VH1 “journalist” launches smear campaign against Bard Eithun

VH1 logo
VH1 affiliated journalist (and I feel guilty for using that term, because seriously, it’s VH1) Zack Sigel apparently was inspired by the recent Disma controversy, and has set his targets on Bard “Faust” Eithun in what is almost certainly an attempt to get his current projects (Blood Tsunami, Studfaust, etc.) pulled from the upcoming Martyrdoom Festival. Unlike Craig Pillard, Faust admittedly does have a criminal record to his name, having been imprisoned for the murder of a homosexual some years ago, but this doesn’t make the apparent goal any more noble. Whether or not Faust is the same person he was 20 years ago, witch hunting is not going to actually reform him, or usher in any sort of actual justice or utopian tolerant social justice city on a hill. Most of this article, however, isn’t a call to action against Faust, although the passages specifically condemning Faust’s actions come off as passive-aggressive at best. Instead, Sigel dedicates most of the article to whining about metalheads not immediately condemning bands for their ideological stances. Ironically he also pushes Deafheaven, despite their own ties to right wing movements, but odds are he won’t be turning on them for that any time soon, lest the ensuing cognitive dissonance explodes and kills everyone in a 500 mile radius.

We’re probably enabling him by acknowledging this article, but if nobody calls out this sort of pseudo-tolerant hypocrisy, everyone gets burnt.

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Album anniversaries – Seven Churches

possessed-seven_churches
A landmark in underground metal has been allowed to be 30 years old for some time now. We can’t have that, can we? Seven Churches is sometimes labeled the first “death metal” album by members of the press. I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that, but it’s a crucial link between earlier speed metal and more advanced recordings that would come out only a year later. Musically, this fits in well with many of its immediate proto-underground contemporaries, like Bathory, Celtic Frost (at least on their faster material), and perhaps Show No Mercy era Slayer, although it benefits from an especially clear and powerful production given its vintage. Later works by the band more closely resemble extreme, souped up speed metal than the more evolved recordings of the late ’80s, but this album came in at just the right time to directly influence many aspiring (or at least aspirating) metalheads.

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Upcoming tours: Cradle of Filth

Cradle of Filth - Promo Picture

Less valuable to us than yesterday’s Voivod announcement is this upcoming Cradle of Filth tour. This legendary traditional heavy metal masquerading as black metal act will be headlining the “Inquisitional Torture” tour, supported by Ne Obliviscaris and Butcher Babies. This tour is presumably intended to promote the band’s latest album (Hammer of the Witches), which came out in July and was undoubtedly of little interest to our previous editor. These concerts are probably not worth your time, unless you really like throwing rotting vegetables at stages.

The tour dates follow:

Jan. 26 Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of the Living Arts
Jan. 27 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
Jan. 28 Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
Jan. 29 Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
Jan. 31 Charlotte, NC @ Filmore Charlotte
Feb. 1 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Heaven
Feb. 2 Orlando, FL @ Venue 578
Feb. 3 St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theater
Feb. 9 Memphis, TN @ New Daisy Theater
Feb. 10 Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
Feb. 11 Houston, TX @ House of Blues
Feb. 12 San Antonio, TX @ The Aztec Theater
Feb. 14 Eaglewood, CO @ Gothic Theater
Feb. 15 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
Feb. 17 Los Angeles, CA @ Avalon
Feb. 18 San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
Feb. 20 Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
Feb. 21 San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Feb. 23 Seattle, WA @ The Showbox 
Feb. 29 Ringle, WI @ Q and Z Expo Center
Mar. 1 Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
Mar. 2 Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
Mar. 3 Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
Mar. 5 Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall
Mar. 6 Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theater
Mar. 7 Montreal, QC @ Corona Theater
Mar. 8 New York, NY @ Webster Hall

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Autopsy debuts “Waiting For The Screams” from Skull Grinder

Autopsy released a single from Skull Grinder today, giving me an opportunity to taste something of what the album might be like. If “Waiting For The Screams” is any indicator of upcoming content, this album is going to be overtly influenced by traditional style doom metal. Much of its runtime is given over to shouted vocals over slow, relatively consonant riffs reminiscent of Black Sabbath, interspersed with some passages of more standard death metal riffing more like what I’d expect from Autopsy. The band claims not to have made any stylistic changes, but this sounds to me like a more accessible and melodramatic Autopsy than the one that produced Severed Survival and Mental Funeral. I guess we’ll see what the full album is actually like.

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Upcoming tours: Voivod

Promotional picture of Voivod by Valerie Gagne from their official site
Two tours of note today. First, and presumably better, is Voivod’s impending US tour. The band is currently traveling through Europe with Napalm Death and Obituary as part of Deathcrusher 2015. This February, they will join Vektor and Eight Bells for what is mostly a tour of the eastern USA, with some later dates in the Midwest. If an interview from February 2015 is to be believed, an album (and one that may be more overtly progressive rock oriented than usual for the band) is coming some time next year; the splits with At the Gates and Napalm Death that it mentions appear to have released without issues. The tour dates follow:

2/06 – Providence, RI – Fete Ballroom
2/07 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theatre
2/08 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Neck Tie
2/09 – Morgantown, WV – Mainstage
2/10 – Pittsburgh, PA – Altar Bar
2/11 – Asbury Park, NJ – Stone Pony
2/12 – Lancaster, PA – Chameleon Club
2/13 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
2/14 – Richmond, VA – Strange Matter
2/16 – Raleigh, NC – Kings
2/18 – Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre
2/19 – Sanford, FL – West End Trading Co.
2/20 – Ybor City, FL – The Orpheum
2/21 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade
2/22 – Knoxville, TN – The Concourse
2/24 – Chicago, IL – The Abbey Pub
2/25 – Cudahy, WI – The Metal Grill
2/26 – St Paul, MN – The Amsterdam
2/27 – Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
2/28 – St. Louis, MO – Firebird
3/03 – Ferndale, MI – The Loving Touch

I could theoretically make it to the Rhode Island show, and I am certainly interested in doing so, but we’ll have to see how things shape up in the next few months.

