When it comes to underground black metal and Viking-ish / pagan-ish metal, I tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers available. Yes, there are incredible releases out there, and they often come from bands I’ve never heard of before. It’s tough to know where to direct my attention. So I download a few promos, a few of them end up on the iPod, and fewer get a complete listen.
In my continuing exploration of many of the classics of speculative fiction, I read Larry Niven's Ringworld. If you're familiar at all with the Halo video game franchise, you know at least one thing this book inspired. The central feature is an artifact, a made world in the shape of an enormous ring. It surrounds a sun, spinning to simulate gravity, with high walls at the edges to keep air, soil, and water from flowing off the edges of the ring's inner surface. "Shadow squares" at a closer orbit to the world's sun provide daylight intervals on the livable surface. To get a good visualization of the Ringworld, you can follow this link, although you should be warned that if you look too closely at it that will provide some spoilers.
Well, it’s a funeral, that’s for sure.
The last time I talked about Atriarch, I focused on how they combine doom with punk’s equivalent of doom, deathrock. I said they were like a cross between My Dying Bride and Christian Death. But the more I listened to An Unending Pathway, the more I realized they are true spiritual successors to My Dying Bride.
I thoroughly enjoyed Inter Arma's 2013 release, and although FMA did not agree, I was not alone in that enjoyment.* Sky Burial was a thunderous piece of heavy music that while sludge-tinged, defied certain scene aesthetics and easy categorization. The heft was undeniable, and in all the right places. The Cavern follows somewhat quickly on that release. So why so quickly?** Still further, why make a one song album? Why make one song 45 minutes long? Why not break it up into six to nine songs, up to eight minutes long each? There are probably a lot of reasons to make a one 45 minute long song album - publicity, a bet, an internal challenge to push songwriting boundaries. But is there a cohesiveness, a theme that would justify the 45 minutes? These were my thoughts heading into this review of Inter Arma's The Cavern. 
Execration is the act of condemning something, declaring it evil. But more importantly, it's an obscure word that sounds vaguely evil even if you didn't know that, and the cover art to the Norwegian band's Morbid Dimensions looks like something from an underground black metal band--the kind that has too much creativity to be contained in only the colors black and white. So we can figure out a couple of things from that alone.
It’s been said that Blue Öyster Cult put the first unnecessary umlaut in a band name “because of the Wagnerian aspect of Metal.” You probably already know how ridiculously bombastic Wagner made his operas, including the use of a giant cello that required two people to play—because it wasn’t heavy enough yet. Drama on top of drama made songs like “Ride of the Valkyries” so compelling, and though his compositions had their subtleties you don’t exactly need a critical ear to catch the main drift of any part of the Ring Cycle.
As I was listening to Abigail's Intercourse & Lust, I had no idea it was 18 years old. Speed metal is evergreen. This is true to the purest ethos of the backpatch-on-jean-jacket set.
Feist: Metals (2011)
So by now I’ve revisited every studio album by Slipknot, a band who shaped my musical preferences long-term—and honestly had a big part in prepping me to be an extreme metal fan. What I’ve learned is that they released a handful of pretty good records with hard rock parts, some metal parts, extreme percussion, angry shout-along choruses and catchy sung melodies. They also released one very good record (Iowa) that was, on balance, a metal album. This revisiting of their catalog hasn’t really done anything to alter my current perception of the band.
I’ve always kind of felt that YOB is a bit overrated. No, let me rephrase that: I used to think YOB was overrated.
I’ve been going back over the discography of Slipknot, because they were an important gateway band for me. Finally I’ve come to the last of their previous studio albums. This one is a bit different to me personally. Whereas their first three albums got a whole lot of spins from me in an earlier time, and have a lot of nostalgia value, my view of All Hope Is Gone is not clouded by such feelings. By the time it came out in 2008, I was already hooked by Suffocation and fully into a death metal obsession. I listened to it, sure, but I was more interested in more extreme things by that point.
I’m going to, once again, borrow a metaphor from a particular Decibel review, because it’s perfect: listening to Anaal Nathrakh is like hearing the gates of hell opened, just a crack. No one else can do that. They made my own end-of-year list a couple years back, because Vanitas brilliantly combined that utter sonic chaos with undeniably catchy melody and close to a score of different sonic influences (including opera) in brilliant fashion.
Chris Black is on a roll. An unstoppable heavy metal force. He is truly one of metal’s most gifted songwriters at the helm of two of metal’s most likable bands.
A couple of years ago I said that Menace Ruine sounds like occult church music. That’s still pretty much the case. If you’re the kind of person who is mesmerized by Botanist, or intrigued by Sabbath Assembly, then you will certainly enjoy Venus Armata.
After defying all expectations by going harsher and heavier with their sophomore album, Slipknot took a short hiatus. The members went off and pursued their own projects for a while, most notably Corey Taylor’s Stone Sour. And upon their return, they went to a much more predictable path.
Exmortus - We need to talk about your flair. I mean Exmortus, come on. You only have fifteen pieces of flair. Dragonforce, they have thirty seven pieces of flair. And a heck of lead guitarist. Yes we know that 15 pieces is the minimum. But people can get guitar leads anywhere. People listen to this kind of metal for fun - for the super noodling guitar licks. The air guitar action. That's what flair is about. Yes we know we could tell you to be more about the flair. But we want you to express yourself. If you think the minimum of flair is enough, well, ok. But some bands choose to do more flair, and, well, we encourage that. You do want to express yourself, don't you Exmortus? Don't you?
Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (1967)
I'm a bit of a nerd. And I love to read, but I don't have the time/motivation to read a book in a weekend. It takes me a bit longer. So as I may have mentioned before, I set out to identify and collect some of the classics of science fiction. I'm still going through that collection that I amassed mostly over a decade ago.
For nostalgia’s sake, I’m going to go see Slipknot next month. In anticipation of that, I’m trying to figure out how 32-year-old me feels about the band that the 22-year-old me loved so much. I began that with a review of the debut, which left me with an understanding of why I loved them, but not really feeling it the same way I used to.