“I can’t speak for everyone, but this year hasn’t exactly crushed it for me. I don’t know what it is. A case of the heard-it-all-befores? The inescapable drain of attempting to keep up with everything but feeling like you’re keeping up with nothing? Whatever it is, I circled Thy Catafalque’s Geometria early, hoping it would wrench me from my malaise. With Tamás Kátai, you’re never getting the same thing twice.” Malaise forever.
“Eryn Non Dae.’s follow-up to 2012’s Meliora is something I’d long dreamt of, and thanks to France and the promo bin I – with humble objectivity and tact – get to demonstrate to you bitches once again why Muppet taste is best taste. Spoiler alert: this album is fucking glorious.” Franks and fiends.
“Music as ‘just entertainment’ is a solipsistic and fairly recent notion. Throughout the history of humankind, various forms of music have instead been tightly woven into the communities that birthed them, shaping and steering social bonds. Even if this fact has been conveniently hidden in the deepest crevices of our collective memories, helped by capitalism’s commodification of art, music as a concept outside the ludic and academically autotelic still exists in the cultures of indigenous people like the Tuvans. Their shamans perform songs primarily to heal and such music becomes a bridge between the spiritual and the physical. Richmond duo Among The Rocks And Roots are one of those rare contemporary groups which successfully tap into that subliminal, metaphysical source and simultaneously reach somewhere beyond their own ids.” Id Rock.
“Insect Ark’s debut, Portal/Well saw a warm, if not enthusiastic, welcome at AMG by our staff’s very own card-carrying Illuminati member. Such is Roquentin‘s power that the one-woman, drone-doom project didn’t blow up despite its extreme catchiness and party-ready bangers. Never one to allow the powers that be (other than myself) to dictate a band’s future, it was with great curiosity that I reached into the murky waters of the promo pond to retrieve Marrow Hymns, a sophomore effort which sees founding bassist/multi-instrumentalist Dana Schechter joined by drummer and synth-wrangler Ashley Spungin. At forty-four minutes, it’s hardly a marathon, yet the staid oddness of the whole thing proves to lengthen the listening experience.” Swarm drone.
“Time to turn over another rock for yet another black metal garage project! Yet another slice on the Australian Metal Genre Roulette Wheel, Arkheth is a self-described experimental black metal project coming off an eight-year hiatus. “Experimental” as a subgenre label can be vague even at the best of times (that is, when it’s not an outright lie by marketing), but it’s still a head-turner for fans of strange music.” Strange brew.
“Contrary to popular belief, researchers have recently concluded that all metal does not, in fact, sound the same. Turns out, there are completely different styles of metal altogether. Like, tons of them. There’s a speed one, and a black one, and a doooom one and a melodeath… *ahem* Anyway, the point of my having shattered your world with such unfathomable concepts was to pave the way for blasphemous trvth bomb number two: it’s not always about the riffs, yo.” Metal awareness.
“It’s a big deal when a band lists major influences, like Ævangelist, Dodecahedron, and Blut Aus Nord, in their biography. Sometimes it’s an innocent list, meant to feed the reader with keywords. Other times, it’s misleading. In Ophe’s case, the list ain’t that far off, as the band takes their forefather’s black/avant-garde style and French’s the fuck out of it. It’s Dodecahedron’s low-end, mixed with the dark, distant blackness of Ævangelist and layers of Område and Spektr. When you look deeper into Ophe, this isn’t a surprise. Considering that this one-man band consists of Område’s own Bargnatt XIX. But this ain’t no Område.” One, man, one basement.
“Since their inception, Portal’s outre take on death metal has been something of a curiosity; a malformed fetus suspended in sepia alcohol behind so many dusty artifacts. Few other artists have encroached on their sound, and even fewer can pretend to challenge their simultaneously dour and frenzied Victorian aesthetic. Theirs is horror music, to be sure, but the horror stems from a sort of noir psychedelia, an all-encompassing fractal unrest where the creak of the floorboards and the crack of colliding planets are indistinguishable in scope.” The cake is a lie.
“Let me tell you something which you might already know but have most likely never heard stated directly: Master-baiting is incredibly easy. To set a Muppet trap, one only needs a handful of specific pearls to effectively get me off of one musical tangent and thrusted furiously into another. Slap the black metal tag on something, slather it in cvlt artwork and croon it to me in a foreign tongue and I’m about as sonically revved up as they come.” Muppets are cheap dates.
![Vulture Industries – Stranger Times [Things You Might Have Missed 2017]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/SOM427-Vulture-Industries-1500X1500px-300dpi-RGB-768x768.jpg)
“Borrowing from the likes of Arcturus, Vulture Industries likes the melodic and the avant-garde. The result is that Stranger Times, like the rest of the band’s material, is chill, moody, and accessible. It’s simple grooves and smooth vocals bring a smile to the face of the most-hopeless insomniacs and a smirk to the loneliest of night dwellers. It’s for late night drives home and for midnight walks through frozen city parks. In essence, it’s music for the pre-dawn street sweepers. It’s peace in peace-less times and it’s an escape when you need it the most.” Escape to Vulture Mountain.
