Mastadon – Cold Dark Place Really Sucks

Bought an EP of Cold Dark Place by Mastadon, since the album cover looked cool, like a classic Aeternus. To my dismay, as I started track one, some horrible over-produced folk-rock attempt came blaring through my headphones, complete with horrible synced male and female off-pitched vocals.  Another track has a weird, crappy beat and Jane’s addiction styled vocals.  These songs are so bad that its hard to listen to more than fifteen seconds of each song before feeling violently ripped-off.
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Defeated Sanity – Disposal of the Dead Dharmata

This band from Germany has been around in one form or another since the 90s.  Besides having a reputation as an under-rated act, they actively tour and record.  They are considered technical/brutal death metal.  I would probably count them as old school death metal.  Several releases are available, and it feels somewhat unfair to look at just one release and judge, but lets try.
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SHAARIMOTH Temple of the Adversarial Fire

Well crafted and nicely produced, Temple of the Adversarial Fire by Shaarimoth , appears to be a nice mixture of 90s black metal fun.  This is more in the epic vein, rather than underground sounding.  Lets face it: the first two songs are great.  There is a nice mixture of riffs and beats, with short phrasing.  It is a bit heavy on vocals. They can get tiring at points.  Bands I hear as influences here include Emperor, Morbid Angel, early My Dying Bride, and Bal Saggoth. Making my way through the album, song 3 leads with annoying vocals (minus 1 star), over a slower heavier riff.  In song 4, am waiting for the album to get its mojo back. It does, with a European blast beat that has a sick lower grinded guitar counterpart. A fun, evil Samael style rock riff emerges from that. Some of the vocals still are iffy, but the guitar playing is growing on me. Why is the album so choppy though?

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Underground Record Labels in 2159 Ch. II

It was very late at night now. The moon was full, and the path had gave way to a blood paved street. Some very pale women and children with red eyes came out and played on the swings in the forest in the dark, giggling.  There was a shanty town, many huts, with a Gerry-rigged cathedral with Satanic stained glass mirrors in the center.  A small class was being held inside of one of the huts. he had heard of this place, a weird Swiss corporate enclave that had been on the route to Stoner Mountain since the early 1600s and which , strangely, still remained as part of Switzerland (formally), though it was in the middle of what used to be known as California, in the former USA.  Rumor had it that not far from this place, the tech titans had made a pact with the Satanic Illuminati (Octagon) to provoke nuclear war in order to further control the supply chains. From time to time, large amounts of cryptos had been reported (as having been dumped on the road) to GovCore.  People were likely harvesting DeathCoins out here, using biomechanical hydro power. Death coins stored up all the vitality of the people killed onto a tradeable digital coin.  Luckily, these people were more into the tech side of the system. They let the low lives and the scavs in other regions do most of the killing these days. Their killings were merely ritualistic at this point.
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Another Take on Ritual Chamber – Obscurations (2016)

I have no way of knowing if anyone will read this letter. It joins the others which have been hidden in the knot-hole of the ancient tree on top of the mountain that locals simply call “the big one,” to which I make a daily pilgrimage. My life has become oriented around what I can only describe as a portal to the future.

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Underground Record Labels in the Year 2159

It is the year 2159. All the world’s capitols have been obliterated- save South America and Africa (the only continents free of nuclear weapons)- and humanity is no longer able to reproduce due to the over-manufacturing of sex-bots.  There had been three nuclear wars already, first of which involved USA and North Korea and the most recent involving Britain and Iran.  EMP’s and cyber-hacks had taken out the grid long ago, leaving only a strand of humanity left whose bodies could physically adapt to life without WI-FI.  Most of the main bands in the US which were based out of major cities perished as urban conditioning caused them to starve with no wherewithal to survive in the wild.  All that was left were rag tag bunches of malnourished but darkly inspired bands of street trash scavengers who roamed the land with metal detectors seeking alkaline batteries to power their equipment (though these were also needed to power their sex-bots).  Guitarists went back to using hand cranked Pignose amps, with vintage EV megaphones held in front to further amplify the vocals and guitars.
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