For anyone who’s still curious, here are my listening choices for the last three weeks. This will be the last of these posts. The whole list thing is too strict a format for proper discussion of music, so fuck it. Besides, I’ve got quite a nifty surprise up my sleeve to put the finishing touches to, so all you death metal-loving lurkers, keep an eye out for that.
Apologies for the minimal comment. I’m house-bound with a stupidly high fever and the world’s looking a little peculiar. Those albums that deserve a post of their own will be sure to get one eventually.
Week 2
All I’ll say is, if you’ve missed either the Craft or the Tenhi albums, both of which came out too late in 2011 to make any decent website’s end-of-year lists, you need to fix that now. The Tenhi is beautiful and terrifying, exactly the kind of music you might imagine from an album with that cover, and the Craft (like the last Taake) is proof that black metal can stay true to its form without any risk of stagnating.
Tenhi – Saivo
Craft – Void
Gigan – Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes
Bjork – Biophilia
Dark Angel – Darkness Descends
Obituary – Slowly We Rot
Hellveto – Zmierzch
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Week 3
The first of many weeks devoted to catching up on the great finds of my LURKER brethren. I’m pleased to be able to say that every one of these records is fantastic. Follow the links to read the original articles.
Terzij de Horde & Starve – A Chosen Hollow N.B. Both sides of this split are awesome, and complement each other admirably. Ignore Starve at your peril.
Saturnalia Temple – Aion of Drakon
Wildernessking – The Writing of Gods in the Sand
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Week 4
I spent most of this week at my parents house, without a working computer or mp3 player, and with only a CD player at my disposal. A delve through my old music collection turned up a few great surprises, though.
Merciless – The Awakening
Day Without Dawn – Understanding Consequences
The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute, Amputechture, The Bedlam in Goliath
Deep Purple – Shades of Deep Purple
King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King
Week 2
Tenhi – Saivo
Craft – Void
Gigan – Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes
Bjork – Biophilia
Dark Angel – Darkness Descends
Obituary – Slowly We Rot
Hellveto – Zmierzch
Week 3
Terzij de Horde & Starve – A Chosen Hollow
Asva – Presences of Absences
Saturnalia Temple – Aion of Drakon
Wildernessking – The Writing of Gods in the Sand
Demdike Stare – Elemental
Kayo Dot – Gamma Knife
Timeghoul – demos
Week 4
Merciless – The Awakening
Day Without Dawn – Understanding Consequences
The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute, Amputechture, the Bedlam in Goliath
Deep Purple – Shades of Deep Purple
King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King
4 comments
Pale King says:
Jan 29, 2012
Let’s see . . . Not sure how many weeks I’ve been at it but lately I’ve been jamming:
Ptahil’s For His Satanic Majesty’s Glory. Gets me pumped in the same way that like a Grand Magus record gets me pumped, – talking like fist-pumping, steering-wheel-pounding, in-my-girlfriend’s-face-pointing pumped – ‘cept it’s “black metal,” Ã la Beherit. So it’s got a whole other “side,” an underside, if you will, that furrows the brow and invokes hallucinations of a giant black cat recumbent in my passenger seat.
And I’ve also been really into that Saturnalia Temple record. It fills my head with a resounding, crunchy, being-stoned-like warmth that only bands like Electric Wizard are usually able to do. Gotta thank LP for introducing me to this record.
Got out my copy of Far Beyond Driven for the first time in about a year. What a great record to sort out hipsters and poseurs. If some newjack doesn’t throw the horns for Pantera, esp. “Unbroken,” he’s a disingenuous imposter. He doesn’t love metal, he just follows trends.
But holy shit!, have you guys heard WHITEHORSE’S Progression? I’ve never heard anything else by WHITEHORSE, but Progression is between diSEMBOWELMENT’s Transcendence . . . and, like, Beherit’s Drawing Down the Moon(again, I namedrop Beherit), with some extra groove for ladies with big butts. It’s a gnarly sounding record, too. The vocals, the guitar tones, the simplicity/catchiness. Definitely been one of my most listened to records lately.
Other than those, there’s also Low’s C’mon, and tons of DARKTHRONE and Wipers, as per usual.
And even though I bought Dodecahedron’s debut a few days ago, I haven’t heard the urge to listen to it very much yet. Honestly, I’d probably rather listen to Circumspices . . . or Paracletus. And I really don’t like Blut Aus Nord at all, – though I have tried – so all of their moments that are BAN-inspired are really lost on me. But maybe it’ll click after a few more listens.
Richard says:
Jan 29, 2012
You don’t like Blut Aus Nord either? Weird! You have great taste from what I can tell but some horrendous blindspots too.
King Pall says:
Jan 30, 2012
It’s not that I dislike them, like in italics dislike them, I’d just almost always rather listen to something else. There’s never a time when I’m in the mood for their particular style of BM, which I think is a style entirely exclusive to BAN. So I don’t know about a blindspot, per se. They’re just the stripper I ignore and go and order another beer and watch the previous stripper listlessly dance in the “Make Me an Offer” cage. I’m thoroughly aware of their existence and have listened to a lot of their catalog, e.g. the presently available two-thirds of this little triptych thing they’re doing, the one with the hilariously conceited title and The Vitruvian Man on the front. And one other older one, “Dads of the Ice Age” or something. As far as my having great taste, I thank you for saying so and shoot it right back @ ya. However, I do not have refined tastes. One can probably infer that from my posts. And this is something all of my friends are aware of, also. They know how much I love bad TV – talking like Two & Half Men, Two Broke Girls, The New Girl, Glee, Modern Family, etc. I love bad movies, too, and not like trendy B-horror flicks. Like bad, big Hollywood movies. (Watch Limitless!) And that’s all because I like things that tread that very thin line between true irony and self-awareness. In short, I don’t like bands that take themselves too seriously. And when they do, they either have to a.) be completely guileless and unawares and still awesome e.g. Immortal, Inquisition, Amon Amarth, hell most metal bands, or they have to b.) totally fucking rule and kill my senses and make me tangent with the “other” dimension e.g. Agalloch, Deathspell Omega. To me, and I already and will continue to occasionally challenge this opinion of mine, BAN takes their shit too seriously without the payout that I find necessary for such stoic semantics.
SQ. says:
Jan 29, 2012
Progression is very good indeed.