I Do What I Want

I saw this and had to share.  This is from The Chive.

Funeral Doom Bands on Bandcamp

I did one of these posts quite a while ago with slam death metal.  I decided it was about time to pick a new genre to take a look at briefly and hopefully discover some good, newer bands.  All of these are either free or Name Your Price.

Dom: Dom II End
Dom is a one-man funeral doom metal project from Spain.  Created exclusively by Ivan "Belial" Manzano, Dom has managed to put out a number of releases in the short time it has been active.  Dom is incredibly bleak with a morosely slow sound and some dark and disturbing soundscapes.  The use of keyboards further adds to the hopeless sound.  This is an instrumental band but for the most part vocals are not missed.  At times, it tends to drag on with no real direction, but for the most part it sounds pretty good.

Lycus: Demo 2011
Lycus has been getting a little bit of hype, as well as the occasional mention over on Metalsucks.  It is fairly well-deserved too.  Lycus is not as slow-paced as other bands, and probably are more of a doom metal band with death metal-esque growled vocals in the vein of Swallow the Sun's first album than a funeral doom metal band.  The music is compelling though.  I will be on the lookout for their debut album which is supposed to release this year.

The Cold View: Weeping Winter
Winter is probably the most appropriate season for funeral doom, especially the really cold, miserable days and The Cold View have taken that concept and run with it.  Musically, The Cold View bears a very strong resemblance to Ahab's debut album.  I love that album so I am definitely on board here.  It is very slow, very depressing, but with some surprisingly pretty moments if you listen close enough.  I like this one quite a bit.

Ubi Sunt: I
Ubi Sunt is quite an unusual group.  Their album is based on the works of Thomas Campion and Solage, two composers from the Renaissance.  Kind of an odd concept for a funeral doom metal band, but it comes across quite well.  There is a heavy use of wind instruments, strings, and organs which really add a Renaissance flair to the music.  The result is a very impressive mix.  I like this one a lot.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 86

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Hatred
LABEL:  Oxygen
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Thrash/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Inner Self"
NOTES:  Have you figured out that I liked Sepultura in high school?  Searching for this album in Sepultura's official discography will be fruitless.  This is a bootleg.  It is the only bootleg in my collection.  Much of it is from a live concert in Holland, though there are parts from another concert and some studio tracks as well on it.  I remember finding it at the local music store which had a large amount of bootlegs on sale at one point.  I found the Sepultura album because I was basically obsessed with the band at this point.

W.A.S.P.: The Crimson Idol

Once again, I have been on a major W.A.S.P. kick lately, covering their early material and their mid-era material.  I have not had an occasion yet to check out their more recent stuff, but after all of the great stuff I have heard from the band and the surprisingly positive reviews of even their most recent material, certainly an odd thing for a band that has been around for 30 years, I may just do that.

This is the major album that I targeted when it was becoming clear to me that I needed to expand my W.A.S.P. library.  It seemed like the most interesting due to the overall concept of the album and the fact that the band had matured so much.  I mentioned in my last post about the band that The Headless Children was where the band was beginning to flex their artistic muscles somewhat and move away from the more radio-friendly sound they had started with.  It was on this album that the new W.A.S.P. truly arrived.  There are still a couple of anthemic, fist-pumping songs on here ("Arena of Pleasure" and "Chainsaw Charlie" for example), but the songwriting had matured significantly.

This is a concept album.  The story in a nutshell is about a young man from a troubled childhood who rises to superstardom as a rock star but finds out in the process that he has alienated his family and the people he cares the most about.  The final track is about the startling realization that he has fame and money but that his parents have disowned him.  It is definitely a product of its time as the 1980's were truly a greed-driven time period.  In some ways this album is a commentary on the changing fortunes of the 1980's metal/rock scene.  Many once-important bands were beginning the downhill turn of their careers.  Those that were not able to adapt would perish.  W.A.S.P. was a band that was able to adapt, though they were never as famous as they were in the 1980's.  This album in part was the start of their next era.

Musically, this album is epic.  It begins with the introductory track "The Titanic Overture" which immediately kicks into the first rampaging song "The Invisible Boy".  From there, the band keeps up a high intensity except for the occasional acoustic interlude or the one or two ballads on the album.  But none of those softer moments detract from what is an incredible album.  If anything they add to it.  They make the album feel like a complete story, not a collection of songs.  This album is a larger work of art that is hard to take apart piece by piece.  It makes more sense as a cohesive unit.

