(In this post DGR begins a sequence of seven reviews, which we will do our best to post on seven consecutive days, catching up with albums from earlier in the year that we didn’t fully cover. And to begin we have Black Crown Initiate‘s latest album, released in August by Century Media.)

We’re nearing the end of the year, which means you’ve inevitably seen the occasional author musing to themselves about starting to work on their year-end lists. In fact, I’ve already seen a couple of prospective ones myself, which isn’t weird at all considering it’s still March. But there’s always been something of a compulsion of mine where I feel like if I don’t cover everything I’ve listened to this year then I’m short-changing the bands, even if a disc may have hit way early on in the year, and as far as the internet is concerned may as well have been released in the Cretaceous period.

In some cases it’s fine because that means that there can be some half-hearted attempts at brevity in these write-ups, but man if it doesn’t feel a bit like panicking right before the end of the year, especially while keeping in mind there’s still a few handfuls of releases still heading towards us in the October/November months. I generally try to avoid bringing a personal “I” into the mix when writing for that reason, because honestly, few care about the personal adventures of some dork with a laptop on the west coast; in that way, I try to keep things focused on how the album may play out to the listener while keeping my own adventures fairly light throughout.

It doesn’t really work that way when you write like this though. Instead, it becomes incredibly personal due to just how candid the reviews wind up feeling. Imagine laying your arm across a desk and just sweeping everything off it and you’ll have a mental image of what doing one of these collections can feel like. It’s reckless as hell and shit goes flying everywhere, but wow, look at how clear that desk is now. It is surprisingly freeing.

Thus we make a run at clearing out much of the backlog, some releases I’m surprised haven’t gotten more coverage around here and others matters of curiosity. A few of these are later discoveries and others I’d guess fall squarely into the DGR corner of the NCS virtual office and nowhere else. It’s like a weight is being lifted off my shoulders already.

So long as we ignore the blank ‘potential year-ender list’ file that is currently parked dead center on my desktop. Continue reading »