without sacrificing that crucial whiplash. It’s a great time, and definitely one of the year’s best thrash albums.

8/10

Carcass - Despicable

While they've been much less prolific since their reboot than they were prior, Liverpool's melodic death metal pioneers simply continue to demonstrate their excellence in this seemingly effortless four-track appetizer to next year's Torn Arteries. Anyone familiar with the band's brutal form of melodic death metal will certainly be pleased with the four quite sufficiently pulverizing cuts here; those who may only be familiar with some of the band's many less muscular imitators might be surprised, and pleasantly so, with the Englanders' ability to lay on the infectious guitar melody without sacrificing an ounce of force.

8/10

#metal #heavy metal #death metal #black metal #deathcore #sludge metal #post metal #new album #album review #new music #thrash metal #blackened death metal #blackgaze #experimental metal #mathcore #doom metal #stoner metal #groove metal

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rebelwith0utacause · 4 years ago

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It’s 2 am, but it’s a music tag, so I’m doing it. Thanks @5sosofficial, sleep can wait ✌😌✌

Edit: it’s 4 am, and I’m a long-winded bitch, so everything goes under the line.

Right, so, first order of business, 20 songs on shuffle:

5SOS - Talk Fast

The Band CAMINO - Berenstein

Phillip Phillips - Miles

Nao - Bad Blood

You Me @ Six - Liquid Confidence (Nothing To Lose)

Yves Tumor - Noid

Patric Fiori - Que Tu Reviennes

Bigflo & Oli - Dommage

Dido - Hunter

Anarbor - Tasty

5SOS - Empty Wallets

TOOL - Vicarious

Roseburg, Kellin Quinn - RIP

Jack’s Mannequin - Dark Blue

While She Sleeps - I’VE SEEN IT ALL

OK Go - Another Set Of Issues

Galantis - Runaway (U & I)

Zayn - BoRdErSz

While She Sleeps - GATES OF PARADISE

Julie Zenatti - Si Je M’en Sors

10 songs I’ve been listening to in no particular order:

Architects - Gone With The Wind

X Ambasadors - Unconsolable

Onlychild - Teeth

Bring Me The Horizon - Teardrops

While She Sleeps - FAKERS PLAGUE

5SOS - Thin White Lies

Architects - Animals

ASL - Voodoo

Ina Wroldsen - Sea

Normandie - Holy Water

10 albums that influenced my taste and made me a music snob (with commentary):

1. Linkin Park - Meteora

I think I’ve already talked about this, but I was in my early teens when this album came out, and I had a classmate that liked rock(ish music) so I went to the local CD shop that sold burned CDs (we won’t talk about it, 90s and 00s Macedonia was in a different century than the rest of the world) and asked for something cool and rock, and they gave me this CD. Now, like the nosy music nerd I was, I decided to play it once before I gave him the CD. Long story short, loved it so much, ended up buying him a picture frame and keeping the CD for myself. The angst in Chester’s voice and the tiny electronic twists together with the dark tunes made my teenage years (and still do) bearable.

2. Kyo - Le Chemin

I was maybe 9 when I first heard these guys on TV and fell in love with the guy in the red shirt. This was around the time I started understanding a bit of French and it certainly helped when a few years later I found a copy of this baby in our local French Institute. I’ve been listening to a lot of French music throughout the years, but nothing compares to this album. It made me understand emotions in French if that makes sense. There’s always a dark undertone to every song and I love how Ben’s able to infuse his voice with enough desperation/anguish/urgency while still talking about love.

3. Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane

Early teens again, on a vacation in Montenegro, bought it from a shop right off the beach lmao. The cover looked dope, and it was 2 euros. Mainly bought it because I loved that there was Jane in the title, a male name in Macedonian, also the name of the guy I had a crush on. When I went back to camp, he played it for me and he liked it as well (he was an employee there and a biiiiiiiit older than me). Little did I know that the syncopation, the embellishments and the raw energy Adam sang with in (only) this album was gonna make me compare every pop album to this one for years to come. This is like IT for me when it comes to pop music, even if it’s not entirely pop.

4. Six Pack - Minut Cutanja

I was 13, my brother wasn’t at home, so I decided to raid his computer for music. “Borrowed” a lot of punk music and this album which was titled just Six Pack. I didn’t really listen to Serbian music (tbh, I turned my nose at it bcs I thought it was something older people did, or ppl with no taste), let’s just say that living in a post-Yugoslavia world as a kid was fkn weird (@httpsgfg might agree). But there’s this song called 2 Minuta Straha (2 Minutes of Fear) which served as a soft transition to punk (punk-rock) for me, and consequently heavier rock and metal. Like, it’s such a great album, and made me open to finding other ex-Yu bands that sounded modern before their time.

5. Opeth - Blackwater Park

It was late 2007 and I made my first friend in high school (other than the ppl I already knew). She was this goth type that had a brother in a band and she listened to a lot of the music he listened to. Long story short, she showed me Bleak and that was IT for me. Loved the oriental vibes, the distorted guitars and the growls so fkn much. To this day I’m a growl > scream girl, and Mikael Akerfeldt’s to blame. Like... his growl is so smooth and homogenous, I love it, and wait until you hear his clean vocals. Top that all off with the jazzy solos and acoustic-sounding guitars, just makes it all so perfect damn it!

6. Avenged Sevenfold - Avenged Sevenfold

2007-2009 was definitely my a7x moment. I started my journey with Waking The Fallen, but The White Album (self-titled) was the pivotal one for me. There’s just something about the complexity of the composition, like the drums are fkn vicious, the guitars are more technical but also more melodic and the lyrics are liakfjndjflsdkjn! It’s also the album The Rev wrote some of my all-time faves like Brompton Cocktail, Afterlife and Almost Easy, and in hindsight... no, don’t want to think about it. But yeah, it set the bar for modern metal music for me.

7. Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime

Now, where do I fkn start with this one. Found it in 2009 or 2010, the peak of my prog metal days and I was just blown away that someone thought to create banger sonics with a banger backstory. Queensryche (at least those bandmembers back then) were absolutely genius in their craft, and I’m just sad they never got to make another album similar in quality.

8. Alice In Chains - Dirt

Back in the day, I really hated grunge, and if I’m being honest, I still hate Nirvana with a passion, hated the fact that musically they weren’t the best but got so famous post-mortem. I mean it’s not their fault, it’s their fans’ fault for being such dicks lbr. But in 2010 I bit the bullet and played me some AIC. I was trying to broaden my horizons so to speak, and grunge was next in line. Layne’s vocals had me hook, line and sinker. I’ve been a fan ever since and I even gave Soundgarden and Pearl Jam a chance.

9. The Police - Synchronicity

My mom’s to blame for this, she’s always liked them, and I used to listen to a lot of ska-influenced music as a kid (I still love it today). I think Synchronicity was the peak of their musicianship as a band and it’s just such an evergreen album. Like... It doesn’t sound like something produced in 1983, yknow? Sting is a mf genius.

10. Ludovico Einaudi - Divenire

The beginning of the last decade was a weird time for me music-wise. I think I wanted to make myself appear more grown-up in the eyes of ppl, and I got a lot of shit for listening to metal. So I went in all sorts of directions, from grunge, to pop-rock (ATL, Paramore that kinda thing), post-rock radio hits and even a bit of minimalist classical music and instrumentals. I used to play classical guitar, so this wasn’t really anything new, but the minimalist subgenre definitely was. I think I could classify my taste as sounding modern/timeless, I really don’t like music that’s stuck in a certain decade, and this album, or more like the song Divenire because that’s the one I’ve played the most, is exactly it. I could be 80 and still listening to this, thinking it just got released. This man is a genius.

Alright, almost 2 hrs after I first started writing this, I’m tagging: @tigerteeff @pxrxmoore @karajaynetoday @wheniminouterspace @httpsgfg or anyone who wants to do it. I guess I missed a few albums, but it is what it is.

#music tag #misc

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voice-of-anarchy · 7 years ago

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JEFF LOOMIS Has 'A Lot Of Musical Ideas' He Hopes To Contribute To ARCH ENEMY

ARCH ENEMY guitarist Jeff Loomis says that he has a lot of musical ideas that he is hoping to contribute to the band in the future.

Loomis, who was the main songwriter in his previous group, NEVERMORE, joined ARCH ENEMY in late 2014, but was not involved in the writing for the latter act's latest album, 2017's "Will To Power".

In a recent interview with All That Shreds, Jeff admitted that playing with ARCH ENEMY was "a big change" for him. "ARCH ENEMY's a six-string-guitar band, and they're tuned down to C, so it took a little bit of getting used to for me to learn some of their approaches to the way they write music," he said. "ARCH ENEMY has a particular formula in the way that they write songs. It's much different than the way I write. It wasn't too hard for me, as I felt pretty focused learning the songs. I think it was a good thing that I got thrown into the whole mix quickly. It made me learn everything very fast and I just quickly became familiar with the songs like that."

He continued: "Since joining the band, I have a lot of musical ideas that I'm hoping I can contribute in the future. I did write three or four songs for the last album, but they didn't make it, only because it wasn't in the style that they were looking for. Fortunately enough, I was able to play guitar solos on the latest album, so that makes me happy.

"I'm looking forward to the future to maybe writing some songs with them and becoming more of a member so to speak, you know, so that's cool," he said. "I'm delighted with my position. I'm very fortunate to play in front of so many people every night and to be able to tour the world and see so many cool places. I consider myself a lucky guy."

When the interviewer pointed out to Loomis that some people got the impression he was not getting any freedom to give creative input to the ARCH ENEMY songs, Jeff responded: "If you were to reverse the whole thing and make me Michael [Amott, ARCH ENEMY guitarist], for instance… Let's go back to when I was back in NEVERMORE, right? That was my band — I called the shots in that band, I wrote the songs. And we, like ARCH ENEMY, had the ever-revolving door of guitar players coming in and out that wanted to write and participate. We granted that to some players that wrote cool songs, like Steve Smyth and Tim Calvert. For the majority of it, it was Warrel Dane [vocals] and I that wrote most of the music. It's kind of the same thing with ARCH ENEMY. Michael and Daniel [Erlandsson, ARCH ENEMY drummer] handle a lot of the writing. They know what ARCH ENEMY is supposed to sound like, simply because they are the founders of the band, plain and simple."

Loomis went on to say: "I didn't want to be that guy that came into the band and said, 'Here are 10 songs and they're going to be on the next album.' That's not right to do that. So I'm just giving it time, and I'm just hoping that on the next record, maybe there will be that opportunity. I can see how people think that. I completely understand… [I'm] just going to have to give it time and see what happens."

Amott said last year that Loomis is "a strong songwriter" in his own right, "but not in the style of ARCH ENEMY, I feel. He's always writing and recording with his own stuff. He has a project called CONQUERING DYSTOPIA, he has his solo stuff, [and] he obviously wrote most of the NEVERMORE stuff. I've always respected him, and continue to respect him, as a guitar player — he's amazing and an amazing human being; he fits in perfectly," he said. "[There's] a great chemistry [between us]. But, you know, I've always written most of the music, so it's difficult to… I don't really wanna change the sound of the band too much. The band sort of started around my songwriting and my ideas, and those continue to be the most dominant ones, I guess. But, you know, who knows [what can happen] in the future?"

Amott also spoke about how Loomis's addition to ARCH ENEMY has changed the sound of the band. He said: "Well, [Jeff is] playing some lead guitar on the album, and his style is very different to our previous guitar players — my brother [Christopher Amott] or whoever else was playing with us. But we have very constrasting styles, which is great. And he can play a lot of stuff on the guitar that I can't play, and I can play stuff that he can't play, so we just have that great… But when we lock together in the harmonies an the motifs, I think it's very strong. He's got a lot of classic metal as well inside of him. I think he's just been working in a different field for a very long time, he's not really… But he started off, obviously, with the same kind of roots that… We have a lot of common ground."

"Will To Power" was released last September via Century Media Records. Co-produced by Amott and Erlandsson, the disc was mixed and mastered by longtime collaborator and friend Jens Bogren (OPETH, AT THE GATES, DIMMU BORGIR). The album's captivating cover artwork was designed by Alex Reisfar.

"Will To Power" marks the second ARCH ENEMY album since the departure of longtime singer Angela Gossow and addition of Alissa White-Gluz.

#Arch Enemy #jeff loomis #2018 interviews

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nuclearblastuk · 7 years ago

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AMORPHIS reveal album title, cover & release date!

AMORPHIS have finally finished recording their upcoming new studio album, entitled ‘Queen Of Time’. The record is scheduled for a May 18th release, via Nuclear Blast. In comparison to its predecessor, ‘Under The Red Cloud’ (2015), the album will include the use of real strings, flutes, orchestral arrangements and even choirs! In addition, this will be the first time that people will be able to hear their lyricist Pekka Kainulainen on the album as he contributes a speech in Finnish.

