Friday, April 28, 2017

QUICK HITS: Rebel Souls - The Forces of Darkness

Cuero rebeldeeeee!

In the interest of transparency, I should inform you all that I'm reviewing this on request.  I almost never do that simply because I'm the most unreliable idiot on the planet, but I'm making an exception here entirely because the email that asked me to also mentioned that Obscura is a fucking terrible album.  Hell yes I'll review this album you fellow connoisseur of death metal that doesn't sound like the most irritating shit on the planet on purpose.  High fucking five.

Rebel Souls hail from the area where even insane evil scientists like to relax, southern Spain, and according to their little promotional blurb on Bandcamp, aim to create a sound in the vein of Vader, Vomitory, and Krisiun.  Longtime readers of mine should recognize that I absolutely fucking adore all three of those bands, and lucky for me, the band isn't just talking out of their collective ass this time.  Vocally, there is a huge Vomitory influence, and the rampant tremolo riffs that rip by with painfully sharp gusto only bolster the connection.  While the Swedish legends do indeed make up most of the influence, Vader is most definitely represented well also.  Their signature high speed chugging riffs rear their heads several times throughout The Forces of Darkness, and it adds some extra crunch and propulsiveness to the already high octane blasting insanity on display.  "The Elementar" is a great example of this, and probably stands as the best track on display as a result.  Really though you can't go wrong with any of these monsters.  There's an edge of roughness around everything, giving off pure attitude and rawness without being so mechanically precise that you lose the inherent brutality but without becoming a sloppy mess.  Overall there's not much to say other than this rules.  It looks like this band has been around more or less forever before finally getting this debut full length out, so let's hope they can keep up this momentum and kill us again soon!


RATING: 85%

Thursday, April 27, 2017

QUICK HITS: Incredulous - The Weight of Time

I'm not sure I trust it...

Incredulous is yet another thrash act out of California, merely thirtyish years late to the party, but I'll cut them some slack since I'm pretty sure the members are all young enough to be my children.  My thoughts during the first track were that this is mega lo-fi, but it sorta has a charm to it in that old school DIY way.  It's instrumental, so it's definitely a showcase for the instrumentalists of the band, and they're all competent enough.  The riffs are nice enough, sharp and melodic despite sounding like it was recorded on an answering machine, drumming is good and energetic if a little bit stock, nothing to outwardly dislike really but nothing jumps out of the speakers to grab my ears and force me to headbang like a maniac.  While this is playing I think I'll look up some information on the members to see if my joke about them all being super young was accurate or not.  Wait a minute... what's that I see in the picture of the vocalist?  Is that an Embryonic Devourment shirt??  Oh no, he's gonna suck isn't he?  The next three tracks confirm that yes, he's not very good.  His bark at least has some effort behind it, so he can't be called lazy or just in the band for the sake of it, but his voice sounds like a blend of the lows and highs from Skeletonwitch, and that should theoretically rule, but with his voice pushed so far in the forefront it's really distracting and his mediocre skill is all the more apparent.  I mean, not everybody needs to be Mads Haarlov, I get that, and it's neat to see a more extreme style of vocal in an ostensibly pure thrash band that takes on a deeper register instead of imitating Mille Petrozza for the fifty billionth time, but something about him just strikes me as really unrefined and way out of his league.  In all honesty, the whole demo just smacks of a band that isn't ready yet.  Granted, that's what demos are for so I'm not gonna trash them for it yet, but there's really nothing at all here to stand out.  It's just thrash riffs and low barking.  Almost any metalhead has heard that a thousand times before.  It's very much a utilitarian release that shows up, does what it needs to do with very little consequence, and ends.


RATING: 38%

Sunday, April 23, 2017

QUICK HITS CLASSICS: Infester - To the Depths, in Degradation

Time to test the depths...

