“Like a new year’s resolution gone completely to hell, you’ll notice that the Record o’ the Month for February is getting posted nearly 3/4 of the way through the month by a man covered in Oreo ice cream and smelling strongly of gin. For that I say: c’mon, it’s just like old times! Why all the whining? You know I love you guys. I can change, I swear! No really, it won’t be like this next time, I promise!” As a humble offering, Angry Metal Guy offers up Record(s) o’ the Month.
“Remember those shreddy noodlefest albums Shrapnel Records put out in the 80s and 90s? They’d basically take a guitar wiz kid like Marty Friedman and have him wank and solo through eight or ten tracks of masturbatory and self-congratulatory Yngwie worship. Since most of these albums sounded like 45 minute solos where the rest of the band went for coffee, they were never my cup of tea, but I certainly respected the talent involved. One of Shrapnel’s second-tier wank masters was Toby Knapp. After his stint on the noodle circuit he went on to found the very respectable throwback American power metal band Onward and release two very solid albums under that moniker.” The shred master hath returned to classic metal.
“I loved the Cascadian/post-black metal craze, but let’s be honest: that bubble burst at least two years ago. After the umpteenth Wolves worshipper appeared (Addaura, Alda, Ash Borer – need I move past the ‘A’s?’), the mystique wore off and the music turned predictable.” Spring has sprung, and in case the snow hansn’t cooled your outlook, here’s some black metal to further harsh your mellow.
“When it comes to selecting albums to review, I rely on a tried-and-mostly-tr00 method of meticulous selection that’s been proven to garner conversations around water bubblers and soda machines the world over: I sometimes randomly just pick shit from a list and think, “Okay, that’s cool. Let’s give that a shot.” Behold, today’s selection is Iceland’s Dynfari.” In the game of chance, you win some and you lose some. Are the odds in Grymm’s favor this time around?
“Earlier this year, a band hailing somehow not from Japan, but from Kraków, released an appropriately enigmatically-named EP that by all rights should have shat all over Angra’s RoTM position, had anybody on the planet told us about it. But they didn’t. And for that you’ll burn.” We are aggrieved.
“Doom. Doom is done right when the word is no longer a mere genre, but an onomatopoeic descriptor of what you are hearing. Suffice to say, Finland’s Oceanwake understands this.” Prepare to meet your new doom flavor of the week. Mmmm doom.
“When guitarist Christian Muenzner (Spawn of Possession, ex-Necrophagist) and drummer Hannes Grossman (Blotted Science, ex-Necrophagist) departed Obscura last year, needless to say I was pretty bummed. The duo was an integral part of the band’s sparkling technical and progressive death metal formula that yielded back-to-back masterworks in Cosmogenesis and Omnivium. So while Obscura’s future looks uncertain, the gifted pair have forged ahead with a brand spankin’ new outfit called Alkaloid featuring an all-star line-up….” Dudes from the big names in tech-death coming together in a new super project? Are your slide rulers in a tangled knot of anticipation yet?
“As most readers are well aware, I am old. I grew up in the 80s as a precocious child of metal and still harbor a deep, abiding love for all things 80s and iron. Naturally, I’m the very demographic for a three-day festival mostly made up of bands from those bygone times. This is why Madam X and I decamped to Brooklyn, New York for the third Defenders of the Old Festival this past weekend (the first to be held in the lovely and historic borough of the Empire State).” Old meets old. Geezer Fight!
“Oh, how things have changed. Back in the Unchain the Underground days we used to get physical copies of releases. When I first started it as a print ‘zine in 1988, before some of my fellow staphers here at AMG were alive, it was a cassette and onesheet, then CDs. The digital copies just started to creep in towards the end of UtU existing as a web site.” Some things change, some don’t. Like the smell of a good angel corpse, for instance.
“I seem to have a knack for grabbing consecutive promos by two-piece bands. Last year, it was the one-two punch of Brits Godflesh and Anaal Nathrakh. This week, it’s Dynfari and the subject of this review’s intense scrutinizing observation, Minnesota’s Dissident Clone.” Here’s something short and nasty to start off your week.
