“If Luc Lemay wrote a deathgrind album, the early demos would sound something like Okazaki Fragments. Earlier this year, the Calgary-based extreme metal outfit’s debut Abandoned blindsided me like a drive-by at Tim Horton’s by mixing rabid grindcore with the avant-garde tendencies of Gorguts and Pyrrhon in search of an ever more deformed and disgusting style of death metal. They found it.” Colour Kronos impressed.
“For those unfamiliar, Mutoid Man began in 2012 as a two-man project featuring vocalist/guitarist Steven Brodsky (Cave In) and drummer Ben Koller (Converge). Their debut EP Helium Head displayed a love of gigantic riffs, effects pedals, and 1980’s video games (the band’s very name comes from the boss of the NES classic Smash TV).” Big money! Big prizes!
“Grind doesn’t do much for me these days. Sure I still get the itch for some manic, face-peeling extremity but one of the main reasons I’ve lost interest in the scene over the past couple of years is largely due to the difficulty of finding interesting bands capable of balancing the core speed and blasting ferocity of the genre with actual songcraft and hooks to keep me coming back.” Until now, that is.
![Black Yo)))ga – Asanas Ritual, Vol. 1 [Things You Might Have Missed 2015]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Black-Yoga_Asanas-Ritual-Vol-I.jpg)
“Yoga has become quite the fad in recent years. It seems like there’s a new joint popping up every other week. Each pushing a new style, better accommodations, and better results. The only thing that has even remotely piqued my interest is the free beer administered at the local brewery at the completion of their Sunday yoga sessions. But it turns out, there is a yoga course for people just like me. Black Yo)))ga is a vinyasa-styled center in Pennsylvania that focuses their sessions around metal music, rather than the traditional yoga/tree-hugger noise.” Stretch those quads as you expand your mind.
![Caligula’s Horse – Bloom [Things You Might Have Missed 2015]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Press_Cover_01.jpg)
“Caligula’s Horse is one of those bands I managed to get out in front of because of my Angry Metal Father-in-Law. Turns out that a guy who owns every cool record since 1975 is still on the hunt for great music—and the more obscure the better—so he has his ear to the ground in the progressive metal scene in a way I could hardly imagine.” Father-in-Law knows best.
“I love combining metal with long-distance running. I find that reducing myself to a wheezing heap is a surprisingly effective way to evaluate new music: if an album makes me say “fuck this!” and throw my iPod into the nearest drainage ditch, it probably isn’t worth revisiting. With Macabre Omen’s sophomore effort Gods of War – At War, the effect was quite the opposite.” You missed the battle of the year!
