“In many ways, this collaboration makes perfect sense. The lo-fi, chaotic-noise aesthetic of Gnaw Their Tongues is a very natural direction for the experimental drone of Crowhurst to wander off to, and vice versa. Given the prolific nature of Gnaw Their Tongues’s Maurice de Jong and Crowhurst mastermind Jay Gambit, it’s also pretty much par for the course that these two noise mongers eventually crossed paths and left some tracks in their wake.” Gnawed and miserable.
“No joke: the day I found out Death Alley’s new record was coming out, I was jamming hard to Captain Beyond and Blue Öyster Cult. It was as if my craving for some old-school rock reached across the ocean to the Netherlands. Not only did Death Alley hear my call, they answered it—with Superbia. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t much for religious interventions or anything but, my god, I almost picked up the Bible after that.” It’s bible good!
“Kill to survive; metal in 2018 is facing a similar conundrum, and has been for years. As the scene gets busier, it bleeds and struggles, much like extreme metal did in the mid-late nineties. Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death showcases the problem ably: extreme bands simply had nowhere left to go. The glut of boring material is exhausting, and it gives the impression of an enervated scene. Pestilence, releasing their eighth studio record Hadeon this year, seems to feel this climate and have wisely decided to sound like a death metal band who loves making death metal.” A plague of death.
“In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that I think Delain, the Dutch symphonic metal band, is trash.” Now we can all move forward.
“While many of my writing colleagues hunker down amid inches of snow and ice, wallowing in gloom, I’m enjoying a haphazard but sporadically scorching Australian summer. The closest I’ve got to such frosty atmospheres recently was on an evening sitting outside where I outrageously had to retrieve a jacket in the middle of fucking summer. As such, my musical appetite generally stays on the lighter side at this time of year, in extreme metal terms that is. However, as it turns out, January, and life circumstances have forced my hand to embrace the darker, doomier realms of metal.” Faal for every season.
“I’m a bit of a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to folk. I occupied the Ensiferum / Finntroll bandwagon for a decade, but the Viking folk of Heidevolk came to me as a recent and pleasant surprise. They are not Bathory, not Korpiklaani, not Týr or Vintersorg, but the Dutchmen blend the aesthetics and strengths of each into one cohesive package.” Go folk yourself.
“A new year, a new opportunity for the masses to spout some ephemeral nonsense about “living for the moment” mere seconds before they relapse into heart disease and bad decisions. While we’re all guilty of this to some degree or another, 2018 does represent a year of change for me. As I advance upon a new academic challenge, amongst other things, it also means I have to fucking move house again. However, the disturbance has motivated me to examine some albums I might not have previously, so when I stumbled upon Bleeding Gods and their second release, Dodekathlon — a symphonic death concept record detailing the twelve labors of Hercules — how could I possibly resist?” Pick things up and put them down.
“I consider myself fairly well-versed on the subject of 70s prog. I’ve got scores of albums by dozens of bands, and what I don’t have I can usually recognize. So when something comes about that I haven’t heard of (like last year’s Sea Goat record), it’s gotta be for a good reason — like the band not recording anything, or sucking. So here we are with Dutch outfit Kayak, probably spelled backward, and their latest album Seventeen, which I have found out has nothing to do with Kip Winger strutting around partially clothed.” No Winger, no hairpiece!
“As this isn’t my memoirs, nor a review of a decades-old Nuclear Blast and Relapse sampler, let’s get to what’s written on the top of this page, and what you came here for: Neocaesar’s 11:11. And what a guy with a dreadful Slayer pun as a pen name who talks about Plato too much has to say about it.” Sophistry and death.
“I’ve been meaning to check out Deinonychus for one simple reason: I fucking love dinosaurs. Fellow dino nerds will know that Deinonychus was a fearsome predator of the early Cretaceous period, closely related to the infamous Velociraptor and with a name that means ‘terrible claw.’ It’s a badass band name, and though this Dutch trio doesn’t sing about slicing open unsuspecting sauropods, their music is no less compelling.” Music to go extinct to.
