“It’s no use making fun of Gazpacho for the name. I did that once already and unfortunately they’re still named after a type of tomato soup. While this tomato soup isn’t cursed, it does contain MSG, which is about as close to ‘metal’ as one needs to get to be reviewed here at AMG.” The Angry Metal Guy himself drops in to wax not-particularly-eloquently about the Norwegian progressive band Gazpacho’s newest full length. Don’t miss this review.
“Are you sick and tired of getting your evil delivered to you in cold, icy, frost-bitten care packages from Norway? Does your black heart sink when there’s too much treble in your diet? Do you lack the strength to pick up those juicy invisible oranges you once craved? Sometimes, you just want Satan’s message to be delivered in a nice, toasty-warm basket with some fresh bread, a bottle of wine, and a couple of aromatic cigars.” And that’s where Hail Spirit Noir comes in. It’s time for a cozy brunch date with the Dark Lord.
Well, this is a bit of a surprise. I never heard of Bloody Hammers until I reviewed their self-titled debut in February, and now they’re back with a follow-up a mere seven months later! Talk about productivity! While I liked aspects of the debut and their Hour of 13 and Witchfinder General meets Danzig approach to retro “occult rock,” things felt a bit underwhelming as a whole and suffered from inconsistent songwriting.” With so little time between releases, is it realistic to expect big improvement on Spiritual Relics? Steel Druhm is here to prep your expectations accordingly.
I was surprised to see Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse show up on a record with The Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord—’cause I have no idea what the connection between these two is or has been. But seeing this combination—two people who come from pretty different worlds in my brain—I couldn’t give this a skip. And neither should you.
“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.
Neurosis has been called many things over their storied career, from sludge to shoegaze to post-rock. Alex is here to examine these labels as he reviews Honor Found in Decay. He’s a deep thinker, that Alex.
Explaining a group that calls themselves “Finnish psychedelic forest folk” is about as easy as completing the final course on Ninja Warrior whilst drunk on moonshine, but Steel Druhm gives it a go anyway. Assemble the trauma team!!
Finland’s penchant for downy frowny metal is pretty well known. Sporting doom, melodeath and atmospheric black metal acts the like of Swallow the Sun, Insomnium and October Falls and being known for long, dark, vodka-soaked, winters speckled with knife fights and rumors of sunlight somewhere south, it’s actually a surprise that Finland hasn’t produced a lot of more music consisting of both downies and frownies. Indeed, post-metallers The Chant are really the first in their particular idiom. What is their particular idiom, you ask? Well, you know, the kind of music you write when the sun hasn’t risen for a three months: depressive post-rock.
A few years back when Guilt Machine released, Arjen Lucassen (of—deep breath—Ayreon, Star One, Arjen Lucassen, Guilt Machine, Galexia, Stream of Passion, Vengeance, Ambeon and a myriad of other projects I probably don’t even know exist) is reported to have said that if he’d had to do it over again, Ayreon would have sounded like Guilt Machine. Whether that was just talk in the build up for a new record or not, it appears that to a certain extent he meant it, as his new Lost in the New Real sounds like the combination of the two projects. On the one hand, Lost in the New Real is a concept record and (faux) double album, featuring the dulcet tones of Rutger Hauer as narrator and “psychologist,” like one would expect from an Ayreon record. However, like Guilt Machine, the record features primarily only one vocalist (Arjen himself), and the music is largely a post-Pink Floyd progressive rock heavy with atmospherics and sweet, but melancholic, melodies. As a fan of Guilt Machine and not of Ayreon, I can say that I was curious to see how this sort of combination would work and I was pleasantly surprised.
You can take the dirty hippy out of metal, but you can’t take the metal out of the dirty hippy.
