ANTHRAX: Worship Music (2011)

ANTHRAX
Worship Music

This is the way to come back ...

I find myself worrying and puzzled. How would Anthrax even begin to plan on getting their shit together? How could their circulation, so varicose, stale and shitty, manage to pulse with anything but old hits and shitty bricks from their ancient period, in stale thrash-shorts and white sneakers and wacky lyrics about Judge Dredd and whatever "Efilnikufesin" was; they're just lucky to even be alive, much less a signed, active 2011 band.

I say these things, since Anthrax have spent two decades showing us truly how shitty a band can get. It was bad, folks. It was no funeral. No one cared. They did some horrible things and they did them in the dullest, still somehow legal ways (if I recall the 1998 single & video "Inside Out", that was the first time I got my period, and since then I've been a man -- a bleeding hole of a man).

No one told me that Anthrax's newest comeback effort, and the words effort and comeback are seldom so pronounced as this, would be a pure fucking bolt of energy. I'll allow my curse words to roll out for a bit, since a TRUE return to form by a band this fragmented, disjointed and flippant - with a fan base that hadn't escaped - is a rarity nearly unique.

To describe the level of energy, I only have to say "Mad House" or remind you of those bolts of lightning they used to serve up with the crazy cereal lyrics or Indian motifs - but then subtract the things that made them tiring and grating: There is no excess of solemnity, humour OR aggression. Something has clicked. This machine serves up rock after rock of tumbling motherfucking destruction.

It is not that they are sickeningly hardcore or melodic - but that their mixture of past elements, even those that were ill-advised for a thrash band in 92, or 98, or 03, somehow totally covers the bases of a great band.

I'm too excited, people. You just have to go hear for yourself. I will feel sorry for you if Worship Music doesn't rough up your evening, but remember, I was as cynical of the 'THRAX contemporarily as you might be, and as I pushed play with an open mind last night, something, or someone, said "fuuuuuuuuuuck yeaaaah".

And that something was Joey Belladonna, a ridiculous, ridiculously named Native-American, part time karaoke alcoholic, doing to the ascendant vocalist comeback things that have never been achieved in history.


[ 4 o' 5 ]


by Knut T. Farstad

BLOTTED SCIENCE: The Animation of ... (EP 2011)

BLOTTED SCIENCE

The Animation of Entomology EP

The only part obvious about Blotted Science's music is the notion that it is incredibly complex, and as such becomes more of a natural wonder or disaster occurring by the typhoons of serendipity, more climate, insect or asteroid than human. In fact, few things have ever seemed as inhuman as this EP (or the previous, full-length The Machinations of Dementia (2007), and that is not a complaint, but an observation of the visceral and massively crucial part of the creative process and artfulness - where none would be perceived - of those who do, indeed, machinate their music. A syncopated, divine - or absolutely Satanic - oscillation, flickering by the trainload through the railway of your ears.

Blotted Science is the brainchild of WATCHTOWER's enfant absurd, the tech-metal renaissance man, Ron Jarzombek. He is the only performer in metal who is perhaps TOO AMAZING to get an awestruck fan base of  kids and amateurs who slaver about good guitar-playing for the wrong reasons, pretending to love the art of expression but only suckling shadows of what they can copy or use as eyelids. This is an extremely potent presentation of a sound we have generally heard described as far back as Jarzombek's "solo" records, under his name and apparently by sole credit, like the 2002 album Solitarily Speaking of Theoretical Confinement - the closest this mirror-hall shardstorm auteur has come to a "classic".


But in truth the mannerism and musicality do not allow for such things as favourite songs, albums, or comprehension. They can be shallow entertainment for my love of freaky things beyond my wildest personal disciplines; or enjoyed as deep, hard vivisections of the personality of technical metal. There are no hooks, no flotation device to make you understand, or remember, or recognize what is in essence a BRUTE show of perseverant effect. In a chaos of countertonality and precision, steeply avoiding melody, squares of structure or even indeed repetition of anything but its perpetual motion, it takes my highest praise to describe Ron Jarzombek's mastery. 


3 o/o 5

American Black Metal

Wolves in our Throne Room ... ? 

