“Eryn Non Dae.’s follow-up to 2012’s Meliora is something I’d long dreamt of, and thanks to France and the promo bin I – with humble objectivity and tact – get to demonstrate to you bitches once again why Muppet taste is best taste. Spoiler alert: this album is fucking glorious.” Franks and fiends.
“Insect Ark’s debut, Portal/Well saw a warm, if not enthusiastic, welcome at AMG by our staff’s very own card-carrying Illuminati member. Such is Roquentin‘s power that the one-woman, drone-doom project didn’t blow up despite its extreme catchiness and party-ready bangers. Never one to allow the powers that be (other than myself) to dictate a band’s future, it was with great curiosity that I reached into the murky waters of the promo pond to retrieve Marrow Hymns, a sophomore effort which sees founding bassist/multi-instrumentalist Dana Schechter joined by drummer and synth-wrangler Ashley Spungin. At forty-four minutes, it’s hardly a marathon, yet the staid oddness of the whole thing proves to lengthen the listening experience.” Swarm drone.
“Contrary to popular belief, researchers have recently concluded that all metal does not, in fact, sound the same. Turns out, there are completely different styles of metal altogether. Like, tons of them. There’s a speed one, and a black one, and a doooom one and a melodeath… *ahem* Anyway, the point of my having shattered your world with such unfathomable concepts was to pave the way for blasphemous trvth bomb number two: it’s not always about the riffs, yo.” Metal awareness.
“Since their inception, Portal’s outre take on death metal has been something of a curiosity; a malformed fetus suspended in sepia alcohol behind so many dusty artifacts. Few other artists have encroached on their sound, and even fewer can pretend to challenge their simultaneously dour and frenzied Victorian aesthetic. Theirs is horror music, to be sure, but the horror stems from a sort of noir psychedelia, an all-encompassing fractal unrest where the creak of the floorboards and the crack of colliding planets are indistinguishable in scope.” The cake is a lie.
![Vulture Industries – Stranger Times [Things You Might Have Missed 2017]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/SOM427-Vulture-Industries-1500X1500px-300dpi-RGB-768x768.jpg)
“Borrowing from the likes of Arcturus, Vulture Industries likes the melodic and the avant-garde. The result is that Stranger Times, like the rest of the band’s material, is chill, moody, and accessible. It’s simple grooves and smooth vocals bring a smile to the face of the most-hopeless insomniacs and a smirk to the loneliest of night dwellers. It’s for late night drives home and for midnight walks through frozen city parks. In essence, it’s music for the pre-dawn street sweepers. It’s peace in peace-less times and it’s an escape when you need it the most.” Escape to Vulture Mountain.
“Oh, December. That special time of year, when the masses try to buy their way out of SAD, supermarkets become more unbearable than usual thanks to seasonal saccharine soundtracks, and even the AMG promo bin transforms into a smoldering heap of nope. Some blind themselves to the solstice’s sadness with festive lights, others drown it in nog, but let me assure you: there will be no happiness.”
“It takes something else to make music that, even if it has obvious roots, seems to have been produced entirely out of these normal cycles. Such was the case with #!%16.7, the last release from Krakow’s oddball djent group Ketha. It had everything you’d never expect; grind-length grooves, a horn section, and even that Casio patch that’s just a dude grunting. Zero Hours Starlight is a wholly more conventional effort, but it still refuses easy categorization.” There’s a mole in my pigeonhole!
“While some avant-garde bands attempt to breach genre boundaries by removing as many traditional melodies and discernible rhythm patterns as possible while still qualifying as music, these Californians take an experimental approach by simply modifying the tools of the trade. By swapping six-string guitars for the obscure yet beautiful hammered dulcimer, they practice modern black metal on a structural level with a completely unique sound capable of moments more beautiful and more terrifying than one is likely to find anywhere else in the genre. Collective: The Shape of He to Come, their seventh LP in as many years, is an attempt to further not only the boundaries of the scene but also their own aesthetic.” Bring down the hammer!
“I’ve been lurking the metal blogosphere for around a decade now, and while I hesitate to call myself a scene vet, I’ve read enough write-ups from various webzines to know how coverage of a record like the self-titled debut of France’s Les Chants du Hasard generally plays out. Most scribes hunger for the discovery of some nebulous ‘next big thing’ that carries the potential of turning a genre on its head. As such, many writers are overly eager to gush over potential innovators; when met face to face with what their promo sheet describes as an all-orchestral black metal album, they’re often too willing to jump on the hype train, regardless of quality.” Classical darkness.
“I don’t know any bands that sound quite like In Tormentata Quiete. The vocals are the heart and soul of the band, but where this often indicates an accessible band with a single, capable vocalist, ITQ uses everything but the kitchen sink in its range of styles. Two equally capable ladies bring harmonic symphonies that without context might have befitted a progressive Nightwishcore band, but here they balance out Marco Vitals. The only male listed in the vocal department, I am forced to conclude this one man is responsible for the grandiose, operatic clean vocals, the hushed whisper of the spoken sections, the occasional guttural growl, and the absolutely caustic black metal screech.” Many tongues, few spit-ups.