Today, the band unveils some more details on the production, the album title, the album cover (see above) and on working with their new/old bassist Olli-Pekka Laine.

The album was once again produced by the famous Jens Bogren (OPETH, AMON AMARTH, KREATOR, and many others), who is well-known for challenging, and motivating, the artists during the recording process. He isn’t afraid to push them to their limits!

Esa comments: "I guess ‘Queen Of Time’ turned out as a massive surprise to all of us. During the rehearsing and pre-production we didn’t have any idea that Jens had this huge picture inside of his head about the landscape of the album. It’s a very natural continuation to ‘Under The Red Cloud’ but with steroids. The songs are more aggressive but there’s more dynamics, harmonies and orchestral arrangements present. The result is AMORPHIS as something you’ve never heard before! Essentially, working with Jens worked really well. As a person he is very similar to us - we share the same kind of weird humor and we all like to work hard." ---

The cover artwork, which was created once again by French artist Jean ”Valnoir” Simoulin from Metastazis, captures the feeling of the lyrics and the music. With Pekka Kainulainen's (lyricist) words, the lyrical theme is universal: “Cultures rise, flourish, and are destroyed. The story of man is the story of searching, finding, and forgetting. A single spark can set the world afire, a single idea can give birth to a new culture. The greatest can stagnate into insignificance, the smallest can hold the power for change. The lyrics on this album are distant echoes of ancient forest peoples, from a time when meaning was proportioned by the cosmic forces that govern birth and death. If the connection was lost, they sought for a strand of knowledge, found a new direction, and a new age began.”

‘Queen Of Time’ will be also the first album with their old/new bass player Olli-Pekka 'Oppu' Laine following the departure of Niclas Etelävuori in 2017. Oppu was one of the founding members in 1990 and recorded the first seven records with AMORPHIS (‘The Karelian Isthmus’ LP, 1992; ‘Privilege Of Evil’ EP, 1993; ‘Tales From The Thousand Lakes’ LP, 1994; ‘Black Winter Day’ EP, 1995; ‘Elegy’ LP, 1996; ‘My Kantele’ EP, 1997 and the ‘Tuonela’ LP, 1999) before he parted ways with the band in spring 2000. "To be honest, 'Oppu' was the only guy we could imagine being in AMORPHIS. It was funny - when we started to play our first shows together again last summer it all felt so familiar. He was involved with arranging songs and he also even brought some new songs to the table… really good ones, too!" says Esa. And Oppu adds: "Even though the last year with AMORPHIS has been exciting, nostalgic and fun, it's also been truly comfortable to be with the guys again. As a clichéd expression, it's been like returning home from a lengthy odyssey. After eighteen years, it feels like we are picking up where we left off from the good ol' days! I'm really looking forward for the upcoming tour. The new album itself is a really strong package, the only hard thing will be picking which songs to play live! It’s safe to say we are set to pull off some killer shows over the next few years. After that, I'm predicting a long and fruitful career for the band in its current form..."

The band will soon kick off pre-orders for ‘Queen Of Time’ and release their first single, so stay tuned! --- AMORPHIS festival shows 2018: 12.05. Kopervik - Karmoygeddon Metal Festival (NO) 08.06. Hyvinkää – Rockfest (FI) 09.06. Tampere - South Park Festival (FI) 13.06. Tokyo - Shibuya Club Quattro (JP) 14.06. Osaka - Umeda Club Quattro (JP) 21. - 23.06. St. Goarshausen – RockFels (DE) 24.06. Clisson – Hellfest (FR) 05. - 07.07. Ballenstedt - Rockharz Open Air (DE) 06.07. Lohja – Rantajamit (FI) 12. - 14.07. Balingen - Bang Your Head!!! (DE) 12. - 15.07. Vizovice - Masters of Rock (CZ) 14.07. Joensuu – Ilosaarirock (FI) 20.07. Laukaa - John Smith Rock Festival (FI) 27.07. Kuopio – RockCock (FI) 28.07. Oulu – Qstock (FI) 02. - 04.08. Wacken - Wacken Open Air (DE) 08. - 11.08. Villena - Leyendas del Rock (ES) 10.08. Kortrijk - Alcatraz Metal Festival (BE) More live dates: w/ DARK TRANQUILLITY, MOONSPELL, OMNIUM GATHERUM 07.09. New York, NY - Gramercy Theatre (US) 08.09. Montréal, QC - Café Campus (CA) 09.09. Québec City, QC - Impérial de Québec (CA) 10.09. Toronto, ON - The Opera House (CA) 11.09. Ft. Wayne, IN - Piere's Entertainment Center (US) 12.09. Detroit, MI - Harpos Concert Theatre (US) 13.09. Joliet, IL - The Forge (US) 14.09. Minneapolis, MN - The Cabooze (US) 15.09. Winnipeg, MB - The Park Theatre (CA) 17.09. Edmonton, AB - The Starlite Room (CA) 18.09. CDN Calgary, AB – Dickens (CA) 19.09. Vancouver, BC - Rickshaw Theatre (CA) 20.09. Seattle, WA - El Corazon (US) 22.09. Berkeley, CA - UC Theatre (US) 23.09. Anaheim, CA - City National Grove (US) 24.09. West Hollywood, CA - Whiskey a Go Go (US) 25.09. San Diego, CA - Brick by Brick (US) 26.09. Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre (US) 27.09. Las Vegas, NV - House of Blues (US) 28.09. Salt Lake City, UT - Liquid Joe's (US) 29.09. Denver, CO - Herman‘s Hideaway (US) 01.10. Dallas, TX – Trees (US) 02.10. San Antonio, TX - The Rock Box (US) 03.10. Houston, TX - Scout Bar (US) 05.10. Tampa, FL - The Orpheum (US) 06.10. Lake Park, FL - Kelsey Theater (US) 07.10. Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (US) 09.10. Louisville, KY - Diamond Pub & Billiards (US) 10.10. Durham, NC - Motorco Music Hall (US) 11.10. Baltimore, MD – Soundstage (US) 12.10. Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero Theatre (US) 14.10. Clifton Park, NY - Upstate Concert Hall (US)

#AMORPHIS #QUEEN OF TIME #DARK TRANQUILITY #MOONSPELL #OMNIUM GATHERUM

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sinceileftyoublog · 5 years ago

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Live Picks: 2/14-2/18

Opeth

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Ridiculous metal and ridiculously-stacked folk! All-star level hip hop!

2/14: The Exile Follies, Old Town School of Folk Music

The name “The Exile Follies” refers to the touring combination of three artists experiencing self-imposed exile from the band they became known for, way back in 2002: Grant-Lee Phillips (from Grant Lee Buffalo), John Doe (from X), and Kristin Hersh (from Throwing Muses). Eighteen years later, the trio is reuniting for a tour, with a solo set from each, some collaborations, a lot of banter, and perhaps new songs.

2/14: Opeth, Riviera

The most recent album from the Swedish progressive metal band, September’s In Cauda Venenum, was released in both English and Swedish. There’s not much difference between the two versions. “Garden of Earthly Delights” contains a synthy hum with the band’s trademark prog instrumentation, as does “Heart in Hand” and the loud-quiet-loud “Next of Kin”. “Lovelorn Crime” is a slow burn. “The Garroter”, a song about inequality and apathy under a dictatorship, starts with flamenco guitar and piano, turning into a dark, jazzy ditty. In general, the band is as usual great at composing instrumentals that mirror the song’s subject matter. “Continuum”, for instance, is about the loneliness felt after the dissolution of a relationship; the echoing hi hats are emptiness, manifested. Yet, “Universal Truth”’s title translated into Swedish is “no truth is universal,” a cheeky move from a smart band who sings about the things that divide us politically and socially, not to be cynical but recognizing of the oppression that plagues many across the world.

Swedish hard rockers Graveyard open.

2/15: Machine Head, Metro

We previewed Machine Head’s set at Concord Music Hall two years ago:

“Oakland thrashers Machine Head enjoyed somewhat of a critical renaissance towards the beginning of the decade. While their early material was as authentically heavy as can be, their late 90′s and early 2000′s albums unfortunately delved into the realm of Limp Bizkit-like rap/nu metal. On 2011′s Unto the Locust, thankfully, they rediscovered their hard and experimental edge, as did they on the sweeping 2014 epic Bloodstone & Diamonds (the first with new bassist Jared MacEachern).

Unfortunately, the record they released earlier this year, Catharsis, falls back into the same rap trap as 1999′s The Burning Red and 2001′s Supercharger, the worst stereotypical metalcore swinging riffs with overzealous delivery from lead singer Robb Flynn. One can only hope that these songs are more tolerable live. Either way, thankfully, judging from the band’s recent set lists, it seems they know that their best music was the one-two-three punch of the Grammy-nominated 2007 album The Blackening, Locust, and Bloodstone.”

Since then, they’ve released two non-album singles, “Do Or Die” and “Circle The Drain”, the latter released today. This tour celebrates the 25th anniversary of their seminal debut Burn My Eyes, which they’ll play in full at some point during the night.

Wolf Parade; Photo by Pamela Evelyn & Joseph Yarmush

2/16: Chance the Rapper & Common, United Center

The two team captains for tonight’s All-Star Celebrity Game will also be part of the main festivities. Common will introduce the players before tip-off, while Chance is set to perform at halftime, unfortunately including material from his latest and lamest, The Big Day.

Common is also performing at Offshore, a rooftop on Navy Pier after the Slam Dunk and 3 Point Contest, with DJs Aktive and Dummy.

2/16: 2 Chainz, PRYSM

Known originally for the strength of his undeniably goofy singles, over the past few years, 2 Chainz has proved he can release some truly great albums. 2017′s Pretty Girls Like Trap Music did what Migos’ Culture thought it was doing, presenting buoyant lyrical flow over trap beats, while last year’s Rap Or Go To The League was a look inward at the man himself while still offering plenty of turn-ups. He’s stayed busy in 2020, too, dropping a new track with Future (2-minute banger “Dead Man Walking”) and curating a compilation of artists signed to The Real University (T.R.U.), his imprint, entitled No Face, No Case. He features on 6 tracks, including the unexpectedly soulful state pride anthem “Georgia”.

2/16: Wolf Parade, Thalia Hall

At one time a dynamic five-piece, the Wolf Parade that made Thin Mind, released last month, is a trio, after multi-instrumentalist Dante DeCaro amicably left the band last year. The combination of the aesthetic whittled down to guitar, keyboards/synthesizers, and drums and the idea behind the record--exploring technology and what it’s done to our minds--makes Thin Mind the first Wolf Parade record that feels like it’s been done before.

Lyrically, there are constant references to glass, a cover that allows us to immerse ourselves in screen, a mirror by which to reflect, but not a symbolism that ascends above the aforementioned oft-explored dichotomy. “They pull you one way / They push you back again, I know / To sow division / Poisoning minds,” sings Dan Boeckner. He’s right! But the point at which he sings, “Nobody knows what they want anymore,” it goes from an astute observation to one generated from the type of person to refer to social media as “The Twitter.” Other times, Thin Mind is on-the-nose political. “The Static Age” is inspired by a collection of short stories about a leader out of touch with his populace, as if the band is trying to say, “Sound familiar?” Instrumentally, even a funny song like “Julia Take Your Man Home”, a self-aware dirge about toxic masculinity, is hobbled by a plodding groove.

Still, Thin Mind is a Wolf Parade record, which means it’s undoubtedly got some great songs. Drummer Arlen Thompson’s work stands out, his electronic drums providing the backbone to the zooming “Forest Green”, his synth and drum fills lending a quintessentially spooky quality to the theatrical “Against the Day”. And when the band talks about the isolating nature of technology not as it relates to some generic conception of humanity, but themselves, it comes across as personal and true. “Tuning into static and my mind is frayed / I could’ve been asleep by now,” Boeckner sings on the catchy “Wandering Son”, a song about the ebbs and flows of a touring musician’s closeness to his family. Perhaps the most genuine sentiment on the whole record comes courtesy of Spencer Krug. “Be as kind as you can,” he sings on the emotional centerpiece. Unlike much of Thin Mind, it’s a far-from-novel idea that never gets old.

Bedroom rockers Jo Passed open.

2/16-2/18: Shakey Graves, SPACE

We previewed Shakey Graves’ set at the Riviera in 2018:

“If you first heard Shakey Graves through his overblown single 'Dearly Departed', you were probably as skeptical as I was to hear that his new album Can’t Wake Up was supposed to be a revelation. Well, it’s not album of the year, but it’s a very impressive transformation from earnest folk singer to indie rock curator for Alejandro Rose-Garcia. Using a choir of voices on many songs to convey his mental monologues, Garcia creates a world where he’s 17, and then 27, having existential crises and feeling invincible at the same time. Tracks are breezy ('Kids These Days', 'Backseat Driver') and dreamy ('Counting Sheep', 'Dining Alone'), and the wide array of instruments on the record, including lo-fi synthesizers, like on the drum-machine-addled ‘My Neighbor' and 'Big Bad Wolf' and buzzing 'Foot Of Your Bed', add to the chaos that makes the record so ultimately effective.”