   Sometimes I have to answer my own, long-suffering questions - about my taste in regards to certain other things which have haunted my musical sensibility and concurrent social, musical discussion, about conformists and non-conformists ... but perhaps more importantly, about this thing itself and why it has grown so looming and popular that, even in forums and collectives and podcasts, devoted to opposition either of its element or by ignoring it making its denizens self-important. its popularity secretly lingers, grows and subsists, but is actually only a secretive, particular interest because it maintains a facade. It sounds like I am describing a pandemic flu, but therre are similar problems, more important than just people dying (death and plague are not easy subjects, but it is to a fault universal). Certain other TRENDS, and CULTS, that demographically are just as widespread and oftimes problematic as infectious disease. A mainstream crowd canonizing a band  based on pilfered values; foreign, subcultural, formerly esoteric and even unknown genres (to American metalheads). Very often this kind of musical sleight-of-hand has a typecast villain and perpetrator; American, shallow indie-progressive-metal eclecticism, and the rest of the world - and the snobs above the snobs within USA - has slowly been either discriminating, or fallen in love with these bands and their art thieves. Americans have stolen everything musical somehow, but the world always believes they can make it better. And that was exactly what they did with death metal a decade earlier: Autopsy were a scatological, rumbling self-propelled missile of disgustingly perfect music.

DEAD AS DREAMS

   In 2000 WEAKLING came onto the American "alternative metal" scene (I use the term due to the website/store of Aquarius Records; gathering place for intense elitists Stony McProgsalots scene for a long time). Fans were rabid and shows were sold out and the musicians apparently came from nowhere (though of course it was all done in a very calculated, but misleading and illusory fashion). True story: their record was such a sought after gem that for a while there was a marketing campaign - or if you'd like, a joke played on bozos and the obsessive - that included TREASURE MAPS to find HIDDEN, BURIED copies of Weakling's record.

Prior to the release of the album, a few odd tales sprung up about the possible ways it could be distributed, including printing a single copy to be given to a single fan in Europe or burying copies of the album in the ground and giving maps to fans who wanted to find them. Band leader John Gossard has since decried the spread of these stories as a publicity stunt pulled by the band's record label noting that the ideas were never intended to be more than a joke between the band members.


Weakling entry on Wikipedia

   For myself, with the go-ahead from a band member online, I avoided purchase and went straight to AudioGalaxy - ancient piracy for nerds - for the record, titled Dead as Dreams. It is likely in the top 20 epic-type metal records ever. But it is doing hard time in the convicting hearts of us elitists and record nerds, because Dead as Dreams and Weakling were, in overtly conscious, American fashion, giving birth to the cutest little toddler ... American Black Metal. And at night he turned to stone and emasculated you.

  Now, death metal had been a whole successful thing, with both international popularity and homegrown legends, giving birth to the more tech-progressive and brutal styles of death, and a certain promiscuity yet genius lay in that category of American bands. The past decade's mainstream has remained mostly the static, faceless fan base who have bought the same Cannibal Corpse record for 20 years and now thinks Suffocation is something new (cause they re-formed), and only trying to ignore all the Canadian death metal they own by blasting Nile -- which is an exotic joke about Egypt and Americans.


But that is all normal and ... to be expected of "those people".

  American Black Metal, however ... that descriptor does not begin to describe how flesh-eatingly potent the growth of interest in black metal has been over the past decade, and how battered the resulting inspirations can be, still all hailed glorious from some bag of tricks like SONG LENGTH, CRAZY TRACK INDEX, LONG TITLES, NO BASS GUITARS, ALL BASS GUITARS ... just all over the fucking place. It more resembled, and did in fact grow from, the punk scenes, thrash bands, indie-metal guys, Alternative Tentacles and fucking secretly pederast prog people, who are now the hot and bothered journalists hailing all American Black Metal bands as revolutionary.


Do you know what happened in Norway when Black Metal unleashed as a sub-culture? 


[TO BE CONTINUED: within November's end]

PRIMORDIAL: Redemption at the Puritan's Hand

PRIMORDIAL

Redemption at the Puritan's Hand
2011

"So rise my brothers, rise from your graves
No grave is deep enough to keep us in chains"
Track 2: "Lain With The Wolf" by Primordial  

Primordial shall certainly sometime be sacrificed at the altar of their own genius. I can barely consider their quality, due to the absolute lack of flaw in their constant, chronological execution of the most epic music. In theme, in the burning fire of historical lyricism; in Alan Nemtheanga's passionate, discordant but preciously clear vocals, and how he makes important this fabricated realm of coffins, death, of some slight but unclear Magick; ideologically devoted to starvation and merciless pity; devoted to devotion, or just devoted - in summary, I do believe - to a quantity of metal hitherto not measured amongst men.

