“I still remember the first time I really sat down with a Tom Waits album. When that day came, the album was The Black Rider. And, as one would expect, I thought it was the most-metal, non-metal album I’d ever heard. After that, and still to this day, ole Tom gets more than a few spins per month in the Grier household. Waits gets so much love here that he even has a portrait in the living room and a neat stack of vinyl in the corner. I mean, how can you hate Tom Waits?” Tom Waits for no man.
The world became a much darker place in 2009 when UK doom upstarts Warning disbanded after only two albums. When word got out that guitarist and vocalist Patrick Walker would form a new project called 40 Watt Sun with fellow Warning bandmate Christian Leitch, doomsters the world over panted with anticipation. What many people hoped would be a continuation of the morose path constructed by Warning’s farewell album, 2006’s criminally underrated Watching from a Distance, instead were met with softer, but no less intense, waters with The Inside Room. Five years and several label woes later, the band returns with their self-released second album, Wider than the Sky.” Watch the skies (from a distance).
“One of the best aspects of writing for Angry Metal Guy Inc. Ltd. Turbo Hyper-Fighting Edition, besides the scenic view of the cemetery right outside the window of my broom closet/office, is the chance to review something challenging and different. Texas one-man black metal act Goatcraft definitely fits the bill as both. Yes, we review a crap-ton of one-man (or woman) black metal here, but I don’t recall us ever reviewing an album that’s strictly piano.” One man, one keyboard…all blackness.
“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!
“Call me Diabolus. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – I granted the privateers in Alestorm a Letter of Marque and they went on to capture The Good Ship TYMHM and raise the Jolly Roger high over the AMG Staff’s Top Ten Lists. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating circulation. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I simply drink away the accursed rain. Alas, my initial deed could not go unaddressed forever; I was ordered to write about The Dread Crew of Oddwood’s Lawful Evil.” Keel haul em’ all.
“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?
![Refused – Freedom [Things You Might Have Missed 2015]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/a1885858130_10-768x768.jpg)
“If you don’t know who Refused are, or that they’re (along with Born Against) Fucking Dead, you must be so young that you missed the phase in the early 2000s where every two-bit nü-metal act on the planet was citing their final record as a major influence (for the masochists among you here is a reminder of just how bad this era was). You young rapscallions are perfectly capable of using AltaVista yourselves so I’ll spare you the history lesson; all you need for the moment is that the band split in 1998, and few ever expected them to return.” But honestly, what old guy can pass up reliving their wasted youth?
“Replace Steel Panther’s cut-rate comedy with a quintet of Torontonians who seem to actually love the ridiculous hard rock of old and, for better or for worse, you end up with Diemonds .” Female fronted cock rock? That seems wrong.
“Sweden’s Draugurinn is the dark ambient personification of one-woman-band, Dísa Á. Even though she didn’t make a blip on my metal detector until recently, that hasn’t been for a lack of effort on her part. With both Draugurinn and her black metal persona, Turdus Merula, she’s been releasing quite the number of full-lengths since 2010.” Well, this is certainly dark and unhappy!
“Drunk drivers fucking suck. On January 23, 1997, Acid Bath bassist Audie Pitre and his parents were killed by one who blew through a stop sign, ending one of the most creative sludge bands in the history of metal music, let alone in the New Orleans, Louisiana music scene. On a more personal note, it also ending one of my all-time favorite bands.” But at least there was a small silver lining.