Confession time: even as a long time death metal fan, I've never actually bothered listening to Infester's sole full length, To the Depths, in Degradation.  I don't know why, it has a long standing reputation as one of the few legitimate cult classics of the genre but for some reason I just never took the time to sit down and give it a listen.  I decided to change that today, mostly because I read some old reviews for it from two of my personal favorite reviewing peers, droneriot and lord_ghengis.  The former says what most people say (it's horrifyingly ugly and monstrous and inhuman) while the latter says the opposite (it's propulsive and riffy and varied and fresh), but they both agreed it is one of the all time greatest releases in the genre.  This intrigued me, I wondered how I would feel about it since I'm prone to being contrarian at times.  Time to finally give this dark beast a spin:

I'm immediately struck by the droneriot school of thought.  This is disgustingly brutal, almost inhuman in its approach to the tropes of the genre.  It's bizarre to think how ahead of its time the album was.  It may not have predated some of the earliest examples of supreme filth in death metal like Mental Funeral or Onward to Golgotha, but it's definitely one of the earlier examples of death metal eschewing everything in favor of unremitting brutality.  Everything about this just sounds... I dunno, malevolent, like some form of audial curse is being put on you for listening.  Seriously, I frequently champion Suffocation as one of the heaviest bands of the 90s but they wish they could have sounded this bleak.  It's dark and earnestly hateful, with a focused intent to harm.  The frequent shifts from bone-rattling, harrowing doom-slathered dirges to almost illogical blasts of frenzied chaos just sound unnatural and utterly fucknuts wrong.  This is hurting me, it's so great but it seems like it was crafted in some sort of alternate Shadow Dimension where human rules don't apply.  Did the fucking Dunwich Horror write this?  Is this what Wilbur Whateley was reading to his brother?  Listen to those vocals!  Is he roaring?  Groaning?  Dying??  I'm listening to this on Spotify because piracy is wrong, kids, and the occasional breaks for ads for Axe Body Spray and KFC are doing nothing to snap be back to reality.  I'm only a few songs in as a write this, something just compelled me to start writing by the time "Chamber of Reunion" started.  It's just so unrelenting and harrowing, there is nothing human or relatable about this, it's some utterly alien incantation ritual I'm sure is meant to kill me.  Is this like The Ring?  Am I gonna die in a week??

And now, and this is 100% true, near the end of "Epicurean Entrails", I started to feel lightheaded and my stomach started tying itself in knots.  I dizzily stumbled to my bathroom and proceeded to take the most forceful and jet black liquid shit of my life.  WHAT KIND OF USOG DEMONRY IS THIS??  I CAVE, I'M DONE MAN, LICK MY FOREHEAD AND CLEANSE ME YOU FIENDS.

So I'm convinced, To the Depths, in Degradation is cursed and I'm never listening to it again because I would like to live a full life.


RATING: 100% PLEASE DON'T HURT ME ANYMORE 

Friday, April 21, 2017

QUICK "HIT": Sleep - Dopesmoker

FIRST ANNUAL 4/21 SPECIAL!!

With yesterday being the ganja holiday that it is, I thought it would be high time to review arguably the most definitive stoner metal album of all time, Sleep's seminal hour long ode to haze, Jerusalem, more widely known for the remastered and lengthened single track version from five years later, Dopesmoker.  Now, right off the bat you're probably wondering why I didn't write this on 4/20 like any halfways logical human, well...

I tried.

You see, I don't smoke weed.  Never have, never really wanted to.  I don't really have a reason, I'm just not intrigued (I didn't drink until I was 23, I've played so much Final Fantasy over the years that I'm pretty sure I've somehow regained my virginity, I'm so square I'm practically cubical).  For that reason I just don't touch on stoner metal very often because I always felt like I just don't "get it".  Like, I understand what it is: it's super fuzzed out Sabbath worship based around hypnotic riffs and extreme repetition, with a newer breed of bands being less afraid to pick up the pace and introduce more punky and aggressive parts.  The problem is that I just don't have the capacity to listen to one super awesome riff for ten minutes on end, so a lot of the classic bands and hot new groups just do nothing for me.

So I had an idea.

I'll reach out to three close friends of mine, all of whom are very pro-stoner, but unlike me, are not metalheads.  There's the guy (I'll call Patt Mike), the girl (I'll call Biz Luckingham), and the guy/girl couple (I'll call Tittybong, because after two spoonerisms of prominent musicians in the style, customers demand a non-linear pricepoint.  Also because it's a real town in Australia and that always makes me laugh).  I figure that if stoner metal is a subgenre created by and for stoned headbangers, how can I trust them when they say it complements the high since they already like heavy and abrasive music?  This experiment should show factually whether Sleep is actually a great band or if it's just surrounded by an eternally skunky bukkake party.  I asked them all to listen to Dopesmoker and/or Sleep's Holy Mountain and I would just review whichever one(s) they chose.

