“My introduction proper to Anvil came at the pubescent age of 14 when I chose Pound for Pound as one of my 12 introductory cassettes from the Columbia House Record Club. I’d heard a song here, a song there, but Pound for Pound was the first platter I heard from nuts to noggin. My initial feeling? Underwhelmed.” Will the new platter whelm Mr. Kikuras?
![Morality Crisis – MASH [Things You Might Have Missed 2015]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Morality-Crisis-MASH-768x768.jpg)
I really hope that you, dear readers, are as alarmed as me that we are deep into February 2016. What’s that? It’s March? Bloody hell. Well that explains why it’s still light during the drive home from work already. My perennial quest Sophia sluggishness means I’m nowhere near keeping up with the 2016 release schedule […]
“One lesson I’ve learned in my tenure at AMG is that burgers can be successfully compared to just about anything. Just like burgers are a great plan for a meal in a pinch, they also work in that annoying pinch when a lede just refuses to come to mind. I think we can largely agree that listening to Swe-death records is like the endless quest for the perfect burger.” In dining, as in death, it’s the seasoning that counts.
“There are one-man bands and there are one-man bands. Via Vengeance is the latter. Shane Ocell is not only the sole-instrumentalist of this Arizona-based doom band, but also performs guitar, drums, and vocals simultaneously. Yep, you heard me. The Via Vengeance live experience consists of Ocell sitting behind a kit, chugging away on a guitar, and belting out vicious incantations through his monitors. For this reason, Ocell’s songwriting is simplistic, proving that doom can be done well without over-the-top epicness.” One man, big doom.
“For whatever reason, bands tend to get less and less extreme as they age. Sometimes it’s the extremity of earlier albums being too much to match. Some musicians just get tired of metal, like Brent Hinds or Mikael Åkerfeldt. Bands can change style completely, like Opeth and Cynic, or they can just write more choruses, as Kurt Ballou says of Converge. Yet for all the diversity of unmetalification, there are some very consistent pathways that musicians and bands tend to follow. Today’s example, most notable in Cynic and Opeth, is something I like to call Kronos’ Law of Increasing Hippietude[1. It is suspected that this contributes directly to Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings.].” Kronos is working on his thesis and his advisor seems to have disappeared.
“Paragon has been nothing but consistent over their 22 year career, releasing album after album of raging Germanic power metal in the same vein as Grave Digger and Iron Savior. Though they’ve had plenty of fun moments, 2012’s Forces of Destruction took a big leap forward in terms of song writing, heaviness and staying power. Coming off their best album to date obviously puts more pressure on the band and perhaps that’s the reason for the 4 year wait for Hell Beyond Hell.” Roll out the Cheese wheel!
“You’ve witnessed the scene. It’s a part of the furniture in many contemporary neo-neo-noir, ominously foreboding, condemningly pseudofuturist movies. Our heroic but morally ambiguous protagonist visits some sort of underground nightclub. People, presumably the filth of the city, dance spastically (yet provocatively) under stroboscopes, adorned by black leather and fetishized clothing. A mixture of disgust and temptation lingers while a red haze surrounds the entangled mess of bodies. It’s Hollywood’s typical portrayal of Hell on Earth, a mise-en-scène imbued with cheap symbolism. Imagine now a worthy metal accompaniment to such a spectacle in real life, deprived of all the fabricated fanciness, something that would eclipse phony visual cues and provide a truly infernal setting.” Or just recall the club scene in Blade II.
“I’m not going to lie. I chose to review this promo on the basis that Draugnim sounds like Draugr – an entity which should be familiar to fellow Elder Scrolls nerds. On this basis, I predicted vaguely folkloric Scandinavian black metal. Indeed, Vulturine boasts Finnish Pagan metal similar to a popular band whose new album is also soon to drop.” Super nerds unite!
“A lot can happen to people over time. Take me, for instance; my 20-year high school reunion is coming this year, and I can pretty much guarantee that very few people who don’t follow me on a daily basis are going to have a hard time believing that who I am and who I was are the same people. With plenty of tattoos and hair on my face (and little on my head), I know more than a few heads will turn. Wicher, the debut album from Polish pagan metal barbarians Sacrilegium, also turns twenty this year. Until now, it was the band’s only full-length output, given that the band disbanded in 2000.” So what name tag will these cats get at their reunion?
“The wait is finally over, slam nerds. If, like me, you have been long awaiting the next chapter in the story of Krighsu, the Terrax, and stellar depopulation in the year 8K, then fear not; the new Wormed album, Krighsu, is cresting over the pseudo-horizon, so it’s time to leave that geodesic dome and begin vortex mitosis.” The wait is over, or has it just begun?
