“Pestilential Shadows comes from the land down under, where the women glow and men plunder. Listen closely, and you’ll hear their black metal thunder. Listen even closer, and you’ll run for cover. Gimmicky introduction aside, the men in Pestilential Shadows have been at work making some seriously bleak music since 2003, and their fifth album, Ephemeral, shows no signs of deviating from this path.” Anyone want a Vegemite sandwich?
“The Skull has an origin story that’s weirder than most. A few years back, several members of doom legends Trouble found themselves out of the band, and decided to form a “tribute” to their former group. Besides the irony of a tribute band containing 3/5ths of the band they are tribute-ing, The Skull quickly proved their credentials onstage. At a packed hometown gig in Chicago, I witnessed the band deliver a set of long-unheard Trouble classics. Eric Wagner (vocals), Jeff Olson (drums) and Ron Holzner (bass) sounded predictably solid, while Lothar Keller and Matt Goldsborough handily replicated the guitar interplay of Trouble’s recorded work. But when the band announced an album of original material, I was skeptical at first…” Can The Skull give us more trouble than Trouble? One can only hope.
“There was a time before the Internet when musicians were scary. Glen Benton was an animal killing, Satan-worshipping maniac instead of an angry divorcee. Slayer were about to slit open a woman’s throat, all in spikes and leather instead of looking like they are on line at Chuck E. Cheese’s in a Spongebob t-shirt. The only scary person left in extreme music now that GG Allin is dead is Gaahl from Gorgoroth/God Seed and I’ve been too out touch to not know if he’s considered frightening these days.” Out of touch and scared of Sponge Bob is no way to go through life, Al.
“Harmony pervades Once There Was A Time When Time And Space Were One. Not in the strictly musical sense, but in its idyllic unity between typically opposed characteristics. Time and space, old and new, science and nature. Sweden’s My Brother The Wind returns on this, their third record, to peacefully entrance and impart their wholly-improvised instrumental Space Rock on the rushed and pressured masses.” God knows we all need a break from the pressures of modern life!
“When I submitted last week’s Godflesh review for their awesome long-awaited comeback album, I had no idea that it would just be part one of a two-part special on British Two-Piece Bands Who Want To Watch The World Burn.” Will Anaal Nathrakh’s quick and cold Desideratum attack decimate or will it self-destruct? Read on!
“I was worried about this album. Revocation have had it too good for too long, releasing large quantities of absurdly excellent music with extreme consistency over a timespan that most other artists would take to write just one album. They’ve been cranking out yearly releases since their magnum opus Chaos of Forms in 2011. Yearly releases. For four years. The honeymoon has to end sometime, right?” Or does it?
“It turns out I’m a judgmental son of a bitch. I admit it, I label people before they even open their mouths and I usually find many decisions made by others to be dumb and immature. I don’t mean to be this way, but I’m very much a person that “judges a book by its cover.” However, I have to say that nothing pleases me more than discovering that the dickhead talking to me with his Corona Light and sport coat over a Superman shirt is actually cool as shit. I like to be proved wrong about someone’s character. It makes for a much better conversation. The same goes for music.” We like judgmental types around here, since we’re in the judging business and all. And this one deserved some real serious judgment.
“There’s a lot to be said about a band that can produce albums that are radically different from each other, but still are unmistakably recognizable as a product of their arduous labor. Even more can be said when those albums are consistent in their high level of quality.” Can the high quality and creative insanity keep going or have we finally found the rut?
“August. Cicaidas scream in the oaks. The punishing sun presses vapors from the Earth, rendering the air nearly drinkable. You could brew tea in the steam rising in the morning light. Even the dogs relinquish their rightfully-given portion of summer in favor of an air-conditioned shelter. Inside of that shelter, complete with the high-speed internet needed to distract one from the horrors of the season, a terrible, moments-long sound streams from the wide, unblinking eyes of the speakers. It sounds like fucking Decapitated.” Death, thy name is Decapitated.
“I made the error of listening to Solitary Sabred’s new album at work. Half-way through opener “Disciples of the Sword” I was being restrained by security: apparently it’s “against office policy” to strip to your underwear, lather yourself in baby oil, adopt the power stance and wave a poster-tube around your head pretending it’s a sword (why I keep baby oil at the office is my business, OK?).” Most HR departments frown on such trve metal shenanigans because HR is not trve! Death to false human resources!
