Be Excellent To Each Other

Pure filth featuring members of Primitive Man. Can't get enough of this EP.

https://verminwomb.bandcamp.com/track/you-know-nothing

Guess who I'm seeing on Monday!

Wesley Willis decayed corpse?

ZOM's "Flesh Assimilation" could be my metal release of the year. Only spun it a few times so far, but it's superb. There's no flab on it, just 8 face-meltin' black/death belters.

https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp ... similation

(Preferred the murkier production of Multiversal Holocaust and the demo, though.)

Strongest 2015 release so far, for me:

A Umbra Omega is probably going to be my album of the year, unless Virus pull their fingers out and release this year.

Fenriz' own radio show is superb.

Finally!

Babymetal fans should note that there's a documentary about them on iPlayer (but only until Tuesday): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... y-to-tokyo

AKA "People Who Are Alive".

They're ok but hugely gimmicky.

So's your face.

Actually they aren't, really. We saw a whole set (rather than just their one usual played hit) and they're really bloody good.

I haven't seen them live but I have both albums. I'm sure they're good to watch live.

Good enough to stand outside in shorts and tshirt in an apocalyptic downpour.

Paedo.

Fuck you she's eighteen I checked during the gig.

Ahem.

I'm pretty sure everyone here has grown out of metal, but anyway:

The new Morbid Angel record is superb.

That is all.

I haven't! I shall check it out.

Never!

I wouldn’t say I’ve grown out of it, but my tastes have become more varied and more mellow.

I must share with you something I learned over the weekend ( for context, we were talking about subgenres of music and how over categorisation sucks all the fun out of music)

There's apparently a sub genre of grindcore called pornogrind.

The only difference between pornogrind and grindcore is that pornogrind has exceptionally sexually explicit lyrics.

...

Even I can see the flaw in that.

I've been going through a bit of a Therapy? jag lately, having wrenched Semi Detached out of its non-Spotified existence by adding it to my own Spotify. What an under-rated gem that album is.

Anyway, that led me to this:

Fall from grace for the lads.

Cheap as chips tickets. In Maidstone Leisure Centre. Ignominy.

Having previously only listened to them as far as Infernal Love (but loves everything up to that point) I randomly decided to pick up what was their new album at the time 'Disquiet', which I fucking loved. Spurred on by that I went back one to 'A Brief Crack of Light' but it hasn't grabbed me at all. Checking Wikipedia for this post though has made me aware that they've got a new album out this year so I'll be all over that, and the hopefully resultant tour.

Disquiet is very much the spiritual successor to Troublegum, I've been enjoying that lately too.

Given you stopped at Infernal Love, I'd definitely recommend checking out Semi Detached.

Hmmm, one of the reasons I stopped at Infernal Love is because the chorus to 'Church of Noise' annoyed me so intensely. You're not the first person I've heard talk about how good it is so I probably should give the whole album a proper shot at some point.

Ha, the Church of Noise is an absurd song but I'm very fond of it. It's not indicative of the rest of the album (aside from its punchy production).

Look at how ickle they look. Don't they grow up fast, eh? (No, this was 26 years ago you idiot)

https://www.dannydutch.com/single-post/2018/06/01/Watch-Rage-Against-The-Machine-Play-A-Record-Shop-In-1992

Are Royal Blood metal?

I mean, my first reaction is no, but they're heavier than the metalcore shitters.

I you both.

They're really not. Royal Blood are a lot more bluesy and pop-y than anything I'd call metalcore. And I say that as someone who utterly adores Royal Blood.

I'd generically call them just 'rock' and be done with it, because a lot of the time all this genre dividing is just wankery.

In terms of 'heaviness' though it's sometimes a worthwhile thing to try and quantify, purely because people can't always get into stuff that's too heavy (by whatever their own standards are) and that's totally fair enough. And, to bring it full circle, Royal Blood are the sort of heavy that I'm pretty sure my dad could get into i.e not very at all.

They are dad rock, I agree

I still remember the one-off BBC 2 show called something reverential like 'No Nirvana, never mind' that seemed to appear out of nowhere one evening during my youth and that show-cased all these incredible bands me and all my peers loved. This was decades before YouTube et al, and before even most people had Sky or whatever, so actually seeing things like music videos was hilariously rare. And this was the next thing up from even that: just great bands filmed playing live in a smokey venue.

