I’m a fan of Pharaoh, have been since their 2003 debut After the Fire. These Philly fanatics are the present and future of the new retro wave of traditional heavy metal (NRWOTHM) and over their short but solid career, they’ve fused retro ideals with prog and enough thrash sensibility to kick the required ass quotient.
My oh my, doom is getting more and more epic (read as long-winded) and it seems the genre is increasingly stricken with chronic Metallica-itis (inability to edit or cull songs). With bands such as Pilgrim and Swallow the Sun releasing albums loaded down with mega-long, droning numbers, attention spans everywhere are being tested and found wanting.
Gazpacho has to be the worst name for a band ever. The soup itself is frankly a little on the unexciting side as it is, being a vegetable soup served cold. It’s actually Spanish or Portuguese, isn’t it? Being Norwegian, couldn’t they have chosen say, lefse or something? Not only is it tastier (Mmm, a bit of sugar and butter and I’m a Happy Metal Guy! NOMNOMNOM!), but it’s Norwegian! Like the band! Get it!? Well, anyway, needless to say I was less than stoked to actually dig my ear-fingers into this record. How could a band that can’t come up with a decent band name come up with good music? I mean, this is an existential question… really.
We all have those bands we’re aware of for years but never make an effort to hear. I’m not even talking about bands you’re pretty sure you’ll hate (i.e. Korn). I’m talking about the bands you hear about, make a mental note to check out, only to be distracted by something shiny. The U.K.’s Orange Goblin is one of those bands for yours truly. I’ve heard of ’em forever, heard mostly good things, but just never got up the gumption to track down their stuff.
Life (and death) can certainly be strange. How else do you explain one of 2011’s most unfortunate events giving rise to 2012’s most unusual listening experience.
To those in the know, the arrival of a new Earth record comes with a lot of baggage, mostly due to bandleader Dylan Carlson’s well-known personal struggles and his infamous role in Kurt Cobain’s untimely demise. More significantly, there’s the fact that Earth’s recent output is surprisingly laid back, and bears almost no resemblance to their pioneering doom-drone works of the ’90s. Old-school Earth fans can forgive Carlson for giving Kurt that shotgun, but they cannot abide by this mellow hippie shit, man. So with the release of Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II, the question becomes: will Carlson a) give the people what they want, or b) continue with the current musical direction, unencumbered by giving a fuck about what people think?
I’d been holding off on writing this review because, well, to be frank I’m no grind expert. While I have a working knowledge of most genres and pretty deep knowledge in a several, grind is not one of them. In full disclosure, I’ve not listened to the classics (except Carcass and Napalm Death and Nasum), and I’m probably even fucking up genres when I have discussions about what I think the classics are. So, to pretend to be authoritative on the subject would be disingenuous at best. Against my better judgement, when I got Aborted’s Global Flatline I decided that I should review it anyway. But after listening to it about 10 times I realized I wasn’t quite sure how to put what I thought of it, which is kind of my.. job. So, that’s kind of awkward. I went back and listened to the band’s older material
So this is a review of an album by a Swiss band being written by an Egyptian guy living in Egypt and published on a website run by a guy living in Sweden. Don’t you just love the Internet? Anyway, Eluveitie is indeed a very Swiss band that draws its influences from the roots of the land; medieval Helvetian and Celtic history. Since I did not study European history or Anthropology at any level, I can’t verify the accuracy, relevance or truthfulness of the stories being told on Helvetios. What I can verify, though, is that the music is quite interesting; especially if you haven’t heard Eluveitie before. They use the standard metal gear of distorted guitars, drums and bass and they’ve added a multitude of native folk instruments to complement and emphasize that snapshot of medieval Europe they’re creating with their music.
Holy shite, this is a feisty and fiery one! One of the most successful “project” bands in recent memory, Goatwhore has come roaring back, filled with piss, bile and cayenne peppers on album five, Blood for the Master. This is nasty, blackened death/thrash from the most stagnant bayou of the Big Easy and it’s the musical equivalent of a gator attack.
“When I was first cutting my teeth as a reviewer over at the long defunct Unchain the Underground, I had the distinct honor of reviewing Blut Aus Nord’s 2003 opus The Work which Transforms God. I recall it distinctly being one of the most difficult reviews I ever had to write. The music the band created was new, extreme, pummeling, challenging and ultimately difficult on a level which few records I’d ever heard before were. It offered up an extremity for which I was not prepared. I could tell, though, that it was a revolutionary record. It was something special; incredibly special… extreme, abstract, brilliant, innovative and done in a way that I was not ready for. I really, really hated it.” Nearly one decade later, what the hell will AMG do with Dodecahedron?
