Not Metal

Mastodon

Crack The Skye

I love Mastodon’s music, ever since I picked up Remission after seeing a dude’s t-shirt with the “horsesplosion” art. I’ve dug what they do. But…

I wasn’t excited about this album at all before it came out. Maybe I’d listened to Blood Mountain a little too much, maybe because I hadn’t been listening to nearly as much metal as I had over the last two and a half years, or maybe it was because Brendan O’Brian was involved. Whatever it may have been, this album was hanging out in the “I’ll get to it whenever, its on the list, but its not a priority” zone and it was not moving off it anytime soon.

Then the rumors about the album being about Rasputin and some other shit and the album went onto the “God I hope this doesn’t turn into a Mars Volta thing” list. The only other album on the list is the next Mars Volta album. And that list is well below the list in the above paragraph.

Then the album art came out. All I saw at the time was “Tonight! At the Planetarium! Lazer Metal!” It wasn’t as iconic as the previous records and I wasn’t pleased. I know what I liked, and I liked old Mastodon. I feared the worst. My shrunken penis was conferring with an underused mattress and they feared the worst.
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Not lolcats. Just The Cat’s Pajamas

This will be hotter than emo crunk.

I don’t know if I “get” this band. Their schtick is kind of cool? “Putting the gay into metal.” Hah hah? What?

Somewhat unique I suppose. I honestly liked their self-titled EP. The spacey atmosphere they melded into the songs were my favorite parts. I distinctly remember playing the EP on repeat for about 50 times a day for a week. But, that love interest lasted no longer than that single week. Since then, I’ve forgotten they even were making a full length until I saw the post today on metalsucks.

If you ask me, if they keep up the nintendo-roboto keys and Evanescence-esque clean vokills, this band will have multiple t-shirts at your local hot topic with a fan base of mall core kids buying their merch within the weeks following the release of this new album. Not to mention they have the strength of a major label like Century Media backing it up.

Check out the new song streaming here if you care.

Epically epicocous!

Big smelly fucking dudes with no shirts!

Where: The Metro, Chicago IL.

Oh, and one other stereotypical metal head: big fucking dude with a big fucking beard.They were abundant in the crowd on the main floor where at times I was crammed between “them” on the front line of the pit and one obese sweaty fuck garbed in complete White Sox gear. Strangely, the Sox had not played that day.

The Metro was the perfect venue for this show. There are others like it in Chicago, but this small cramped vintage hall is about 4 blocks down the street from my apartment. So that’s really why.

Intronaut opened up the show. They were very very very heavy. I’m pretty sure they fall in the “NeurIsis” camp. Which some people hate. But, honestly the riffing reminded me more of Meshuggah or Dillinger when they’re trying to be melodic and not spaz. Regardless, I found myself read more »

Sunday I went and saw Paganfest, which is a gathering of folk metal bands.

When I first entered the venue I was greeted by some asshole in a tricornered hat. Come to find out this was the drummer for Swashbuckle. More on them later.

First up was the opening act which was some local band that had won a battle of the bands. They were called Burning Shadows. They were pretty good power/thrash folk.

Next was Swashbuckle. They dress in full pirate gear, puffy shirts and all. They were a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect much from these guys but they kicked ass. No folk metal sound really, just pirate thrash with a hint of grind. The singer also implores the audience to “put their hooks in the air” and “screw their peg legs on tight”.  It was corny but they kick ass so I can get past their stage persona.

Third up was Blackguard. They were ok; I didn’t get into them too much. I like their recorded music better than them live, though the singer is charismatic and has a good stage presence.

Next was Moonsorrow whom I really enjoyed. They were a good change of pace. They are folky and thrashy but a bit slower, doomy in some instances.

Then came Primordial. These guys were a huge letdown. Just plain sucked. The singer is annoying; he really gets off on controlling the audience, having them in the palm of his hand, ordering them around. Many frontmen do this but this guy was all about it. Their whole set was him trying to get the audience to do shit (wave hands, clap, pump fists, sing along to his retard lyrics) and the band sucking.

Finally was Korpiklaani. Man, they kicked ass.  Folk metal on a higher level. And they don’t rely mainly on keyboards in live situations to obtain folk instrument sounds; they had a fiddler and an accordion player. Very fierce.

Constitutional Masturbation

Sounds sexy.

I gotta be honest and say I’ve never actually heard anything by this band. Never really cared that much. This is mostly due to their “so funny I forgot to laugh ironic but not really and just comes across as stupid”, band name. First impressions are a bitch. And these guys sounds like a combination of Cattle Decapitation and The Black Dahlia Murder. Two bands who, in my opinion, get the job done better (no pun intended). So why waste time on another marginal “death metal” band? Well, this song gets me with the slower riffing. I dig the brutal…slow…grind stuff the most in this song. Though, after that there isn’t much else that you probably haven’t heard already from 1000 other bands.

If you care to hear, do so before the video is removed for violating copyright laws or some shit.

UPDATE 5-2-09 – You’re shit out of luck. The song has been taken down. You’ll have to wait until the record leaks to download it.

As dark as the inside of your colon

Darker than that still.

Have you ever wanted to drink pure alcoholic black sludge from the darkest pits of hell? Well if you weren’t in Muenster, Indiana on Saturday, there is a good chance you won’t get to this year. Saturday, April 26th was the annual 3 Floyd’s Dark Lord Day. It’s the one day of the year that you can buy this sinister beverage.

As expected, there were thousand upon thousands of over anxious beer snobs sitting in lawn chairs with coolers filled with beer that probably cost more than a week’s worth of food.