Since then, he’s released a cover of Roger Miller’s “A World So Full Of Love”, but he’s been playing new songs at his shows. Expect to hear some of them during his three-night stint at SPACE for his For The Record acoustic tour.

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ibythetidepromotions · 5 years ago

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An interview with: Constellatia

Could you introduce yourselves to the readers?

We are Gideon Lamprecht (Guitars) and Keenan Oakes (Bass, vocals), best known as the founders of Crow Black Sky and Wildernessking respectively. With many years of experience between us, we've started a post-metal collaboration that we intend to take across the world, with many albums and tours.

'The Language of Limbs' releases November 15th via Isolation Records. In the United States merch store the description for the album mentions: "It is a record that came from a place of desperation; a musical outlet for the years of hardship both members endured in their personal lives... It's an album about obsession and overcoming. It's a triumphant record" do you feel you guys met at the right moment in your lives to write such a cathartic album?

We had already met each other in 2009, but there has never been a more suitable time in either of our lives for us to start working together. Everything that happened before this brought many stars into alignment for this collaboration to be conceived. It's something we've chatted about on many occasions, we're both extremely grateful for the timing, and we both needed it.

Your Facebook "About" section mentions live members, does this mean there are plans for upcoming shows?

This was never intended to be a studio-only band; touring and live shows with an emphasis on creating a powerful atmosphere and an unforgettable experience are as important to us as writing the albums themselves. Our first show is planned for January 2020 and touring preparations are underway.

Being a duo with live members not attached to the writing process, does your writing favor towards the live atmosphere of shows, or more to the studio aspect?

We wouldn't write anything we can't replicate live too, and it is sounding incredible in rehearsals. Our aim is to write the best albums we can because a record is the ultimate statement and something that's timeless, though we will always place a massive emphasis on the live shows and look for ways to elevate what the listener hears on the album.

The album art shows a very mysterious and haunting landscape, what is the story behind this piece?

Daniel Nel is the artist and he is a friend of ours. The cover painting is somewhat overwhelming and rather grand in scope. There's an isolated figure treading the middle of the waves. This figure speaks to the overcoming of obstacles and standing firm in times of strife.

With the insane comeback of vinyl these past few years, do you feel records are an essential staple when making pre-orders?

To us it is the most important format, as it is the most tangible, and the last medium that demands somewhat active listening. With the surge in vinyl culture over the last few years, it is absolutely imperative for us to include vinyl pre-orders as most collectors are interested in grabbing the special colour ways and exclusive packages, and we want to give our supporters immediate access to those.

The visuals for the debut single 'All Nights Belong To You' captures both viewers and listeners attention alike. What was the process like for finding a visual artist to properly bring your ideas to life?

The videographer, Pieter Jordaan, is a friend of ours. After a meeting with him about what we wanted to capture, the rest was fairly simple. We came up with the concept together, and put some time aside to shoot on a gloomy winter's day in Cape Town.

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There was an article from Metal Hammer earlier this year mentioning South Africa having an explosive metal scene. What do you feel is the hardest part about emerging from this already established scene as a fresh band?

We have both been playing in South African metal bands for over ten years, so this project, although only a year old, is not so fresh. We know what needs to be done, and what can be skipped as a local band. The hardest part about being a band here is finding suitable music partners, ones who share your ambition and taste, who you get along with, and who have what it takes. The other stuff isn't hard and simply takes time and good albums; the internet has made the world very small and we can reach a global audience easily.

Dream tour with Constellatia on the bill?

We love bands who create awe-inspiring music and atmospheres, it doesn't necessarily have to be metal. However, being on a bill with Cult of Luna, Devin Townsend, or Opeth would be amazing.

Anything else you would like to tell the readers before we go?

Thank you so much for reading and listening! The video for "In Acclamation" releases on the 30th of October, and our debut album, The Language of Limbs, will be released on the 15th of November Pre-orders are available if that's your thing.

youtube

Constellatia Social Media:

Facebook

YouTube

Instagram

Bandcamp

Merch US

Merch EU

#Constellatia #black metal #blackgaze #post black metal #Cape Town

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strangegatewaysbeckon · 8 years ago

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Adam Zaars (Tribulation) interviewed 2013

I’m trying to put a finger on The Formulas of Death, but I can’t. Was the intention to make an album that’s hard to fit into one easy category? Adam Zaars: No, that wasn’t the intention, but I’m not surprised to hear the question. The intention was just to create flowing music. It would have been hard not to do it in the way we did it, we just let it happen. We didn’t have an agenda to stir the pot or anything, although it seems now that we did.

My initial impression is that it’s a bit of a time-span record. There are bits from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s throughout the soundscape. What was it like writing music for The Formulas of Death? Adam Zaars: We take inspiration for the atmosphere and the song and riff structures from anywhere, so I’m not surprised to hear that either. I know I just said that it was easy to write the album, but it also took time. We always waited for the music to come to us rather than trying to force things out. Trying to make sense of everything was at times a bit confusing, but in the end I think we managed to do just that, I think the music is very coherent.

I mean, I notice all kinds of things happening on the record. Like “Spectres” could be a descendent of Unanimated, but then you throw in the black metal reggae part at 2:36. “Rånda” has that old Opeth bounce. “Spell” has that old Bathory peel to it. Are purposefully referencing the music that you like? Adam Zaars: No, we are not and we always get compared to bands that we don’t listen to (except from Bathory in this case). I still don’t get that reggae thing either. I think that’s a narrow-minded comparison, or maybe I’m just so far removed from that genre that I just don’t hear it. I hear we have disco beats in the album as well. I mean, come on, are people so imbedded in their own cultural pattern that they can’t even take a beat for what it is? It’s a beat! It’s got nothing to do with any style of music, it’s just a beat. Listen again, and forget what you have heard before. I know that can be hard, but I really think those beats on our album are just there for the right reasons and we certainly didn’t put them there to be outlandish or anything, you know.

What role do the instrumentals play? Each one is vastly different from the other. Adam Zaars: The whole album could have been instrumental really. Instrumental music has that 'free' way that I was just mentioning, it can just flow freely and that’s an inspiring thing to me. "Laylah" and "Ultra Silvam" were originally intended to be one song, but it turned out that we needed to make two! I don’t know why really, we don’t really analyze it while we do it, we just go with what feels like the right way.

I’m curious where the inspiration to “Ultra Silvam” came from. I know it’s an old term for Transylvania, but the song’s not creepy or dark. It’s more of a groove, shake your money maker-kind of thing. Adam Zaars: It’s a beautiful area with a lot of history and myth that relates to the band to a certain extent. That said the title is a metaphor rather than a hymn to a piece of land. And I have to say that to me that song is very dark. I think it has got a lot of what I would call Swedish darkness in it. I always start humming on other old Swedish songs when I have listened to it, songs that are dark and somber yet beautiful to me. It’s all in the eye (ear) of the beholder I guess, and this time it might be my cultural background that getting me to that conclusion, although I have a feeling that it isn’t.

Back in 2009, you told me Morbid Angel’s Altars of Madness was tops. Do you have movie soundtracks or scores that you feel are exemplary and, as such, part of Tribulation’s fabric? Adam Zaars: It still is! In particular the (Herzog’s) Nosferatu and Suspiria scores.

Was it important to keep things aggressive? For all the experimentation and curveballs, The Formulas of Death is still very much a death metal record. Adam Zaars: Our music is emotional to us and it carries a range of emotions to us, and aggression is a strong emotion hence it’s not surprising to me that it’s still in there. Again, we really just did it without too much analyzing, we didn’t go, "We should really have an aggressive one as well." Because of the time it took to get the right feel of everything I’m not surprised to hear that people have so many different thoughts about it and feel so many things about it. It’s varied, I guess.

What is death metal in your eyes? Adam Zaars: If I could name one album that is death metal to me I would say Covenant. But that’s not all there is to it, of course. I never really listened that much to death metal, except for the albums and bands that really stood out, and they were always so good, like Morbid Angel. When death metal isn’t creative it might be the dullest genre there is. I have more patience with old heavy metal bands than I do with death metal bands, because it seems like it’s very hard to make anything at all that’s the least interesting. To me that is. I don’t really care to be honest. Good music is good music, bad music is bad music. It’s obvious isn’t it? I don’t get why you have to be loyal to a certain something that someone once upon a time made up. We weren’t there; there is no nostalgia in it for us. Genres seem like a good thing for journalists, something that makes their job a bit easier, and for people that make documentaries about music and for people that have to fit in to a, again, certain something that someone made up.

Lyrically, where are you taking the reader? There are all kinds curious things. The intro title, “Vagina Dentata,” for example. The Hebrew titled, “Night.” Or, the Lovecraftian “Wanderer In The Outer Darkness.” Adam Zaars: The lyrics are personal and purposefully dark, obviously. They are metaphors and they are literal. I don’t want to get into too much detail since I find it nice to hear that people really make up their own minds about what they are about and that doesn’t really matter to me since I know what they mean to me. "Vagina Dentata" doesn’t mean what most people think about when hearing the title, it’s about a passage way and an opening, an initiation. That’s mostly what the rest of the album is about as well. It’s about spiritual death and rebirth and about becoming. The Hebrew title paints a picture for people that don’t know Hebrew, it’s a beautiful set of letters isn’t it? For the people who do know their Hebrew it might have even more depth and suggestions.

Would you say the lyrics are tied into your spiritual outlook? Adam Zaars: Yes, they are. They are a part of it, the music is as well. I would say that it’s the output of a spiritual life. They don’t fully reveal it, that’s for sure, but I find spirituality and creativity very much intertwined. I can almost go as far as saying that I couldn’t be creative and stand for what has been done if it wasn’t. Art is spiritual for me, and to us what we do is art.

Describe your spiritual outlook. It’s not like it’s obvious as Glen Benton’s burned-in forehead cross. Adam Zaars: What is he? An inverted non-spiritual Christian? I don’t know the guy. It’s quite difficult to make sense of my views in a short space like this because I can never say a thing like “I’m a Satanist and I follow these rules,” or “I’m a Shaivite and my heart strives for union with the blabla” mainly because I find it hard to put a name to it as easy as that. I mean, except for the superficial namedropping and attitudes towards life there isn’t that much difference between the goals of a Western Satanist and a Hindu ascetic. It’s a quest for the ending of the life-cycle and either a union with something you put a name to or a dissolution from whatever it is you put a name to. Some may argue, of course, but I look at it from a wider angle. At the same time I’m not saying that certain names are not important, they certainly are, but I think it’s the intent and the belief and the will and maybe even the history behind it that is very important. My spiritual outlook isn’t tied to any religion, but I do find what could be called Indian philosophy appealing, maybe because of its vast variety, but it’s also based in Western as well as “new world” thoughts and ideas. I think pretty much all religions could be useful as long as you know how to approach them and as long as you see all the external bullshit, I also think that many religions can be useful if you fully embrace them. Paradoxes are always a part of spirituality, I guess. In a western environment I have always found the “left hand side” of things more attractive and I would probably be called superstitious. It derives from both faith and experience with an emphasis on the latter.

Where’d the cover idea come from? Kind of reminds me of a dark post-punk album cover. Like something The Chameleons might’ve done after Script of the Bridge. Adam Zaars: Funny thing, I just heard The Chameleons last week actually, maybe a bit too "nice" for me. The cover was drawn by Jonathan, the guitar player, and the original image he made it from is from an old fin de siècle magazine. I find it perfect for the album really, we couldn’t have used anything else. I like how it has this uncertainty to it that I think the album has as well. It’s folkloristic in a way that is in accordance with the album. It has got that dark old fear of the unknown that still lingers in man, it’s also very sensual and it has a divine quality to it as well. Not that farfetched, I guess.

It was done at Necromorbus Studios, correct? It’s probably the best recording to come out of the studio. I feels vintage but not detrimentally so. Adam Zaars: We needed the freedom of having a lot of time and we needed to do it in an environment that was nothing like a big city where we could make the studio into our own. We did the drums in Necromorbus (Tore also did the mixing and mastering), then we relocated to our home town in the western parts of Sweden to do the rest with Jonas Wikstrand. We had two rooms and pretty much rearranged them completely into what felt comfortable for us. It was an inspiring time, I never really wanted to leave the studio. It was great working with both guys really, and I am really pleased with what they both contributed.

As for current happenings, what did drummer Jakob Ljungberg bring to the table? I like his switch between hard rock pounder and progressive rock creativeness. Adam Zaars: It’s great playing with him, he’s a great addition in a lot of ways. We’ve know each other since we were kids and we have always played together, so to have him in the band is great. He adds his kind of drumming which isn’t the typical death metal way of drumming and that’s exactly what we needed.

Alright, final question. Plans for 2013? Domination or sit quietly back and let the music do the talking? Adam Zaars: We have plans. Hopefully we can make them happen!