And then, well, they all got stoned and forgot that I asked them to listen to it.

God fucking dammit.

So while I waited for them all to get back to me, I wrote down my own thoughts on Dopesmoker.  Honestly, it's pretty good.  It doesn't blow my mind or anything but in the realm of preposterously lengthy metal songs, it's certainly one of the better ones that doesn't fall under the funeral doom umbrella.  The ludicrously long and repetitive Sabbath riffs work well enough for what they are, and the droning, one-note vocals make the whole thing sound like this years long pilgrimage to Weed Mecca.  It's very weary and drawn out, clearly aiming to be hypnotic and transcendental, something meant for when you want to turn on, tune in, and drop out.  The band's very name is quite fitting, as there's this sluggish, sleepy quality surrounding the whole thing.  It's meant to be taken in as one whole experience, so the different sections all lead into each other very well and the track ebbs and flows like the tides.  It never picks up beyond a glacial paced groove, and I appreciate the band for just going all out with the idea here and not pussing out and making it sound like six distinct songs.  It's monumentally heavy and drowning in fuzz.  I chose this band/album for this celebration/experiment for exactly this reason.  It's the logical endpoint for the style.  It's diluted with absolutely nothing and just surrounds itself with a sulfuric fog and dies slowly, exactly how it was always meant to be.  The problem I have with it is that... well, it's really god damned hard for me to listen to attentively.  I've tried a couple times years ago, and by the time you reach the 8 minute mark and have heard effectively just one riff repeated twelve times, you just want to listen to the thing on fast forward and see if it's actually a real song slowed down to the point of incomprehension.  This time, however, I just had it on in the background while I chatted with my girlfriend and played games on my phone.  It worked much better this way.  It's inoffensive background noise that somehow gets better the less attention I give it.  Suddenly the repetition isn't bothersome, it's hypnotic.  The agonizingly deliberate progression goes by in a much more manageable pace, since each change is a welcome surprise instead of a "GOD DAMMIT FINALLY" moment.  The iconic opening lines of "Drop out of life with bong in hand / Follow the smoke towards the riff filled land" sound fucking monumental when they're first delivered, and when they're revisted near the one hour mark, it's actually extremely effective at tying it all together, it's just that I'd never be able to wait that full hour under normal circumstances.  Maybe this is why you need to be blazed to appreciate it, because I, as a sober person, find it to be drool inducingly boring when I'm paying attention to it, but find it to be a subtly brilliant piece of art when I'm not dedicating more than 50% of my mental faculties to it.

So with that in mind, now that it's a day later, let's see what Patt, Biz, and Tittybong had to say about it now that they've had extra time.


BIZ SEZ: Biz:[3:53pm] "I'm listening!"

BH [4:02pm] "Awesome!  Thank you!"

BH [6:14pm] "Thoughts?  Did it complement or harsh the high?  Was it awful?  Did it work well?  Did it sound like a dying pachyderm?"

Biz [10:11pm] "Honestly it was almost kind of soothing?  I fell asleep like halfway through, haha.  I really enjoyed it.  Lullaby metal [laughing emoji]"

Jeez Biz, I wake up at 4:30am for work, where were you hours ago?  Anyway that's 1-for-1, she liked it and it seemed to jive well with what she had going on.  Enough to put her to sleep for six hours at the very least, and it presumably wasn't out of boredom.  I'll count that as a win.


PATT SEZ: [3:03am] "Okay so my thoughts are this.  As a metal fan myself..."

FUCKING SHIT I FORGOT PATT LIKED METAL.  I mean, his taste is very eclectic and he's by no means a "metalhead", but he does like the odd band here and there.  He saw Black Sabbath on their farewell tour and I knew that.  So I ruined my own experiment, the whole idea was to get people who would never listen to this and see what they thought while baked.  Oh well, this'll have to do, I'll assume metal isn't one of his top five most listened to genres and soldier on as though we're still on track of the pure and untouched.  Back to it: 

"As a metal fan myself I did enjoy the songs, having never heard of the band before I was a blank slate. I started by taking one large hit and starting Holy Mountain. The intro was cool, the sound quality was a little off for me, but remember I have one deaf ear so Everything I hear is a little off. The guitars were scratchier than I would have liked for being stoned.  After another two hits I got more into the general sound of the track. I then started Dopesmoker and lit my road joint once more for the drive home. From Chicago to [MYSTERY TOWN] I was guided by their dramatic rifts and melodic drumming, I definitely was able to tune out the world, listen to the music and drive. As a stoner I might not have this as a first go to, but if it came on I would surely enjoy it. Digging through more of their work on Spotify I found myself enjoying "Evil Gypsy/Solomon's Theme" much more, I replayed that at least twice while smoking. If I had to offer a numerical value I'd say while stoned 5 1/2 out of 10. Not the worst, but wouldn't be a go to for me, but did enjoy the listen. Thank you and have a pleasant flight."

