“In honor of our esteemed Dr. A.N. Grier’s misplaced love for baseball (and the fact that the season has finally come to a merciful conclusion), I present a baseball analogy for Crippled Black Phoenix. CBP are like big-league sluggers: most of the time they strike out, but every few games they wallop one into the second deck of left field.” Swiiiiing, batter.
“Rest in hazy, gloomy peace, The Wounded Kings. A picture of a tombstone, a few words on Facebook, and we we’re left robbed of an illustrious specimen of progressive, psychedelic doom metal, condemned to finding solace in the five praiseworthy full-lengths and several smaller releases they recorded.” It’s with heavy hearts and a pocket full of doom that we wish The Wounded Kings farewell…
“It was on a tepid spring night that I witnessed, for the first time, the show put on by three mysterious French shamans going by the name of Aluk Todolo. A psychedelic, trance-inducing “krautblack” assault washed over the audience, permeating and shaking each molecule and atom of their beings. An unforgettable experience.” Darkness, beauty and brutality.
“Vibrant green fields, replete with young men and women frolicking with each other in their natural environment, adorned with flowers and flowing locks. Loose-fitting headbands and azure jeans which gently swell at the bottom. A world of love where acceptance is life, difference is disregarded and war is abhorrent. And drugs. A fucking shitload of drugs.” Get off my lawn, you hippies!
“Italian power trio Ufomammut, now with eight (or nine if you count collabs) studio releases under their belt, return to form once again playing their signature alloy of psychedelic space doom, sludge, and stoner…. Actually, we don’t really need a formal and formulaic intro when we’ve got an album of this magnitude at hand.” Big things are in the offing. Big, big things.
“Three years ago I found a little piece of time-travel magic when I stumbled upon A Forest of Stars and their third release, a whimsical offering that envelopes you like an opium haze, transporting you back to 1891, re-opening the imposing wooden doors to the gentleman’s club and recruiting you into their English Victorian brotherhood.” Metal’s version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is back to save the day. Are you worthy of admission to their club?
“Music that takes you places in your mind is a queer phenomenon. How the hell did the mind associate certain patterns of molecular vibrations in the air with such far-flung imagery as the cold depths of interstellar space and impossibly colorful dreamscapes in the first place anyway? To answer my own question because I’m solipsistic like that: unicorns. Also: invisible fairies sitting on your shoulders that are hosing liquid fairy dust into your ears. And oh, don’t forget about those psychic ants chewing and burrowing into your brain’s numerous ridges.” The staff at AMG apologies in advance for the cutesy-tootsy nature of this here review. We’ve tried nothing with Happy Metal Guy and nothing hasn’t worked. Anywho, read all about the unicorns and blackened doom from Finland.