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#Tribulation #Tribulation band #Adam Zaars #Interview #Text Interview #2013 #Decibel Magazine

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arkbot · 8 years ago

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1, 9, 12, 18, 31, 32, 34, 52, 86?

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milkthan cereal or more cereal than milk? - More milk than cereal for sure.Tbh I like to finish my cereal and have a glass of milk after. This milk isusually chocolate because my favourite cereals are chocolate

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? -I pretty much always sing in the car when driving on my own. I also sing at mydogs and at @yourantagonist with my own substituted lyrics I’m a huge loserdeal with it

12: what’s your favorite planet? - Mars.It’s named for the god of war, to start. I like that despite being a fair bitsmaller than Earth, it has incredibly large features like Olympus Mons and VallesMarineris. I like that instead of dirt, the surface is covered in iron oxide,literally rust. At its most habitable, it would be like Antarctica withoutoxygen. I’m also fascinated by its proximity, and its chances of being thefirst alien planet man sets foot on.

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you didthat has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is alwaysbrought up. - One memorable occasion is the end of exams in my firstsemester of Uni. At the time, I was still finding my limits with alcohol, andwith cause for celebration we partied harder and longer than I had yetexperienced. As a result, by early afternoon I was already in a belligerent state.The residence building in which we were celebrating was triangular, and so fromthe common area extended three long hallways. Each was separated by one ofthose push-bar metal doors. For reasons unknown to all, myself included, I sawfit to joust the door in our hallway. Taking a running start from the other endof the hall, I built a head of steam towards the door. Being quick and not relenting one bit in myapproach, I hit the latched door with tremendous force. This was the pinnacle ofmy intoxication, and I was made to nap afterwards. Such was my inebriation that I was stilldrunk when I roused, went to a concert, and returned, some 8 hours after theincident.

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you likewearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to whitesock hell? really, just talk about socks. - I’m a huge fan of socks. Tome, walking around barefoot is akin to walking around without a shirt:something I’d do at the pool, in the summer time, but definitely a state ofundress. Socks are comfortable and warm, like a hug for my feet. I don’t sleepwith socks, or a shirt, or pants, that’s silly, unless it’s super cold in whichcase all options are on the table. Most of my socks are gray, but I have a fewpairs of statement socks such as my storm trooper, starscape, and pink pairs.

32: tell us a story of something that happened toyou after 3AM when you were with friends. - I’m not sure of the exacttime but it was certainly late. I was at a smash tournament in Edmonton, andafter everything was done I took my carpool to meet with some Edmonton friendsat McDonald’s. We got there first, and as our friends rolled up behind us, westarted walking to the door. Being a large group, drive thru would be a hassle,so it made sense to at least check if the dining room was open. Turns out itwasn’t. So we walk back and are talking to the other driver, deciding what todo instead (we went to Denny’s) when a man walks up to our group and asks if we’vegot smokes. Being a bunch of nerds, none of us do, and he’s reallydisappointed. He asks us what we’re doing, and we tell him we were gonna getfood, but only the drive thru is open. He starts to explain this elaborate planwhere he’ll get us food if we get him smokes. We’re a little weirded out, likeno man, we’re not gonna go find smokes for you. So we say nah, we can get food ourselves,we just need to use the drive thru. He’s like well, you know what the problemis? You’re walking! At this point we notice that the other driver has rolled uphis windows. We quickly disengage from the conversation and get in our car.While exiting the parking lot, we see he’s still kind of wandering around,looking for someone with smokes. This encounter is well remembered as thesketchy guy at McDonald’s, not to be confused with all the strange encountersthat smashers have had at one particularly sketchy McDonald’s in Calgary.

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept asa kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? -I had a lot of stuffed animals as a kid. Like, a LOT. In my teens, we did some renovations through the house, andI had to move out of my room temporarily. My stuffies all went into storage atthat time and I didn’t retrieve them when I went back, so there they sat. Lastyear we were making an effort to clean out storage space, so I was goingthrough the bag of old friends picking a few to keep and the rest to give away.One I picked was a very small shark. I don’t remember him being a big favouritebefore, but he was small and cute and I was happy to put him back in my room.We were happily reunited for a while, until a fateful trip. I went on a family tripto Hawaii, and being so tiny he was an excellent travelling companion, right inmy backpack. He went with me, and returned, safely, but remained in my bag as Iresumed normal life. One night, I accidentally left my vehicle unlocked on thecurb, and when I returned in the morning I had been robbed. Missing were somecheap sunglasses, a Wii U, and my backpack, complete with laptop, textbooks,and my fuzzy sharky friend. It was a sad day.

52: what are your favorite memes of the year sofar? - God, Star Wars prequel memes. They’re everywhere on Reddit, andas someone who appreciates both the prequel trilogy and bad memes, they’ve madea fine addition to my collection.

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? -I do! I’m a big nerd for prog rock, and I’m more of an album guy in general(over shuffle or picking singles). I almost always listen to albums in full,and often even sequentially for an artist’s whole discography. Personalfavourites:

The Human Equation by Aryeon, thesaga of a man who falls into a coma and spends 20 days (20 tracks!) wrestlingwith his emotions and working through a lot of buried traumas. Backstabbingfriendships, romantic issues, an asshole father, it’s all in there, with wellcomposed tracks, and a different guest singer for each emotion personified.

Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from aMemory by Dream Theater. In their breakout 1992 album Images and Words, they hada track called Metropolis Part 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper. Fans clamouredfor a follow up, and they went all out with a full sequel album 7 years later.It follows the story of a man who is being hypnotized in order to explore strangerecurring dreams. He discovers that he has been reliving a past life, where hewas a woman who was murdered when a love triangle turned sour. Aside from a twisting,non-linear storyline, this one just has kickass instrumentals that rank with DT’sbest.

Epica & the Black Halo byKamelot. This band is a recent revelation for me, and I’m so glad I found them.This is two albums to tell one story: a rock opera inspired by Goethe’s Faust.I’m only just exploring it now, and still piecing together themes and thedetails of the story itself, but the music is great.

A Thousand Suns by Linkin Park.This comes from a quieter time in Linkin Park’s legacy, and I don’t know manypeople who know about it, but I really liked it. It’s not as hard hitting astheir first couple albums, but I think it shows growth as writers, as it tells thestory of a near future after nuclear apocalypse. Many of the songs can be heardtwo ways, speaking about big political statements, or a second meaning ofpersonal conflict.

Ghost Reveries by Opeth. It took mya while to break into this band, and the was the album that was just accessibleenough for me to do it. That shouldn’t downplay the musicianship here, which isphenomenal, but coming from Dream Theater it was closer to a familiar sound.This one tells the story of a man who commits an unspeakable crime, murderinghis own mother. It follows him fleeing justice, spiralling into despair as heis pursued by both man and his own sins, until he surrenders to the Devil andtakes his own life.

#yourantagonist #sorry it took so long I still have more to answer

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limejuicer1862 · 5 years ago

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F WORD WARNING

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

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Thursday Simpson

lives between Peoria, Illinois and Iowa City, Iowa. She is a writer, musician and cook. Her work has recently been anthologized in Nasty! Volume 2, Hexing the Patriarchy and Satan Speaks!. She believes in garlic, onions and Feline Satan. Her twitter is @JeanBava and her full publication history can be found at www.thursdaysimpson.com

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

When I was a kid and throughout highschool I always wanted to write. Mostly back then I would listen to Opeth’s album Damnation or Tiamat’s album Prey and try to come up with my own poetry but it never really happened. But eventually in 2008 I was enrolled in community college and playing in about 10 different bands. I wasn’t really happy playing music so I started thinking about writing again. One of the nice things about writing as opposed to film making or playing music is that there is no recording or filming process. It’s like pure expression, no strings, no tuning, no effects or cables. Sure, you need a laptop and there is always so much revision and study involved. And writing is such a more long term thing than music. A manuscript might take more than five years to go from draft number one to publication as opposed to an album getting written, recorded, mixed and released in a year or two. It’s not that one medium involves more or less work, they’re just different. And the process involved with writing really kind of seemed attractive to me back then. I could sit and read and then write on my computer and email my work to publications instead of constantly practicing and trying to get my riffs recorded on good audio and find a label’s mailing address and trying to get their attention and going on the road and all of that.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

There are several things that do come to mind, though. Growing up in Galesburg, Illinois one hears a lot about Carl Sandburg. He was born here and a lot of things are named after him. I actually won a poetry contest in the 7th grade put on by his estate and his daughter gave me the prize at a ceremony held at his birthplace.

I think also in the 7th grade our class did a poetry unit where we read poets like Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes and Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. Looking back on that now, it’s so weird. It was a Catholic school, so we were getting all of this militant right wing anti abortion politics, books like Harry Potter were banned.But we also read poets like Nikki Giovanni and learned about Oscar Romero.

Then once I was in public highschool, I think I started to hear people talk about poetry as something one did to express themselves. Or as a valid art form unto itself. Some people from my highschool used to get together both in person and online and workshop eachother’s poetry. They were who told me about Sylvia Plath and poets like that.

But it was really more professors at my community college that made it start to click for me. One guy was an eldergoth from the 80’s and also used to play music before he became a writer. He really helped me take poetry as something I wanted to do and turn it into something that I did. He taught, “America,” by Allen Ginsberg in class one day and I went out and got a copy of Howl. The title poem, Howl, really fucking blew me away. I think that’s the poem that really made me fall in love with poetry.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

At first, very much so. That’s all we were taught in community college. The only non intro lit course was a two part Fall-Spring British Lit survey. I really didn’t like Beowulf or Canterbury Tales or the The Faerie Queene. I loved Shakespeare but didn’t really like Donne and Marvel and etc etc.

And after a month or two of the Enlightenment guys, I really fell for Wordsworth and Coleridge and Byron and the Shelley’s. I read their stuff for the better part of Spring 2010. Then a friend of mine that recently graduated from Western Illinois University asked me to help her run a local writing workshop. And while we were hanging out and planning it she showed me all of the texts they worked on at Western and let me borrow Richard Siken’s book, Crush. And after reading him I fell in love with poetry all over again.

Then once I transferred to the University of Iowa to finish my BA I chose a poetry writing course based on the instructor teaching Siken and Frank O’Hara. The Writers Workshop offers a series of creative writing courses for undergrads that anyone can take. And the instructors are all graduate students currently enrolled in the Workshop. We also studied Jeffrey McDaniel and the Dickman Twins and people like that. She also directed me to poets like Sharon Olds, James Wright, Franz Wright.

In other classes in the English literature department we read people like James Baldwin and Marilynne Robinson and Mary Swander and Raymond Carver and Jane Smiley.

During my last Semester there, Spring 2013, I started reading Maggie Nelson. She was around Iowa City for a bit in 2010 or 2011, guest lecturing and things like that, while she was publishing her book, Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions, through University of Iowa Press. So by 2013 everyone in Iowa City was reading Bluets. That book really changed my life. I read everything else Maggie Nelson wrote and then read every author she cited in her work, Simone Weil, Eileen Myles, Cookie Mueller.

Then after reading authors like Dodie Bellamy and Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus I started making friends that shared a love for similar writers. And then I more or less started getting plugged into communities of actual contemporary writers my own age doing the coolest fucking shit.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

It varies! I hate doing the same thing every day. But, I do prefer to write in the morning, first thing. I always hydrate first thing every morning. I’m obsessed with drinking water. Then I either make breakfast and a pot of tea or coffee or just start in on whatever project I’m working on. The longer each day goes on the more shit comes up. And I really need to focus when I write. So I like to get it out of the way first thing. Then it always isn’t in the back of my mind as I do everything else during the day.

In general I try to pattern my work ethic after my favorite athletes. Interviews with Kevin Durant or DeMarcus Cousins or Nyla Rose have taught me so much about what it takes and what it looks like to pursue greatness.

5. What motivates you to write?

I think it’s almost always been work that I admire. Sometimes it’s an interpersonal thing, a breakup or a great hookup or whatever. But almost always it’s because I’ve seen a great film or read a great book or watched a great professional wrestling match or athletic contest.

I really like raw, physically immediate work that takes real risks. That’s why I love pro wrestling so much. It’s such a physical, emotional form of storytelling. A great match from Mitsuharu Misawa in a lot of ways reminds me of a novel like The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich or Like Being Killed by Ellen Miller. Or more recently, Tessa Blanchard’s match with Sami Callihan. Tessa really connects with the audience with her tears and really honest cries of pain throughout that contest. That same feeling and emotion is present in Colt Cabana’s recent title defense against James Storm or in just about anything that Pentagón Jr. and his brother, Fénix do in the ring.

Same with the New Day, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods and Big E. I think they’re just about the most talented artists working in professional wrestling throughout this entire decade. There is so much artistic brilliance in their matches with the Uso’s or in Kofi Kingston’s main event work in 2019.

