Black metal ist kalt

Metal is fucking ridiculous. You know, I know, metal fans know it. I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's really fucking ridiculous. Power metal is fantastically whimsical, death metal is laughably brutal, and thrash metal is practically a cartoon.

But nothing whatsoever can match black metal (bolded for emphasis/grimness.) The attitude, the aesthetic, the fashion...
hell, it almost feels as style-conscious as the "scene/emo/whateverthefuck" 'movement'. It's gotta be grim, it's gotta be frostbitten, it's gotta be so invertedly necro and recorded in your basement onto a limited edition tape that if it isn't, you're a fucking poser so go listen to Job For a Cowboy you fucking gay-ass poser scum FUUUUUUUUCKKKKK HOLY SHIT I HATE YOU YOU SUCK SO MUCH.

(Admittedly, this fervour has died down somewhat in recent times; acts like Darkthrone and Satyricon are looking more like angry old men then costumed servants to Satan, and newer bands like Nachtmystium and Wolves in the Throne Room look downright friendly.)

Nonetheless, this sort of attitude means a lot of black metal is shitty, sloppy, aimless, indistinct, blast-beaten nonsense. So when bands come along and try something new, something a little more grandiose, with a little more thought and a little more effort (well, make it a lot more), a lot of people absolutely lose their shit (see: Deathspell Omega, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc.) However, one of my favourite black metal releases in the last few years (and, in fact, one of my favourite metal releases) is just well-written straight-up black metal: no keyboards, no female vocals, no extended ambient passages. Fucking I.C.E.



Imperial Crystalline Entombment, comprised of Mammoth, Blizzzard, IceSickKill and Bleak (yes, really), are pretty much a pure black metal ensemble hailing from the frostbitten fjords of Waldorf, Maryland ("pure" meaning guitar + bass + drums + vokills, not "pure" in the Aryan, National Socialist Black Metal way(see: Gestapo 666, Slave Whipping Blasphemy, etc.) What sets them apart is that they actually put noticeable time and effort into songwriting. There are choruses, there are vocals, there are hooks, and they do it all without dipping into "melodic black metal" territory. The lyrics are a tongue-in-cheek (?) story about the coming of Ravaskeith, and his bringing of an apocalyptic end in white. While the subject matter is ridiculous (word of the day!) and the lyrics not particularly deep/meaningful, they are written with... get this... metre and rhyme. The syncopation of the vocals and the rhyming does wonders when it comes to making a memorable, satisfying experience.

Mammoth rise in winter guise,
Take this child to the frozen side,
Empty human born of flesh,
Throw him, to the cold white death!

Buy it if you like it.

M4As, sorry:
I.C.E. - Hypothermic Possession
I.C.E. - Cascade Cavern Catharsis

Ghosts will come and kiss our eyes

If I had a dollar for every band that "features members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor", I'd probably have at least twelve dollars. A Silver Mt Zion is the obvious choice, then we've got Set Fire to Flames, Fly Pan Am, Exhaust, 1-Speed Bike, Black Ox Orkestar, Molasses, etc, etc. Not to say I dislike Godspeed (actually quite the opposite), nor do I dislike many of the side projects, but it just feels like they're goddamn everywhere.

One such project I ignored for far too long was HRSTA (spelled with little dots below the RST, but who has the time to do that?), featuring Mike Moya (ex-Godspeed, lolz) and, perhaps more excitingly, Brooke Crouser (Jackie-O Motherfucker (note to self: do blog on Jackie-O Motherfucker.)



Moving away from the grandeur of the former and the folksy noisefuck of the latter, HRSTA are sort of a middle ground between the two extremes (to underwrite everyone involved in this comparison.) This is a superbly atmospheric record, with all matter of organs and related instruments providing minor-chord drones while the reverb-y/tremeolo'd-to-hell-and-back guitar lines wrap their way around them (or is it the other way around..?); and, of course, Moya's vocals fit perfectly, and whatever little couplets of lyrics you can decipher are wonderfully creepy, too. His voice reminds me of Mehdi Ameziane from Natural Snow Buildings, and, at times, even of Thom Yorke's more restrained moments (a la Kid A, natch.)

As always, support the band whenever you can.

HRSTA - Entre la mer et l'eau douce
HRSTA - The Orchard

Comus rape, Comus break, sweet young virgin's virtue take!

It's always a pleasant surprise when the most interesting and experimental bands you can find were actually active 40 years ago. Such was the case when I stumbled upon Comus roughly over a year ago. A tragically short lived and largely-membered group of musicians from the UK who released one of the most "out-there" albums of the early (early early) 70's, First Utterance. Seriously, it is difficult to conceive that must like this was released in 1971, and even harder to imagine it was conceived 2-3 years before that. HOLY SHIT.



It's sort of hard to describe, but imagine a group of medieval minstrels on LSD on acid playing some sort of proto-freak folk (in the sense that this is freaky and it is folky, not in the sense it's that made-up genre people sometimes label Animal Collective as.) Thematically, the song varies in themes from rape to more rape to torture to rape and torture (to the oddly out-of-place celestially-themed prog-rock wankery of "The Herald", which is probably a metaphor for rape (i.e. "flutes", etc.)

None of this would really be half as interesting as it is if it weren't for Roger Wootton vocal style, which ranges from yelping to screaming to warbling to sometimes actual singing; definitely download "Song to Comus" to see what I mean, because it really makes the songs extra-special. EXTRA SPECIAL.

Most exciting of all and most extra special is that the band recently announced a goddamn reunion after a 35-ish year split. I will donate any part of my body (you hear that, Comus? Any part.) for a Toronto date. Please.

