“Listening to Shifting.negative makes me want to apologize. To all members of Aborym, and particularly mainman Fabrizio “Fabban” Giannese – I’m sorry for whatever conditions existed in your lives that caused you to think creating this album was a good idea. I also want to apologize to curious listeners, who may have seen Aborym’s past works compared to Anaal Nathrakh and Blut Aus Nord and assumed Shifting was another misanthropic, industrial black metal romp.” The apology tour has begun.
“If there was a saying that Papa Grymm would instill on us kids (besides to clean our rooms), it would be to make ourselves as uncomfortable as humanly possible. I don’t mean wearing sweater vests in the summer, folks, but rather stepping outside those little boxes we build for ourselves. Discomfort begets growth, after all. And what can be more uncomfortable than atonal, ambient black metal?” More edgy than a wedgie.
“Let’s go ahead and acknowledge this up front: of all the big-name old school death metal bands, Morbid Angel has arguably fared the worst. Sure, they had a few stumbles over the years – 1995’s Domination had some serious clunkers, and 2003’s Heretic was supposedly singlehandedly responsible for getting the group dropped from Earache – but the real deathblow came in 2011, with a little record called Illud Divinum Insanus.” Are you still morbid?
“As far as we know, futurist music is no more. One of the last attempts to resuscitate the arthritic soul of the clanging artistic mechanism in the rock and metal community was probably Mike Patton’s Pranzo Oltranzista, but the year was 1997 and I was almost two decades younger. In the meantime, neither the likes of John Zorn or Elliott Sharp have ever contributed to the reiteration of that crime against common sense that was immortalised on Marinetti’s Manifest of Futurism in 1909. Too abstract and complex, their art; too prudent and astute their approach, contemporary artists have been neglecting pure noise for over 50 years.” Confused? That must mean Alex is back to confound and bewilder.
“We all have a little touch of crazy inside us. You know what I mean; trapped laughter that rumbles out with such force it makes your belly hurt. Sadly with all the hullabaloo and day-to-day grind we forget to stop and breath, but more importantly, we forget to laugh. American melo-death merchants, Nekrogoblikon have made it their mission to remind us that tapping into our crazy and embracing the silly is just downright necessary and I support that!” Goblins are the medium, meta is the message.
“To say that I’ve had an ongoing “love/hate” relationship with Amaranthe would be a far too forgiving description of my feelings towards Sweden’s very own ’90s pop-commodity-metal band’s first two albums. I even took a moment last year to openly admit that I had spent far too much time and energy hating Amaranthe, and that frankly I couldn’t cope with listening to another one of their records. I have to admit, this was partially a lie: I actually have been listening to the band’s new record far more than I’d like to admit publicly.” We messed up.
“Cast your minds back to a time when metal music was not cool. Nay, indeed, a time when metal was anathema to all that was considered to be “chic” and “in.” A time when your favorite bands were actually encouraged by the music industry to play slower, cut their hair, and write sensitive lyrics about their childhoods. Yes, this unfortunately really happened. Our semi-irregular feature “90s Metal Weirdness” focuses on albums released between 1992 and 2001 and which we all probably would rather forget. But in the service of publicly shaming the musicians involved, we have pushed forward.”
“It seems I’m not quite over my hankering for cheese. In simple terms, that means you get to sit through a review of Resurrection, the aptly titled rebirth of Italian band Death SS and their brand of ‘horror music’. Death SS have quite a history, going back to their inception in 1977 with the only constant of the band (outside of the Evil Metal EP) being the odd vocal styling’s of Steve Sylvester. The list of former members is pretty astonishing (upwards of 30 member changes) which probably accounts for why Death SS have done a complete about-turn when comparing Resurrection against its predecessors.” First Powerwolf and now this? Madam X is off the reservation and wandering through Cheese Land and she may never be the same. Ever see KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park? This could be KISS Meets the Madam.
Incoming! Incoming! It’s a bad album cover!
Morbid Angel is elite death metal and has been the standard for as long as I can remember. They have defined death metal for listeners of the genre for decades, influenced all of the great bands to come out of the genre after them, and have been away for 8 long years. 2003’s Heretic was not the best record they’d ever produced, this is most certainly true. But there was no reason not to believe after hearing “Nevermore,” the single that was released ahead of time, that the return of David Vincent would usher in the kind of catastrophic reaction that has ensued. I make it my business to never read reviews of any record before I write my own review, hell, I haven’t even read Steel Druhm’s (which is below this one) of this record. But it was hard to miss the fury, anger and disappointment that has been floating around the ether. I had to ask myself “could it really possibly be this bad?” You see, I’m a stalwart defender of some pretty hated records (most notably Iron Maiden’s The X Factor and Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War), and I try to listen to every record with a clean slate. And I attempted to do so with this record, as well.
