NO CLEAN SINGING

“METALHEAD”: AN ANALYSIS OF MEDIA CULTURE CLASH

Dec 152015

(This post is by Grant Skelton, and he will explain what it’s about.)

After several years, I’m finally back in school finishing out a Bachelor’s. This was an essay I wrote for a journalism class called “Mass Media & Cultures.” In a nutshell, the course covered communication of news messages between (or about) different cultures and how those messages are framed.

My assignment for this essay was to “select a commercial movie that deals with either a culture clash or attempts to depict another culture and discuss the effect this film and its message might have on an average adult viewer.”

I chose the 2013 Icelandic film Metalhead, directed by Ragnar Bragason. One of the class textbooks I refer to is Jaap van Ginnekin’s Understanding Global News: A Critical Introduction. I include these details just to provide some context for the assignment. I really enjoyed writing this paper, because metal culture is still largely misunderstood by the public at large. Most of that misunderstanding has been informed by media platforms that frame heavy metal culture as something that is an antagonistic, subversive art form that directly contributes to acts of violence. But that’s a topic for another day.

A fair warning, this essay does contain some spoilers about Metalhead. It isn’t my intention to ruin the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but the paper would have been impossible to write without revealing some of the elements of the film’s plot. You can rent “Metalhead” on Amazon for $3.99. The DVD looks to be about $13. I haven’t seen it on Netflix or Hulu.

And now for the essay. Continue reading »

2015 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GOOD ALBUMS

LISTMANIA 2015 20 Responses »

Dec 152015

(This is the second of Andy Synn’s 5-part year-end series this week. To see his list of the “Great Albums” of 2015, go here.)

Now, depending on how you interpret it, I realise that the word “Good” can be a bit of a… loaded term.

On the one hand it can be entirely positive. “This is really good!” and so forth… and on the other it can be used in a much more grudging manner. “This is good enough, I suppose”.

So rejoice my friends, because the majority of the albums on this list definitely fall into the “Really good!” category, and many of them just missed out on getting on the “Great” list by the skin of their teeth. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: RIPPER, RIPPING DEATH, BRUTALITY, TEMPLE BELOW, GOAT CAROLS

Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 14 Responses »

Dec 142015

You may have noticed that we’re now hip-deep in year-end LISTMANIA, and that tide will continue to rise from now into the New Year. This means that we won’t have quite as many new-music round-ups as we usually do, but I’m still going to try to squeeze a few in as time permits — including this one…

… which includes lots of eye-catching artwork as well as ear-catching music, but not many of my usual descriptions (because I’m hurrying).

RIPPER

The Chilean band Ripper turned a lot of heads last year (including mine, wherever I left it) with their debut album Raising the Corpse, and now they’ve got a new one on the way named Experiment of Existence. The advance track from the album that premiered today is a superior ass-kicker. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: YEAR-END LISTS FROM EXCLAIM!, APPLE MUSIC, AND ANTI-GRAVITY BUNNY

LISTMANIA 2015 12 Responses »

Dec 142015

As part of our annual LISTMANIA series we re-publish year-end lists of metal from selected print zines and a group of cross-genre web sites with large audiences. We have two more of those in this post (and we’re only waiting for one or two more of those before we’re finished for this year).

We usually don’t re-publish year-end lists from other metal sites and blogs, because we figure you already know about the ones you care about and because, where would we stop? But this year, for the first time, we’re making a few exceptions to that policy.

One of those few exceptions is Angry Metal Guy. Whenever he gets around to posting his year-end list, I’m going to share it here. Among the reasons, AMG is one of the few surviving metal blogs out there which was born in the same year (2009) as our own putrid site. Plus, although we don’t always see eye-to-eye about music, the writing is top-notch. And then, there’s also this little item that recently appeared on the AMG Facebook page: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VOIDCRAEFT — “UNDER THE SUN” AND “I AM NOTHING”

Premieres 1 Response »

Dec 142015

In February of next year, I, Voidhanger Records will be releasing the third album (and the first on this label) by the one-man German black metal project known as Voidcraeft. Its title is Ἕβελ and it’s unusual in many respects, not the least of which is that all of the lyrics are in either Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. There’s a reason for that, which we’ll come to in a moment, but here’s the main point of this post: We’re giving you the chance to listen to two songs from the album, the English translations of which are “I Am Nothing” and “Under the Sun“.