Besides wrestling, films like Night of the Living Dead by George Romero or Living Dead Girl by Jean Rollin really direct my artistic goals. Something raw, real, honest and immediate and emotionally and psychically potent. That’s what I’m always trying to chase and pursue in my own work.

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I think my passion for literature and video games and athletics and film have always been more or less intertwined. When I was about 5 or 6 I started watching the Universal Monster Collection on VHS and got obsessed with horror. I read all of the Goosebumps and Fear Street books from the Galesburg Public Library. I watched the Star Wars films on VHS and then read all of the Star Wars books at the public library. I watched Tales from the Cryptkeeper and Are You Afraid of the Dark and read all of the affiliated franchise novels that the library had.

I first became aware of professional wrestling after renting WWF Royal Rumble on the Sega Genesis. In 1993, 1994 and 1995 the only way to watch wrestling for me was from renting VHS tapes. So anytime I got any money I would rent as many wrestling tapes and horror films as I could afford and watch them over and over.

I didn’t have a computer or access to the Internet until 1999. So mostly every second of my free time was either spent at the library researching films and books or at rental stores reading the VHS boxes.

Crying is a really important spiritual activity for me. Victor Wooten defines crying as something we do when we aren’t able to express our emotions through language. I’ve always cried a lot, regardless of age. My favorite thing to do on my days off is to make a pot of coffee and listen to music or watch a film or listen to an audiobook and cry my fucking eyes out.

The video game Final Fantasy 7 really changed me. I played it fairly soon after it came out in 1997. I became so obsessed with the game. I cried when I played it and I cried thinking about it when I wasn’t playing it. The way it combines such lyrical music with so many incredible greens and blues in the color pallet just really connected with me. I read the strategy guide cover to cover so many times. Video game strategy guides were actually one of my favorite literary genres as a kid. I never owned too many games, but I could afford the strategy guides. So I just read them cover to cover, over and over.

So much of what I do now is born directly out of my obsessions from when I was a child. An interest in Universal Horror led to an interest in the 80’s slasher franchises, that fed into an interest in George Romero’s body of work and so on. Then once I was in college and started to learn about politics and theory and history, horror was such a perfect exploration ground. George Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead became a renewed obsession. I started thinking of 80’s slasher films as Reagan morality tales.

Coming out of the closet and living publicly as queer and trans for me was very much tied to learning about AIDS in the 1980’s. Reagan’s policies really effected my family in a lot of negative ways. Rick Perlstein wrote a really great two volume work that traces changes in right wing politics from Eisenhower through the 1976 Republican Convention. Those books were such great companions to The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy or I Love Dick by Chris Kraus and In One Person by John Irving. Artists like David Wojnarowicz tie so many things together. My mind has always worked in a language of synchronicity and probability and chance and myth. Things like Baseball statistics have always been incredibly meaningful to me. And the way David Wojnarowicz ties things like country music to masculine queerness really made me feel validated as a thinker for the first time in my life.

And during times when I really thought my writing was over and out, especially in late 2012 and late 2013, watching Are You Afraid of the Dark and some of John Carpenter’s films like They Live and Prince of Darkness really helped get my mind and heart together again. The same with 1931’s Frankenstein. I watched that film over and over as a child. But when I watched it during the fall of 2014 it was like seeing it for the first time. Boris Karloff’s performance is just something special. His unhinged screams during the fire at the end of the film really effected me in a profound way. You can watch that film alongside reading Chris Kraus’ novel, Summer of Hate, and learn a lot about violence in our society.

So yeah, the obsessions and concerns in my work now are very much reflected in my obsessions and concerns as a five year old.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

There are so many! I think more than anyone, my favorite contemporary writers are Ariel Gore, Tiffany Scandal, Erika T. Wurth, Juliet Cook, Leza Cantoral, Christine M. Hopkins, Kristen J. Sollee, Joanna C. Valente, Nadia Gerassimenko, Juliet Escoria, Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins, Monqiue Quintana, I could go on forever.

Helen Oyeyemi is a genius. Sybil Lamb is a genius. Patrisse Khan-Cullors is a genius.

I also like Koji Suzuki’s novels. Edward Frenkel is another favorite. Karyn Crisis is writing and publishing a series on traditional Italian witchcraft that is excellent. And I do enjoy Haruki Murakami as well. Marisha Pessl is another favorite.

More than anything, I love how publishing is changing. Ebooks and audiobooks and the Internet are opening up so much to so many people. You no longer need to live in New York City or go to college to have access to a life in literature.

Technology is making literature accessible and possible for disabled persons as well. You don’t need a ton of shelving and space to store your books, you can read / listen while you cook or work or whatever. An average SD card can hold about 5 public libraries worth of books.

In general I just love where contemporary literature is right now and hopefully where it’s heading. Art seems more accessible than it’s ever been.

8.1. Why are they genius?

Helen Oyeyemi’s book, “White is For Witching”, is a novel that is as expertly written as it is affecting. I love books that aren’t fixed. Those Comp 101 tropes of, “Reliable narrator, unreliable narrator,” or, “Now class, to write well, we must first prepare an introductory paragraph with our thesis statement,”

Just turn me off.

I love it when an author jumps deep into the psychic mass of human bodies. The psychic and physical realities of humans don’t correspond at all to those 101 concepts.

And Oyeyemi’s, “White is For Witching,” to me is just about the perfect book. Everything in the narrative is always changing. Every sentence just feels so profound and impactful. It really challenges the reader to kind of move beyond the literal text and engage with the narrative more with one’s psychic senses or within one’s innermost being.

Sybil Lamb’s book, “I’ve Got a Timebomb”, is a novel that, to me, recalls Kathy Acker’s non-linear style. But Sybil’s novel specifically frames Acker’s queer, disjointed virtuosity within a transgender, W. Bush era framework.

As with Oyeyemi’s, “White is For Witching,” its rather difficult to get a sense of what’s happening, sentence to sentence. And that forces the reader to both rely on the depth of the language itself and also on their own psychic ability to sense what is happening. And as the novels continue, they each create such a powerful impact and resonance within the reader. Or at least they did with me. They changed my fucking life.

And Patrisse Khan-Cullors book, “When They Call You a Terrorist,” is one of the most profound works I’ve ever read. It’s in part memoir and part contemporary history. I think if someone was only going to read one book published in the 2010’s, “When They Call You a Terrorist,” is a book that person should choose.

I think for a lot of white people in the United States, we really ignore what’s going on around us. We don’t confront our white privilege. We don’t confront that our white privilege is sustained by institutional racism. We don’t confront that horrific violence is forced on people of color.

Throughout her book, Patrisse Khan-Cullors candidly talks about her life and the lives of those around her. And through her writing, she almost kind of gives the reader a choice. By describing the horror and violence of racism, the reader can either choose to be horrified and repent and commit to change or they can continue to block it out.

The narrative also is about the author’s journey as a queer person. She talks about the realities of being queer in highschool and being queer as an adult.

I think, “When They Call You a Terrorist,” is a book that has incredible power. If anyone doubts the ability of literature and narratives to change lives, “When They Call You a Terrorist,” can shake them from that complacency.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

So, I think for me writing is the most accessible art form. You can do it alone, you don’t have to have a lot of friends or a lot of gear and money and things like that. You don’t have to go buy a guitar and learn how to tune it and replace your strings or learn about what a sine wave and a square wave are and etc etc.

You can go out and read books from your library or find ebooks and audiobooks online and dive in and start getting inspired. Also, libraries carry a ton of ebooks and audiobooks besides physical books. And if there’s something you want that they don’t have, they can almost certainly get it for you.

There’s no equivalent with guitars and drum machines and synthesizers. You kind of have to buy them or maybe at best rent them from a music store. And renting in that context costs money.

But libraries also have laptops you can rent for free and write on. You could base your entire writing career out of a public library if you couldn’t afford books, an internet connection or a computer.

You can just start reading and see what inspires you and go pursue it.

The Internet really helps one connect to other readers and writers and is such an excellent way to find and build communities.

Though, I don’t mean to act like writing is high up on the platonic list of ideal art forms. I live a fairly monastic life and I enjoy that way of living. Writing is a long term game. It takes months and more often than not years to write and draft and edit and revise and get rejected and get rejected and write and revise. It appeals to my temperaments.

And revising is as simple as reading and re-reading, deleting, re-framing, re-stating, seeking clarity and things like that. You don’t have to listen to abunch of audio on abunch of expensive equipment and twist and turn abunch of knobs and worry about re-recording a part or how something’s mixed or anything like that.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

More than anything else, one becomes a writer by first reading and then writing and then going back and editing what one has written. The hardest parts about being a writer have more to do with time, money, stress management, real life shit.

When I was living in Iowa City, some of the best advice I got came from reading the memoirs of writers and artists that I admire. Especially Jeanette Winterson and David Lynch and Ann Patchett.

It’s easy to see ourselves as these nobodies and our heroes as deities. But just to share a small part of Jeanette’s story. After she was kicked out of her parents house for being gay, she used to go to the library every day and get books to read. Back then she thought it was required to read every text in alphabetical order, so she started with the first book in the A section and started working her way down the lines.

Eventually a librarian noticed her habits and told her that she can read any book she likes at anytime. That no one is required to only read books in alphabetical order.

I bring this story up because our crisis’ really hurt. When we lose a job, we feel like it’s the end of the world. When we go through a breakup we feel like it’s the end of the world.

And we feel like that because things really fucking hurt.

But one thing we don’t realize sometimes is that our heroes, the pillars of art, have gone through the same things we’ve gone through. David Lynch had to put Eraserhead on hold for more than five years because he was broke. He talks in his memoir, Catching the Big Fish, about going every day to the local Big Boy and drinking a milkshake while he thought about his ideas.

You have to imagine David Lynch not as the creator of Twin Peaks, but as a broke twenty something loser hanging out at the fast food restaurant every afternoon, starring off into space, dreaming about someday making movies.

Professional, capitalist culture teaches us that such dreams are shameful. We’re all taught to laugh and scoff or at best feel sorry for the girl heading out to LA to become an actress or the person living in their parents basement working on their first demo.

The hardest part about being a writer is learning to not give into all of that shame. A lot of people will talk a lot of shit about you. That will only ever increase in its intensity as you publish and do your thing.

Once, I sent a story to a publication and paid 3 dollars to have the editor give me personalized feedback. And this fucking guy sent me his feedback by gleefully ripping my work to shreds, sentence by sentence.

A couple of weeks later, that exact same piece helped me get accepted into a nationally recognized MFA Program with an offer including full funding.

I didn’t accept the offer because I hate college, but that’s a different story.

The point I’m trying to make is that you just have to never give up. Ever.

Read the books that interest you.

When you get an idea for a piece, write it.

And finish it.

No matter what, finish what you start. No matter how hard it is. You can always edit it later.

Then after you finish writing something, read some more books that interest you. Watch films that interest you. Pursue anything that interests you.

And read books that maybe don’t interest you. And read the books that interest the authors you really like. Read people’s bibliographies. Get the books referenced in their research and read them.

And everytime you get an idea, make a note about it. And when you have time, work on it and do the best job you can.

I think doing one’s best is great advice. Whenever you’re writing, just do the best you can. If you don’t have time to write, just make sure you write when you do have time.

Never give up and always do your best.

That’s where editing really comes in. There isn’t a writer that’s ever lived who doesn’t have to revise their work. In the moment, things seem so impossible. Our sentences always feel so bad.

But one thing you’ll notice, if you don’t give up, is that six months or so after you finish a draft, you’ll come back to it and see what you need to change.

And then six months or so after that, you’ll come back to your piece and see more things that you can improve.

Sometimes that six months only takes a few days or a few weeks. Sometimes it might take a few years. Writing can be a very mysterious process.

That’s why no matter what, you should always just do your best each time you’re sitting down to write. Do your best and let the gods sort out the rest.

If you want to go to college to study literature and writing, go for it. If you don’t want to do that, don’t.

If you like workshopping with other people, do it. If you don’t like it, your editors will let you know what you need to change and how to improve your work.

Some of my favorite writers are highschool dropouts and some of my favorite writers have multiple PhDs. The secret to writing is figuring out your own process and investing in it and devoting yourself to the work of reading and writing and editing and revising. And most importantly, the secret to writing is never giving up. Ever.

When people tell you that your work is shit, just move on. Never delete or destroy your own work. Just file it away and revise and edit it later on.

And I think it’s also important to be open to change. Both changes in your style and changes in your methods and changes in what interests and motivates you.

You might find that you start out writing poetry but want to write more fiction. Or you might start out wanting to write scathing, sexy queer non fiction but end up writing high fantasy novels.

Go with your gut.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’m in the process of finishing up a novel that’s tentatively called, “Like a Razor.” It’s mostly about a young, out of work mathematician dealing with the loss of his primary partner in a polyamorous relationship. There is also a lot of professional wrestling & Satanism related esoterica and mystery involved.

I’m also working on putting together a couple poetry collections. And hopefully also a non-fiction collection dedicated more to examining spirituality and strategies for activism.

