Alright, friends, we’ve managed, thankfully, to go a month without losing a prominent metal figure, and the weather has been pretty decent, so I guess we’ll have to find something else to talk about. Here’s some potential topics of discussion:
- What the fuck do you think goes through someone’s head when they decide to buy a Honda Ridgeline?
- I know Gene and Paul haven’t come off as all that cool in the last thirty or forty years, and the band has been running on fumes, but, form a strictly musical standpoint, for a decade or so, was not Kiss a spectacular hard rock band? Were they deep? No, but Neither is AC/DC or Venom, and I still enjoy the shit out of both. Did Kiss write a shitload of memorable, rocking tunes with great riffs and hooks? I think so. What say you?
- El Capitan did a wonderful Diamonds & Rust feature on Celtic Frost’s ground-breaking third album, Into the Pandemonium, and it got me to thinking about how conservative I am when it comes to metal. I am extremely skeptical of bands making significant changes to their established style. It’s not that I think change is necessarily bad, but, in practice, in metal, it too often results in music that is less heavy, less metal and less good. Now, I could go either way on Into the Pandemonium; some of the experimentation certainly yielded interesting results, but some of it makes me cringe. Where do you stand on band’s making dramatic changes in their sound? Do you tend to embrace them or dismiss them?
Feel free to address any or none of these points in the comments. Now, let’s see what we’ve been listening to in this joint.
After a month without any commonality in listening habits, I’m pleased to say we actually have an album of the month this time around. In fact, we have two albums of the month because there was a tie for first place. However, before we get to the winners, let us acknowledge our first runner-up, Moral Collapse’s self-titled debut. If you’re into brutal tech-death and brutal saxophones, our man Spencer has all the salacious details on Moral Collapse right here. As for our winners, they couldn’t be much different: epic traditional / power metal from France, in the form of Herzel’s Le dernier rampart and vicious death-thrash from deep in the heart of Texas, in the form of Steal Bearing Hand’s Slay in Hell. Cap and Zach have you covered on each release respectively.
Be sure to share your own playlist in the comments, and enjoy the staff-curated Spotify playlist below. Until next month, friends, stay safe and, and, as my mother used to say, go outside and get the germs blown off you.
- Zach Duvall
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – CARNAGE
Warrior Path – The Mad King
Herzel – Le Dernier Rempart
Greyhawk – Keepers of the Flame
Heavens Gate – Livin’ in Hysteria
Demolition Hammer – Tortured Existence - Captain
Revenant – Prophecies of a Dying World
Deus Vult – Look Upon Your Master – The Demo Anthology
Citadelle – Citadelle EP
The Evpatoria Report – Golevka
Charles Lloyd & the Marvels – Tone Poem
Suss – Promise - Andrew Edmunds
Warrior Soul – Drugs, God, And The New Republic
Obituary – Cause Of Death
Cheap Trick – Out To Get You! Live 1977
Exhumed – Gore Metal
Def Leppard – High N Dry
Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus - Lone Watie
Greenleaf – Discography
Herzel – Le Dernier Rempart
Deceased… – Supernatural Addiction
Kombynat Robotron – -270°C
Antony Kalugin – Stellar Gardener
King Crimson – Larks’ Tongues in Aspic - Ryan Tysinger
Obsolete – Animate//Isolate
Universally Estranged – Reared Up In Spectral Predation
Herzel – Le Dernier Rempart
Witchtit – Intoxicating Lethargy
Moral Collapse – Moral Collapse
Megadeth – All four of their albums - Spencer Hotz
Moral Collapse – Moral Collapse
Spellforger – Upholders of Evil
Steel Bearing Hand – Slay in Hell
Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Oz
Altered Dead – Returned to Life
Between the Buried and Me – Automata I & II - Danhammer Obstkrieg
Sevendust – Sevendust
Sevendust – Animosity
Opeth – Blackwater Park
Steel Bearing Hand – Slay in Hell
Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo – El Arte Bolero
Pupil Slicer – Mirrors - Madman
dArtagnan – Feuer & Flamme
Jasun Tipton – The Dream to Fly
Rob Zombie – The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy
Fudge Tunnel – The Complicated Futility of Ignorance
Rush – Counterparts
Roxy Music – Avalon - Jeremy Morse
Steel Bearing Hand – Slay In Hell
Cannibal Corpse – Bloodthirst
Blood Incantation – Hidden History of the Human Race
Billy Joe Shaver – Unshaven: Live at Smith’s Olde Bar
Asphyx – Necroceros
Impaled – Death After Life
- Zach Duvall
Honestly can’t believe no one is giving this Ruins of Beverast a listen, it’s super solid. He’s got that perfectly deft touch when it comes to experimentation and using the weapons already firmly in the arsenal
Hasn’t made a great impression on several of us. General consensus is that it starts really strong then gets a little lost.
