“When non-Poles think about Polish metal, we usually think of the black variety. Well, that and a metal front-man with an absolutely enormous forehead. More of a fivehead, really. What we don’t think of, when we think of Polish metal, is atmospheric post-metal. Since 2014, Warsaw’s Sunnata has been trying to change that. Will their fourth full-length win them a share of the evil coffee market?” Post sells, but who’s buying?
“For being a metal review site, an awful lot of barely-metal promos sneak past our guard gorilla and land in the laps of unsuspecting writers. Staff more senior and wily than myself have learned to decipher their signs and avoid them like that guy at the party who wants to tell you about his Battlestar Galactica fan fic. However, because these promos are most often generously tagged as “doom,” yours truly unwittingly walks right into them. Only after I’ve committed do they tear off their fake mustache, throw down their prop cane and gleefully shout, “Ha ha! It is I, unrelated genre!” Thankfully, I’m an open minded metal head, and these things have worked out splendidly in the past. New England’s Crawl Below caught my attention with the “doom” tag, but also because their album 9 Mile Square is a concept piece about the historic and contemporary region of Norwich, Connecticut. This decidedly non-metal theme should have tipped me off, but here we are.” Broken gates and square mileage.
“It may not be quite accurate to say funeral doom is about minimalism, but it’s not far from the truth either. Much of that is a result of the pace. Even if a funeral doom song has as much going on as a regular metal song when condensed to a regular runtime, stretched over 15 or 20 minutes, it sounds like less. Notes are sustained longer, beats per minute are reduced, and at any given moment, less really is going on. Until now, I would have told you the idea of maximalist funeral doom was an oxymoron, antithetical. It seems no one told that to Tunisia’s Omination.” Maximum doom.
“Atmospheric black metal. We all like to pretend we’ve had our fill. I fully expect to scroll down on this review to comments bemoaning lupine throne room infestations and the Snowy Forest Industrial Complex. I get it. Few things have worn out their welcome in the new millennium more than atmoblack and Bernie Sanders memes. But the fact remains that the sharp harshness of black metal and the soothing beauty of ambient passages go together like chocolate and peanut butter, and there are still plenty of artists treading the well worn wooded paths of this sound. Siberian Federal District denizens Grima play it better than most.” Morbid gardeners.
“Like many of you, I’ve spent significant time over the years wandering musical paths far from our beloved metallic bae. In some cases, this has made me something of an amateur expert, as in the rangy field of Americana. In others, I’ve invested enough time as not to be a tourist, but not enough to be considered a deep diver. This is the case with Afrobeat. I’ve passed many hours with the father of the genre, Fela Kuti—easy enough given his song lengths—and with compilations like the incredible Nigeria 70 box set. I’ve also enjoyed the work of revivalists such as Brooklyn, New York’s Antibalas, so when I stumbled across Here Lies Man in the promo pit, a side project of Antibalas members infusing Afrobeat with Sabbathian riffs, I snapped it up greedily.” Don’t be grabby.
![Old Nick – The Night of the Ambush and the Pillage by the Queen Ann Styl’d Furniture, Animated by One of the Dozen or So Spells That Thee Eastern Vampyre Has Studied [Things You Might Have Missed 2020]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/OldNick-NightoftheAmbush01-768x768.jpeg)
“I’m not sure why I spent so much of 2020 deep diving into the raw black metal recesses of Bandcamp. Might be because ice cold nihilism was especially in fashion this season, or maybe all the social isolating helped me connect more with the weirdo basement dweller one man band crowd. Whatever the reason, I wound up having a great time listening to some truly terrible music. A lot of it is borderline unlistenable, and a lot of that’s on purpose, because badly recording and producing one’s bad playing is pretty kvlt. Of course, this doesn’t preclude truly talented musicians drawn to the genre’s gritty mystique from making some rock solid metal albums.”Hey, Doctor Old Nick!
Holdeneye and Cherd of Doom made these long-winded lists and now they’re your problem. No trade backsies!
![Ivan – Silver Screens [Things You Might Have Missed 2020]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ivan-SilverScreens01-768x768.jpg)
“For those few keeping track, 2020 has been an exceptionally solid year for funeral doom. Convocation, Atramentus, Drown, Mourners and Lone Wanderer all put out top shelf bottles of distilled despondency, while golden boys Bell Witch returned to collaborate, mostly successfully, with Aerial Ruin. While each of these albums occupied a slightly different niche of the style, none wandered so far afield with such thrilling results as Australian duo Ivan on their fifth release Silver Screens.” Strange screenings.
“It was all fun and games at first. “Give the n00b this symphonic power Christmas album. That’ll weed him out.” Everyone had a good laugh, and I survived the ordeal, but then there was precedent. So the following year, a second flaming bag of reindeer shit marked “Christmas Cookies” was ding-dong-ditched at my be-wreathed door. I played along while Steel and AMG giggled behind the bushes. But when a seasonal lump of coal by power metal power players shows up in the promo bin, suddenly it’s not so funny. Suddenly there are whisperings in the break room. “Don’t give it to Cherd. He doesn’t even like power metal.” “I heard he doesn’t even celebrate Christmas. Didn’t someone say he’s Jewish?” Well guess what bitches, I’m subjecting myself to this one out of spite.” Season’s beating!
“We all have styles of metal so squarely in our wheelhouse it’s hard to tell where the wheel ends and the house begins. Weird phrasing? OK, I’ll try again: we all have styles that fit so well, they’re like slipping into a second skin made from stitched-together skins of bands that make the styles we—nope. How about we’re all like a bed-bound shut-in with sores down one side because we never shift position, and each of us has a style of metal that’s the corresponding depression in the mattress and rotting bed linens that perfectly mirrors our moribund—know what? Let’s forget similes. We all have styles that are our jam. Now, rising from Rome, Italy, comes Invernoir and their Cherd-bait debut The Void and the Unbearable Loss with the explicit “…desire to resurrect the sound of doom music from the 90s.”” Void rage.
