“Heads up, Angry Metal Explorers! Today we’re taking a magic carpet ride to a whole not-so-new world, a faraway place where the caravan camels roam. We’re going (going, back back) to Israel. Israel. Not exactly a land lauded for its black metal scene, but here we are, gathering our courage to sneak a glimpse at a trve monster born of death metal dreams in blackened Arabian nights.” Jinn and juice.
“Iron Bonehead doesn’t do nice. With more goats in their stable than a petting zoo, their outfits strive for all things nasty, brutish, and Satanic. What’s a poser to do when confronted with such trveness? Worm couldn’t care less. In their mind, it’s still 1994: if your metal doesn’t sound like it was recorded on tape strung through Satan’s butt crack, no dinner and 666 lashes for you, buster brown.” Butt crack blackness rides again.
King Parrot make grindcore great again. At least that’s what I thought after first hearing the Australian quintet’s 2012 debut Bite Your Head Off, which bucked genre norms by fusing groovy aggression with honest-to-God vocal hooks and a “hip slumdog” attitude. In my review of 2015 follow-up Dead Set I referred to the band as the “Die Antwoord of grindcore,” and that remains one of my favorite analogies I’ve made at AMG to this day.” King for a day, grind for 12 minutes.
“‘I am convinced,’ Nietzche wrote, ‘that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life.’ Though he wrote this in a preface to his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, he was certainly not referring only to the written word — an art that few can claim more ownership of than him. That preface was written by none other than Richard Wagner, and though Nietzche would sour on him later in life, this profound appreciation for art in a broad sense would not end. The love of aesthetic creation, the belief in its power to affect the heart and erode human differences, is the very core of In Contact, a starry-skied series of extended vignettes on love and revolution, passion and loss, fragility and courage, rain-soaked in the joy of creation.” Creationism ascendant.
“I spent the summer searching and searching for the next great retro album. I never found it. In fact, all year I’ve only found a half-dozen albums I’ve really liked (as in a 3.5 or higher), and none of those since June. That’s piss-poor and depressing. It’s like owning a black and white television. Well, I’m hoping to upgrade to a color TV eventually this year, so what better time to start looking than right now?” Baby bible steps.
“I have to admit, I’d never heard of Syn Ze Șase Tri before I grabbed their 2017 release Zăul moș. For six years these Romanian black metallers have been roaming the earth without my knowledge—dropping their unique brand of symphonic black/death on the planet. Though these Transylvanians hail from the same hometown as Negură Bunget, things are done differently. Both bands have their folky songwriting and both have their native mythologies and concepts, but Syn Ze Șase Tri focuses on bigness.” Transylvania? Symphonic black metal? Big? Just in time for Halloween.
“Horrified is in a bit of an odd place. Parallels to Philadelphia death outfit Horrendous are apt, with Horrified’s first two albums delivering exactly the slabs of modernized Swedeath you might expect. Though 2016’s magnificent Of Despair put the band on the map, Horrified mastermind Dan Alderson himself immediately touted their next album as ‘something with an even larger and dynamic range of influences… more original and diverse than the material presented on Of Despair.'” Big words. Big album.
“Everyone has a unique reviewing method when it comes to writing about an album. Sometimes, the words come to me almost immediately, whether in praise or in condemnation. Other times, finding the right words or comparisons takes a while. In other words, I went back-and-forth with where to go with this review of The Apostate of Light, the debut album by Euro-American black metal collective, Oculus.” Word-defying black metal.
“A quick search of Neurosis on our wonderful website is quite revealing: of the first twenty reviews or mentions of those elder statesmen, Yours Truly is responsible for five of the links – more than any other reviewer. That means either I love that band more than other AMG thralls, or I dislike them the least. Which is interesting to me, as I’m certainly not the one here that’s into the heaviest music, for I am olde, and my ears are tender (when they aren’t ringing). So here I go again, getting suckered into a review where Neurosis, Helmet, and Isis are listed as similar acts.” Dead is as Neurosis does.
“For years, I thought something was wrong with me when I got in the mood for some simple, catchy rock/groove. I mean, there is something wrong with me when I get the urge to listen to Volbeat over Mercyful Fate. But, sometimes, one needs a palette cleansing. And that’s exactly why I feel no guilt when listening to bands like Darkhaus, Ghoultown, A Life Divided, and Diablo Blvd. Week after week of listening to constant doom, black, heavy, thrash (and everything between) can make your brain mush. Not to mention, trying to find the words for the couple selected for review while meeting writing deadlines for a textbook, teaching classes, etc. So, detoxing is necessary.” Cleanse my wounded palette.
