The guy who went to Black Flames of Blasphemy VI seems to have liked them – Destroyer 666 is returning with a new studio album after 7 years of inactivity on that front. They’ll presumably continue to be a partial throwback to ’80s first-wave black metal on Wildfire, which is currently set for release on February 26th. The band’s frontman, K.K Warslut commented on the artwork his band has procured for this album, saying that he “…was after something very simple and very metal, being sick to death as I am with pseudo-occultniks dressing everything up in the garb of mysticism.” It’s probably not just him, although the local occultists here at DMU might take issue with that. After this album’s release, the band has a few tour dates lined up in Europe for 2016.
By the mid-1990s, it was clear that death metal and black metal were winding down if not over as far as their creative impetus was concerned. The great sell-out albums were yet to come, and bands explored the time-honored method of being “new” by mixing in established genres and calling the hybrid a new path. Where hybridization works, it brings something different to a genre and makes it work within the style of that genre; when it fails, it reverts to an ancestor.
Cultus Sanguine jumped in through a mixture of doom metal, suicidal black metal and shoegaze with influences from bands like Joy Division who worked through atmosphere. This early form of post-metal emphasized theatrical vocals and melodic simple guitar lines that emphasized a trudging rhythm, making it a lot like the post-metal explosion to come but with a more forceful approach.
Unlike many of the more recent bands, Cultus Sanguine attempted a narrative approach. This became absorbed within the need of vocals and atmosphere to predominate, creating a sense of interrupted mood with heavy emphasis on its return, but ultimately the simpler, rock-style riffs and their underlying progressions did not give the band enough to work with. Now a historical curiosity, this album was lauded for its “creativity” at the time and then rapidly faded into obscurity.
When you’re like us and operate on the assumption that most metal music is bad (or at least mediocre), you probably want to avoid Cannibal Corpse, since they’re still kind of the poster child of lame albeit studio-proficient death metal. In case you don’t, you can always see them on their upcoming US tour. As mentioned in the title, Obituary, Cryptopsy, and Abysmal Dawn will be supporting them. The first two bands in that selection admittedly produced some good content in their early days, but seem to be operating at a similar level of tired rehashes these days. Tickets will go on sale this Friday (December 11th), so you should soon be able to ignore our warning if you feel doing so is absolutely necessary.
Adversary came to us from the heartland of Indiana and released two solid old school death metal albums, the second of which, Forsaken, may deserve more attention. This one is misunderstood because its form is old school death metal, but its heart is in classic heavy metal with melody and groove, as well as some of the more atmospheric 1980s rock.
As a result, listening to it presents a dual experience. It sounds like Num Skull or Nunslaughter doing their version of a Possessed-Venom hybrid, but with more attention to melodic guitar hooks. Vocals take the form of barfed out gruff explosions, guiding the rough-hewn riffs like a second drum track, but the heart of each song is a 1970s heavy metal riff with a broad chord progression through which melodic lead-picked figures wind. Songs mostly follow the speed metal pattern of verse-chorus with interludes and transitions, but each song is wrapped around a presentation of dynamics to bring it to a dramatic close.
While other bands worked with this formula, none have done so with such old-school technique and so this album neatly slipped between its potential audiences. Compounding this fact was the trouble that Adversary’s first album, The Winter’s Harvest, used a drum machine and so was overlooked by many. But for those wanting the feeling of 1985 — that nexus of different influences and unresolved potentials — this album deserves a second look.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote without an outline using only the thoughts gathered in his head over long hours of smoking his pipe and staring into a fireplace. Sitting at his typewriter, head wreathed in smoke, he pounded out a first draft of the Lord of the Rings mythos, and then discarded it, beginning again from scratch. As the story took form, it left behind a litter of empty blue-painted cans of tobacco.
The tobacco was Capstan Original Navy Cut. Members of his family remember the tins proliferating around the house and being used to store household items. When Tolkien and other members of his literary group The Inklings met, nicotine burned in abundance, and they could be found by following the trail of smoke. In his books, Tolkien inserted characters finding great comfort and wisdom in their pipes much as he did in his.
As part of a recent binge of writings by Tolkien and fellow Inkling C.S. Lewis, this writer has indulged in their favorite tobaccos. Capstan Original Navy Cut comes in “flake” form, having been pressed into table-sized cakes and then sliced into wafers about a third the size of a playing card. These are either stuffed into the pipe or “rubbed out” which converts them into ribbons of tobacco. Throughout this experiment, the thought lingers at the back of the mind: why this tobacco, and does it resemble the Longbottom Leaf or Old Toby of his legends?
Original Navy Cut is composed of pure Virginias, but the pressing and aging has converted some of their sugar and acid into a more hay-like flavor, the partial decomposition of the leaf having released its most irksome elements. What remains is a sweet smoke, with slightly more Nicotine (PBUH) than the average medium smoke, which burns evenly and rewards small “sips” or short slow puffs, as one might take while hammering out words on a typewriter. It also admirably complements the smell of typewriter ribbon, for whatever that is worth.