And hopefully all of these works will have a soundtrack that I’ve composed and recorded myself.

Thank you so much for this opportunity! I very much appreciate it

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Thursday Simpson F WORD WARNING Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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chorusfm · 6 years ago

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Ancestors Index

I had the chance to sit down with Nathan Pyles of Ancestors Index to discuss his new album, Ghost, the unique merchandise designs he has created and artists he admires in today’s music scene. Thank you Nathan for allowing me to interview you today. Tell me a little bit this current project of yours called Ancestors Index. How would you describe this band’s sound? Well, the band is mainly myself. I do all the writing for it and the sound is really whatever I feel like writing. There is no one desired sound, and I try to do whatever I’m thinking at the time. How would you describe your writing style? That’s a tough question to answer…I just get ideas from little things in my life, such as hearing a sound, or a lyric, and I start kind of fleshing out ideas in my head and I kind of go with it after that. There’s really no one set way of writing for me, and it’s hard to really nail it down. Are there other artists you look at as far as using similar sounds or styles? Yeah, there are definitely some artist that influence my sound overall. I look to Radiohead, Steven Wilson, Opeth, and Nine Inch Nails. I listen to a lot of different music and I kind of draw from different artists and people like that. What are your current touring plans surrounding the release of your new record, Ghost? At the moment, I’m trying to just collect feedback on how the album is doing. If people are saying the album is shit, then I don’t have the desire to do it (touring) as much. I have had some feedback, I like feedback where I’m not just talking to a person face to face and it’s a little more genuine. But since I’m doing a lot of this by myself, I’d have to put a band together to do shows, and I have a certain idea of how I’d like the shows to go. It wouldn’t be the cheapest show to do, ya know? It would cost some money to do and I’d want to make sure it’s worth it if I do it. Do you have any musicians in mind that you can draw from (for touring), or people you have played with before? Not really. I’ve tried starting bands a couple of times, and that’s kind of why I’m doing this by myself. It’s hard to get musicians all the time, because they can be kind of flaky. So, some of the musicians I worked with in the studio would be fantastic, but other than that I don’t have any set names in mind. What does the LP title (Ghost) come from? It’s something that kind of means something to me as it goes with the album, but I don’t really want to give that out to people so they say, “Oh, this is what that means.” I want people to come up with their own meaning on their own. What are some other artists that you admire in the music scene today? Which particular characteristics do you get drawn into for these artists, specifically? I would say my number one influence is Steven Wilson, a guy who has done so much music from so many different genres. And he doesn’t care if the music sounds completely different from the last album. He does whatever he wants to do and I’m kind of the same way. As long as it has a cohesive sound, you obviously don’t want to put some death metal with something really light, that could jar some people a bit too much. Sometimes that’s good, but you have to do it right. So, he’d be one that I have really gotten into. Others, such as Radiohead, where they kind of do whatever they want, regardless of what other people think. And Nine Inch Nails, with Trent Reznor, kind of the same thing. I like people that do whatever they want in music and they don’t think about what people want. Like, this is the album I going to put out, and that’s the type of artist I would like to be. Cool! So it sounds like you’re drawn to some of those “musical entrepeneurs,” those artists that kind of blaze their own path. Is that kind of what you’re modeling yourself after? Yeah, I’d say so. Tell me a little bit about your promotion strategy for this record. Any unique merchandise designs in the works? The album is pretty much on all major streaming platforms, such as Spotify, and as far as the promotion, I let Deanna handle a lot of that. One thing I’ve kind of found out with this album, since this has turned out to be a lot bigger of a project than the last one I did, is that it can be very consuming to do everything by yourself. As long as the people I work with are doing what I’d like them to, I’m very happy to hand off some of the promotion to them. We’ve done a lot of merch for this album. There’s this big photo book that comes with the album, if you buy it, and it features tons of images that go along with the music. It’s a huge, 120-page book that tells the story of the album as you listen to it. It doesn’t have lyrics in the traditional sense of a lyric book, but it them embedded into the images from the book. It’s something that you don’t see a lot of smaller bands doing often, mostly because it’s not financially feasible for most bands to do, but it’s something I really wanted to do for this album. Who came up with most of the designs for the book? Was it mostly just you, or did you do other collaborations? So, when I came up with the concept of the photo book, I knew what I wanted to do for the cover. I went online, and I basically found someone who did pretty much what I was wanting. They were from Spain and her name was Laura Tietjens. So I contacted her and then I went to someone local in my town named Wade Hawk from Hawk Eye Photography, who I approached about doing the photo book. Steven Wilson, the artist I had mentioned before, had done photo books that were a little more elaborate than mine was, but I showed Wade this and said I’d kind of like to do something like this. So we kind of figured out how the story should go, and then got the model. From there, I kind of let him do his own thing since I didn’t want to micromanage it, because I felt it come out kind of poor if I did it that way. So, I kind of let him go, and I didn’t really fear what he would do since we had the same idea on this. I think as long as it tells the story the same way, and I think it does. It’s kind of its own thing, but it also goes with the music, which is really what I wanted in the end. It’s been harder to get people to purchase the book, since it isn’t cheap to produce, but when people do see the book they have been impressed with it. I think as long as I get it out to enough people, people will eventually start ordering it. If people see it in their face, it will be something that they will really want to have with the album. Last question, Nathan: If you could think of a perfect collaboration with another artist in today’s music scene to pair with your music, who would it be and why? Hmm. If I was going to do a collaboration with my music, I’d want to do something completely different than what my music is. I definitely share some stylistic similarities with Steven Wilson, but I probably wanted to do that (collaboration) since we sound similar. If I’d pick one, I’d probably say Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth. It would be completely different that the sound I’m going for now, and something new would come out of it. Their music is very unique, especially in the death metal genre, where the guitar playing is very melodic and special. Thank you Nathan for the interview! Anything else you would like to share today? If people would like to go check out the new stuff out on the website, as far as the music, merch, and photo book, all of the things I talked about are there. As far as the future…touring and/or another album. I don’t like to sit still, I’m very busy with the new music. Thanks again, and I wish you the best of luck and I hope we cross paths again in the near future. Thank you again for you having me on to do this interview. --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/interviews/ancestors-index/

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happymetalgirl · 4 years ago

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August 2020

Black Crown Initiate - Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape

Black Crown Initiate are one of those bands who have so much going for them in terms of their potential and so much about them on paper sounds like exactly the kind of thing I could nerd the hell out over, yet neither of the band’s previous two albums really made that connection with me or showed themselves to be anything other than respectful substitutes for albums like Cynic’s Focus, or Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name, or Opeth’s Watershed. Like The Wreckage of Stars and Selves We Cannot Forgive, Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape draws moments of exceptional strength from modern metalcore to produce a few highlights such as “Years in Frigid Light”, “Sun of War”, “Death Comes in Reverse”, and the closing solo of “Holy Silence”, but its awkward balancing of softer passages and smoother clean vocals just serves as a reminder of how easy Mikael Åkerfreldt makes it look. The band again certainly showcase what great talent they have and that they have the chops to hold their own with this sound, but until they take their compositional style beyond Soen-plus-death-metal, they will have a hard time escaping the shadows of the big names in their field.

6/10

Misery Signals - Ultraviolet

Misery Signals’ output has slowed with the NWOAHM it was borne from, but after only gracing the previous decade with a single full-length (2013’s ironically titled Absent Light) with members preoccupied with side projects, the band re-united its original line-up with long-absent vocalist Jesse Zaraska and a reignited commitment to the phased-out version of melodic metalcore that they sported at the movement’s height of cultural relevance. There are some bright spots of greater melodic vocals invigoration like “Some Dreams” and the quick “Through Vales of Blue Fire”, but Ultraviolet sounds as out of place in this decade as it would be obscured into the background fifteen years ago, serving less as a testament to the glory of 2000’s metalcore and more as a reminder of how saturated the movement became with recycled material.

5/10

Year of the Knife - Internal Incarceration

I missed out on it last year, but Year of the Knife put out their debut album, Ultimate Aggression, last February, a half-hour ripper of no-nonsense metalcore that embodies the current movement that has fixated on reinventing metalcore’s grooves while staying in line with its central aggression. While Ultimate Aggression indeed embodied its title thoroughly, I was hoping it would serve as a filling appetizer for the main course of the group’s sophomore album, Internal Incarceration. After such a promising debut, I have to say Internal Incarceration is a bit underwhelming. The band still flex their hardcore muscles to the point of bulging out of their t-shirts and provide plenty of slam-inducing groove, which there are a few especially good highlights of on “Nothing to Nobody” and the title track. Unlike the creative grooves Ultimate Aggression teased an expansion upon, Internal Incarceration is a more generic display of strength, which makes for this longer listen unfortunately much less exciting. It’ll still get the kids in the pit swinging and kicking once that gets re-instituted, but they sound more like your average local hardcore band who heard Knocked Loose than an up-and-coming powerhouse of the genre.

6/10

Mesarthim - Planet Nine & The Degenerate Era

I feel like such a fool for taking this long to catch on to the prolific Australian project Mesarthim, whose expansive catalog has been all over Bandcamp in the five years since the band’s first release, with this year’s The Degenerate Era being their fifth full-length and Planet Nine being their seventh EP! I may be late, but I made it to the party to see what Mesarthim is all about. I’ve seen a few bands on Bandcamp tag their sound with the “void metal” label, and of the bands I’ve heard, I’ve not really found it to mean much beyond atmospheric black metal with a bit of a space-related aesthetic associated with it, but after hearing Mesarthim, I can see now that this migh be a genuine sub-genre branch of ambient black metal, the subtle but fearless incorporation of shimmering, chime-like electronics and synthetic choral elements really does evoke the vastness of space and the divine wonder of the cosmos. And the band’s two-song EP release this year, Planet Nine, definitely captures that with its bright melodic progressions and expansive synthetic whirring. It’s definitely very atmosphere-based, very dependent on the lushness of the sounds, which are unfortunately hampered in a few of the softer spots by some messy production, but the band’s smooth transitions do help them make up for the flaws in production quality (which I’m amazed they haven’t ironed out this many albums in), and the fixation on gorgeous atmospheres and intentional transitions makes me strongly suspect they take some notes from fellow celestially themed black metal ambient innovators Alrakis.

7/10

Clocking in at around 44 minutes, The Degenerate Era isn’t that much longer than its EP co-release this year, nor is it all too disparate in style, although the band do dip into more traditionally heavy black metal territory here and there, but otherwise it’s lots of expansive synthetic orchestral elements, lots of spacy guitar-playing, and a pretty gutsy dose of the kind of electronics that would send any already-squirming black metal purist over the top into a full blown temper tantrum. The greater range of emotional diversity on this LP in comparison to Planet Nine puts it a little bit higher for me, although both have a similar appeal and are indeed definitely worth checking out.

7/10

In the Company of Serpants - LUX

In the Company of Serpants continue their culinary tinkering with the latest melting pot of metallic styles on LUX, stirring various chunks of 90’s New Orleans sludge, modern death metal a la Rivers of Nihil, and even late-80’s thrash into a broth of atmospheric post-metal (which serves as a gratifying climax specifically to the opening track, “The Fool’s Journey”) that may not be the most groundbreaking dish in the planet, but the freshness of whose ingredients and the skill of whose chefs comes through in the good consistency of the project. I liken it to a soup in that it’s based heavily on atmospheric post-metal and that it’s hard to get a bite of this album without it, and that there are various pieces of meatier genres in there usually popping in one spoonful at a time. Personally, it’s a soup I enjoy and one I think anyone who enjoys some dynamic post-metal or likes their atmospheric metal with a spiritual feel would enjoy.

7/10

Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction

Terminal Nation are a five-piece from Little Rock, Arkansas who make their full-length debut through the excellent upstart curators 20 Buck Spin, and the band’s aptly titled debut meshes death and doom metal in a flurry more angrily condemning than the average record in the field, occasionally unable to keep from spiraling into grinding blasts of fury in their rage against the capitalism whose very design has oppressed so many and ushered in ecological catastrophe and a new wave of fascism. 2020 has made political commentators out of many, and Terminal Nation are not shy about where they stand and where they place the blame for our world’s ills, targeting the military industrial complex on “Death for Profit”, for-profit medicine on “Caskets of the Poor”, and capitalism as a whole on “Master Plan”. Despite the songs being easily stylistically categorized, the band refuse to let one hybrid genre label define them as a whole, exuding old-school grindcore through filthier guitar tones on songs like “Thirst to Burn” and “Leather Envy”, while slower tracks like “Cognitice Dissonance” and “Expired Utopia” opt for a slow roast kind of scorched Earth, borrowing the occasional nasty metalcore breakdown along the way. Covering a relatively wide range of styles and an array of apocalyptic topics, Holocene Extinction is as blunt in its delivery instrumentally as it is lyrically, and it hits as hard as an album of its nature should, setting this band up on a great start. Fight on!

