“So Hideous occupy an interesting niche for me. As a post-black group with orchestral flourishes, their sound is unique enough to stand out in an over-saturated genre, but it’s never been compelling enough to make me a fan.” New York City continues to pump out some interesting variants on black metal. Must be something in the hot dogs.
“If Deafheaven makes you mad, you’re doing it wrong. The essence of the band’s appeal isn’t found in their physical manifestation, nor the influences they’ve mined and reshaped for themselves. Even the passages of their music that seem to trigger minute-by-minute breakdowns from the commentariat don’t tell the whole story.” And here’s the rest of the story.
“Longtime readers will recall that Kronos does not like Deafheaven. I suspect nobody does, since I see copies of Sunbather in every record shop I enter, meaning that despite the hype, that vinyl is not getting to consumers. And while I’ll continuously bash the band for being, as it has been said, “The Cure with blastbeats,” on some level I have respect for them trying something different, since Satan himself got fed up with Emperor-worship a decade ago. Is the staff of AMG wired into all the ironic mini-trends of the metal world? Is the Pope wearing a Mayhem shirt?
“I have a penchant for picking bands based on their names alone lately. For the most part, doing so has yielded some pretty damn good results. So when the Grymm Grab Bag™ belched forth The Camel, The Lion, The Child, the debut full-length from Seattle’s He Whose Ox Is Gored, you can say that I was a bit nervous. Long band name? Check. Nietzsche-inspired album title? Check. The sound labeled as “progressive doom”? Check.” Progressive doom is progressive… and doomy.
“Listening to Seagrave begets the age-old question: is it better to try something new and fall short, or rehash the same bullshit until we’re all shitting bowls of Iommi riffs and bleeding ‘retro-death metal’ CDs from every orifice?” If your orifices bleed retro-death for more than 4 hours, consult a physician.
“Three consecutive releases reviewed by three different writers on AMG? This must be unheard of. Carving a little niche as one of the better and more evocative offshoots from the much-maligned ‘blackga(y)ze’ genre, An Autumn for Crippled Children have produced their fifth full-length in the beautifully desolate The Long Goodbye.” Many an AMG writer has tried his hand at figuring these cats out. They’re all gone now….
“Intensity and drama unify my musical palette. As unalike as Count Bassie and Ulcerate are, they’re both able to serve up a shitton of excitement, albeit in quite different ways. But the differences between dramatic genres are still immense, which makes a Mono record quite the refresher in between this year’s big tech-death releases.” Here’s something a little bit different.
“A one-man black metal army of darkness – yes, like you I’m already cringing at the thought of spending a week or, God forbid, longer being tormented by fuzzed-out direction-less blackened murk! Somewhere in the midst of releasing their range of splits, EPs and their full-length (Worshipping Times of Old), German band Infestus switched from being a force of three, to being left to the power of one.” Madam X takes on the dank, dark depression of one-man project Infestus, will she end up cut up, depressed and alone? Read on and find out!
“An odd album crept its way onto the Angry Metal promo list in this past month, one that while plenty dark, is far removed from metal, and despite all it’s heavily worded promise, as wholly lacking in anger as I’ve come across in a while. At its most basic, it appears the band couldn’t come up with a decent band name and so took the easy way out, calling themselves Nothing…” Madam X has reviewed nothing lately and frankly, we expected more from her. That said, here goes Nothing.
“I can’t say I went into this album with much faith considering both Infinity and Ascension, Jesu’s previous two albums, seemed so lopsided and emotionally detached. But fear not, Justin Broadrick, seems to have found his voice again. It might not be all that striking or eventful, but it perfectly encapsulates every musical avenue his Jesu project has travelled in a subtle and concise package that delivers an interesting and touching listen and makes the mouthful, Everyday I Get Closer to the Light from Which I Came, one of his strongest releases yet.” Everyone remembers Mr. Broadrick from his Godflesh days, but how is this whole Jesu thing working out for him?
