“I’ve noticed something weird about me and death metal over the years. No matter how much of it I listen to, it seems like there’s always at least one more big-name underground band that I’ve somehow never come across. Recently, that band came in the form of Dutch quintet Sinister.” Where the hell have you been, Z?
“I recently heard from a coworker that lobster meat only has to contain about 2% actual lobster to be labeled as such. Often when you’re biting into a cheap lobster roll, you’re actually eating monkfish – a bottom dwelling creature that looks like a cross between a dog turd and a deep sea anglerfish that got run over by a dump truck. Why bring this up? Well, if Polish grindcore quartet F.A.M. are any indication, mediocre deathgrind albums work the same way.” Contents guaranteed to be fresh.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to sit back and appreciate simplicity. The first lyric here is “Retrogore!” The first non-introductory song is “Retrogore.” The album is Retrogore. Hell, Aborted is retrogore. There’s no other band more deserving of such a title. Their songs are filthy, dripping with the viscera of whichever woman they’ve just verbally brutalized, and their activity now spans over 20 years.” Violence is now in session.
“Despite the general misconception from non-metal folk that our beloved art form is a one-dimensional game, in reality metal in 2016 is as wide-ranging as it’s ever been, offering a bevy of stylistic riches and impressive diversity in both the cultural and genre stakes. Death metal itself has morphed and mutated from its rank beginnings into a myriad of sub-genre offshoots to appease extreme tastes of all kinds.” At the metal buffet, would you find room for Verment on your plate?
“Anyone passingly familiar with the Chicago metal scene in the past few years will have at some point encountered Immortal Bird. In Dr. Fisting and my neck of the woods, they’re one of the better groups to grace the dingy ex-speakeasies and frostbitten holes-in-the-wall. Their tight live performances do their sludgy, blackened death metal great justice and a full-length release has been awaited for a while in la casa de Kronos.” La casa de Kronos has a big old birdbath.
“Oh math, how I hate you. Next to physics (which ruined my day with its so-called “gravity” as I scaled my childhood tree fort and refuses me the privilege to smoothly glide around corners in my front-wheel-drive Pontiac Vibe), math straight-up pisses me off. You’re probably asking yourself, what does Dr. Grier’s Rant of the Day have to do with Continuum’s debut release?” You may or may not get an answer to that over all this loudness. Sweet Fallujah!
“Near the end of 2014, I reconnected with an old friend and found that some things in life definitely stand up to the ravages of time and an ever-growing mosaic of experience. Deathcore is not one of these things, and has aged as gracefully as an unrefrigerated jar of mayonnaise.” Some genres just can’t catch a break.
If there is one thing that can be said about Solace of Requiem, it’s that these guys have yet to pick a style and run with it. Comparing their albums to one another is like comparing metal to sushi. However, their lack of staleness is breath of fresh air (or in this case “putridity?”). Appearing on the scene in 2004 with their self-titled debut of Morbid Angel worship, these guys stuck to the time-tested formula of old-school death metal; mean, fast, and in-your-face. From there they expanded that style by introducing some groove and thrashier elements on Utopia Reborn before incorporating a black-infused tech death approach on their third release, The Great Awakening. Do you like brutal sushi? Do you enjoy an ever shifting musical template? One stop shopping right here, folks!
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