For people who follow our site (religiously), Voidcraeft will not be a new name. Our man Andy Synn featured the band in a post here in October, recommending the music to fans of Deathspell Omega, Ævangelist, and Portal, while noting the experimental nature of the music and its creator’s tradition of writing his own self-critical analysis of his prodigious output. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: A YEAR-END LIST FROM AUSTIN LUNN (PANOPTICON)

LISTMANIA 2015 30 Responses »

Dec 142015

(We are grateful that for the third year in a row Austin Lunn accepted our invitation to share his favorite releases from the year that’s about to end. He is, of course, the man behind one of ours: Panopticon’s Autumn Eternal.)

First off, sorry for the excessive length of my list this year. There was a lot of to choose from and a lot of records to listen to this year. I am sure that I have forgotten some excellent records, and immediately after this is published it’ll hit me. Please keep in mind that there is no particular order or ranking on this list… it is simply a list of records I really enjoyed this year, and I hope that others have, too.

Best wishes,
Austin Continue reading »

2015 A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE GREAT ALBUMS

LISTMANIA 2015 29 Responses »

Dec 142015

(Here’s the first of Andy Synn’s annual five-part, year-end round-up of metal.)

Well, well, well… it’s already that time again, is it? Time to look back on the year in Metal and take stock of all the Great, Good, and Disappointing albums that the past twelve months have produced.

As you may have gathered, I’ve once again elected to split the year into the usual three categories:

The “Great” – the albums which I honestly consider the top tier of this year’s crop.

The “Good” – albums which vary from “solid” to “really good”, but perhaps don’t quite reach the bar of true greatness (though most of them still kick a major amount of ass).

The “Disappointing” – albums which I honestly think could/should have been better (though that doesn’t necessarily make them “Bad” albums).

Now I’ll go a little bit more into the rationale of each one in detail at the appropriate time, but let me just specify that these lists should NOT – I repeat, NOT – be considered comprehensive. There’s just so many albums that have been released this year that there’s almost no way for one person to get to them all. Continue reading »

SUNDAY SLAUGHTER: PRIMITIV, EXCORIATE, ORACULUM, OBSESSÖR, DAMAAR

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 16 Responses »

Dec 132015

I had a plan for today. I was going to finish a review of a new album, I was going to watch a few hours of sportzball (to see if the resurgent Seahawks continue their run into the NFL playoffs), and I was going to spend the rest of the day editing and formatting a big group of year-end-list posts we’ll be rolling out this week as part of our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza. I’ll still accomplish some of these things, but I kind of got derailed at the start of the day.

What happened was that I decided to listen to just one new song, and that put me in a certain kind of mood. And I started bouncing around among other songs that fit the mood, going even deeper into that mood. And then I decided, what the hell, maybe I should share what I listened to. And voilà! Maybe you’ll guess what kind of mood I was in by the time you finish this playlist — IF you can finish it.

PRIMITIV

This was the brand new song that started me on a roll. It’s the first advance track from the new album by an Indian band named Primitiv. The name of the album is Immortal & Vile, and it’s projected for release on February 1 by Transcending Obscurity Distribution. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (SARCÓFAGO)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 3 Responses »

Dec 132015

For this week’s look back in time, we have some music by the influential Brazilian extreme metal band Sarcófago.

Between the band’s founding in 1985 and their break-up in 2000, they recorded four full-length albums and an assortment of demos and EPs. Their 1987 debut album I.N.R.I. was a vital “first wave” release in the evolution of black metal, and even the appearance of the band on the album’s cover was influential in the corpse-painted visual ethic of the genre. The drummer on that album, D.D. Crazy, also pioneered in the use of blast-beat drumming.

Sarcófago’s second album, The Laws of Scourge (1991), marked a change in musical direction. As explained in The Font of All Human Knowledge: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REBEL WIZARD, SHRAPNEL STORM, THE BODY, OCEANS OF SLUMBER

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 13 Responses »

Dec 122015

That post title is a little misleading. I’m writing this (somewhat hurriedly) on a Friday afternoon, because the place of employment for my fucking day job is having its annual holiday party tonight, and the odds are I will get fucked up and be in a world of hurt on Saturday morning — because (obviously) I have all the self-control of a three-year-old.

So, this is a selection of new music that I heard and liked on a Friday, presented for your eyes and ears on a Saturday. As you will no doubt expect by now, no two songs sound remotely alike.

REBEL WIZARD

“Rebel Wizard” is the name of a solo project by the Australian musician Nekrasov, whose work under that name is probably better known in certain circles than Rebel Wizard (and whose most recent release I reviewed here last month). The first Rebel Wizard recording that I heard (and reviewed here) was an EP released in July named Negative Wizard Metal. Just yesterday another EP was released on Bandcamp, this one entitled Invocation of the Miserable Ones. It has many of the attributes that made me like the last EP so much. For example: Continue reading »

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