In my own life as a recording metal musician, I often listen to brilliance, and certainly to any generic fodder, and recognize that I know the tricks and think how I could make it myself. I suppose that is how a chef thinks when he sees a mysterious recipe before him. But, I do not know how to create any such resemblance of Primordial's grandeur. I could copy their lyrics down and study them for ages, I could move to Ireland and have a psychotic lapse into occult nationalism, I could play in a band with their guitarists -- yet I suspect the mystery is only that the technical aspects used to produce Primordial's primal blaze and rolling thunders, are actually of such simple craft that only these persons, as singular musicians before them, could synthesize them into something that seems so complex and complete. That is a sentient art. Where the music is not trying to be artful, but consists of a formula that came to be through true miracle - human folly and persistence.

All this exposition of awe is dangerously close to beatification, and I must be careful. Redemption at the Puritan's Hand is not close to being their best work. There remains nothing bad or mediocre or shallow about it; but the epochal, tune-changing release, The Gathering Wilderness, and the following perfection of this formula, To The Nameless Dead in 2007, are music in statue. 

I do not wish to describe Primordial's genre, style or even technical proficiency. It all works, and you simply must hear them. Many Primordial fans prefer the more blackened, less winding material that came previous, but I must disbelieve them as simply nostalgists. I suppose there is a real chance that even epic, or viking metal fans might dislike this vein of "occult metal", but so many people now share my admiration for Primordial's ipseity that I confess; I feel like the prophet, and I can see the angels, and all that shit metalheads can see in the dark brightness.

Forget about the underground, the scattered occultists of black metal. 8-minute, viciously dramatic songs about burning or drowning Irish coffins presented with the rigeur of a Shakespeare monologue can work, three albums in a row ... It is a sin to beg for more.

rating: [4.5 / 5]            

play time: 63 minutes

Summary: DEATHSPELL OMEGA [2004-2011]

Deathspell Omega:
(2004-2011)

their 2011 EP
Diabolus Absconditus 

Deathspell Omega is among the most fascinating, bizarre and intense metal acts out there; even surpassing their peers within extreme, avant-garde black metal. They are not weird and wickedly contorted and dissonant out of a lust to be confusing, cute or clever; they create pure beauty out of distorted parts that barely fit together, but upon concluded composition tend to become such beautiful tapestries that they own a league of their very own.



Their discography encompasses a wide range, with fairly standard output early on, from 1998 up to their genre classic, the formidable yet still somewhat generically styled Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice (one of the highest rated LPs on RateYourMusic), which presents its weirdest component, the title, to frighten your standard metalhead. Then came 2005's sudden, violent lapse into territory mostly inhabited by such acts as Negură Bunget of Romania; epic-length, strenuously dissonant compositions, with a rapid, mechanical attack, holstered in an organic sense of discordant harmony. That EP, Kenose, is seen by many as their crowning achievement. For my part, 2007's Fas – Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum (yet a ridiculous title for your Ridiculous Black Metal Battle Card Deck© - collect them and battle your friends and cocaine addiction with your heroes!) is their reckoning release, a totally violent blizzard of nearly dysfunctional genius. Fas ... was a paradigm of ultra-violent, frenetic weaponry. Me and my friends listened to it during a car ride, all fucked up, in a stuffed car ... I bet the people driving past us had never seen heads swivelling quite so fast, or people moshing on their inch of space inside a car, going 90 MPH.


[TO BE CONTINUED]

MASTODON - The Hunter (2011)

Mastodon:

The Hunter (2011)

This is quite a terrific ride. It's joyful to see them continue in the vein of "Crack the Skye", but opening up even more and tending more towards vitality. This nearly breaks down their career-long curse of solemnity; and replaced their broken mythological themes with lighter fare - the lyrics are a sort of hybrid between heavier alternative rock and indie.

