“‘Malevolence.’ That word resonated through my mind as I listened to the fourth full-length by French death/black outfit Svart Crown. A word so mundane and exploited in adjective-laden reviews that it appears frivolous when used to describe metal. Yet, when Abreaction is concerned, the seeping and creeping feeling suggested by the word seems almost palpable, venturing beyond just a cool appellation and into territories of real unease.” You merely adopted the evil.
“Motörhead may no longer be around to kill your lawn but, in their wake, churn flotsam and jetsam inspired to take up the axe and split our eardrums asunder. The aptly titled Born Again proffer to raise a pint to the metal gods of yore with their debut Strike with Power in the hopes of rekindling the embers left by Lemmy, et al. The danger in carrying the flame left by music’s Übermensch is that it can be difficult to escape their long shadow and the line between homage and second-rate irrelevancy is thin.” We miss Lemmy.
“After scaling back the blackened and melodic tendencies that marked their 2000 self-titled debut, French loonies Benighted rapidly morphed into the finely-tuned deathgrind butchering machine they are today, releasing a consistent string of high-quality albums drenched in blood-spattered brutality, while keeping the fun and creepy factors cranked. Their sound may be set in stone, but the beauty of Benighted is the distinctive quirks and curve balls they splice into their brutal and musically dynamic brand of pig-squealing lunacy.” Hurls before swine.
“Listening to Sacraments to the Sons of the Abyss fills me with equal parts excitement and dismay. Excitement because, for a fan of Angelcorpse-style blackened death metal, Sacraments is a pretty impressive debut. Dismay because, let’s face it, trying to convey the value of an album like this can be a daunting task. It’s a bit like listening to your beefy friend describe a particularly good hamburger he had last week.” I take mine blackened with extra hot sauce and Satan on the side.
“Lovecraftian atmosphere in music is a tricky thing to nail down. The number of metal bands attempting to emulate H.P. Lovecraft’s pioneering brand of cosmic horror in aural form seems to increase exponentially from year to year, and while many of them come close, most fall short. I believe this is because people underestimate how many elements Lovecraft pulled together to craft his fiction.” Feel the tentacle!
![Gojira – Magma [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gojira-magma-1-768x752.jpg)
“Gojira’s Magma was a pretty major release this year, and while it didn’t get any Angry Metal Guy love it got plenty of Huck N Roll love. So much so, in fact, that it landed in my comprehensive, well thought out, Best of 2016 list.” Feel the Huck love.
“Eclectic is the name of the game when it comes to Dot Legacy. The French quartet has been around for seven years, playing a unique brand of fuzzed-out energy rock. How’s that for a genre? To be honest, Dot Legacy’s second offering, To the Others, kind of defies genre categorization. It’s a mish-mash of everything, and that was the intent going in.” Kitchen sink-core.
“To state the obvious, it’s my allotted task to listen to music and quantify it as best I can so that your delicate, little shell-like ears can filter out the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Ironically, The Von Deer Skulls run the gamut of all three. When faced with a band billed as progressive post-doom, how on earth could my pretentious urges refuse?” Smell the skull!
“Debackliner is the second French group in a week for me. The first was the excellent Ars Moriendi—a one-man, black metal act focused on the Frenchy weirdness of bands like Spektr and Blut aus Nord. But, Debackliner is something else. It’s not a one-man band, it’s not black metal, and it’s not anything you were expecting.” Is there a French connection?
“Retro is the most marketable term for old junk we’ve ever come up with. The nostalgia driven desire to reproduce the splendor of 20 years ago, regardless of what year it is, pretty much started as soon as ’20 years ago’ no longer meant World War II, and it has only increased in magnitude and ubiquity since then.” We never step on a great line.
