|
BULLET BELTS &
BROKEN TEETH
|
|
__________________________________________________
CRAFT
_____________________________________________________________
CATHETER
_____________________________________________________________
THE GATES There was glorious time in metal & punk when you could throw on your latest obscure 7" ep purchase and whether they had mohawks or hair down to their ass it was born of the same crusty denim vested bitches womb. Equal parts MOTORHEAD, DISCHARGE, VENOM & WARFARE here come THE GATES. Not one original bone in their samurai bodies but they take the four riffs and mash 'em up a bunch of different ways to make it work. When I crank this puppy up I'm 15 again and this is the band I would imagine I was in as I drank beer and acted like a reject from the Young Ones. Get a good riff, play it fifteen times, get another, repeat, speed up or slow down riff one = song. Perfect, next! Everything old is new again. _____________________________________________________________
GRAVELAND
_____________________________________________________________
WOJCZECH I wasn't expecting too much when I popped it in. That's what all the ladies tell me-B-B-B-B-B-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA -Z-ZIIIIIIIIIIIIII*cough*IIII-I-N-G! A darker metal tinged grind band that I will recommend with the caveat emptor that I'm really not a huge fan of this genre. So for any of you Grind Bastards fool enough to hang on my word as law proceed with caution. You know what? Fuck that pussy review/escape hatch! I like this, I don't know if they're cool enough or smart or fuckable or whatever. I like this. Trust your ears, not mine. _____________________________________________________________
OCEAN
_____________________________________________________________
PORTAL I didn't know you could get away with brown pants in black metal. _____________________________________________________________
HAEMOTH
_____________________________________________________________
ANTIGAMA MORBID BUNGLE. BPM ist scheisse. And just because you try and rip off Snake from VOIVOD's clean vocals doesn't mean I'm so metalically needy that you can get away with it. _____________________________________________________________
WOLD Harsh, nihilist ritual music from the Great White North. Something very thought out and impressive is going on underneath the layers of fuzz. A definite headphone listening effort. WOLD is a singular, disturbing enigma. I don't get the impression that those involved were trying to follow any rule book or dopplegaang their heroes. A very interesting record from a thought provoking & mysterious collective. A welcome nightmare indeed. _____________________________________________________________
ONDSKAPT The rantings of
the last villager left in line to be hung for the crime of being alive.
Desperate, horrified, Bruce Dickinson this ain't. |
|
-Goat Thrower |
Over in Poland,
where the mad genius behind this Pagan war hymnal resides, there is an
annual Viking festival that is held on the island of Woln and lately I
long to be at one of these more than my other fantasy of headlining the
DYNAMO Festival. We're not talking about some eight sided dice 'hey
nonny-nonny' Bud Light in a plastic horn
farce. I'm talking about a few hundred real serious Pagan fighting clubs
getting together and smashing seven shades of shit out of each other in
the name of the gods .Every one there looks like they fell off of a
mid-period BATHORY album cover and after the busting of heads they
throw a feast/drunken rampage worthy of a Joey DeMaio bass solo. I can't
believe that in my entire life I would have ever thought Poland was cool.
Well, fuck me runnin'. It is, and so is this music. Corny as it may seem,
this is very stirring ,emotional and brilliantly executed metal. If you
don't share the Northern European heritage or the East/Slav heritage you
might not get the same pleasure out of this but any one who has a
warrior's spirit will be drawn to the battle cry.
This starts with a
beginning riff lifted from CELTIC FROST's 'To Mega Therion'-
'Innocence & Wrath'. Played here like it was being covered by
KHANATE.I don't know if this is a good thing yet. I have a
preconceived notion that these guys might be Brown Pants Metal - BPM is
what you would find on Hydra Head, Tortuga, Neurot, Ipecac .A bunch of
clever rich kids trying way too hard to be 'smart' and 'different'. Which
means that they wear brown pants, have big ear lobes and put bugs and
schematic designs on their t-shirts instead of pentagrams & grim reapers.
In actuality, I heartily endorse innovation and enjoy a ton of music
released by the previously mentioned
labels. But, I also cannot stand snobs diluting my beloved metal with
hipster pretension and then trying to sell it back to the very kids they
mock. After a serious listen with my mind as open as my closed mind can
be, the verdict read is this; I don't think OCEAN are full of shit,
they just bore the living shit out of me.
It's such a fucking
pleasure to get knocked on your ass by real grim, hateful black metal. The
aggression & animosity conveyed by HAEMOTH are a perfect example of
why black metal consumed me in the mid-nineties. It's so easy to do this
badly. And get away with it because bedroom Euronymous's are too
chickenshit or embarrassed to admit the kvlt digi-pack limited release
they just bid on from EBay is a big pile of shit. If you care about
something you fight for it. And you sure as hell don't call yourself black
metal when you have the intelligence of the herd and the spine of a
lemming. Embrace contamination. And fight for what you believe in.