“Pop quiz, motherfathers: What has the voice of an apathetic angel, Sabbathian wings o’ doom, and slowly circles the skies with Alunah in its claws and Italian fire in its heart? If you didn’t guess Haunted, either the review title got fucked up or you’re just one of the masses. Haunted aren’t exactly cavehold names in the doom community, but Dayburner sees the quintet looking to change that.” Doom in Venice.
“At AMG Headquarters last week, as a number of us were gathered around the bench press station during our allocated one hour of yard time, discussions turned from who could bench the most, to personal tastes when it comes to genres to review. When I was finally allowed to talk, I said I like my dad metal, sure, but I also enjoy deeply of prog, doom, some stoner — and I like it all to be just a little off-kilter. Well, members of Boss Keloid must have been standing nearby, because Melted on the Inch, their third album, ticks all my non-dad-metal boxes.” Boss dad prison metal.
“Remember Dodecahedron, oooh and how a certain timeless scribe-god lauded their last effort as being worthy of emulation? Yeah, I ‘member, and I also ‘member thinking the lad a tad light in the heart box when he confessed to its ability to bring him to actual physical discomfort. ‘That’s not a thing!’ says I, omitting a slanderous phrase or six from this recollection for the sake of the children. Dialing up the reverb and deliberately hitting ‘wrong’ notes can establish a malevolent aesthetic effectively enough, yet I have never encountered music genuinely able to instill honest-to-God fear in me through sound alone. Well, ‘had’ never.” Fear and the Muppet.
“When W.B Yeats claimed “there are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t yet met,” I’m almost certain he was talking about Finnish death metal. Whenever I’m in need of a riff more monstrous than Shelley and vocals to cripple the craw, I can always rely on those Nordic ne’er-do-wells to deliver the goods. One such band, Black Royal, have been toiling amidst a clutch of EPs, preparing to release their debut, Lightbringer, which comes to me via sheer chance and my own unassailable taste.” Royalty is rotting.
“On their debut American Scrap, Chicago quartet Huntsmen blend Americana with a progressive take on searing sludge metal. But can they do justice to the self-proclaimed Greatest Country in the World?” Born in the U.S.A..
“If your home country only has a whopping 172 bands documented on The Metal Archives, with roughly half of them split up or otherwise disbanded, there’s a decent chance that relatively few people have ever heard your particular take on metal before. Such is the case for Erdve, a fledgling four-piece emerging from the enigmatic Lithuanian underground.” Small scene, big sound.
