“Italy and Greece seem to be accounting for a much greater percentage of our fetid promo sump of late. It’s like the Mediterranean region is vying to knock Scandinavia off the map as the key locus of metal, and they’re putting their collective back into it. Part of that sweaty collective back is Greek act Null’O’Zero, who play a kind of beefed up brand of traditional metal akin to Iced Earth, with a touch of the heavy prog of Symphony X.” Set gyros to pummel.
“Last month, one of our devoted thralls loyal readers was bemoaning the fact that we haven’t used the “Non-Metal Metal Things” tag in a while. Well, here you go, courtesy of dark Icelandic rockers (and Madam X favorites) Kontinuum. Why is the Huckster reviewing this album instead of Madam X?” Icelandic mystery.
“Like most of my peers, I try to spread out my metal listening; variety being the spice of life and all that. Despite this, however, I frequently find myself short on new black metal. Instead, I return to old standbys; kvlt, traditional and the bravely exotic. Unfortunately, the promo sump is rarely a good way to fix this problem, as so few black metal bands are interested in innovating. This is particularly true at the offices of our friends at Iron Bonehead, an established where ingenuity isn’t welcome. Still, Australian studio-project Runespell’s sophomore release—Order of Vengeance—is at least less baffling than the last Australian black metal act I covered, pulling firmly from the Norwegian second wave with smatterings of other scenes and styles to keep things from growing stale.” Leftover Norway.
“Truly am I an Angry Metal Malcontent. I haven’t enjoyed ov deep black metal since my early 20’s: I wish folk metal would collectively gather up the pointy ears and LARP the fuck off and, to make matters worse, I’m not entirely sure I’m on board with Lord Yngwie’s position that less cannot be more. While the extreme genres admittedly lend themselves to excess more readily than most, I’ll often wrap up a tech or prog record just wishing the band would take a step back and more fluidly translate their material, or perhaps highlight the weft and warp of the transitions with increased clarity.” Prog-death with extra fluid.
“I hate to start off by being a Negative Nancy, but past the halfway point of 2018, I can’t squash the feeling that the year has been somewhat of a disappointment thus far when considering the plethora of metal releases that have dropped. Sure there’s been standouts and some genuinely very good to great albums, but these have been in short supply when stacked up against the sheer weight of albums that have filtered through the Angry Metal Promo pit. Of course, there’s plenty of time for the year to take an upward turn and blow us all away, and I for one am hoping the quality of death metal albums gets cranked up as the year progresses.” Less is gore.
“July is “Part Two” month for me, and first up is the second half of Between the Buried and Me’s double album, Automata. Take a moment, if you will, to reacquaint yourself with the first half of this opus. Too lazy to click: Well, to summarize, BTBAM wrote their usual long album, but new record label Sumerian suggested they split it in half and stagger the release. That allows those folks who can’t stomach an hour of music to take it in smaller bursts.” A band of many parts.
“Obscura’s 2009 release, Cosmogensis, dropped right when I was getting back into metal in a big way. I, like most people who heard it at the time, hailed it as the spiritual successor to Necrophagist and crowned the band the Kings o’ Noodly Death Metal. They have, in my estimation, never lived up to these expectations. Both Omnivium and Arkóasis fell flat, and both suffered from similar weaknesses; ballooning song and album-lengths, often at the cost of compositional focus and coherence.” If that’s not a cliff-hanger that makes you need to click, nothing is!
“New York City is a strange dichotomy. Depending on who you ask, you’ll either get mental pictures of Broadway musicals, jazz concerts, the colorfully decorative Times Square, and shopping centers and skyscrapers within a stone’s throw of each other… or you’ll get a grim story of the rampant drug use and homelessness, its long history of violent crimes, and the hopelessness and gritty realities of its citizens that birthed the city’s rap, hardcore, and metal scenes. The thing is, either story would be correct. On their third full-length, Vile Luxury, Imperial Triumphant paints a vivid picture of their city’s duality: shimmering and powerful, yet simultaneously ugly and brutal.” The big apple is rotten to the core.
“Before the thrash explosion of the 80s truly took off under the guidance of rising stars like Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, there was its ugly predecessor, speed metal. Basically, traditional metal played faster, speed metal often approximated the sound of a record spinning at the wrong speed. It was a loose, unrefined and fun style often lacking the hard-edge of thrash. I was sad to see it all but die out by 1987, and Sweden’s Armory apparently feel the same way, so they painstakingly recreated the speed metal sound on their sophomore outing, The Search.” Speed still kills.
Immortal is back, and that deserves a big, fat double review of frozen mountain proportions. Stay frostbitten, my friends.