8/10

Krallice - Mass Cathexis

Already the eight LP for New York’s prolific black metal experimentalists, Mass Cathexis finds the ordinarily forward-thinking band at a loss for major ideas beyond doubling down on he technicality of their sound to the point of stepping on a few of the land mines in the techdeath minefield. They still work in plenty their of their usual progressive song structuring and cerebral atmosphere, and I do enjoy it enough, but I know Krallice can do better than this. And I’m sure they will, and it’ll probably be pretty damn soon too.

6/10

Drouth - Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy

On their sophomore effort through Translation Loss Records, Portland-based quartet Drouth dress up their abundant competence with the basics of blackened death metal as a grander artistic statement than it really is with five epic, yet dragging, showy, yet shallow songs of rather generic material for the genre. I respect the band’s commitment and I give them credit for the performative abilities they showcase on their second album, but I can’t pretend to be wildly excited about 40 minutes of run-of-the-mill blackened death metal.

6/10

Faceless Burial - Speciation

This is the second full-length record from Melbourne three-piece Faceless Burial who have kept a pretty steady pace after their first demo release in 2015 and their independent full-length debut in 2017. Released through Dark Descent Records, Speciation is a refinement of the blunt, bellowing death metal that the band presented on their debut. Packed with delicious low-register guitar riffs, rumbly bass lines, and manic blast beats, Speciation is a candid portrait of much of what makes modern death metal what it is, and what makes it so delicious even looking up at its top tiers. I think Faceless Burial could certainly one day reach those top tiers, and Speciation is a strong step in that direction.

7/10

Avatar - Hunter Gatherer

Swedish quintet Avatar are nothing if not creative, and their decision to go all-in on the circus-freak aesthetic seems to have catalyzed the wildness with which they reimagine and remold melodic death metal. And they’ve certainly been actively prolific over the past decade that saw their emergence into the spotlight, releasing consistently every two years, and they’re right on time this year with Hunter Gatherer. Coming off of the bombastic tale of 2018’s Avatar Country and knowing that the band have a penchant for concept albums, I was eager to see what Hunter Gatherer’s might be, and while there’s no connective narrative, the album generally sticks to a theme of gazing into a chaotic future. The sensational Swedes kick off this year’s effort with its most uncharacteristically generic display, the standard melodeath “Silence in the Age of Apes”, but the album doesn’t take long at all to get to Avatar’s usual extravaganza as the second track, “Colossus”, immediately kicks of with a punctuated siren wail and from the get-go you know you’re in for a ride, and the track’s swaggering mid-tempo march is headbanging as fuck. Oh the invigorating melody just keeps coming too; “A Secret Door” balances alternative rock’s soaring triumph with the natural tendencies toward that feeling from melodeath. The song “Child” captures Avatar’s essential traits with its risky stage-production sway, its soaring chorus, and it’s rumbling low-tuned foundation that all serve the band’s grand ambition in spectacular fashion, and the subsequent “Justice” only soars even higher from there with its palm-muted-backed chorus and Johannes Eckerström’s absolutely fist-raising vocal melody. And the Swedes keep the high-stakes moves coming with the grippingly candid piano balladry of “Child”. As with every Avatar release, though, there are some songs that don’t fly over so well, but only two out of the ten. The band’s switch into half-measured seven-stringed eccentricity on “God of Sick Dreams” is just one of the moments that feels like it could have been a bigger display of creativity, while “Scream Until You Wake” is a clumsily cheesy collision of melodic heavy metal and arena butt rock that unfortunately puts the band’s theatricality in a bad light. The album finishes on two powerful notes, though, with the quick thrash of “When All But Force Has Failed” that immediately reminded me of Bullet for My Valentine’s “Waking the Demon”, and the epic eight-stringed cinematic finale of wormhole. While I still may not have been in love with an Avatar album from start to finish, I still look forward to reviewing their music whenever they have a new album out because even if not everything they do on a particular record, the group’s zealous drive to put on a good show always yields an eccentric and exciting track list and the enthusiasm the band has for whatever imagination it is they’re realizing comes through in their performances. So even if there are a few acts during the show that don’t dazzle me personally, I stay for the whole performance because there’s never a dull moment, and there really is nothing else like it, and Hunter Gatherer has proven sticking around to be worthwhile, because the band have struck their most consistent effort yet, and one I can say I really do love as a whole even with its momentary flaws.

8/10

Moloken - Unveilance of Dark Matter

This came out way earlier in the year, but this is the fourth full-length album from Sweden’s version of Ulcerate, Moloken. I totally kid with how reductive I’m being there, but I mean that comparison as a compliment because Ulcerate are one of death metal’s most interesting acts at the moment and their album this year definitely bolsters their already-high reputation for post-death metal alchemy, and I’d say Moloken’s new album this year showcases how they perform similar sonic sorcery with the vile, grungy sounds of old-school sludge metal, transforming the heroin-intoxicated street babblings of depression into a cleaner, progressive form. And while some of that hyper-perceptible mental anguish is suppressed in that evolution, there’s still enough vibrant torment there inthe clangy bass lines and the yowling screams of agony underneath the layers of more complex, heavy, and modernized instrumentation. I think the song “Hollow Caress” probably highlights the span of older and newer sludge elements on this album best out of the tracks here, but really this whole album is an enthralling window into the spasms of the tormented psyche that might look all too familiar.

8/10

Ingested - Where Only Gods May Tread

Ingested cook up nearly 50 minutes of crusty blackened death metal similar to that of Ancst with a punchy deathcore edge a la Despised Icon or Venom Prison on Where Only Gods May Tread, and for as predictable as the results are, they do pack a solid punch that presents the rhythmic battery of deathcore as a worthy tool of death metal aggression rather than a purist-discredited development. And the band have even tapped a few members of the new and old guards to endorse their metallic campaign through collaboration; Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein joins in on the sludgy barn burner “Another Breath”, while hardcore advocates Matt Honeycutt and Vincent Bennett contribute their talents as well. While it’s, again, not the most groundbreaking of releases, Ingested certainly get the job done satisfactorily beyond what any reasonable purist could gripe about.

6/10

Thou - A Primer of Holy Words

After dropping their compilation of Nirvana covers just a few months prior, Thou hit us again with another compilation of cover songs they’ve done over the years that exemplifies their greater aptitude for the cover song when it comes to styles closer to their wheelhouse like the hardcore punk of Minor Threat and Born Against and the doom metal of Black Sabbath as opposed to the lo-fi grunge of Nirvana, though the band still insist on trying their hand at sludgifying a couple of 90’s grunge classics on a misguided cover of Alice in Chains’ “No Excuses” and Soundgarden’s “Fourth of July”. Like Blessings of the Highest Order, A Primer of Holy Words more or less just runs all the songs on it through a Thou processor to churn out a rather homogeneous mush of sludgy cover material out the other end. It’s a more complimentary batch of songs to the machine the band puts the songs through than the Nirvana covers were, but it’s not something that revolutionizes the originals or outshines Thou simply doing their own thing enough to have me itching to return to it.

5/10

Halestorm - Reimagined

Halestorm take all the punch out of their best hits like “I Get Off”, “I Miss the Misery”, and “Mz. Hyde” in this unnecessarily partially stripped back, partially minimally electronic remix/re-recorded EP of their gutsy modern hard rock catalogue, along with a passable cover of Whitney Houston’s classic “I Will Always Love You”. The unplugged mix of these songs spotlights Lzzy Hale’s booming voice even more than usual, but, again, unnecessarily removes her from her most fitting and supportive context. The neutering of the songs’ instrumental rock swagger to back Hale’s attitude-rich vocal delivery has mostly unfavorable results, the still-vibrant swoon of “I Miss the Misery” coming out the most unscathed, but the most butcherd of the bunch has to be the band’s most storied hit, “I Get Off”, which is about as lifeless as re-dos get. Honestly, the only point I can imagine the band attributed to this project would be the center Hale’s already very centralized voice, which is, not to be a broken record here, just unnecessary. I doubt it was her actual motive, but it’s like she didn’t want anyone else around her sounding good too, so she could stand out better. But more likely it was just another poorly conceived misfire of an acoustic EP of many, not the first or last of its kind. Perhaps my sharp distaste for this one is the impressive display Breaking Benjamin showed on their acoustic re-do album earlier this year.

3/10

Batushka - Raskol

Despite being lambasted as frauds by most fans of the original incarnation of the band after the legally-backed and Metal Blade-released Hospodi was embarrassed by the rushed, but clearly more artistically sound, Панихида (Panihida) from Krystov Drabikowski’s unofficial version of the Batushka project, and more or less exposed as such through the side-by-side release of the two albums, Bartłomiej Krysiuk’s version of Batushka still managed to strike a deal with Witching Hour Productions to release more material this year. I reviewed both Batushka projects last year and despite Drabikowski’s album feeling a bit rushed due to the circumstances of its release, it still blew Hospodi out of the water. Whereas Krystov’s album captured the aesthetic and compositional essence of the seminal Batuska debut, Bart’s album sounded like a generic blackgaze imitation of the real thing, which put the debate to rest for me and most of the Batushka fan base as to who was the deserving artist of the Batushka name. Nevertheless, Bart is giving it another go with the Batushka project in an attempt to earn back the trust he squandered amid the feud that boiled over last year. Biting off a smaller piece of material this time with the modest half-hour slab of Raskol, Bart actually does refine his craft to a slightly more respectable level after shamelessly pimping the band’s name out last year. Fans embroiled in the feud on Krystov’s side seem to forget that even if he wasn’t the driving force of the band, Bart was a part of Batushka from the start and for a long time, so it’s not really that outlandish or surprising that he would actually get better at doing the Batushka thing. While it does still lean on standard shoegaze elements to bide time when Bart’s imagination (or whoever he might have brought on to assist him this time around) runs dry, Raskol is a vast improvement on the cheap, inauthentic-sounding Hospodi, feeling like a much more believable part of the Batushka canon. I still understand fans’ skepticism of the validity of Bart’s incarnation of the Batushka project and I myself still don’t feel totally comfortable lending my full support to a man who hasn’t done much to contest the allegations of unethical actions against him. If this is to be the legal version of Batushka, so be it, at least it’s a little more believable now.

6/10

Primitive Man - Immersion

Denver’s Primitive Man have been the poster child for gargantuan, muscular death-sludge-doom for their entire career, whether it be on their various splits and collaborations or on their full-length projects. The band have played around with harsh noise as a supplement to their absolutely merciless core metallic sound, especially on the lengthy demo, P//M, but the hulk-powered trio have largely kept their main projects free of bells and whistles, which has certainly not led them astray. The band’s 2013 debut album, Scorn, was a sweat-inducing warm-up of direct, no-nonsense, hate-filled sludge metal, and the band quite literally doubled down on it on 2017’s 77-minute Caustic, whose undeniably captivating and fearsome ferocity and tapped so simply yet so tangibly into the core ethos of metal music in this day and age made it one of my favorite albums of that year. This year, the band trimmed it back to six songs clocking in at just 36 minutes, and despite its relative shortness, Immersion spends its time savoring the band’s doom at its usual slow-burning pace. Aside from the noisy two-minute interlude, “∞”, Immersion is another unyielding slab of the vibrantly hateful doom metal that made Caustic such a monolithic album. Despite its being built similarly to it predecessor, Immersion’s half-length feels like a half measure, checking all the boxes, but not really giving the band enough time to vary up their very thick but very homogeneous style except for the harsh noise interlude and the anticipatory buildup of “Entity”. The band are definitely powerful enough to doom-slam their way to finishing the mission though, and Immersion is by no means a failure to showcase that raw power.

7/10

Atramentus - Stygian

Donning your funeral doom metal debut album with a Mariusz Lewandowski art piece after 2017 is a pretty gutsy move in at least that it immediately draws comparisons to Bell Witch’s masterful Mirror Reaper, yet that is the first move Atramentus have opted to take (plus it’s not like a hundred other bands haven’t commissioned the Polish surrealist since then), but they were a bet that 20 Buck Spin has had no problem pitching in to for the Québec-based band’s long-awaited emergence onto the scene. The band’s sudden arrival with a sole release deceptively suggests they are a super new act, but the project has been on the shelves of vocalist/guitarist Philippe Tougas since 2012, who composed the album and kept it in the vault until 2018 (perhaps inspired as many of us were by Mirror Reaper) to finally record it. Stygian is a less melancholic doom metal album than a first impression of the cover might suggest given how many bands have adopted much of Mirror Reaper’s aesthetics. Instead, the debut album’s three tracks offer a refreshingly frightful mix of thundering, mega-chambered drums, Halloween-ish organ hums, dark ambient echoes, and deep rumbling growls and augmented throat chants that are similarly hellish, but also divinely ceremonial hums and emotive soloing during the last of the three movements that serve to maintain the vastness the album invokes. Indeed, the third song (which is half of the album’s length) rolls back some of the menace in favor of some more familiar mournfulness. And of course, this is all delivered at an absolutely tortoise-ish pace as is the key feature of the genre (save for the final burst of blast beats three minutes before the album ends), and of course it can very easily be reductively summed up as a condensed version of Four Phantoms or Mirror Reaper but I really do think Stygian will stand out from the largely homogeneous doom metal crop for what it does do differently with its more ominous elements and hopefully inspire Atramentus to stay active.

