Vomitor – The Escalation (2012)

vomitor the escalation

Article by Lance Viggiano.

The Escalation perfects the misunderstood Australian art of Cimmerian metal – a deliberately low-brow affair which has little tangible relationship to the Common Practice Period and therefore easily panned. Vomitor deliberately flaunt rock’s loud and emotive ethos through boorish motifs qualified further by a thin and mid-centric texture executed in characteristically poor-taste. Constructed primarily out of recombination of past forms, The Escalation is a deliberately retro affair which succeeds by forming a singular and immediately identifiable voice. Historical precedence for this identity is found in the work of Spear of Longinus – specifically the first demo contained within Black Sun Society. Vomitor do not present a way forward for metal; instead the entity finely maps a territory which was discovered but left largely unexplored by ancestors who clung to the safety and security of the coastlines looking into an inhospitable thicket which obscures a familiar but nonetheless unique landscape.

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Tom Araya’s Second Amendment Pragmatism

Article by Corey M.

Recently Tom Araya, frontman of seminal and legendary extreme metal band Slayer, offered some words of encouragement to Swiss concert attendees regarding their ownership of personal firearms. He makes a case for owning guns, saying that there are invaders and enemies all over the world and in your own countries and towns, who may turn weapons against you anywhere, at any time. Because of this constant threat, owning and carrying weapons of your own is advisable, says Araya, making a pertinent point. Though he made a point to use no names, Arya mentioned events “in other countries” that resulted from people thinking they were magically immune to random violence (a transparent allusion to the Orlando, Florida shootings last month, in which nearly a hundred patrons of a nightclub were gunned down over the course of a few hours and half of those ended up dead, all because of one man with a gun).

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Garroted – In the Court of Nyarlahotep (2016)

garroted in the court of nyarlahotep

Article by David Rosales. Occasionally our staff have differing opinions on unpristine works from upcoming or past their prime bands. The editor’s sobering take on Garroted – In the Court of Nyarlahotep was presented in Sadistic Metal Reviews: Taste the Rainbow!

A modernist acoustic guitar intro, an undefined progressive death metal tirade, cavernous vocals and death-grind guitar tones. An exquisite Old School written all over it, and yet, the young Garroted manage to avoid becoming guides in nostalgia trips. Like Colombian Condor, Garroted takes the tools from the past and forges a future strictly on the loyalty to those traditions.

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Dream Theater to play in Belo Horizonte

dreamtheater-retard

Article by Jon Faugustus.

Dream Theater will be presenting themselves in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, at the Teatro Minascentro. This event adds to one more high-grade theater venue being defiled by the conformist pop this bands sells out to insecure young adults, and ex-Motley Crue fans going through middle life crisis.

Brazil, like Japan, is one of the go-to countries for any mainstream band seeking international recognition. The metal fandom there is as unoriginal and undescerning in their tastes as in the metal the artists produce. This is why it is not surprising to find 1/10000 bands worth listening to occasionally arising from such geographic locations.

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New Periphery album on July 22

periphery-misha-producing

Article by Jon Faugustus.

Djent band Periphery to release new album, Periphery III: Select Difficulty, on July 22nd, 2016. This upcoming album further consolidates Periphery’s reputation as the leading non-metal hipster band.

periphery1-hipster

Standing out as an out-of-the-closet Pantera tribute band, Periphery has made a name for itself in the Pro-Tools community and the Mac users forum. The band has come to be known for their anti-establishment, anti-genre-classification, anti-gender-classification, anti-making-sense postures that sets them appart from anything in the rational universe, fitting perfectly in the make-believe world of millenials and the pampered liberal youth.

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The Difficulties of Folk Metal

Anders_Zorn_-_Hins_Anders_(1904)

Article by Johan P.

I’ve never been overly impressed by the folk metal phenomenon, which emerged in the middle of the 1990s and began to gain popularity some years later. I do not mean to imply that there isn’t any good folk music out there. On the contrary, there’s a lot of rewarding traditional music to discover. Many musicians – metallers included – have realized that their respective countries’ folk music reservoir is a gold mine for potential ideas to integrate into more modern forms of music. It was on these premises that folk metal was born. However, if the source material is to be successfully re-animated and be brought into metal or any other genre, it requires some serious work from the composer and performer. Most folk metal bands fail at this point for a variety of reasons, with the end-result often sounding like bad heavy metal adorned with folk-melodies that have been stripped of all subtlety to fit into a rock-based harmonic and structural environment.

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Ghoulgotha – To Starve the Cross (2016)

ghoulgotha - to starve the cross

Article by Corey M.

To Starve the Cross sounds like the result of having chopped up a dozen good death metal songs and pasted the bits back together in such a way to eliminate any sense of continuity. Ghoulgotha is obviously made up of experienced and skilled players including the drummer of Ascended Dead and the guitarist from Father Befouled and Decrepitaph (among several other projects).

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