“Wow, what a year! A large portion of 2013 has had me working my ass off in preparation for my stint out at sea with 70,000 Tons of Pure Fucking METAL! I’ve tried to curtail my excitement, but fuck it, this is huge – Carcass, Septicflesh, Finntroll, Overkill… what more could a girl ask for?” As Madam X shamelessly drops free plugs for a certain novelty cruise line, she also delivers her best albums of the year. That lady can multi-task!
“Edvard Munch’s series of paintings, The Scream, has long held a fascination for me, from Munch’s depiction of the blood red sky to the raw emotion and suffering in the screamers eyes, as images they’re almost stifling to look at. Cerekloth have taken The Scream a step further. They’ve intensified the colors, honed in on the screamer, they’ve given you a passage into where this torture is coming from and they’ve added a bone chilling soundtrack – life meets art? Bursting onto the scene back in 2008 after putting blackened death outfit Church Bizarre temporarily on ice, the release of the debut EP Pandemonium Prayers saw Cerekloth added to Hells Headbangers for the release of a demo and an additional EP Halo of Syringes. And now a full 5 years later, Denmark based Cerekloth return with the Reaper in toe driving it home that death is a part of life, putting death and darkness back into death metal with In the Midst of Life We are in Death. Color me embarrassed for letting this devastating collaboration of aggression and chilling sensations slip through the cracks and go unnoticed!” Madam X gets extra dark and scary as she examines the painful and tortured death metal of Cerekloth. You wouldn’t like her when she’s super scary!
“When I think old-school, ’80s or early ’90s style black metal my mind naturally spirals through the rabbit hole landing squarely in the frozen planes of Norway to bands like Darkthrone and the rawness of Transylvanian Hunger or Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, my mind certainly doesn’t go bounding off like Alice into the dusty, critter infested, heat of Tucson Arizona. Nor, to be more precise, towards Sleepwalker and his one-man homage to Satan – A Transylvanian Funeral.” Madam X sat through 72 minutes of old school black metal and came out on the other side to tell you about it… Poor lady.
Ah, what could be better than nasty, heavy-as-hell Finnish doom-death to ease the transition from summer to fall. In case you haven’t heard, winter is coming…
Funeral doom is about as niche a market as you’ll ever find anywhere. It’s slow as hell, heavy as fuck and requires more concentration than a quantum psychics exam given at a strip club.
As under the radar and below the Earth’s crust as a band can get, Brazil’s doom/death stalwarts Mythological Cold Towers may have crafted an album capable of getting them some serious attention. Immemorial is their fourth release (available from Cyclone Empire) and like their previous works, it’s slow to mid-paced, atmospheric doom/death with a fair amount of melody and a smidgen of goth influence. The end result is like a cross between Swallow the Sun, Candlesmass, old Katatonia and really old Paradise Lost (some of this sounds like their Gothic album but with more finesse). If forced to describe their sound in a mere two words, those words would be “fucking” and “morose.” Though not the least bit cheery or hopeful, Immemorial is so well executed and laden with dark atmosphere, it ends up far more addicting than it should. In fact, it reminds me of Loss’s Despond. Both are crushingly doomy, heavy affairs that somehow stick in the head and demand repeat spins (this is way more melodic though). While not reinventing the death/doom wheel, Mythological Cold Towers manages to find that elusive sweet spot between heavy and subtly melodic and proceeds to milk it for all its worth. This is their best material by far and good enough for an honorable mention for 2011’s best, so Steel Druhm feels some shame for getting to it so late. If you were looking for quality doom/death in 2011 and missed this, you should also feel shame!
We made it through another year here in Angry Metal World. We overcame Terminal Reviewer Burnout Syndrome, careers and personal lives, just to bring you more of our self-righteous, ego-driven babbling and blathering. Why did we do it? Because we care so damn much! Now, as the year grinds us all towards inevitable doom, it falls to me to get the metal wheel a rollin and name my picks for the best albums of 2011. This was a pretty solid year, so it was tough to figure out which albums belonged where, but you demanded it, so I’m delivering the goods, Yeah!
Ever felt the need to sit amidst the shadows and brood darkly over lost loves, personal failures, lack of objectivity in music reviews and other existential mumbo jumbo? If so, I may have the perfect musical accompaniment for your days of shoegaze. Despond, the debut from Tennessee’s Loss, is one mammoth slab of remorseful, gloomy funeral doom/death that will harsh anyone’s mellow and kill any and all buzz. It’s snail paced, ponderous and crushingly heavy in that way only real doom can be. On the highway of metal music, this thing has its hazard lights flashing and moves slower than a senior citizen with cataracts and a bum hip. Now, I’m well aware that funeral doom isn’t for everyone. I myself rarely find the style compelling enough to sit through an album’s worth regardless of how well the band executes. For that very reason I was surprised by the impact Despond had on me. Not only did I enjoy listening to the entirety of Loss’s mortuary muzak, but I kept going back for more and ultimately, it left me blown away. That either means they have something truly special going on or I have a brain tumor pressing on my music appreciation lobe. Either way, this is an weirdly addictive album full of gloom and despair with some unbelievably powerful emotions and atmosphere to it.