Oh man, that’s really surprising! Anchoress In Furs—Polar Hiss Hysteria—Deserts To Bind and Defeat feels like that back half carries plenty of weight. I can’t disagree that the front half is pretty slick though. Oh well, more for me
Julien Baker – Little Oblivions
Scorpions – Lonesome Crow
Morbus Chron – Sweven
Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked for Death
Ulver – The Assassination of Julius Caesar
Pretty Maids – Red, Hot & Heavy
Gut – Disciples of Smut
Hideous Divinity – Simulacrum
Prong – Prove You Wrong
Cro-mags – Alpha Omega
Cro-mags – Near Death Experience
Nuclear Assault – Game Over
Ulver – Childhood’s End
Hell f++++n’ yeah!! Both Gene’s and Paul’s voices continue to thrill me in dozens of great tunes, Goin’ Blind and Just A Boy being but just two examples of them.
Sleep – Dopesmoker
Amenra – Mass IIII
Iron Maiden – Powerslave
Inter Arma – Sky Burial
Portal – Swarth
Emperor – In the Nightside Eclipse
Mare Cognitum – Solar Paroxysm
In terms of a band doing something different, I’m really not sure. I tend to think style changes are better understood in hindsight than in the moment. If I find myself coming back to a particular album by a band, then I think their change pays off. Mastodon is one band I think has benefitted from their change in sound. I’m hard-pressed to think of many others, though that might say more about the bands I listen to than about the question.
I dig the subtle changes Deftones have gone through. I don’t dig Danzig’s. I don’t dig much NIN’s. I hate Beck’s. and I love what Axl accomplished in Chinese Democracy
I’d argue that the transition from Pretty Hate Machine to The Downward Spiral was a positive change for NIN. I even liked the changes on The Fragile and With Teeth, though Year Zero on not so much.
Other ones I can think of –
Everything The Beatles did from the mid-60s on.
Pink Floyd’s gradual shift from psychadelic rock to prog rock.
Meshuggah losing the thrash metal and pretty much inventing djent.
Neurosis switching from hardcore punk to post metal.
Tool going away from alt metal into something way more elaborate.
Intronaut switching to a “cleaner” sound.
Cynic wholly abandoning any semblance of death metal.
While I personally prefer their 80s output, Metallica’s switch to arena rock in the 90s suited them well, with them putting out a bunch of killer tracks.
Lunar Shadow – Wish to Leave
Nightfall – At Night We Prey
Dvne – Etemen Aenka
Wheel (FI) – Resident Human
Sur Austru – Obarsie
Stortregn – Impermanence
Reverend Bizarre – In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend
I think Enslaved has made a dramatic change with their latest album and it is not for the better. This was the biggest metal disappointment of 2020 for me. Of course, Enslaved have always evolved their sound. They have never stood still in terms of style and their evolution has always worked for me. But the latest album shifts things too far away in the wrong direction. (Partly its the sudden prominence of meandering keyboards that wrecks things for me).
The Drowning – The Radiant Dark
Proscription – Conduit
Seth – The Howling Spirit
Katavasia – Magnus Venator
Xenobiotic – Mordrake
Question – Reflections of the Void
Fornicus – Suphuric Omnipotence
Abnormality – Sociopathic Constructs
Ominous Ruin – Amidst Voices that Echo in Stone