Feb 042022
 

 

Today I must bring this list to an end. It’s not because I’m really finished — I have dozens more songs I’d like to add and write about. It’s because we’re now a week into February and I really ought to spend more time focusing on the songs of this year instead of yesteryear.

So, please do me a favor and hold your fire. I know I didn’t include some of the songs you’ve been waiting to see, and please don’t question how the hell I chose the ones I did include, at the cost of your own favorites, because it was anything but an organized, scientific, and well-thought-out process. I’m happy with what I chose, but easily could have chosen others.

That statement is as true of today’s final songs as all the ones that came before. I picked a few — okay, more than a few (though accompanied by fewer words and no artwork) — but in coming down to the wire I yielded even more to random impulse than probably ever before.

On Monday I’ll add a “wrap up” post that compiles everything on the list from eager beginning to anguished end, all in one place. And with that, here are the final choices, this time arranged alphabetically. Continue reading »

Jul 112016
 

Reviews in Haikus

 

(Andy Synn returns to an old, irregular series of album reviews in haiku. Three reviews of three lines each come after the jump. With music, of course.)

This week is brought to you by the number “the”.

By which I mean that every band I’m reviewing this week is one of those “the something” bands.

Naming conventions aside though, they’re all quite different, running the gamut from leviathan Doom to scintillating Tech to totally not Metal at all, so whoever you are, there should be something to tickle your earbuds over the course of the next 5-7 days!

Let’s begin with some of my trademark pithy haikus, as I know some of you have been missing them and clamouring (quietly) for their return. Continue reading »

Dec 082015
 

Batushka-Litourgiya

 

This is the first part of a two-part collection of recent discoveries I’ve made in the vein of black metal, plus one that isn’t black metal but is still spiritually as black as a corpse charred in a napalm attack. As will become obvious, I’ve chosen this particular group of bands in part because no two of them sound alike.

BATUSHKA

Batushka are a Polish band whose members have not been disclosed, but they are reputed to be from well-known bands. Their debut album Litourgiya was released on December 5 by the Polish label Witching Hour Productions. It makes an astonishing impact from the very first song, and all the way to the end.

The music is dark, heaving, and very heavy — with bombastic outbreaks of wildfire and thunder — and the bleak, majestic melodies are effective at getting under the skin. But what sets the music apart and makes the album especially memorable are the vocals. In addition to the incinerating shrieks that you might expect in a black metal album, you’ll hear reverberating liturgical chants in what I’m told is Church Slavonic — the language used in the Orthodox Church in such places as Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as nations in the Balkan Peninsula. Continue reading »

Apr 232015
 

 

I wasn’t planning to post anything else today, but then I read something that I enjoyed and thought was worth recommending to you. It’s a long article by Ryan Wasoba in Riverfront Times of St. Louis about the city’s metal scene, with a focus on three metal bands in particular: Fister, The Lion’s Daughter, and Black Fast. I’m a fan of all three bands, and that has something to do with why I enjoyed it, but there’s more.

The article is built on interesting stories about each band’s music and their experiences getting to where they are now — Fister’s new album IV (which consists of a single 44-minute song) is due for release in a matter of days, and The Lion’s Daughter and Black Fast have signed to prominent labels (Season of Mist, and eOne) for the release of their next albums. Those stories include anecdotes from Black Fast’s recording sessions with Erik Rutan that are kind of amazing as well as amusing. But all the stories are interesting. Continue reading »

May 202014
 

As a result of unusually pressing personal and job-related commitments, and making sure I have enough clean underwear for my MDF trip tomorrow, I haven’t had time for proper write-ups on all the good new songs I came across yesterday. But I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll be happy just listening anyway. So here goes — a big load of music streams (or links) in alphabetical order and damn few words from me.

DEAD CONGREGATION

Promulgation of the Fall, the new album I’ve written about before by the excellent Greek band Dead Congregation, is now streaming in full and available for acquisition on Bandcamp. Part of me thinks this moots the point of a review. Part of me wants to lavish my praise in print anyway. We’ll see — but you should damn sure listen below: Continue reading »

Jan 242014
 

Today we reach the 10th part of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two I’m announcing today, click here. I’m still not positive how many more parts remain, but I have resolved to finish before this month ends.

