“If there is one thing you can count on in the realms of heavy metal, it’s bands creating names that fit their musical vision. Carcass definitely paints a vivid picture of death metal just nicely. And a band with a name like My Dying Bride is usually guaranteed to bring The Mope™ like few others do. So you can imagine what was going through my brain when Germany’s Goat Explosion threw their debut album, Rumors of Man, our way.” Face goat toward enemy.
“My interest piqued when I read that Tunjum, a Peruvian band releasing their first full length LP, plays “ancestral metal from the land of the Incas!” I checked out their Metal Archives page, and found that they write about “ancient Muchik culture.” I took to Wikipedia to investigate “ancient Muchik culture,” and discovered that researchers believe that human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism were common religious practices of the Moche, which seemed like a pretty ample source of inspiration. I admit, I didn’t know anything about the band, but I reasoned like this: good source material? Check. Good artwork? Well, I like it. Illegible logo? Very much. So, I gave it a chance.” Ancient cultures deserve double reviews.
“It’s 2018 AD and it seems we have entered the era of ‘post-thrash.’ This record was labelled as such on our Upcoming Crap to Review sheet which is now sadly defunct, having been usurped by an appallingly efficient workflow management system which was painstakingly introduced and optimized by the ever-reliable Madam X. Such is the corporate behemoth that we have become and long gone are the days of AMG arbitrarily foisting metalcore on Steel Druhm. But on to the subject of today’s article, which goes by the ridiculous Murkin Hella Fools (MHF) by an Oakland troupe called Survival. What is ‘post-thrash?'” War of posts.
“It’s good to have friends in high places; for prospective subjects of a review here, that means being buddies with an Angry Metal Guy hall of famer. Such were the means by which I became aware of Parius, a melo-prog-tech death metal act that shares a state — and on multiple occasions, a stage — with fellow Pennsylvanians Lör, the toppers of this blog’s 2017 aggregated list. Their enthusiastic social media plugging of Parius’ second LP, The Eldritch Realm, intrigued me as it came from a group that clearly has an ear for talent. Plus, given the record’s title, it would have been an irredeemable crime to not cover it personally.” Tales of the Elitist.
“If you’ve ever had a nasty scab that just wouldn’t fall off and wondered what lurked underneath, it was Cemetery Lust, the audio equivalent of gangrene, sepsis, piss and pus. This infectiously thrownback thrash crew last tested the strength of my immune system with 2014s Orgies of Abomination, and to this day I’ve yet to scrape off all the ooze and offal spewed by that piece of nastiness. Four years later, they recur with the charmingly titled, Rotting in Piss, and all pathogens are once again airborne, this time with a hint of asbestos for extra lung fun.” Urine trouble.
“I mean, really. Come and Chutney? By fucking Chubby Thunderous Bad Kush Masters?? Well played, you Chubby London fucks; you have my attention. Billed as FFO Weedeater, Bongzilla, Black Sabbath, and… and fucking Vengaboys?! Well now, I’m as elated as a child at an amusement park.” Don’t come round here no more.
“Categorization eludes Firtan. Okeanos, the second record by this German four-piece, is an album of vast fluctuations. Ever immutable and indefinable black metal rests at its core, but its proceeding layers are a lot more complex. Okeanos is a swirling cauldron of flavorsome sounds: profusely potent and pungent. Inspired by avant-garde intellectuals like Nietzsche and Lovecraft, Okeanos is a ‘dazzling display of epic black metal grandeur, suffused with autumnal atmosphere and winding-yet-captivating compositions.’ Firtan well and truly blow their own trumpet.” Pretentiousness and the void.
“At what point does death metal qualify as “old-school?” It’s odd to think that an entire sub-genre is predicated, in part, on how long it happens to have existed, and in this world of hyper-convenient immediacy, surely that span is shrinking at a rapid pace. One day, some poor fuck will be mooning over a Suicide Silence record telling his mates how the classics are always the best, and I will spin in my grave so fast I’ll bore into the center of the Earth. Rather than simply exhuming the dead, fortunately, Oakland’s Extremity lean more towards the Frankensteinian school of science.” Build-An-Abomination.
“My middle school biology teacher once said, ‘Once you stop growing, you literally start dying.’ His morbid sentiment was, of course, referring to one’s physical body, but in retrospect, I’ve adopted a more philosophical interpretation of that statement. In order to beat spiritual death, you need to continue growing, and that means continually pushing yourself. At first glance, this seems exactly the ethos Sathanas live by.” D.I.E. (Death in effect).
“It’s probably fair to say that Agalloch and Giant Squid went out with differing degrees of success on the recording front. Both issued their final albums in 2014, with Agalloch’s The Serpent and the Sphere garnering mixed opinions, while Giant Squid’s Minoans opus was a fine conceptual piece that stands among their stronger releases. With the dust settled on two stellar careers, can the ex-Agalloch collective of Don Anderson, Jason Walton and prolific drummer Aesop Dekker combine successfully with former Giant Squid and current Squalus frontman/guitarist Aaron Gregory?” Salve for loss or salt in the wound?