Comus - Diana
Comus - Song to Comus

Comments are always appreciated. Tell me what you like, what you don't, want you want more or less of, or send me some recommendations or anything. And if you wanna link to me, I'll link to you. No homo.

My holy bones are best for breaking.

I don't think I can throw enough "crossover"s or "post-"s into a genre description to make This Song Is A Mess But So Am I communicable in just words. Experimental-electro-noise-crossover? Harsh post-dance with industrial influence? -core?

This was a project started by Freddy Ruppert after the death of his mother, so as one can imagine, this album follows a frantic sort of emotional roller coaster. That being said, the variety works surprisingly coherently: from straight-up noise ("God and Cancer") to straight-up dance ("Song for Donna Ruppert") to acoustic experimentation ("High Fives for Jamie") to creep-rock ("Bones Bones Bones") to God knows what they are all tied together quite nicely, by both Ruppert's distinctive voice and the subject(s) at hand.



What really sets this apart from other experimental electronica, and in fact, most music as a whole is the passion behind this record. Every note and every word is absolutely meant which is far more than you can say for a distressingly large percentage of current artists. We're talking a pg.99 level of feeling here.

Appropriately, this project was laid to rest after it had run its course for Mr. Ruppert, at which time he graciously made all the project's material free for download. I'm still going to put up a couple MP3s in case you aren't quite ready to commit to a whole .zip file.

Since you can't support this band, give his new band, Former Ghosts a listen.

This Song Is A Mess But So Am I - God and Cancer
This Song Is A Mess But So Am I - Bedridden and Dancing



Is it just me or was this entry not as well-done as my others? Something feels off.

Nice schedule commitment, stupid.

Sorry, computer problems yesterday. New post up maybe tonight, but I've got an emergency band practice. Say, could this count as an entry?



No, ok, fine, I owe you cats an actual blog. But hey, if you're in the GTA, swing by the show tomorrow, eh?

Ruzan Orkestar

A Trap For Judges (& a schedule for blogs (this one (now every Monday and Thursday)

Doesn't it seem like the more "extreme" a genre gets (in any direction, i.e. extremely harsh or minimal or whatever), the more it has to do to be interesting? Noise, drone, ambient... all fairly interchangeable and indistinct, for the most part. There is simply only so much you can do with white noise/single-digit BPM/holding down a C on your Korg. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy all the aforementioned genres, but it's very easy to get burnt out and jaded with it all.

My first drone experience was, as it is for most people, with Sunn O))) (unless you're uber-tr00 and listened to Earth.) I didn't quite "get it", again, as it is with most people. Not that didn't understand, per se: I was a fan the Melvins' doomier, proto-drone, dirgey, [ominous-sounding-D-word] material, especially "Hag Me" off of Houdini. But what the fuck was with Sunn O)))? Ten minutes long, no discernible "riff", no nothin' as far as I was concerned. Admittedly, I was 15 and was much more interested in death/black/thrash at the time, so I probably wasn't in the best frame of mind.

A couple years later, when Black One came out, I (NOTE: this is not a blog about Sunn O))) and this story is indeed going somewhere, but feel free to skip this paragraph if you want to get to the meat and potatoes of this thing.) decided to pick it up and give the band another chance, especially since this album had a number of guests and seemed to be a fairly varied album. Which it actually was. Oren Ambarchi, John Wiese, Wrest and Malefic (of Leviathan and Xasthur, respectively) doing vocals HOLY SHIT. And it worked: almost every track stood out. The tremolo riff (riff?!) in "It Took The Night to Believe", the goddamn netherwordly screams in "Cursed Realm (Of the Winterdemons)", and, perhaps my favourite, the huge harmonics in "Cry for the Weeper." Drone could be more glacial paced guitar sludge, and I'm doing my best to come up with a "it only took me the night to believe in the genre" sort of joke, but I can't.

So with a newfound interest in the genre, I set out to see what other "experimental" drone I could find. Boris's unpredictable, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach; Earth's sun-baked southern doom; Asunder's monolithic funeral dirges. And, just recently, I have discovered, perhaps, the crown jewel of them all (ok, aside from Boris, but they're not really drone, ya know?): Asva.



What You Don't Know Is Frontier is absolutely massive. Oppressive, haunting, ethereal... every buzz word you use when talking about drone applies here, the only difference being these words actually mean those things now.

More than anything, it's the simple things on the album that are most effective. As I'm sure you can tell from the pictures, these are slightly more mature doom merchants, but it really does show. Take, for instance, the organ (keyboard? Synth?) in the opening title track. This is what takes it beyond most other drone. It's very basic but goddamn if it doesn't unlead this nightmare fuel.

The highlight of this album (not just for me, but for everyone, it seems, according to Last.fm , too) is undoubtedly "A Game In Heaven, Hard Work In Hell." Words aren't going to do much for this one, but let's say it starts of very droney (surprise!), builds with some eerie, indistinct female vocals before, out of completely nowhere, fucking bulldozes you with a glacier made of onyx and hate. I don't really want to ruin the track actually, because I do hope you'll shit yourself the same way I did when I first spun this record. Shit yourself with pure awesome.

I encourage you to buy this record if you like what you hear. The band, like a lot of people, have been affected by the current economic situation, and because of lack of money had to cancel a European tour scheduled for next month. Buy it straight from the band, cut out as much of the middleman as you can.

Asva - A Game In Heaven, Hard Work In Hell

New schedule

Ok, so starting tomorrow there should be a fairly regular update schedule. New posts Mondays and Thursdays. Until then, watch a Swans live video. Definitely my favourite band at the moment.