The Return of the Cassette, Part 1

Cassettes are making a comeback.
Is it just a gimmick?

The audio cassette is an amazing format. It's cheap to produce, easily transported, relatively durable, and portable decks could run a long time on a pair of AA batteries. Sure, it sounds like crap, but when the cassette was king you couldn't very well walk or drive around with a turntable or CD player. As CD players became more affordable and more portable--and less likely to scratch your disc--the cassette fell out of favor.

I got into music as CDs were overtaking cassettes. I only bought a couple cassettes, but recorded many of my CDs onto the format for listening on my Walkman or in my car. So I do have some nostalgia for the format. Strong memories persist: blaring my Walkman while mowing the lawn, sitting in the back seat of the car with my family, winding the tape back in with my pinky, or listening to the same tape over and over in my first vehicle. If side A ended in the middle of a song, it was disconcerting to hear the song without a break in the middle later on. Older metalheads have even more nostalgia for the format, held over from their discovery of the music or from tape-trading.

The format has been making a comeback. (If you're into underground, lo-fi black metal, you may not be aware it was even gone.) But why?

Rituals of the Oak: Come Taste the Doom (2012)

Review

I’m not sure why people have a problem with female-fronted traditional doom. If there’s any metal genre that could use a feminine counterpoint, it’s trad-doom. While metal usually has plenty of notes and a huge wall of sound, effectively choking out anything but the most powerful of true “singing” voices, the sparse compositions of doom allow the female voice room to breathe. Sure, in some cases using a woman is barely better than a gimmick, but there are those bands that know exactly how to make it work.

Rituals of the Oak has it all figured out on Come Taste the Doom. Here, the Aussie quartet offers up five tracks of pure doom metal, fronted by an effective feminine voice. Sabine Hamad-Linfoot has an earthy husk that perfectly fits the druidic impression given by their band name and lyrics. Think a mellowed-out Uta Plotkin (Witch Mountain). Or Jinx Dawson (Coven) if she wasn’t so damned goofy. Hamad-Linfoot’s delivery is simple and understated, but she conveys emotion and crescendos nicely when needed. Most importantly, her voice is well-controlled and beautifully enchanting.

The Saw v. Look at These Teeth

v.

Saxophone has been popping up in a lot of metal albums lately. But I was still surprised to find that there is not one, but at least two grindcore bands which completely replace guitar with saxophone. I decided to compare and contrast the three-song EPs the two bands have released.

Hammers of Misfortune: 17th Street (2011)

Review

Since I let my very expensive Terrorizer subscription lapse, the only metal magazine I continue to read is Decibel. And with good reason. Not all of their writers have the best taste. Some of the reviews are filled with hyperbole or references I don't understand. Some of the stuff they go nuts for just makes me scratch my head. But those are the exceptions.

So, when I saw the prominent position of 17th Street on the magazine's top 40 of 2011 list, I decided to check out the latest from Hammers of Misfortune. This is my first exposure to the band, and I have to say that in a magazine focused on extreme metal, they stick out like Nergal in a cancer ward. But it's good enough that the divergence from their normal coverage is warranted.

Thrown to the Sun: Of Oceans and Raindrops (2011)

Review

Foodies want to be able to put a mental pin into every country on the globe to represent the various ethnic cuisines they've sampled. Metalheads are like that in building their music collections. So I was excited when Turkish progressive death metallers Thrown to the Sun contacted me about their free debut album. I'd never listened to a Turkish band before. I was even more excited when I tasted it.

Like a lot of bands from outside metal's normal geographical region, Thrown to the Sun's sound isn't wholly original. You can identify a lot of their influences. "Evoker Pt. 1: A Ground to Fall Upon" sounds like a combination of Opeth and Behemoth. Elsewhere, you'll pick up a lot of Origin and Obscura, or even Strapping Young Lad.

Cthulhu

Vildhjarta: Måsstaden (2011)

Review

Djent.

There, that has you all worked up now, doesn't it? The feelings that term brings up are strong. Many people like the genre of the moment, but a lot of more old-fashioned (or, at least, older) metalheads really hate it (I include myself in the latter group). To some, merely uttering the word djent is itself a hanging offense.

Vildhjarta is a djent band, there is no question. And they're signed to Century Media. That's two strikes, right there, and for those reasons I initially ignored them. But I saw a significant number of defenses of the band, calling them different from your typical djent fare. So, I decided to give it a shot.

Palace of Worms: Lifting the Veil (2010)

Review

If there is any label currently vying for the Profound Lore throne at the top of forward-thinking metal, it's The Flenser. They recently offered the sophomore album of San Francisco one-man black metal project Palace of Worms free through Bandcamp.

The label describes Lifting the Veil as a black metal "inversion". I'm not sure inversion is the right term. That implies it's taking black metal and turning the whole thing on its head. But what is black metal? Today, you could boil it down to two very different camps (at least, if you don't count the French, who are most definitely doing their own thing). First, there is the old-school, Transilvanian Hunger camp, more or less content to ape the 90's golden era of Norwegian black metal. Then, there's the new camp, your Wolves in the Throne Room, Altar of Plagues, and, indeed, Liturgy, who approach the black metal aesthetic obliquely, using its sounds to wholly different ends. The two sides malign one another as stubborn asses stuck in the past or as hipsters, as the case may be.

Korn: The Path of Totality (2011)

Review

I thought I'd start the new year off right, by addressing trve kvlt metal legends Korn. I've made fun of them lately. They seem to think their album title is so brilliant, deep, and God-damned clever, when they're not even the first band of 2011 to use it.

It's still no secret that I grew up as a fan of the band. Even their more recent work has been a guilty pleasure of mine--up until their last two albums. The untitled one simply left no impression on me, and I gave Remember Who You Are a better score than it deserved, a 3 out of 5, noting that with only one guitarist, they needed the electronic elements to prop up their sound. For The Path of Totality, they've taken the electronic elements to a new level.

Other Best-of-2011 Lists

No new material from me today, due to the holiday. Instead, take a look at some other notable best-of lists for 2011.

- Decibel

- That's How Kids Die

- Beards, etc.

- Monkey Defies Gravity

- Šawtooth Ŵave

- Invisible Oranges

- NPR

- No Clean Singing (especially check out the Metal Bandcamp Doom Favorites

If you know of any other good ones (which obviously does not include MetalSucks) please link in the comments.