Culling the Herd
In previous years I've been cute with my end-of-year lists. I did a top 13 of 2013, a top 12 of 2012, a huge number of lists and a top 25 of 2011, and back in 2010 I did best-of by subgenre. It would seem I'm done with that, for this year at least.
As I pondered 2014 in metal, I wondered where I'm going with this blog and how long I can keep doing this. Over 2,000 unread e-mails weigh on a person psychologically. I need to find a way to manage it with less time.
For a moment, I felt like my tastes have stagnated, at least in metal. The albums that stuck in my head were all from artists I've featured in previous year-end lists. But going back over the year, I was pleasantly surprised at how many standouts I had momentarily forgotten. A few of them made this list. And that's really the best reason to read these lists anyway, so you can remember to pick up the records you meant to buy.
As always, this represents how I feel about these albums now, not necessarily when I first reviewed them and not necessarily how I'll feel about them in a month. It is going to skew mostly toward the people who send me promos, but that's not all the list.
10. Wolvhammer: Clawing Into Black Sun
Another cycle of blackened sludge albums (a repeat of 2011) found Wolvhammer head-and-shoulders above contemporaries like Tombs and Castevet. For some reason this band once again slipped my mind when I first compiled this list, but taking another listen it's undeniable how great and even catchy these riffs are.
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. 