“I’m no wine buff but if I ever feel the urge to get rat-arsed in an upper class, debonair sort of way, I usually plump for a bottle of something French. Why? Well, when it comes to the old grape juice, Pierre just seems to know his stuff. Wine is one of those products that carries with it a particular weight of expectation according to the country or region of the world from which it originates, and in this respect music is not all that different.” Nor-core is a thing?
“For some reason, I seem to be the go-to reviewer for anything Sepultura-related here at AMG. This is a pretty unrewarding “honor,” given that the band has been releasing underwhelming albums for many years now (and don’t even get me started on Max Cavalera’s various projects). The band’s latest record Machine Messiah is their fourteenth overall, and marks their first collaboration with celebrated Swedish producer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Katatonia, Fates Warning).” Watch Dr. Fisting try to break free from his bloody roots.
“Expectations can be an odd thing when dealing with hybrid genres. The more genres descriptors added to the band’s tag, the harder it gets to form a view of what you’re going to listen to, and it doesn’t just apply to blackened melodic industrigothic deathfolk. Take Infernal Angels, now releasing their 4th album in 15 years. Various sources I checked listed the band as melodic black metal, melodic black/death metal, or plain black/death metal.” Get in your pigeonhole!
“‘May you dream of the devil and wake in fright.’ This old curse serves as the inspiration for the novel and later film adaptation Wake in Fright, a harrowing descent into madness that tells the tale of an English school teacher in a remote Australian town who wrestles with conformity, misery and the innate self-destruction that clings to man like a shadow.” To sleep, per-chase to scream.
“Here’s something to think about… If Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger released today, would it make the same impression it made back in 1994? More importantly, would it get the same reception nowadays that it got in the past?” No chance.
“I like doom, it’s a genre replete with crushing riffs, evocative themes (doom spelled backward is “mood,” after all) and one of the best examples to turn to when you need something spine-crushingly heavy. What it doesn’t do is respect your time.” Time waits for no band.
“Much like how everyone figured out what Ewoks were called despite the name never being mentioned in film, mysterious forces of collective cultural understanding have conspired to associate slamming brutal death metal with forced puns. I have not the faintest chance of elucidating the causes for this association, but I want to go on record in support of it.” Slam-fisted stuff here, folks.
“I’m not an expert on black metal; in fact, I’m somewhat at an initiate level. While I have dug the occasional blackened affair like Axamenta, I’ve never had quite as much love for the kind of gritty, treble-laden, snare-abusing, hysterically-snarled theater that has been hated by parents, loved by anti-establishment youths and mocked to varying degrees by just about everyone else. This makes for a difficult situation when the dumping grounds of December leave naught but black metal promos.” Black is the season.
“Do you smell that? No? Breath deeper? Now do you smell it? Nope, it wasn’t me or the dog. That is the flatulence of another year. Forced out the sphincter of 2016, 2017 promises to be better than the worm-ridden large intestine it was shat from. Actually, twenty-seventeen doesn’t promise shit.” Doc loves the smell of blackened sphincter in the mourning.
“If my hypothesis is correct, then this should be AMG’s last full review of the year, and the honor has gone to a lowly newbie thanks to some seasonal schadenfreude courtesy of Steel Druhm. See, with our infamously dreadful December promo pool to pull from, I let the fates decide my final assignment of 2016. So while everyone else cozied up by the fire with their choice Things You Might Have Missed, he assigned me to tackle the third record of prog project The DRX, Throughout Within.” Prog the halls, then leave same.
