We’re now into July! Impressive as it is, this year has been one hell of a year: like the year 2011 was supposed to have been but really, really wasn’t. On a personal note, I can say that I wasn’t expecting 2012 to be good at all. However, there haven’t even really been any major […]
You can take the dirty hippy out of metal, but you can’t take the metal out of the dirty hippy.
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.
Every once in a while the scene gets a hair up its ass and decides that something that is explicitly not metal is totally OK to love. So, in the 90s, when I was first cutting my teeth on the extreme metal scene, Anathema and Katatonia were both giving up their extreme pasts and putting out records that were much more akin to sort of depressing alt rock than anything they’d previously been doing. Then there’s black metal guys’ love of swirly keyboard soundscapes (such that it ends up on Metal Archives, despite them actually banning other bands that I, and most others, would consider metal. Well, since the release of Amesoeurs really broke this sound in 2009, this sort of post-black metal shoegaze stuff has becomes the scene’s favorite non-metal thing. And, really, the description of it by one reviewer I read really sums it up: “Black metal that pisses off the indie kids and indie rock that pisses off the black metal kids. Brilliant.”
So, last year (also known as last week) we introduced this thing called the “Top Records We Wish We Could Unhear” and I’ve already gotten to my first nomination for the year of 2012. Dies Irae (no, not that one, the Mexican one) is apparently an old melodic death metal band that has remade itself in the image of “post-metal” (no, not that kind of post metal, the kind from 1999) and got themselves signed by Chaos Records, who otherwise have pretty good taste in bands. Secret Veils of Passion is, therefore, the first of the band’s new, updated versions of itself and it is a remarkable record to behold. But no, not that kind of remarkable. Think more like: I am remarking upon
Well, since the release of Traced in Air, I can’t think of a band that has higher expectations for their next full length than Cynic. Really, I don’t know a single non-Cynic fanboy among the reviewers that I frequently read, and this is because their two records are fantastic. The EP they released last year (Re-Traced) was a neat little foray into other styles and I really loved it. But I don’t think that anyone is quite ready for the band to stay in those other styles. Carbon-Based Anatomy is raising questions as to whether or not they will come back to the techy metal for which they’re supposed to be known.
Ever felt the need to sit amidst the shadows and brood darkly over lost loves, personal failures, lack of objectivity in music reviews and other existential mumbo jumbo? If so, I may have the perfect musical accompaniment for your days of shoegaze. Despond, the debut from Tennessee’s Loss, is one mammoth slab of remorseful, gloomy funeral doom/death that will harsh anyone’s mellow and kill any and all buzz. It’s snail paced, ponderous and crushingly heavy in that way only real doom can be. On the highway of metal music, this thing has its hazard lights flashing and moves slower than a senior citizen with cataracts and a bum hip. Now, I’m well aware that funeral doom isn’t for everyone. I myself rarely find the style compelling enough to sit through an album’s worth regardless of how well the band executes. For that very reason I was surprised by the impact Despond had on me. Not only did I enjoy listening to the entirety of Loss’s mortuary muzak, but I kept going back for more and ultimately, it left me blown away. That either means they have something truly special going on or I have a brain tumor pressing on my music appreciation lobe. Either way, this is an weirdly addictive album full of gloom and despair with some unbelievably powerful emotions and atmosphere to it.
Ulver is one of the greatest metal bands ever. If there were a “Big 4” for 90s metal, Ulver would be one of them because those first three records, Bergtatt, Kveldssanger and Nattens Madrigal (for the uninitiated) are absolutely essential Norwegian black metal records (obviously Kveldssanger isn’t black metal per se, but it is still an awesome record). But, of course, that same experimental drive that pushed the band into black metal also pushed them out of it, and Garm has been very critical of the scene since leaving it. That said, Ulver is also like Katatonia or Anathema in that their post-(extreme) metal music has been widely accepted by metalheads largely because of the already existing cred. But I get the feeling that War of the Roses will try that patience.
Where the hell does one even start with Anathema. The band has been in a state of flux for quite a while. The last thing they put out was Hindsight which, quite obviously, was not technically considered a standard release (despite it being my top record of 2008, a very dry year for metal in this Angry Metal Guy’s opinion). That means it’s been five years since A Natural Disaster an album that I found to be remarkably underwhelming, as it followed up one of the finest albums of the entire 2000s: A Fine Day to Exit. But it has, indeed, been 9 years since Anathema released a new album that I was super excited about. Everyone keeps asking “was 7 years worth it?” Well, for me it’s more like “was 9 years worth it?”
One would assume that an Angry Metal Guy wouldn’t be handing out high scores willy nilly, something I seriously try to avoid doing. But apparently 2010 is a year filled with really fantastic albums by bands doing the things that, as a reviewer, and more specifically, as a music-lover, I have trouble not totally falling for. Pain of Salvation has never been a band that I personally fell for. Scarsick, the band’s 2007 release, was a record that I had issues with and I’ve had some personal gripes about Daniel Gildenlöw’s vocals on the older material (specifically his wannabe Mike Patton rappy/talky vocals). But, that said, Pain of Salvation has long been the darling of the progressive rock and metal scene, with legions of fans who love their technical prowess and pop sensibility.