Virginia flakes such as this tend to appeal to either new smokers who want a blend that is sweet and strong like a cigarette, or to the experienced who can nurse a pipe for hours. Since Tolkien was a master pipe smoker, he fit the latter category, and apparently always kept a pipe going with this and other blends to power himself through late-night endurance test writing sessions. And we can enjoy the results, and the metal inspired by them.
Part of me still wants to like Gud. Isvind’s 4th studio album is a textbook example of how to sound like black metal, for sure, but the specific emphasis on consonant melody (mixed with some primitive and ambient elements ala Darkthrone) make for a substyle that at least can be done well in the right hands. Under this admittedly pleasing exterior, though, lies a heart of incoherence and confusion. Isvind, at least in 2015, is random to the core, and their inability to properly organize their songs makes for a tedious 45 minutes.
While this pervasive failure makes it more difficult to zero in on any one flaw, a few are at least more prominent and demanding of attention. One thing I immediately noticed were the presence of gimmicky female vocals – after the short but dissonant prelude at the beginning of the first track, they are scattered very sparsely throughout the rest of the tracks. They fail to add much beyond the occasional peak of shrill dissonance. As I kept analyzing Gud‘s tracks, I found that the tracks were full of these distractions in various forms, whether it was extra instrumentation, or stark shifts in tempo or tonality or other aspects of the songwriting. Each one of these is the musicological equivalent of being constantly pestered by a small child who demands your attention; eventually you get used to it, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. To their credit, Isvind manages to incorporate a great deal of dissonance into what is primarily a melodic and consonant style, which makes for some interesting isolated riffs, but since they can’t string the sections of their songs together properly, it almost doesn’t matter. To be fair, I don’t think this problem is caused specifically by the musical exploration, since other black metal bands (read: Averse Sefira) have written far more coherent and therefore interesting songs than are present on display here.
Still, I can’t recommend this in good conscience. It’s not quite as nonsensically random as Myrkur or a Krallice, but it’s a lot closer in spirit to those albums than what its aesthetics may lead you to believe on your initial listen.
P.S:I almost pluralized listens, but you shouldn’t give this album that much attention.
Back in the day, Vader earned a bit of extra notoriety by releasing the original Future of the Past and presumably documenting their influences (and their taste for Depeche Mode) through cover songs. Nearly 20 years later, they’re doing it again. Future of the Past II: Hell in the East showcases a set of somewhat more obscure bands, trading in familiar speed/thrash acts for the Polish underground of the 1980s, as well as a few outliers like Krabathor from the Czech Republic. This cover compilation will be released on December 14th, along with another separate pressing of Vader’s demos and a re-release of Future of the Past [I]. I do not know why Poland produced such a disproportionate amount of metal during its last years under communism; Vader, having lived through it may very well have a better grasp on the causes.
Anthrax has always been vaguely relevant at best – selling not quite enough albums to be huge, but never really going away and always drawing some amount of media attention. Perhaps it’s lower expectations, but they seem to have aged more gracefully than most of their famous speed metal counterparts in recent years. 2011’s Worship Music must’ve paid the bills for a while, since the delay between that and the upcoming For All Kings is quite lengthy (albeit not as lengthy as the wait between WM and its own predecessor). So far, Anthrax has released the track “Evil Twin” as a single, which makes for an accurate if unnecessary imitation of the band’s past work. Anthrax has also promised that For All Kings will be “heavier” than its predecessor, perhaps due to the presence of Jon Donais from the metalcore band Shadows Fall. I wouldn’t stake any important bets on it, though.
Pestilence’s demos have been repressed at least once before, most notably on some printings of Malleus Malificarum, but this most recent compilation of them may end up being of at least historic value to the band’s fans. The Dysentery Penance combines both of the band’s 1987 demos into one release, showcasing what we described about two months ago as the “formative years” of the band. Possible added value comes from some remastering work provided by Dan Swano, as well as some live material bolted onto the end of the album. Whether or not the remaster ends up enhancing this product, it’s still probably a better purchase than the band’s post-reformation studio albums.
This December, a few notable black metal acts are touring Western/Central Europe. Gorgoroth and Gehenna, at the very least had some fame and notoriety back in the 1990s and are still well known today, although the former has drifted quite far from their best days. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of Kampfar until just now, although a cursory look at Encyclopedia Metallum suggests they’ve existed since the mid-90s. Supporting acts are expected to vary, but in the UK, these three bands will be joined by De Profundis, who is at least tangentially related to the black metal focus this tour has. I’d like to label this a “tour of the fallen” like the recently covered Slayer/Testament/Carcass tour, but it seems less definite than in that case.
