“Do you know what a big muff pedal does? Well, if you don’t, it essentially can turn electric guitars into fat fuzzy rock machines. Over the decades, that sound has found a home across all genres that riff, stomp, and tear blues licks a new one. As such, the pedal name lends itself well to the mission of the wacky Norwegian outfit Big Muff 68, who seeks to give us a fresh new genre view with Swing Metal. If you hadn’t guessed yet, that genre is none other than… swing metal!” Tough Muff.
“The first time I sat down with The Hallowing of Heirdom, I was in denial. With every song, I expected the sky to crack open and a dark sheet of black rain to pour from blood-red clouds. It never happened. And, as a result, I’m going to try to rate, compare, and measure The Hallowing of Heirdom against Winterfylleth’s decade of atmospheric black metal records. For how much I hate the phrase, this is like comparing apples to oranges.” Strum and drag.
“Having read plenty of trash masquerading as philosophy and heard plenty of nonsensical music both within and without metal, I figured I was desensitized to weird stuff. Hell, the world seems almost desensitized to weirdness; Jacques Lacan, one of the biggest dolts to ever pretend to think about stuff and write it down, posited that an erection was equal to the square root of -1 and more than zero people took him seriously.” Weird is full of surprises.
“One Foot in the Flesh Grave’s take on doom punk and swamp rock is just the kind of experience I was hoping for. Formed in the cruel, unrelenting heat of Corpus Christi (Texas), Wailin Storms must have quickly realized that to stand out, their sound needed more than just the country and rockabilly twang they were being exposed to.” Music for misfits and serial killers.
Almost Home is a record that was influenced by how much everything sucks right now, according to the band. It’s a bit of a dissertation on America in 2009, with a shitty economic situation, how hard it’s been to keep the band going in this kind of situation and so forth. Honestly, I don’t hear it. But that’s what the band says. What I hear is a highly melodic and poppy hardcore band doing the same things that bands of this type have been doing for years. It’s unfortunate, really, because they’ve got an alright sound, but things don’t stick.
