We get our fair share of e-mails every day from record label representatives and PR folks. The most intriguing ones are those offering promo’s of new albums for review purposes, especially albums from bands whose music I don’t know anything about. I wish I had time to download and listen to everything that comes our way, but I don’t. So I can’t help but be influenced by what the e-mails say about the music, and how they say it. There’s an art to doing it well.
Some of the most effective pitches we get come from Earsplit PR, an outfit run by Liz Ciavarella-Brenner and Dave Brenner. They represent an extraordinary range of metal bands and labels, and they seem to have a chameleon-like ability to adapt their prose to each band’s music. Liz, in particular, seems to have my number, maybe because the e-mails I get from her trend more toward the very nasty end of the metal spectrum that I like best (and yes, I know she’s not writing these messages for me alone, though sometimes it seems that way). Now, I don’t know who wrote this message I got yesterday, because this one wasn’t specifically signed by Liz or Dave, but shit . . . you have to read this:
“ARCHGOAT’s new mini-album Heavenly Vulva (Christ’s Last Rites) goes straight for the throat of the self-proclaimed messiah and his wretched mother. Featuring six trademark God-slaying tracks torn directly from the Virgin’s violated womb, this brand new EP is gloriously crude, divinely tumultuous and deliciously deviant, as we have come to expect from the filthy, fearless Finn black crusaders. Defiled, invasive unsanctified black/death delivered in a corrupt, vile and demonic fashion, these anti-epiphanies embed themselves in the sacred flesh, spilling blood from the demised dog’s quivering body, funeral bells chiming as paradise is ransacked and the deceptive lie of centuries is exposed. Pounding, ripping, gurgling and mocking, the truth reveals itself. Blood-soaked, battered and humiliated, the deposed former denizens of Heaven cower in a corner. A frantic, blasphemous onslaught on the blind, deluded fraud-worshippers and knee-bending whoremongers who follow the path of the Liar!
The band is not available for interviews.”
(more after the jump . . .)
Fuck. If I could write like that, I’d kiss my day job good-bye and just . . . write. I especially like the touch at the end: “The band is not available for interviews.” Underlined. And italicized. You have to understand the context: Every day we get appeals to interview bands. Emphasizing that this band is NOT available for interviews is a strikingly clever way of telling you, as if you couldn’t figure it out from what came before, that this band is deep underground and KVLT with a capital V, i.e., they don’t give a rat’s puckered ass whether you pay attention to them or not. Except their label has hired Earsplit PR.
Well, if you have figured out anything at all about me, you’ll know I bit hard on this lure. I downloaded that 6-track Archgoat EP before I could take another breath. Not because I have a hard-on for music that captures the violation of the Virgin’s womb, mind you — though I did get a big smile from the album’s name — but because that write-up made me SO FUCKING CURIOUS.
And so here we are, less than 24 hours later, me having shoved aside all else I had planned to do for NCS today and instead writing about an album I didn’t know existed and didn’t care about until yesterday afternoon. I’m tempted just to say, read what Earsplit PR wrote, because it’s pretty much all true. But to justify my own existence as something more than a conduit for very well-written PR pieces, I’ll say a few words more.
The music is deceptively simple, pared to the bone, downtuned to coal-mine levels of downwardness, and as filthy as a cesspool on a heavy-flow day. It’s devoted to the creation of atmosphere, an atmosphere of occult malevolence, a human attempt at capturing a myth of inhuman malignancy, and it pulls it off pretty well. The shit is so dank that I’m sure a thick carpet of mold is now growing in my ear canals. It’s a style of black metal I don’t think I’ve heard before; there may not be a tremolo riff or a blast beat on the whole record — but it’s still plenty black.
And as for funeral bells, special mention should be made of “Day of Clouds”, which includes one of the most effective use of them since the intro to “Hell’s Bells”.
I suspect what will make or break this EP for most listeners will be the vocals. They’re the kind of sub-bass frog-croacking that I’m used to hearing in brutal death metal, but this frog sounds like something long, thick, and pulsating has been shoved so far down its throat that it’s coming out the other end of the intestinal tract. Vocal variety is not on the menu, unless you count the cries of a young woman in the throes of orgasm at the beginning of “Penetrator of the Second Temple”, which sounds disturbingly bereft of joy.