If you’re not familiar with today’s two additions to the list, you’ll soon understand why I grouped them together. They’re the least “extreme” of the songs featured so far, and I suppose some folks might argue they don’t belong on this list at all. But as different as both songs are from what I usually pass my days hearing and writing about, both of them lodged firmly in my head and have meant a lot to me since I first heard them. So they’re here, and so are you, and on we go…

FALKENBACH

Falkenbach is the German one-man project of Vratyas Vakyas. Since 1996 he has released six albums on an irregular and unpredictable schedule, the most recent being 2013’s Asa. By coincidence, it appeared on a late-breaking year-end list we published this morning, with these words:

“With multiple styles present, Asa sounds atmospheric and epic, Vratyas Vakyas putting forth excellent performances in everything he’s done with this album. The contrasting vocal styles are well done and may rival some of the best bipolar voices in metal, but the use of acoustic guitar may actually be the highlight of the album. I can envision Asa being what campfire stories at night would sound like with backing guitars and drums as others go forward to to do the deeds being sung about back home…. Falkenbach remains one of folk metal’s standard bearers, Asa showing exactly why.” Continue reading »

Dec 092013
 

(BadWolf reviews the remarkable collaborative effort by two St. Louis bands: The Lion’s Daughter and Indian Blanket.)

I’ve had to re-write this review around three times to really sum up my feelings about A Black Sea, the collaborative album from St. Louis sludge metal band The Lion’s Daughter and Indian Blanket, a folk outfit from the same city. Although I haven’t had much time to listen to the album, I feel quite strongly that it is one of the finest extreme metal albums released in 2013.

I first heard of this project right here, when Islander posted a stream of “Wolves,” the first cut from this album. That song’s mix of metal and folk brought up more than a few touchstone sounds—Agalloch and Neurosis, most obviously, and Opeth and Cobalt to a lesser degree. It made a good enough first impression to put A Black Sea near the top of my priority list.

Consider expectations met. A Black Sea is the sort of album that one can listen to from front-to-back and then re-start. Both Indian Blanket and The Lion’s Daughter carry a versatile array of styles, and employ every one of them on this album. As a result, even though the overriding mood stays bleak, the album winds from churning sludge to delicate acoustic passages—it feels every bit like a journey across the titular sea, or into the foreboding, prehistoric forest depicted on the cover. Continue reading »

Oct 232013
 

A reminder about the rules of MISCELLANY:  These are the only posts on this site that feature music which hasn’t been filtered in advance by me or any of the other writers. I randomly pick bands whose music I’ve never heard before, I listen to a recent song or two, I write down immediate impressions, and I stream the music that I heard. When I play this game, I try to focus on bands who are under the radar. It’s a good way to discover and spread the word about new music, but it’s a bit of a crap shoot.

Here’s how I picked the bands in this edition of MISCELLANY: I saw a Facebook post by my friend Prof. D. Grover the XIIIth urging me to pay attention to a St. Louis band named Black Fast and their recent album Starving Out the Light. That became my first pick for this expedition. After hearing a few songs, I liked them on Facebook, and not long after that I saw a status they posted recommending a song that premiered yesterday which was a collaboration between two more St. Louis bands — Indian Blanket and The Lion’s Daughter. I listened to that song, which became my second stop on this MISCELLANY tour. And then I discovered that The Lion’s Daughter have an album on Facebook named Shame On Us All — and that became my third and final pick for what turned into a St. Louis edition of MISCELLANY.

BLACK FAST

The Black Fast album was released via Bandcamp in August of this year and it follows a self-titled EP from 2011. The featured song on Bandcamp is the album’s fourth track, “Obelisk”, and I listened to that one and then checked out the album opener, “Levitations”. They’re both head-whipping riff machines with bounding bass lines, jaw-dropping guitar solos, and caustic vocals. “Blackened thrash” is a start at a genre description, but doesn’t do justice to the intricacy or the strong progressive leanings of the songwriting. It’s kind of like a mash-up of Vektor and Blotted Science. Continue reading »