“The San Francisco music scene is nothing if not creative. With oddball acts like Hammers of Misfortune, Vhöl and Slough Feg calling the area home, creativity is in abundant supply. Worm Ouroboros is yet another off-kilter act providing local color to the Bay Area, lesser known but no less interesting. The brain-trust of Lorraine Rath and Jessica Way, the band’s unique blend of dark ambient goth-rock, doom and neo-folk is as interesting as it is offbeat.” Bay Area goth-waves are rising.
“Recently, in the course of a discussion I was having regarding another new release set to land in the not too distant future, I was reflecting upon the enormous number of one-man black metal projects turning up in the AMG promo bin at the moment. Well hey, presto, time for another!” Lonely is the word.
“‘…the universe is a flaw in the purity of non-being.’ It’s this thought by French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry that sprung into my mind while listening and re-listening to the latest record by Dutch ambient black metal duo Urfaust. Their style was always born out of a sense of desolation and isolation, a tribute to emptiness, owing equally to dark ambient and metal.” Of being and ambience.
“There are some albums that scream out for a review… Opeth’s Sorceress was certainly in no danger of being overlooked. We toyed with you a little, made you wait, but it was on the cards you’d get a review – eventually. The Black Scorpio Underground’s Necrochasm will never be one of those “sought-after” albums. In fact, it’s tough to even mention these two bands in the same review, purely because they’re complete opposites.” Scary has a sound.
“Believe it or not the life of a music reviewer is not as glamorous as one would think. Yes, from time to time you’re invited to the likes of Thor’s Rock Opera in some trendy part of New York City, you’re jet-setting off to Chicago with tickets to Alehorn of Power IX, or you’re the first to get your grubby mitts on Swallow the Sun’s new triple album. Outside of those jaw-dropping moments though, reviewing consists of picking some unknown band/album off the promo sheet with your fingers tightly crossed hoping that what’s going to burst out of your monitors isn’t going to suck monkey balls. Aussie ambient/black metallers, Spire, was one of those random, finger-crossing, hope-for-the-best-expect-the-worst moments.” Sometimes you win and sometimes….
“Dante Alighieri once said “The path to paradise begins in Hell.” Andy Curtis-Brignell and Laurence Taylor, the backbone of Caïna, hold these powerful words true and no album makes this more apparent than their new outing – Christ Clad in White Phosphorus.” If you’re going through Hell, keep going.
“Solo projects are a mixed bag for me. On one hand, you’ll occasionally get a musician’s pure, unencumbered vision, free of competing egos, stylistic conflict, or bullshit social media drama that inevitably leads to a nasty breakup and months of blog posts detailing the extended legal battle over rights to the band name. More often, however, you get good ideas and musicianship hampered by a lack of self-awareness or weakened by the absence of an additional creative force. To paraphrase Stephen King, writers are often the worst judge of their own work.” And that’s where we come in.
“We here at Angry Metal Guy Industries try our damnedest to approach each album with an open mind and our full, undivided attention. We also give many, many listens to each album, grasping at as many straws as we can to formulate a 600-word review, and trying to relay our experience with said album in a way that’s both entertaining and informative. Sometimes, though, after so many listens, an album can be so thick with atmospherics and density that approaching it can feel hopelessly impossible.” But we at AMG never say”impossible.” Instead we say “I’m possible!”
“Growing up in New England, very rarely did I miss a concert. Any and all big-name metal bands that came around, I would be there, no questions asked. However, having lived in Jacksonville, Florida for the last five years, there’s been a major dearth of quality metal concerts in my newly-adopted hometown. So when a co-worker of mine told me that the legendary Sunn O))) were playing here in Jacksonville as part of a tour to support last year’s Kannon, I thought he was absolutely full of shit.” Turns out that shit was about to get real.
“Sometimes a band comes out of nowhere and takes a baseball bat to the established way of doing things. Whether that means adding banjos to black metal or incorporating 70s prog into doom/death, it can result in absolute triumph or a total grease fire. It’s those unexpected triumphs in particular that make music such a visceral and exciting medium and when a band pulls off something new and unusual, they deserve respect and admiration. Unknown Italian doomsters Messa want to be the next trend wrecker and to that end they’ve fused dark ambient weirdness and minimalist drone onto old school, traditional doom on their eye-opening debut, Belfry.” No one expected this Italian Inquisition!
