A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 4A): ARCHONS

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 072019
 


Archons

(DGR turned in a surprise 4th installment in his effort to catch up with reviews of 2019 releases after a personal hiatus. The first 3 installments are here, here, and here. However, our beleaguered editor (me) decided to cut this 4th installment into 3 parts, focusing on one album per day, beginning with this review of the comeback album by Archons.)

Hey, did you guys catch when the previous collection of these reviews was referred to as part three of three?

Ha. Oops.

In all seriousness this last piece is it. After this, I’m caught up, and for that some thanks are in order. Even though life derailed me hard for a moment and this review archive for the longest time held a title of ‘Review Archive Jan-Feb’, ever-expanding and at one point holding twenty-two releases that I had hoped to look at, I was finally able to get this done thanks in large part to the other writers on this site being understanding enough to pick up some of my slack, including reviewing releases that are pretty firmly in the ‘DGR wheelhouse’.

This collection absorbed releases throughout the year, and thanks to the rest of the crew for picking up on bigger releases that I would’ve wanted to talk about like Wormed or Hate, I was able to knuckle up and tackle these lesser-known bands and finally be done.

Just in time for stuff like In Mourning and Insomnium to hit…whoops. Continue reading »

ARCHONS CALLS IT QUITS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 192013
 

(Here’s a news update from DGR.)

It sucks to come home from work and start your day off likes this, but sometimes that is the way the world works. Melo-death group Archons are calling it quits, as posted in this message here on their Facebook page. The opening section is in French so I grabbed the pertinent bit for you guys here

We have an important announcement to do today. We officially announce you that ARCHONS has decided to disband. The decision was taken in good will from everybody. We all want to pass on to something else. Sadly, this means the second album won’t be released. Even if most of the recording is done, there is still too much to do. We thank all of you for your incredible support for all these years. We will never forget what we lived with Archons. Thank you!

I really enjoyed these guys and their debut disc The Consequences Of Silence, and while I don’t think the group from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, fully escaped sounding a bit like “Arch DarkTranquilArsis”, as one joking user put it, I still thought it was a damn good hybrid and Archons did do a lot with the genre – given its inherent scent of stagnation. They had excellent guitar work and were able to write some damn good music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EARLY GRAVES, THE TONY DANZA TAPDANCE EXTRAVAGANZA, AND ARCHONS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Sep 202012
 

Here’s a quick round-up of new things that caught my eye this morning.

EARLY GRAVES

I’m very fucking stoked for the new Early Graves album, Red Horse, which will be out October 30 on No Sleep Records. The title track debuted at the end of August, and I included it in this feature. Now, NPR has premiered a second song — “Pure Hell”.

According to NPR, the band’s new vocalist John Strachan (Funeral Pyre) wrote the song for Makh Daniels, Early Graves’ original vocalist who tragically died in a van accident a little more than two years ago: “He always had that pure hell back patch. So I wrote this for him and the way he lived.”

The song title has a second meaning, too: Sonically, it’s pure hell, too — an explosive, violent, smoking-hot rush of grindcore insanity with a massive, skull-crushing breakdown in the back half. Go HERE to get smashed by this music. Continue reading »