“Ashenspire hail from Glasgow (Scotland) and like their British / Norwegian counterparts (A Forest of Stars / Vulture Industries), Ashenspire deliver a brand of avant-garde black metal that has you sit up and take notice. Clad in a single-breasted frock coat, Speak Not of the Laudanum Quandary tells of the harrowing odyssey of British imperialist tragedy using 7 lengthy tracks.” Big topic, big music.
“Just like death and taxes, you can count on Svart Records to artfully bestow the weird and the wonderful. Ark of Contempt and Anger’s promo blurb begins by saying that ‘Sink have once again created an oddly compelling and strangely enchanting album that is truly in a league of its own.’ Add to that, Sink promises rich and complex compositions woven with enigmatic lyrics, and I’ll admit I had a hard time resisting this.” Plus there’s a cute dog on the cover!
“Infernal Machine is a seven-part journey, creating the soundtrack to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel The Forever War. The story, loosely depicts Haldeman’s military service during the Vietnam War, with the account chronicled as a space opera where the military fails to see its soldiers as any more than complex and valuable machines. This seems a large musical undertaking, especially in light that Ridley Scott has had the film idea “in production” since back in 2008….” An odd prog band bringing to life a weird novel? What could go wrong?
“After the tragic, but remarkably metal, death of their vocalist, Windir was laid to rest in 2004. From its ashes came Vreid (“wrath” in Norwegian), which barreled onto the scene, knocking ten tons of shit out of listeners with machine gun riffage, under the command of ex-Windir bassist Hváll. Vreid have a black metal flavor that bears more than a few striking similarities to the misanthropic, war and history flavored style of Windir. Outside of that, Vreid have riff-heavy, black ‘n roll similarities to the likes of Carpathian Forest, some of the attitude and energy of Borknagar’s Universal album and a blend of the rocking grooviness of Sepultura and the more traditional and melodic elements of Taake, Koldbrann, Ragnarok, and middle earth’s own Carach Angren.” With a list of comparisons like that, you’d think it wouldn’t be possible for Madam X to get angry about this…
“Cosmic Child came through a little thin on the promo information (and in fact prior to listening to it for the first time, I didn’t even know the name of the album – so much for embedded album info) at any rate, I figured alright, close your eyes, hit play and go from there – how bad can it be right? The band name conjured up images of something with a Finntroll flavor – tell me a band name like New Keepers of the Water Towers doesn’t sound even remotely folky and troll-like right? It actually ended up being absofuckinglutely nothing like Finntroll, go figure!” But…if it isn’t like Fintroll, what the hell is it like??? Calm down. Madam X will now answer your questions.