We arrived around 11:30 am and realized that it was way too late if you ever wanted to even capture a glimpse of the delicious motor oil. We hiked to the back of the line (which was in a different parking lot) and immediately said “fuck that!” Most people were just standing in unmarked lines perfectly content with not moving.

My party went right into the mess and found that there were 4 or 5 different lines for 4 or 5 different things but no one knew what these lines we really for. Luckily we were able to get into a short line and sample the liquid sin. It was thick, and sweet, and delicious, and BLACK. Very Very Black. It was well worth fighting the crowd.

After that little spot of luck, we were able to “squeeze” into the line to buy actual bottles of the bottled darkness. Once we purchased the maximum allotment of dark lord, we were guided right into another part of the chaos where we found out we could taste and buy popskull. Once we escaped the madness, me and my fellow beer junkie agreed that the popskull was a superior beer. It was light and hoppy yet was a dark refreshing beer.

Moral of the story – Fuck morals and get beer anyway possible.

Brutal Truth

Evolution Through Revolution

Things are going by in a million mile/hr. blur right now. I just listened to the new Brutal Truth and have no recollection of what the fuck just happened. It’s as if I opened up a portal to the future and that portal to the future just happened to be Brutal Truth playing a grind opus to me backwards in time into my brain piece which fast forwarded me 30 min or so in parallel and left me feeling awkwardly great about my life wasting away in front of a computer screen…

I have not heard anything this technically fast and brutal in a long time. Anyone who knows Brutal Truth that has had their previous records on rotation once in awhile and gotten something out of it will know what to expect. A band like this “returning” to their grind roots and making a new record should be enough of a sign to know to expect something good.
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Agoraphobic Nosebleed

Agorapocalypse

Right now, I have my Sony stereo headphones on with the new ANB cranked and spinning it’s whirlwind grind-storm into my poor brain. After giving an initial review the day before its official release I decided this album had to be in my collection. For those of us that are into vinyl, do check out the double gatefold verion of this from Relapse.

The cover artwork is stunning in a larger format. It’s done by the same artist, Florian Bertmer, who did the visuals for the latest 16 record. It is a perfect supplement to the music as it describes the tone of the record; a claustrophobic porno-drug-crazed-grind mind fuck.
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Wow they sound like an actual band now!

So awesome it’ll get two reviews

Before you go any further with reading click this and start streaming it in its entirety!

I gave this a one off listen today while designing the interwebs at my day job. Needless to say it was difficult not to look like a fucking idiot sitting at my desk banging my head at breakneck speed to the thirteen powerfully awesome grind jams that ripped through my phones. Scott Hull is all over the place with the riffs, and they are big, the are MEATY, they are fast, they are sludgey. They are slam-your-face-to-the-pavement-and-stomp-your-fucking-teeth-out heavy-awesome (we are copyrighting “heavy-awesome”). Look out for a proper review in the coming week or so! Go buy this now!
“Dick To Mouth Resuscitation”…fucking stellar!
Agoraphobic Nosebleed – “Agorapocalypse” full album stream!

Nachtmystium

Assassins: Black Meddle, Pt. 1

Getting started is always the hard part, so lets just get the obvious point out of the way. In the world of black metal there are two camps: Tr00 and False. Both have its advantages and drawbacks. Tr00 wins with its unspoiled artistic vision and the fun some have in collecting the extremely limited runs that it is produced in but fails in shitty production and general stagnation that’s been going on for some time. False pretty much flips the tables on Tr00 but also brings with it women in bondage gear at concerts for better or worse. (and dudes in vinyl raver pants, which is never ever good).

This record is neither Tr00 nor False. This record is well beyond that argument or scene even. This record brings something else to the table altogether. Where your typical BM record invokes visions of bleak snow covered castles, eternal torture in hell, or uh, Satan doing his thing. This record makes me think of the gulf coast; the heat, the drugs, the king bastard that is the ocean, or the power of rural poverty. The storm that either destroys one or gives one a second chance on “Ghosts of Grace”, the closing three song suite “Seasick”, and the horn/flamenco guitar section halfway through said suite all bring me back to the darker side of life in the deep sweaty South. When I first heard “Ghosts of Grace” all I could think of was Lieutenant Dan yelling at God in the thunderstorm scene from Forrest Gump; not a brutal scene in the typical sense of the word, but this isn’t a traditionally brutal album either. Sonically, this record isn’t that far off from Instinct/Decay besides three obvious things:

1. The production is better. By this I mean that the drums sound clearer (1.5 – Tony Laureano’s drum work fits perfectly here) and the solo’s are more prominent.
2. The obvious influence of classic/psych rock. The title and clever song title in ‘One of These Nights’ aside, the record brings in instruments that don’t really come into modern metal outside of those genres. The horn part, not meaning to harp on this too much but it really is awesome, made me think of “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty almost instantly and I didn’t want to slam the mute button when I heard it either! I was too impressed with this thought and that I was enjoying it to do anything besides sit back and smile like a moron.
3. There is a “spaciness” in the sound and pacing of this album that is missing from almost all BM records. Where others focus on overbearing or claustrophobic aural elements, this record allows the listener to fully take in the surroundings and enjoy them.

The best way to explain this would be to describe this as Instinct/Decay v. 10.0. There hasn’t been a drastic overhaul in any one part, but improvements across the board that make for a better record. It’s the minor nuances of this record that lead for such a traumatic/dramatic change in how it gets processed, and it really is breathtaking.

Bottom Line: Like the NES vs the SNES; this isn’t a black metal record. It’s a Super Black Metal record.

~ Chili Bowl Soul Vortex
Opinions are like assholes,
But mine is special,
It can shoot blood out of it.