“Say what you will about Sunn O))), they are iconic. While the music is arguably the stuff to fall asleep standing to or hear in the laundry, the duo is the epitome of metal consistency. Nearly twenty-five years of droned-out, doomed-up, and heavy-as-fuck riffs later, and the duo is still kicking in slow motion. Member Greg Anderson, owner and proprietor of Southern Lord records, offers his own take on the low and slow with a new moniker The Lord, and debut album Forest Nocturne.” O))) God!
“There’s something about abstractness in music that rides a fine line between tantalizing and off-putting. While anything tagged “avant-garde” is immediately greeted by a chorus of hissing and boos, there are ways to create effectively challenging tunes using relatively standard methods. Some metallic styles are born out of this aesthetic, as post-metal’s emphasis on landscapes or drone’s focus on overwhelming density spring to mind, but black metal has always maintained a bit more straightforward nostalgia in the unholy trinity: tremolo, blastbeats, and shrieks. Unru seeks to challenge such things.” Dare to be difficult.
“I’ve become a jaded man-cat over the last few years or so. I can blame Covid, or humanity’s lack of… well, humanity towards one another, or a myriad of other reasons. The fact of the matter is whenever I turn on the news or see yet another impossibly bad hot-take on Twitter, the anger that begins to well up inside me can power my home city for months. So, what’s a grouchy man-cat to do? Listen to Nova, the fourth full-length by Norwegian/French multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Kathrine Shepard, aka Sylvaine, that’s what. Having reviewed not one, but two, albums of hers, I knew what to expect. Or so I thought.” Prime Nova.
“Slow Burning Rage is a one-man crew consisting of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Parrish, who you may know as the former drummer of melodeath heavyweights Darkest Hour, as well as other varying acts like Iron Reagan, Mammoth Grinder, City of Caterpillar, and Bleach Everything (to name a few). What can you expect from Slow Burning Rage, then? Well, for as varied and crazy as his resume is, it’s nothing like any of his acts. Slow Burning Rage’s self-titled debut is deemed “jazz sludge” by the promo gods.” Rage for change.
“Formed as a solo project back in 2015, Kluizenaer—a German outfit, despite choosing the Dutch for ‘hermit’ as its nom de guerre—dropped a debut album, Radbraak, that a few cursory searches of the usual sources has failed to uncover. Since I am assured by the promo blurb that the debut comprised “abstract sound collages of blackened ambient and noise,” I did not intensify my searches. Radbraak was followed by two more obscure EPs before 2018’s locate-able Das ungebrochene Schweigen (The unbroken Silence), by which point Kluizenaer had evolved into a trio.” Evolution/mutation.
“Where Ruins based its first track loosely on the seminal critical theory work, Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, by German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, Daxma’s second full-length, Unmarked Boxes, drinks deep of 13th century Persian poet Rumi’s work of the same name.” Smart music.
“Hi gang, what did I miss? Having taken July as a mini sabbatical following the arrival of a second shark pup, it’s nice to find the site still standing (no thanks to the readers or most of the staff) and to get back into the swing of things with a familiar face. Unreqvited and I go way back to my nameless_n00b days, when its third full-length album, Mosaic I: L’amour et l’ardeur, became the very first to get a 4.0 out of me. Its sequel, Mosaic II: La déteste et la détresse, failed to scale quite the same heights due to a very weak final third, which really held back an otherwise very good album. We somehow missed Unreqvited’s next full-length installment, last year’s Empathica, altogether and so we here we find ourselves, exploring love and passion on sixth outing, Beautiful Ghosts.” Ghosts or just ghosted?
“When post-metal gets talked about there are certain bands – the titans of the genre, if you will – that get routinely name dropped. While the UK’s excellent Bossk may not be on the level of genre progenitors Neurosis, for example, either in terms of influence or output – Migration is only their second full-length – they are, I believe, unfairly overlooked in post-metal circles. To test this theory in absolutely rigorous scientific conditions, I spent several minutes performing grueling searches of this site. Our post-metal tag has, at the time of writing, 263 articles associated with it. The Cult of Luna tag produces 53 hits, Neurosis 100, ISIS 82 … you get the picture. How many for Bossk, you ask? One.” Post-statistics and migration patterns
“If I’m being truly honest, I have a difficult time with death metal. It feels unfair, as these acts rear their guttural heads on my AOTY’s yearly, but they’re often adjacent strains: black/death, dissonant tech-death, Lovecraftian, or other pretentiously experimental concoctions. But old school and Swedeath? Gimme somethin’ else, because I overthink the hell out of it: at the risk of sounding like my parents, it all sounds the same to me. However, a new weird death metal release from the label behind groups like Prometheus and Thecodontion? Acausal Intrusion, sign me the fuck up.” Ruptured Nulitas.
“I have history with Devil Sold His Soul, but not all of it good, especially when we parted on poor terms: I got fed up with Empire of Light’s excessive vocals and didn’t give EP Belong ╪ Betray a fair chance. Loss, the first release in seven years, hits differently: it chronicles seven years of grief and personal loss from its creators. Is it the labor of love it was intended to be?” Devil in the details.