Anyway, I say all this because that programme was the first time any of us experienced RATM and it. Was. Fucking. Mind. Blowing. The righteous fucking anger plus the guitar work plus the hooks plus Zach de la Rocha just being himself all over the place was like literally nothing we'd ever seen before. Just, brilliant stuff.

It's disappointing he hasn't done much recently. I unfairly assumed he'd have let his craft slide over the years, but his verse on Run The Jewel's 'Close Your Eyes And Count To Fuck' is proper hip hop genius; he's still tearing down fucking walls after all these years.

And here's the very thing I was talking about:

All you fucking youngsters, coming along and reclassifying proper metal as rock just because you're jealous of proper metal haircuts.

And the other thing. It's a brilliant tune, but the video is also excellent:

Great find! Weird seeing J Mascis with stupidly long hair that isn't brilliantly white.

Also, on the topic of Morello's guitar work upthread, I assume everyone has seen the insanity of his solo with the Boss on Ghost of Tom Joad? Skip to around 6.47 for it.

Sadly both Pearl Jam and RATM are cut from that, but I enjoyed it nonetheless - thanks for digging it out. Sonic Youth are so weird, I love them. Look how young Billy Corgan looks, and he's got hair! Shame he went all alt-right as the world left him behind.

I watched a video of Smashing Pumpkins playing live in 94 t'other day. He has hair, but you can see it's going. He was wise to shave it all off. As you say, shame he's turned bad. Though there was always a touch of the Morriseys about him.

Edit, that youtube link wasn't working, here's a screengrab.

New Deathspell Omega record is up on NoEvDia's channel. Seems to be applying Manichaean cosmic dualist thought to totalitarian political theory.

This one is going to take a while to get to grips with - it's a bit challenging...

I've never been able to get into Deathspell Omega. I've tried loads of times but it just won't catch.

Got my mitts on a vinyl copy of Justice for All this week

They can be a bit much! The new one is odd, musically - there's a lot more hardcore/grind riffing, but they counter it with sort of weird mathy arpeggios everywhere.

I've got a DSO tattoo these days, though. I quite like them.

NoEvDia are on a bit of a roll, as the new Misþyrming is really good, too. Bit more of the Enslaved-style rock on this one.



Nice, where did you get that? It's my favourite 'tallica one.

Mine too, one of my mates is a record dealer, he’d just sold Master of Puppets too

You can buy it new for £24ish on Amazon etc but this is from back in the day and had been played once to tape Sounds fantastic

Bands I have been listening to lately:

Pelican - their first new studio album in six years has just dropped and I’m two tracks in currently. If you like instrumental, atmospheric post-rock/metal you’ll like this.

Russian Circles - another instrumental band but a bit more straightforward than Pelican. Still excellent though, and feature the bass player from Botch, who are one of my all-time favourites.

SUMAC - Aaron Turner’s main band since Isis split, they’re heavier and faster and less progressive. I’m still not entirely sure I love them yet, need to give them more playtime.

Isis - speaking of Isis, I listened to three of their albums while working yesterday and I still love them. When Celestial was released there was no one doing what they did, and they were definitely pioneers for the now-burgeoning post-metal scene. 2002’s Oceanic is definitely the highlight.

Daughters - debatable whether they should be categorised as metal at all, they’re almost a modern-day Swans in a parallel universe where Swans didn’t reform and release four amazing albums in the last decade. But still good.

Cult of Luna - another post-metal band but special mention because their latest album (a collaboration with former Made Out of Babies vocalist Julie Christmas) is incredible.

Have you heard Endon, the band who supported Sumac on their tour this year? They're absolutely ridiculous, best described as 'like that Merzbow/Full of Hell collab, except good.'

Also - new Cave In album. It's gorgeous.

Caleb

Surprise new Pallbearer single

https://pallbearer.bandcamp.com/album/atlantis

New Mgła record dropped last week, suddenly. It's not as good as Exercises In Futility, but then very little is.

Worth a punt if you want a little bit of melody in your black metal, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming. Like, say, the Memoria Vetusta records. Also—contains many, many paradiddles.

Ar, it's non too shabby.

Ross Sewage is doing a comic of Ghoul currently kickstarting at the mo.