Some months ago, a good friend asked for advice on pipe smoking. It was clear at that moment that no top-level guide existed, mainly because most got stuck in a muddle of gear and preferences, but few mentioned the core of the practice: technique.
17 CommentsTags: listening, music, stochastic resonance
It is somewhat difficult to fail to enjoy the theory behind this holiday, even if — like everything in the hands of a human social group, committee, cult, clique, echo chamber, hug box, or hive-mind — it has been turned into an excuse for carnies to sell garbage to apathetic narcissistic morons.
13 CommentsTags: commercialism, eugenics, halloween
Following the lead of South American bands like Mortem and Krisiun, Evil Damn charge ahead with fast riffs from the early days of death metal before the genre fully separated from speed metal, but keep the influence on speed rather than choppy riffs, making an energetic and seamless listening experience.
1 CommentTags: death metal, evil damn
Most things that slide across the desk, you wonder why they got made, why a label supports them, and why anyone has invested in something so obviously mediocre. Then you realize: they are all just doing their jobs, producing work churn, and no one cares about quality.
1 CommentTags: consecration, Doom Metal
The problem with black metal is that it tried to evolve, not realizing that it was the ultimate evolution and had to go within, making more complex melodies and keeping its droning ambient mood-shifting textural structure. Katavasia attempts to return to black metal with heavy metal roots like Varathron, from which it borrowed personnel.
3 CommentsTags: Black Metal, katavasia
Progressive death metal band Sadist, who brought an early fusion of 1970s prog with 1990s technical death metal, intend to revisit their origins with Firescorched, their ninth album, due out in 2022.
5 CommentsTags: death metal, Progressive Death Metal, sadist
This band wears its influences on its sleeve — Evoken, Worship, Skepticism, and Colosseum — but at its core, this is something more like EyeHateGod, a riff look that breaks into an inner sanctum of something like rage, emulating a cry from the betrayed generation that carved out the rudiments of underground metal.
No CommentsTags: deber, Doom Metal
One of the heads of the Paul Speckmann hydra — Death Strike, Funeral Bitch, Master, Abomination, and Speckmann Project — Abomination presented an early vision of the grinding punk, speed metal, and 1970s rock fusion that formed the basis of the Speckmann ideal of death metal.
2 CommentsTags: abomination, death metal
Birth Ritual records added Sentenced Down to its roster of tapes licensed from Century Media. Originally released in 1996, the album showed where Sentenced went after the formative North From Here, and while it was quality heavy metal, it missed out on the mystical atmosphere of earlier releases.
No CommentsTags: birth ritual records, Heavy Metal, sentenced
Deceased and Doomstone, like Motörhead, represent a certain spirit in metal that combines enthusiasm and cynicism, although Doomstone tends more toward the imaginative early heavy metal era that wrote about goblins, witches, UFOs, and ancient gods. This album compiles some well-executed covers from bands that I mostly care little about.
4 CommentsTags: deceased, Speed Metal
