“The hallway that led to my office in grad school was red. Both walls. I shit you not. To make matters worse the hellish tunnel narrowed as you approached its end—where, to no one’s surprise, you could find my office. Trust me when I tell you that five years of red walls can fuck with a person. Like grad schools, animals also use the color red to ward off people. Red can represent everything from lovers to the most gruesome of deaths. And Spain’s grrrl sludge group, Rosy Finch, is every bit as varying in its topics and delivery. With artwork that looks as though poor Carrie got it again, this is Scarlet.” Red is a slow color.
Nirvana
Quayde LaHüe – Love out of Darkness Review
“I was saddened to learn that by skipping the first day of Eliminator Fest, I’d missed a performance by the band that I find myself covering today: Olympia, Washington’s Quayde LaHüe. After spending time with their debut album Love out of Darkness, I’m vowing to catch them live at some point, because these guys and gal kick some serious olde school ass.” Love in a dark place.
Elder – Reflections of a Floating World Review
“Every so often, an album comes out of nowhere and truck sticks you into next Tuesday. Elder’s 2015 opus Lore did that for me. Their complex brand of New England stoner metal featured the right amount of proggy psych stylings to land in my personal Top Ten. Lore has been a constant friend these last two years, and I expected that topping it would be tough, given its lofty heights and incredible riffcraft. Leave it to Reflections of a Floating World to prove me so incredibly wrong.” Respect your Elder.
Område – Nåde Review
“Well, Område have done it again. Two years ago, I opened their Edari review talking about the marriage of an album to its artwork. What seems simplistic turns out to quite difficult. Finding the right artist and the right piece of art to match an album’s character is like food presentation. For instance, if not careful, you’ll turn your entire family against your amazing chili dogs. I thought the artwork of Område’s debut was the perfect match to its sound, but Nåde takes the cake (or, in this case, a foot-long chili coney).” Of trippy music and penis-shaped meats.
Interview with Dan Gargiulo of Revocation
“Between pillaging, plundering, and getting insanely hammered, Mark Z. interview’s Revocation’s Dan Gargiulo.” The first of several plunder publications from this year’s 70,000 Tons of Metal excursion.
Godhunter/Destroyer of Light – Endsville Review
“Since picking up Endsville, a split EP of Godhunter and Destroyer of Light material, it has come to my attention that Tucson-based Godhunter is getting quite the buzz these days.” Doom from the Great Southwest is hot these days.
90s Metal Weirdness: Bruce Dickinson – Skunkworks
“Cast your minds back to a time when metal music was not cool. Nay, indeed, a time when metal was anathema to all that was considered to be “chic” and “in.” A time when your favorite bands were actually encouraged by the music industry to play slower, cut their hair, and write sensitive lyrics about their childhoods. Yes, this unfortunately really happened. Our new semi-irregular feature “90s Metal Weirdness” focuses on albums released between 1992 and 2001 and which we all probably would rather forget. But in the service of publicly shaming the musicians involved, we have pushed forward.” And how dare we accuse the Crown Prince of NWoBHM of weirdness? Oh, we dare, but it’s all very British and polite like.
Indefensible Positions: Steel Druhm Defends Stomp 442
Every once in a while the metal scene collectively pisses on a band or record and someone needs to step up and defend why they like it. I normally don’t spend a lot of time defending shitty records, but sometimes genuinely interesting or good records get lampooned by an overly conservative heavy metal scene and that calls for a professional contrarian to defend it! If ever there was a professional contrarian, it would be me. So here I am to re-hash a record from my past that I still love that everyone else seems to have soured on (or never liked in the first place). This time it’s Stomp 442 by Anthrax.
Enbilulugugal – Noizemongers for Goatserpent Review
“33 COPIES. That’s the amount of copies pressed of the 2011 re-release of Noizemongers for Goatserpent, the seminal 2004 “classic” by California’s black/noise merchants, Enbilulugugal. On CDR, no less! This would cause the hearts of both hipsters and black metal elitists to flutter in obscure bliss and revel in the notion that, truly, you have never heard of this before. Sadly, for those (devil) horn-rimmed glasses-wearing folk, Crucial Blast is re-re-releasing Noizemongers for Goatserpent, this time on a two-disc digipak with beautiful art, liner notes… and two discs containing 79 FUCKING TRACKS (!!!) of some of the worst sounds ever put to record.” 79 tracks is a whole lot of bang for the buck. Who would complain about a bargain like that? Our man Grymm, that’s who!
Newsted – Heavy Metal Music Review
“By now most of you are familiar with the dysfunctional soap opera that led Jason Newsted to jump ship from Metallica prior to their execrable St. Anger album. Anyone who watched the shockumentary Some Kind of Monster can see why he bailed and most probably wonder why he didn’t beat copious amounts of Danish ass and kick over the Hetfield Table™ on his way out the door. Since his exodus, Jason has shown himself to be a productive and versatile musician’s musician, recording with Voivod, playing with Ozzy Osbourne, keeping his Echobrain project running and finding time to launch his eponymous solo project Newsted.” Jason Newsted has this solo thing going on and finally released the debut album. Steel Druhm gives you the lowdown as Lars and James download it illegally out of spite.