8/10

Innumerable Forms - Despotic Rule

The Boston five-piece are back with a two-track demo after a smashing debut in 2018 that captured the vile sludgy doom of Primitive Man and the adrenaline of brutal death metal. The first song on this year’s short offering, “Philosophical Collapse”, explodes out of the gate with deathly quick pace and fury until like a fatigued distance runner after a minute-long burst of speed, it succumbs to doomed sluggishness for the bulk of its runtime. The second and titular track is based on a slower Iommi-esque doom riff that slowly takes the modernized sounds of Sabbath into thrashy territory over the course of its nearly five-minute runtime. Both songs capture the aggressive doom at the heart of Innumerable Forms’ sound that made me love Punishment in Flesh so much, and I hope these songs are at least a sign of what is to come from the band.

Innumerable/10

Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I feel like for power metal especially, putting out a boring record can be worse than an incompitent or poorly executed album, and Unleash the Archers definitely provide strong support that with Abyss, whose moments of mild euphoria (which is an extremely generous description) are much too few and far between the slog of totally formulaic and under-delivered melodic autofill. Vocalist Brittany Hayes showcases her capacity for power metal drama on the epic “The Wind That Shapes the Land”, which only makes her utterly bland, zero-effort delivery across the rest of album that much more offensive. Yeah, I’ll keep it short and keep myself from going too in on this album, because, yeah it’s just boring, which is a massive and avoidable mistake to fulfill an easy baseline requirement for power metal, which, to me, is grounds for failure.

3/10

Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities

Good ol’ Incantation are back with another 45 minutes of doomy death metal, the likes of Ossuarium, for example, have harped on, which, to give a ratio for clarity, is like 80/20 death/doom. Definitely more death metal gusto than doom metal void-gazing to avoid that pitfall of lethargy, the trade-off for this clearly minimally ambitious album being the numerous pitfalls of death metal. Sect of Vile Divinities definitely gets the job done and it’s sometimes pretty savory along the way, but it’s definitely not an above-average slab of meat from this particular slaughterhouse.

5/10

Kolossus - The Line of the Border

Kolossus is the one-man atmospheric black metal project of Genoa-based creator “Helliminator”, who released this debut LP back in March to relative silence. And with how saturated bedroom ambient black metal is, I get how easy it is for things to get lost in the weeds, but for anyone who stumbles upon this one, it’s definitely a good few leagues above your typical atmospheric black metal release, and Satanath Records did well to catch wind of Kolossus after the independent split release with Manon in 2018. The Line of the Border is a confidently dynamic record whose fluidity in its shifts from acoustic melancholy to post-metal sludge and somber, yet seething, black metal agony showcases Helliminator’s and his collaborators’ compositional ability. It’s a hard album to sum up, and that’s a good thing for an album in a field so easy to reductively describe.

7/10

Humavoid - Lidless

Lidless is the patiently-awaited sophomore album from Finnish four-piece Humavoid, who’s 2014 independent debut album caught the attention of up-and-coming German label Noble Demon through its bold, progressive approach to experimental death metal that, when even just competently executed, gives off such a naturally heady vibe. But Humavoid are not about taking the path of least resistance and not about just creating the appearance of innovation with metal music, and their second record’s thrilling firestorm of Meshuggah-influenced djenty jaggedness that puts Veil of Maya and Jinjer to shame and jazzy eccentricity that fires a warning shot past Imperial Triumphant in the larger-than-life swirl of sounds that would make Devin Townsend cream his britches make for quite the decisive statement. Lidless may be comprised of very familiar ingredients, but the compositonal ingenuity the band wield and the constant headlong drive into the unknown make the combination of sounds on this album. The frightful, falling-stalactite-feeling piano-playing and synth work especially keep the mood of the album ever-shifting and the rest of the band excitedly on their toes, along with anyone hearing their overachieving madness. This is definitely one of the year’s best, and I am so eager to see what lies ahead for Humavoid.

9/10

Expander - Neuropunk Boostergang

Of the bands partaking in this past decade’s thrash metal revival Austin, Texas’ Expander are one of the less hokey, more serious-sounding bands to emerge recently, but of the handful of (2) EPs the band have released and the debut they put out in 2017, nothing the band has done has really sounded any alarms in my ears that they might be one of the bigger movers of the genre in the coming, now-current decade. Reliable underground curators Profound Lore and little-guy-supporter producer Kurt Ballou, though, disagree with my doubt in the band’s potential and have backed their sophomore release here, Neuropunk Boostergang. Harnessing some industrial elements and aggressive shouting that hearkens to American Head Charge and labelmates Lord Mantis and angular riffing reminiscent of both nasty sludge metal and crossover thrash with a more futuristic technicality, Neuropunk Boostergang is definitely a significant step up from Endless Computer, and an album that finds the band zeroed in on an attractive sonic identity. Not many thrash albums beckon the descriptor of atmospheric, and if so it’s certainly more of a generous way of saying it’s boring and blends into the background. Yet Neuropunk Boostergang manages to touch on meditative chords with its immersive and fascinating take on thrash metal, forward-thinking and avant-garde with an early version of the genre that most bands think simplistically to nostalgia-trip over. I wouldn’t have backed Expander to put out anything of major value based on their entire back catalog, and I wouldn’t have guessed that they would actually carve out a little niche for themselves to really blossom in. But the gnarly Texans (and Profound Lore) have proven me wrong in my favorite way with my favorite thrash release of the year.

8/10

Seether - Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Seether have not been doing so well, at least creatively, for the past several years, their last album before this one, Poison the Parish, being a completely unmemorable late-career display of the creative dryness within the band and the expiry of the post-grunge they capitalized in the early 2000’s. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum is not a full return to form, but it is a step in the right direction that the band desperately needed, which just comes from more meticulous songwriting this time around. The opening track “Dead and Done” is an energetic and vibrant start to the album and “Beg” revisits that “Fuck It” type of energy that the band need to embrace more frequently, while the silky “Wasteland” adds a scoop of Deftones’ shoegazy guitar work and captures the emotive potency that makes post-grunge so appealing when it’s at its best. The swinging “Bruised and Bloodied” offers a taste of the wackier side of Seether, while the more traditionally grungy “Pride Before the Fall” shows just how much the band appreciate Alice in Chains, and they actually help diversify the largely dragging energy of the album. Indeed, the bulk of the album is still unfortunately rut-entrenched filler that could have been better trimmed. It’s passable filler, but it just means that this album is still one that I’ll only be partially returning to to visit its best tracks.

6/10

Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

I have never been too big on electro industrialist project Powerman 5000, which wouldn’t even make a B-team picked by frontman Spider One’s own big brother Rob Zombie. My introduction to them was through their 2009 album, Somewhere in the Other Side of Nowhere, an astonishingly character-less and generic caricature of the industrial metal Zombie so exuberantly champions. The band have their better projects like Tonight the Stars Revolt!, but nothing they’ve put out so far has really ever convinced me that I should be paying them more attention. This year’s The Noble Rot is a pretty non-offensive outing, but also typically devoid of imagination. Not to stoke sibling rivalry that’s not there or anything, but it’s like if Rob Zombie were trying really hard not to upset suburban parents from the 90’s. It’s a lot less butt-rocking than the band have shown they can be at their worst, and it’s overall passably listenable. The metropolitan swagger of “Black Lipstick” is a notable highlight where Spider One’s sultry delivery actually works in the track’s favor. But unfortunately there really aren’t any other significant positives to speak of, and listenable is about as kind of a thing as I can say about this album.

4/10

Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

San Jose’s Gulch definitely get points for their all-out work ethic and for leaving everything on the stage or studio, but the band’s sophomore effort this year simply echoes the same need for continued growth that their debut did. The group’s exaggerated but still-maturing take on hardcore punk is thrilling in the short moment it occupies, but entirely forgettable.

5/10

Venomous Concept - Politics Versus the Erection

Like Gulch, Venomous Concept definitely get points for the effort they pour into their very similar brand of aggressive, off-the-wall hardcore punk, but theirs turns out to be another similar case of too little of that effort directed toward really arranging their outlash in an efficient way. It works for the stages and getting kids kicking in the pits that aren’t around anymore for the time being, but only at that baseline level that all good punk music in this vein does. Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough creativity in this project, or traditional punk ethos done exceptionally well for me to be all too enthused about it.

5/10

John Petrucci - Terminal Velocity

Show-off.

7/10

Pain of Salvation - Panther

A lack of ambition has never been a weakness for Swedish prog zealots Pain of Salvation, who love biting off sometimes a bit more than they can chew with their consistently lengthy and overly galaxy-brained concept albums. I definitely respect the massive inspiration the band always seem to tap into and I find them quite capable of fulfilling their creative mission more often than being too heady for their own good. The band do insist on integrating a perplexing degree of early 2000’s nu metal into their sound, and including some rapped verses that seem like a quota they just have to check for some reason. And Panther is, for the most part, another solid display of talents from Pain of Salvation, whose impressive compositional prog chops do more than enough to obscure the odder choices that pop up here and there.

8/10

Ulver - Flowers of Evil

I don’t know why but for some reason I thought Ulver’s venture into synthwave was a one-day stop before they moved on to whatever was next for them. I wasn’t expecting the genre-polyamorous visionaries to make another album in the same synth-y new wave vein as 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, yet Flowers of Evil is an unexpected and welcome sequel to an album that opened up a whole new avenue of sultry smoothness for the band, and it’s just as cool as it’s predecessor. Are Ulver the new Depesche Mode? I don’t know, if they are, I’m okay with that.

8/10

Necrot - Mortal

Necrot are a recently established trio from Oakland, California who have certainly generated a lot of buzz around their sophomore LP release here since their announcing it a few months ago. I mean I saw memes about the cover relating to coming home and taking off your pants or bra after a long day back in July. The band’s straightforwardly deathly 2017 debut, Blood Offerings, certainly didn’t seem to drum up too much hype around the time of its release, but the band are certainly releasing Mortal this time around to quite a captive audience, and after all the anticipation for their second album, Necrot show the world that can definitely play some death metal. Honestly, I went into this with a pretty open mind and eager to see what Mortal would be al about for the new group with the spotlight on them, but apart from a more old-school approach to riff-writing that does indeed come as a breath of fresh air in today’s death metal landscape, I don’t really see what else about it is such a big deal. I’m not saying there aren’t some tasty grooves or even a good few attention-grabbing solos on here, but I really don’t get what the death metal world is getting all hot and bothered about for this album beyond its checking off all the usual boxes and maybe doing a little smoke and mirrors to present themselves like a modern incarnation of Death or Morbid Angel. I mean I like it as much as, if not a little bit more than, any other average death metal project and I really do like what they band are doing with vintage riffs in this context, but I just don’t see what it’s doing with the very typical elements of the genre that it employs so much better than their average contemporaries that’s ramped up such astronomical hype.

7/10

Pig Destroyer - The Octagonal Stairway

Probably the EP I have been the most pumped for, it’s nice to hear some new Pig Destroyer not so long after their 2018 release, Head Cage, which took some getting used to for me, but I can say I regard it pretty highly as a step toward a more full-bodied sound for the band. I mean they’ve never been short on the shrapnel-spraying volatility needed to wholly carry a project, their groundbreaking creativity with the building blocks of grindcore setting them at the top of their field to look down at the grindcore masses far far below, and J. R. Hayes’ impressive poetic lyricism being a hefty bonus, and Head Cage wasn’t really that big of a stylistic departure for them apart from adopting the sound pallet of their contemporaries. The Octagonal Stairway is definitely more of an interim project for the time being, the first three tracks continuing the band’s mass-building with their sound; they’re as hard-hitting and representative of Pig Destroyer as any song off Head Cage, the title track in particular. I can grant to the pickiest Pig Destroyer Fan that there still isn’t as much slasher-film gore being invoked through samples of such, overtly grotesque lyricism, or scraping guitar tones that mimic the sharping of rusty bone saws. The last 14 minutes of the 25-minute EP are consumed by sample-driven ambient industrial music that the group have definitely had more creative and immersive experiments with. The 11-minute closer, “Sound Walker”, has its flashes of cool industrial manipulation, but given how high Pig Destroyer have set the bar for their ventures into this kind of territory with the cinematic horror of Natasha and even Mass & Volume, this massive track, while a respectable slab of industrial noise ambiance that flows as well as the aforementioned projects, lacks that narrative immersion and grandeur the band have shown to harness so well to bolster their music. For what handful of their talent the band offer here, it’s just enough to remind us of their immense prowess and that they’re still there, watching, waiting.

7/10

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