Dark Americana

 I've mentioned it a couple times now: I really love the dark Americana vibe of singer-songwriters/bands like Steve Von Till, Scott Kelly, Man's Gin, Dax Riggs, and Wino's most recent solo album. And it seems to be the music that best fits my mood when I think about 9/11.



This kind of music is tough to define, and that's why I can only call it a "vibe". Sometimes it's rock, other times country, and other times folk--but maybe it could be something else, too.

Morne: Asylum (2011)

Review

Morne's Asylum is a strange listen for me. Josh Haun had some great observations about it--namely that it is "a search for the sublime through heaviness," in contrast to metal's usual preoccupation with the grotesque.

Sonically, the album fits mostly into a sludge metal framework. The guitar tone is pure sludge, as are the hoarse, caveman vocals. It also draws on doom and post-metal, with a slow tempo and wave after wave of subtly changing power chords. Keyboards dance quietly atop those waves, barely rippling the surface.

Ancestral: Asinfonias Para Cerdos (2011)

Review

The vocalist of Chile's Ancestral (the death metal one, not the black metal one) gave me a review copy of the band's self-released full-length, Asinfonias Para Cerdos. I'm pretty sure that's "Symphonies for Pigs", so it sounds like a good idea to me.

Any time you hear mention of Suffocation, there's usually also some comment about how many bands try to copy them. Ancestral does a lot of that. It's a brutal death metal assault from start to finish, full of plenty of slam-style breakdowns. For those of you who are easily confused, death metal with breakdowns is absolutely NOT deathcore. Deathcore is just metalcore simplified and played extra heavy. Ancestral is unadulterated slam death.

Exhumed: All Guts, No Glory (2011)

Review

In 2011, a trend can start and end in a couple months. With a dozen new releases in every genre every day, and people writing about music on umpteen million blogs (I'm guilty too), it just moves fast. Take, for instance, the so-called New Wave of Old-School Death Metal. It was identified as a reaction to the too-clean, too-technical sound of modern death metal. The NWOOSDM seems to have started some time in the middle of 2010, and here we are in the middle of 2011 and the anti-trend of NWOOSDM is now the trend. Some people are already getting sick of it.

Is it now anti-trend to release a modern death metal album? What's cool (or anti-cool) today? Don't ask Exhumed, because they obviously don't care.

Communic: The Bottom Deep (2011)

Review

I've mentioned before that I love American-style power metal. The more aggressive, less cheesy cousin of the Euro variety does exactly what I want it to do. And Norway's Communic is about the only European band to do it the American way.

The Bottom Deep is the band's fourth full-length. If you've heard them before, you know what to expect. If not, chances are you've heard Nevermore, and that will put you in the right frame of reference. Jeff Loomis-style thrashy power metal riffs with the occasional pinch harmonics, peppered with the occasional undistorted section, with an operatic, emotional vocal performance. Cool riffs, big drama.

Exhumed: Primevil

Open the core, enter hell's door

Primevil was an Indiana hard rock band whose sole album, 1974's Smokin' Bats at Campton's, sounds like a direct influence on stoner rock almost twenty years later. Metal cred can be found in the devil album art, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Venom's Black Metal. The demon face, logo placement, album title placement and font, they are all spot-on. Hell, Venom even recorded an album called Prime Evil, and members of that band started a new band called Primevil (to release an album this summer). Could all of that be coincidence?

Blizzard at Sea: Invariance (2011)

Review

How do you decide which albums to listen to? I've touched on the subject a while back, discussing what sources I look to, which evidence I use. But I didn't discuss how to weigh that evidence.

I submit that most of us decide what to listen to based on a simple cost/benefit analysis. You compare your investment--money, time, bandwidth, and/or hard drive space--to how much you want the album. You want it because of its pure musical quality, the pedigree of the band, the music's originality, or whatever you value. That cost/benefit analysis weighs heavily in favor of Invariance, the debut EP of Blizzard at Sea.

Rite: Lie in Wait for Blood (demo 2011)

Review

Unsigned Swedish black metallers Rite keep churning out the releases. I've interviewed them to plug their Hight of the Day two-song single and then plugged the "Lie in Wait for Blood" promo, so you could say I'm a champion of theirs. Now they've presented us with a four-song demo, Lie in Wait for Blood.

The demo contains the song "Lie in Wait for Blood" as well as three new cuts. The production is (as always) deliciously raw, but this time they have gotten it exactly right (no pun intended), so that it sounds consistent throughout and is never robbed of its power.

The music is mostly slow- to mid-paced, dissonant, raw, evil black metal. The atmosphere created is intense and nerve-racking. The drums are interesting, and sometimes they speed up (e.g. on "Funerals") even when the other instruments are still moving at a doomy pace. Besides the title track, the other standout is "Plagues to Come". It has somewhat of an Egyptian feel to the melody, and although I didn't listen closely to the lyrics I suspect it has something to do with the ten plagues.

Botanist: I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose from the Dead (2011)

Review

Can music be black metal without actually being metal? That's one question posed by I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose From the Dead, the debut album of Botanist. Otrebor, the band's only member, contacted me with a review copy of the album. He handles drums, vocals, and hammered dulcimer.

The hammered dulcimer is an ancient stringed instrument played with mallets. Your only point of reference may be a xylophone, thanks to its popularity in children's alphabet books. Dulcimer completely takes the place of guitar and bass in this record, so it sounds entirely like no other band out there.

It was intended as two separate albums, but weirdo-friendly label Tumult decided to release it as a double album. When I first put on I: The Suicide Tree, I expected this to be gimmicky. But I was immediately drawn in. High-pitched melodies, dissonance, and rasped vocals, accompanied by weird, halting drum rhythms. It's hard to know what to make of it at first. Sure, it could be dismissed as merely an interesting experiment, but it's mesmerizing.

Across Tundras: Sage

Review

Sage is dry. Across Tundras dream of cool, clear water, but do not find it. It's the soundtrack of walking through the Nevada desert, hallucinating from exposure.

I love the dark Americana vibe of bands like Man's Gin, Wino, and Dax Riggs. I'm not even sure I've mentioned it before, except for my glowing reviews of Smiling Dogs and Adrift. Across Tundras compellingly fuse that vibe to the stoner metal / desert rock of Kyuss.