One song has been made publicly available for streaming on the label’s website, so I don’t think I’m violating the rules by repeating it here. This is “Blessed Vulva”:
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/02.-Blessed-Vulva.mp3|titles=Archgoat-Blessed Vulva]The EP will be released by Debemur Morti on November 1Â and can be pre-ordered HERE. Archgoat’s official site is at this location.
I remember finding out about Archgoat a couple years ago in college, but they fell under the category of “too kvlt for me to find and get ahold of” I NOW HAVE THE POWER AHHAHAHAH. Thank you, Islander.
Although the kvlt-ness is kind of…ruined isn’t the right word, and neither is tainted… altered somewhat when I read descriptions like “TRACKS TORN DIRECTLY FROM THE VIRGIN’S VIOLATED WOMB” and then realize that they have a label and PR people and a website where they hawk their merch just like any other band. Not to belittle Archgoat; I liked them a lot when I heard them in college and I like the new song, and that’s also applicable to any tr00 kvlt band (Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult comes to mind). It’s just a little difficult to lose yourself in the full experience (to me, when it comes to black metal, part of that experience is the supposed beliefs of the band) when you think about the fact that when you get right down to it, they’re just dudes with instruments making music.
Also, it must be the day for blacker than blackness, because I got the coffee fuckin’ RIGHT this morning.
I’m making my coffee now, so black and thick that the spoon will stand up in it. It will be pounding, ripping, gurgling, and mocking.
Archgoat are still plugging away after all these years and are still as god awful as they were 20 years ago. LOL
Bwahahahahahah!
Wow, that was…chunky.
As in peanut butter, or bowel movement?
The two are not mutually exclusive.
My parents hate this sort of stuff.
All parents hate this sort of stuff. And many of their children do, too. 🙂
I’m a father, so consider me in that club 🙂
Damn it! And I thought I was a parent! Fuckin’ mail-man cocksucker…..
Maybe we’ve just discovered a better way than DNA testing to determine biological parenthood!
Also, the name of this album makes me laugh and think of Seinfeld. You know the girl Jerry dates who’s name rhymes with a female body part. Mulva ?
LOL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1g5iPdwTL4
From the news on May 12, 2011: “On Wednesday, ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva outraged many on Capitol Hill when he released a statement calling it “un-American” to end subsidies to the Big 5 oil companies ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.”
These guys sure lay it on thick, don’t they? XD
Definitely interesting combination of sounds and styles. It’s like, grindy 80s death, meets some sort of black n roll. And guttural frog vocals. When I read frog vox in your article I was thinking maybe in the vein of Inquisition, but no, it was even sillier. Pretty sure he was giving that mic a blowjob. I could see myself blasting this in my car, annoying everyone in ear shot, lol.
Y’know, I could see myself doing that, too. It’s just so fucking ill. It wouldn’t be as annoying as blasting the new song from Wold that I just heard this morning, but I think it would serve the purpose nicely.
Ah…screwing with the NorPs is like shooting fish in a barrel. You can blast Amon Amarth and get the same result.
Now wearing a t-shirt with Marduks “Fuck me Jesus” on it while walking through the tourist area of Baltimore…thats funny
🙂
As somebody who has an extreme hatred of frogs, the vocals were a definite turn-off. I listened to about 20 seconds before I had to turn it off. Not my thing.
I do love the album title and art.
Archgoat are Finnish? Did I know that and forget it, or did I not know it at all? Weird.
But anyway, Archgoat are one of the bands I’ve been trying to get into, among other Finnish black metal bands such as Sargeist and Horna. All three of these bands are also appearing at MDFX along with Black Witchery, which has me excited.
you going as well?
I reeeeeeeallllyyy hope so. I’ll need to get a job what with 4 days costing like $180, then you have to add in gas, hotel, food ‘n’ drink, and money for any merch/music I want to buy while I’m there… that’s a lot of money lol.
Heres where my buddies from out of town saty….the price is pretty decent from what they tell me
http://www.countryinns.com/webExtra.do? … e=MDBALNOR
Its about 15 minutes outside of Baltimore
I’m using really shitty cell phone speakers, but I quite like it. I also like goregrind, so…take that as you will.