They don't sound as "goddamn serious" anymore - in a good way - and finally relax their hypertensive attack, even placing a couple of power ballads on the record, without making them singles or boring interludes. I think this is all a reflection that they have finally settled on a sound and gotten comfortable, both artistically and commercially. They definitely deserve everything they've managed to achieve, and I'm glad to be able to enjoy them again, of late (including Crack the Skye), for the first time since their 2000 9-song demo dropped.


rating: [3 / 5]            
play time: 58 minutes
download @ mediafire

MACHINE HEAD - Unto the Locust (2011)

Machine Head:

Unto the Locust (2011)

  The face-pierced, veteran aggro-stoner, and self-proclaimed metal legend, Robb Flynn, and his tremendous line-up (including his co-guitarist from late 80's Vio-Lence, Phil Demmel, and the rock solid drummer Dave McClain) throw forth what is the culmination of the culture change (starting with Through the Ashes of Empire (2003); followed by the good, but unfocused The Blackening (2007)) he instigated to replace the sadly impotent stoner nu-metal of his output from 1996-2002. Instead of sounding like he's trying too hard, Flynn manages to abbreviate the many influences he's gathered, from Gojira, Devin Townsend, Dillinger Escape Plan, et al; other bands they have toured with and befriended - but mainly from
Robb himself and his technical and vocal security, making his label of "legend" somehow seem deserved now. After so many years trudging with Machine Head, bringing them back to the top, and of course his terrific 80s output with Vio-Lence (a severely underrated, sphincter-tight thrash band, akin to Dark Angel etc.), his spot in the Hall of Fame is secured ... here's to hoping he won't get lazy again. 

   Though he will hardly reclaim the commercial access he had during the 90s (if you will recall singles like "Davidian" and "Ten Ton Hammer", which were Sepultura - Roots-inflected nu-metal tracks with a terrific sound and heaviness, but lacking integrity and vitality), this is Flynn's best record since the debut, nu-metal Burn My Eyes back in 1994. And as a fixture guaranteed by Demmel's inclusion, it features the most intense guitar-playing he or they have achieved since Oppressing the Masses, 21 long years ago. 


Post-Script: There are many things I dislike about this record, but I try to keep the subjectivity of it cohesive to Machine Head's discography in general, and otherwise an objective view of what I surmise many might find a very good mainstream listen.

rating: [3 / 5]
play time: 63 minutes
download @ mediafire

DOWNLOADS: Recent Metal Releases

I uploaded a bunch of newer releases (all 2011, most of them very recent), for your listening pleasure. Of course, find a way to support the artists and don't be a fop-doodle.


An article collecting reviews of these releases is UPCOMING!

BLUT AUS NORD (France):

• 777 sect(s) (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?1j3aabkvly51kqu

ABSU (USA):

• Abzu (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?x136bit3f866gkg

BLOTTED SCIENCE (USA):

• The Animation of Entomology (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?mppcsl401g01p9a

TAAKE (Norway):

• Noregs Vaapen (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?gacb97bdr4662ij

MACHINE HEAD (USA):

• Unto the Locust (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?h7uhfz7t6vraptp

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM (USA)

• Celestial Lineage (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?7gqmvp2bgt79323

VADER (POLAND)

• Welcome to the Morbid Reich (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?7zgbc3z38dccmvm

AMEBIX (ENGLAND)

• Sonic Mass (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?ja7ezt4msw4397x

KRALLICE (USA)

• Diotima (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?aj4ef22dp49w7jr

OPETH (SWEDEN)

• Heritage (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?cu94l63h57pmk00

DEATHSPELL OMEGA (FRANCE)

• Diabolus Absconditus (2011) - http://www.mediafire.com/?s1pi99rdnc159rp

NILE: Conclusions

NILE
Conclusions




Certain bands are ever-present, and subsist so by being (in distinct manners) mediocre or very, very good, but could go unnoticed for an entire lifetime of listening. They play out their lengthy, continuous blur of bad (with a dedicated, retarded fan base) or, in this case, almost great records, over entire decades, and in Nile's case started in 1993, meaning they're almost 20 years from formation. They've made six LPs, with very little variety, but indeed just three interspersed categories of song, being interlude, fast Nile song and the rare slow Nile song. There are a couple of classic songs that combine the fast and slow Nile songs into epic lengths, but as a matter of total overview, they have a near-zero will to change, and one might argue, just as little reason to stop doing what they're doing.

