ANOTHER OAK PANTHEON UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 022012
 

We climbed on the Oak Pantheon bandwagon last June, which I suppose was before it was a bandwagon. Since then we’ve been closely following this Minneapolis duo (a trio, if you include producer Sean Golyer). Their self-released debut in 2011, The Void, was wonderful. It appeared on many of the Best of 2011 lists we published. As I wrote in a subsequent post: “[T]he music is hugely distracting and tremendously appealing. As a gross generalization, it’s folk-influenced black metal with memorable acoustic and electric melodies, infectious rhythms, and a scarifying dose of Nordic vocals. Sweeping beauty and the beast, indeed.”

The Void is still available for download at Oak Pantheon’s Bandcamp page. But as creative musicians are wont to do, the band are working on a new album for release later this year. They’ve created a “teaser reel” of rough instrumental mixes for three songs from the album, and they’ve asked fans to listen and then vote on which song Oak Pantheon should preview in full before the album drops.

After the jump, you can stream the teaser reel and find out how to vote on the track you would most like to hear in full. Also after the jump, I’m excerpting a recent interview of the band that provides more info about the musical direction of the new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SEAN GOLYER

 Interviews, Phro's Posts  8 Responses »
Jan 022012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Phro gets serious. Using Jesper Zuretti’s recent opinion piece as the inspiration, he interviews budding producer/engineer Sean Golyer, and the result is one of the most informative and articulate interviews we’ve published. You’ll see references in the interview to Oak Pantheon’s 2011 release, The Void. We’ve written about that EP a couple of times, most recently here. To hear more of Sean’s work, he has a SoundCloud page at this location.

Phro’s note: A few days ago, Jesper Zuretti provided No Clean Singing with an excellent opinion piece on the song quality vs recording quality debate.  (Or maybe he sparked the debate?)  I noticed some comments written by Sean Goyler (producer for Oak Pantheon’s excellent The Void) and was interested in getting a different perspective.  This interview was conducted via e-mail, so if some things seem out of place, my apologies.  While I don’t think Sean is deviating all that greatly from Jesper’s main points, I do think he has some great things to add to the conversation.

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Is there anything about yourself that you think readers should know to help us get a better view from your perspective? 

I’m just another Midwestern American guy who really loves his metal. I grew up on classic rock and folk in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN and was turned to the dark side of music during my latter years of high school. It started innocently enough with power metal and sludge but has since taken me into the realms of extreme metal, doom, post-metal, crust, and countless other genres and sub-genres. Around the same time in high school I was introduced to some friends who would later come to form Oak Pantheon, a small independent metal band that released its first EP in July of 2011 and is currently working on our debut full-length album. Continue reading »

SEAN GOLYER’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2011

 Listmania  4 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oak Pantheon is a Minneapolis-based band who we wrote about a couple of times earlier this year (most recently here), singing the praises of their EP called The Void. As a gross generalization, it’s folk-influenced black metal with memorable acoustic and electric melodies, infectious rhythms, and a scarifying dose of Nordic vocals. Sean Golyer is a “behind the scenes” member of the band, and he sent us the following list of his favorite albums from the past year. By coincidence, it includes three bands who made their first appearance on our the year-end lists from Stephen and Kenneth Parker that we posted yesterday.

There have no doubt been a lot of great music releases that I’ve listened to this year — countless more than this list indicates (Absu, Disma, and Wolves in the Throne Room are a few of the bands whose albums are great, but not listed below). However, I decided to take a new approach to my choices this year and compiled a short list of releases that have permanently made it into my collection of music that I listen to regularly, or simply releases that were so stand-out fantastic I couldn’t help but mention them.

I have to admit, the big metal releases this year were not quite as stellar as the past few years (at least not ones from the big names or labels). But that allowed me to open myself up further to bands outside of the genre, or bands that really pushed its boundaries. 2011 will certainly be known as the year that the underground really shined and surpassed anything the big labels put out.

Melancholy is a theme I always enjoy searching for and listening to. I discovered a lot of new bands and I’m also developing a newfound taste in crust, but not a lot of releases stood out enough that they stuck in my playlists regularly.  I’m a man who likes to let the music speak for itself, so instead of me babbling on about my opinions for each band, I’d rather you just listen and take in the music to form your own opinion. Continue reading »

OAK PANTHEON UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Jul 122011
 

On June 30, we posted a little feature on three very promising bands who had come our way. The music was quite different, but what the three bands had in common was less than 100 Facebook “likes”. One of those bands was a three-piece group from Minneapolis called Oak Pantheon. At the time, our friends at Death Metal Baboon had premiered a wonderful track from the band’s then-forthcoming EP, The Void.

Well, as of today, Oak Pantheon have released The Void EP as a “name your price” download on their Bandcamp page (here is the link). I’ve been streaming these five tracks while attempting to do paying work today, and I’m having trouble keeping my mind on my job — because the music is hugely distracting and tremendously appealing. As a gross generalization, it’s folk-influenced black metal with memorable acoustic and electric melodies, infectious rhythms, and a scarifying dose of Nordic vocals. Sweeping beauty and the beast, indeed.

I’m particularly carried away by the predominantly instrumental track called “Architect of the Void Pt I” — carried away and hooked like a fish. If you’d like to check out that song and the rest of the EP while you continue browsing around here, we’ve embedded a player after the jump. I’m already sold — and downloading the EP now.

By the way, Oak Pantheon are up from 74 to 96 Facebook likes since our last post. Go help put them over the century mark, won’t you? (And thanks to reader/musician Ray Heberer for reminding us that today was release day for this EP.) Continue reading »

BANDS UNDER 100

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jun 302011
 

We have all sorts of odd ways for picking bands to hear and feature. We pick them based on the appeal of their album art, or the sound of their names, or where they’re from. Sometimes we just mentally throw a dart at a list we keep for our MISCELLANY explorations (the people who watch over us won’t allowed us to have real darts — some bullshit about being a danger to self and others).

Now we’ve come up with a new method of sifting through the great unwashed hordes of metal bands for listening purposes: We decided to pick a handful of bands who, as of the writing of this post, had less than 100 Facebook “likes”. Of course, this tells you absolutely nothing reliable about the quality of the music; many godawful bands have five- and even six-figure Facebook “likes”, and some really good ones just haven’t been widely discovered yet. The low numbers do imply that the band is new, or at least new to Facebook. The bands we picked for this post have got some promising things going on with their music, despite the so-far meager “like” totals. Maybe a little attention will push their totals above the century mark.

In terms of musical styles and genres, today’s line-up is quite varied in their extremity: Melodic black metal from Oak Pantheon (Minnesota), deathcore from Above This (Virginia), death ‘n’ roll from Rudiment of Abhorrence (Washington), and old-school, face-melting death metal from Panic Disorder (Indonesia). Some of this music is also available for free download. Dive in after the jump. Continue reading »

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