So Patt was much more mixed.  He's the only one who listened to Sleep's Holy Mountain as well, and it seems like he liked that one less than Dopesmoker.   SHM is certainly a bit more riffy on the whole so maybe the more frantic pacing had something to do with it?  Either way it looks like Dopesmoker is a hit so far.  The overall score is pretty middling and he admit that he wouldn't reach for it on his own, but enjoying it during a session is something he could see happening, and that's really what I wanted to know throughout this experiment.  Big thanks to him for the detailed response!


TITTYBONG SEZ: ...

...

...

Nothing!  Tittybong never got back to me.  The female half of the collective did inform me she'd be working until later, in fairness, but she said she'd grab her boyfriend afterwards and give it a whirl since they had no real plans for the night.  Now it's afternoon the next day with no word and I didn't pester them about it, so I'm going to be forced to assume that they either tried listening and hated it so much that they didn't want to report back, they simply had no desire to actually do it and didn't have the heart to tell me, or they just plain ass forgot and won't remember until I post this.  I did tell all three participants that I wouldn't be upset if they didn't have time or just didn't want to listen to it, so I'm not upset, but there ya go.  Three very different perspectives from three very different people who have nothing in common besides liking weed, not listening to metal, and being unfortunate enough to be real-life friends with me.


BH'S RATING: 74%
BIZ'S RATING: ZZZZZZZ
PATT'S RATING: 55%
TITTYBONG'S RATING: BUNNY FILTER SNAPCHATS INSTEAD OF LISTENING TO SLEEP


So there we have it.  Sleep is, scientifically, irrefutably, a thing.  Happy 4/21 Special!


EDIT 4/22: Tittybong finally texted me back.  Official word is "FYI metal still sucks/  Although, Sleep puts you in one of those trances.  I have to admit I listened for a solid minute before I realized I was listening to metal music and turned it off.  You've got to be PRETTY stoned to forget you hate metal music."



So there we NOW have it.  Sleep is still scientifically, irrefutaby, a thing.

Friday, April 14, 2017

QUICK HITS: Dying Spirit - Bad Reputation

Sir, this is a Home Depot...

I love Polish metal.  I don't know what it is, but they seem to nail extreme metal with alarming consistency.  Vader's newest may be mediocre but they've got like seven other classics preceding it, Mgla is on top of the black metal underground right now, Behemoth is Behemoth, Cultes des Ghoules, Lost Soul, Furia, Plaga... the list goes on seemingly forever.  So coming across Dying Spirit here filled me with excitement, purely based on the promise of more ass kicking tech death from a European hotspot.  And after a few listens... well, it's okay.  I can give the band some serious props for the vocals being as beefy and menacing as they are, and the tone is very chunky and thick, and I love that, but overall this is lacking some serious bite.  Really, "technical death metal" is a bit of a misnomer, since this is really much closer to the groovy side of death metal.  Not like, say, Six Feet Under or something where they write three riffs and repeat them for 45 minutes.  No, this is more like Godhate or a lesser Vader album like Necropolis or The Empire.  There are a lot of rapid fire chugging patterns that work quite well when it comes to punching the listener in the face, but everything blurs together and makes the album pretty faceless by the time it's done.  It's forty minutes of death metal mosh riffs, with some of them standing out superbly (like "Changes" or "The Game is Never Over").  And frankly, that's pretty cool, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.  As excellent as these riffs are, there are too many that are too similar.  The album really loses its luster after the first few tracks and it peters out without much consequence as a result.  There's a great album in here in the vein of something like Vader with Pantera riffs, but the songwriting is still in the growing stages it seems.  I'll be keeping my eye out for future releases but they'll really need to step their game up with the next one.


RATING - 69%