Nile is a band that, as I mentioned, can be forgotten and buried to the seasoned listener - relying mainly on myself and my equivocal friends outside the fan base - because, after discovering them and listening to their records, you realize they're only going to gainsay the same values and tread the same steps over and over. Certain bands can wield the curse, of repetition combined with ideology, while recording diverse materials (see VOIVOD), but most of them do not (see the entire genre of serious metal), and in this Nile is very much of a type with IMMOLATION, and just the same they both started young and many erstwhiles ago, but had laborious and unsteady start-up processes, which left them with a sort of training in the arts both of instrumental proficiency and many lessons against the art of vacillating. The only difference to offer that stands out is that Immolation is one of the best bands in metal ever, while Nile is just too specific and " outsider-hilarious" to enter that class.

The term "outsider-hilarious" is just a fluke of substance, but I think it does require observation, placing you as the metalhead outside looking in, to realize when a band is just soaking with ridiculous obstacles to the serious or external listener. I have the advantage of once showing Nile to a metal-unseasoned outside listener and, on the canvas of facial expression, recognizing that their whole Egyptian motif is nearly hilarious, and seems like a joke. But the first time I heard Nile, before I had become adjusted to death metal with blast beats at the age of 12, I was obviously trying to get into the entire genre, so I didn't mock them because they were too tight. But playing their records will substantially follow as such:

1. Instrumental section -- using instruments that shall not appear again for the duration of main musical structure. This tries to belabour that these dudes are very serious and well-read guys who did not just pull everything about Egyptian ideology or musicality out of their ass because, with no doubt, it seems heavy as fuck

2. Instantly, without failure, blast the listener with a picaresque, jolly INTENSE BLASTING and TREMOLO PICKING for five minutes

3. Leave the attentive listener failing to either BE VERY CONFUSED or SIT AROUND MOSHING to all of their records.

Without further review of their discography - which could be forthcoming - that is all.

DARKTHRONE - A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992)

I tried introducing a review - this review, actually - by musing on the meaning of the greek word "entheos", which has bequeathed us "enthusiasm" as a lesser offspring, but in origin meant something far deeper; it's a word that comes to mind daily as I consider the transmission of energy and beauty through the artform of recorded music and metal. But someone already wrote up a pretty decent eulogy of the term ... and I would have become decisively boring as I tried to remedy your ignorance of such deep, classic meanings and words, duu-uude.

So let's ignore that I actually did start out with a paragraph dedicated to it. The reason I considered the ancient idiom specifically for A Blaze in the Northern Sky is fairly clear, at least to those with my lineage of taste; this is the best Norwegian black metal record, ever. Some prefer Transilvanian Hunger or Under a Funeral Moon, but in my ears this is the truest example of Darkthrone. It feels perfectly pure and untampered with, like it was blasted into existence true to its brave, cocky title, and the cover might even be called good photography if one considers its symbolic representation. My favourite T-shirt was of this cover, just black with three specks of vague detail and some text. They certainly kept up their (now legendary) trend, but never with the purity of Blaze.

I'm a sucker for excessive songs, and 6 tracks in 42 minutes sounds like my favourite ice cream flavour. I recently read a review pointing out that they probably started the album trend of seven-or-less "epic riff-bombarding" songs, where the duration is not justified by some lofty concept, but just a run-on barrage of great material punctuated with the art itself as free energy, accidentally recorded in the wilderness of genre lust; not encapsulated, accessible "pop" formats inherited from thrash metal. I dare say these songs have a natural excess, separated from the aforementioned pretenders of latter black metal waves by the fact that it's motherfucking Darkthrone's Blaze, ya heard. On one of their more recent, genre-bending releases, "Too Old Too Cold" said with the cocky arrogance of our darling Fenriz:

Nothing to prove

Just a hellish rock n' roll freak

You call your metal black?

Its just plastic lame and weak

We're too old, too cold

Too old and too cold

They deserve to flout their genre, to fuck around with people, to pretend they either were or were not Master Chieftains of black metal, cause they never engaged in ritualistic, "faggy" behaviour, but were so true metal that to this day, hearing "Kathaarian Life Code" gives me magical diesel fuel and inspires me just as it did when I first heard it at fourteen -- when, by the way and example, Dimmu Borgir records were growing from the air like plastic power-ups and early Darkthrone releases were hardly to be found, pissed on by Peaceville until the resurgence of vinyl as power-grabbing gatefold wizardry gave them "inspiration".

If you can't love A Blaze in the Northern Sky, I'll piss all over you if you're not on fire and staple you to a lamp post until you decay into a pile of false hopes.