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Jag Panzer to record The Deviant Chord

Jag Panzer seems to be in a period of heightened activity. After a string of previous and upcoming live concerts (including a scheduled appearance on the next “70,000 Tons of Metal” cruise), the band recently announced that they would be recording their next studio album, The Deviant Chord, in May 2016. This will hopefully build off a long and storied career. Jag Panzer initially achieved fame with 1984’s Ample Destruction, which was one of the formative works of the US power metal scene. Despite long periods of inactivity, the band has been able to successfully revive themselves on multiple occasions, most notably with a string of albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as 2011’s The Scourge of the Light. The main vocalist (Harry Conklin) also went on to form Satan’s Host, which later took on a life of its own through exploration of extreme metal tropes.

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Deadhead Fanzine #6 out now

Several copies of Deadhead Fanzine #6 stacked on top of each other
Afterlife Productions has recently released the latest issue of Deadhead Fanzine. This Malaysian label (calling themselves “Asia’s last stand for conservative metal literature”) has compiled an substantial quantity of metal literature into a package that’s apparently more like a paperback book than a simple magazine. Besides the usual reviews, articles, and etc, the major selling point is likely the dozens of included interviews with both well known and more underground metal bands. Morbid Angel headlines, with former members Mike Browning and Richard Brunelle talking about the band’s earliest days, and the latter also makes his way to the front cover. Deadhead Fanzine 6.66 also understandably devotes some space to Malaysian underground metal in particular, featuring interviews with bands from all over the country. The sheer quantity of content here could make it a very tempting purchase, and it is available from Afterlife’s website.

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Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion turns 30

Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion (2015)
It might not be as important to the Celtic Frost/Hellhammer legacy as its immediate predecessors, but To Mega Therion is still a fine work of metal 30 years (and four days) after its release. Many early underground metal recordings are noted for stripping their musical content to a bare minimum of function and simultaneously exploring new methods of arrangement and songwriting. To Mega Therion, on the other hand, takes a step towards refining the new standard, with more elaborate instrumentation, production, and songwriting than the EPs that came before it. It’s still more restrained in its aesthetic exploration than anything else Celtic Frost released, but listeners can easily hear how some of the more obvious experiments here (timpani, occasional female vocals, etc.) anticipate elements that would become fixtures in the band’s later works, and furthermore in the plethora of subgenres to follow.

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Cryptopsy – The Book of Suffering (Tome 1) (2015)

Cryptopsy - The Book of Suffering (2015)

Would it be too brief to say that The Book of Suffering is like older Cryptopsy, but not quite as good? Probably not. Cryptopsy’s legacy after 1996 appears to be one of steady decay and loss of focus, although you could be forgiven for placing too much importance on the aberration that was The Unspoken King. Bands that aren’t able to jump to a new trend successfully often retreat to what they know, hence this utterly safe and sterile EP. It’s almost as if Cryptopsy wasn’t merely imitating None So Vile, possibly with some brief intrusions from more recent albums, but that the only song they’d heard by previous band lineups was that album’s introductory track (“Crown of Horns”), and that this EP was an effort to imitate that specifically.

Cryptopsy wastes no time in trying to forge the appropriate links in your brain. The spoken intro to “Detritus” (which is so obviously self-referential that it will probably insult you) made me suspect that the band was about to blast and scream, and from then on not a moment passed that wasn’t analogous to something off None So Vile. The overall effect evenly splits between being more orderly and more chaotic than this EP’s obvious inspiration. 20 years of studio experience understandably make for a more precise performance, as does the apparent use of a template. On the other hand, the Cryptopsy of the past had a better understanding of how to glue riffs together to create narrative and contrast in their songs. This incarnation of the band isn’t quite there yet and often uses breakdowns laden with pinch harmonics instead. Furthermore, None So Vile drew on a greater palette of musical language; part of this is that Lord Worm was a more versatile vocalist in his prime than Matt McGachy; a greater part is that Cryptopsy wasn’t relying merely on themselves as a template. Funny then, that this problem should also happen to another one of today’s reviews

In summary, the main problem with The Book of Suffering is that it’s uninspired, more than that it’s pseudorandom. Cryptopsy knows how to sound as if they are about to collapse into random noise at any moment without actually doing so, but they don’t do much of interest with this approach. Maybe if they hadn’t burnt themselves playing with the metalcore fire, this wouldn’t be a problem, although the amount of people looking forwards to a second The Unspoken King has to be rather less than those who will nonetheless accept The Book of Suffering as a continuation of form, if not necessarily substance.

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THEM releases the first single from Sweet Hollow

Them - Sweet Hollow (2016)

October is indeed the season for Mercyful Fate, or at least pretenders to its metallic throne. Earlier this month, we saw two members’ underwhelming reunion in Denner/Sherman. More recently, THEM, composed of an unrelated group of musicians despite likely being named after King Diamond’s 1988 solo album, has released a track from their own upcoming attempt to capture something of that band’s approach.

Sweet Hollow is a concept album very much in the vein of King Diamond’s projects; at this point perhaps most notable for featuring members of Symphony X and Suffocation. The single (“Forever Burns”) resembles an exaggerated, more technically ambitious take on KD’s melodramatic heavy/speed metal sound, to the point of including a great deal of falsetto singing. Even if the final product turns out to be any good, this may scare some of its potential listeners away. Currently, Sweet Hollow is planned for a January 2016 release.

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