This is quite simply the best album I have heard thus far from W.A.S.P. and it will honestly be very difficult to supplant.  As much as I like The Headless Children, W.A.S.P., and The Last Command, this is an incredible album and could easily be somewhere in my Top 25 of all time.  It really is that good.  

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 85

ARTIST:  Megadeth
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Cryptic Writings
LABEL:  Capitol Records
YEAR:  1997
GENRE:  Heavy Metal/Hard Rock
FAVORITE SONG:  "A Secret Place"
NOTES:  Megadeth really started to drift away from thrash metal on this one, and even heavy metal on some tracks.  They were trying to follow the Metallica formula I suspect.  But I like this album a lot better than I like Load.  I think a lot of the songs are surprisingly catchy.  It is not the best album by Megadeth, or even remotely close, but it is not the worst either.

FMA Reviews: Sinister: The Carnage Ending

Originally reviewed here.

In recent years Sinister's music has been somewhat outshined by their amazing and oftentimes brutal album covers. They put out a couple of terrific death metal albums in the early 1990's with some terrific artwork on the cover. But since then their music has been lacking something. One thing they have always managed to do is grab attention on the CD racks though. The music just has not been able to live up to the promise of the cover.

This year Sinister once again released an album with an eye-catching album cover. Unlike prior albums though, the music contained within is extremely impressive and powerful death metal. Sinister definitely has an old-school death metal sound, not at all surprising since the band has been around for a long time now. They have resisted the urge on this album to add more modern touches to their music, just letting it speak for itself. The result is an absolutely blistering and relentless death metal attack that shows that there is some life (death?) left in this old band. Seriously this thing will leave you gasping for air and with a broken neck. It is that good.

Sinister, like their countrymen in Asphyx, are propelled by some extremely powerful riffs. This is fully on display with this album. The riffs are like steamrollers, unstoppable and shockingly heavy. The sound of the album is crisp without sounding sterile. The result of this is that the riffs are emphasized that much stronger. The blunt-force trauma from the riffs is that much more serious. So yeah, the riffs are good. Just a little bit.

Beyond the guitars, everything just comes together to create as much of a cacophonous sound as possible. The drums drive things forward and are truly interesting. It is not often that I really notice the drums, unless they are really good or really bad. This time, they are really good. The vocals, which are not the most brutal in the death metal genre, nonetheless sound terrific with this music.

This album puts Sinister back on the map. They had been going with the flow for years. No longer.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 84

ARTIST:  Fear Factory
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Remanufacture
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1997
GENRE:  Industrial/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Machines of Hate (Self Bias Resistor)"
NOTES:  I will be honest.  I have no idea why I still have this.  This is a remix album of the breakthrough of Fear Factory.  It is much more of a techno remix album and the songs tend to drag on and on.  As such, it is not one I pull out very often.  And I usually don't enjoy it that much when I do.

FMA Reviews: Nunslaughter: Christmassacre

Originally reviewed here.

What Does the Laughter of Nuns Have to Do With Anything?

Well this is certainly interesting. A little bit of background on this release first. This is not a new release. It was initially released on Christmas Day in 2004, in a variety of formats. It was reissued this year to celebrate Nunslaughter's favorite holiday. So this is not a new release, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Nunslaughter has released a filthy little EP full of good times and Christmas cheer. We have the immortal classic "Deathlehem", the positively uplifting "Jewrusalem", and who could forget the popular children's song "Unholy Scriptures". It is pretty obvious how Nunslaughter feels about all of this.

Musically, anyone who has ever heard Nunslaughter knows what to expect. All of the songs are short, sharp, and fast. Nunslaughter plays death metal with a definitive punk style. They rampage through this four song EP in less than ten minutes. They are unrelenting in their brutality. All of the songs are fairly simplistic, but the style fits well for the band. Nunslaughter knows what they want to accomplish and they are very good at what they do.

This is an incredibly short EP, but sometimes good things come in small packages.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 83

ARTIST:  Various
ORIGIN:  Various
TITLE:  In Memory of Celtic Frost
LABEL:  Dwell Records
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Black/Death Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  Opeth: "Circle of the Tyrants"
NOTES:  I had heard a couple of songs by Celtic Frost before, but not that many.  Basically I picked this album up to become familiar with not only Celtic Frost, but the bands that played on it.  The album also featured a brief bio on each of the bands, as well as Frost.  The Mayhem bio went into great length about the whole Dead/Euronymous/Varg Vikernes fiasco.  It took me a little while to get into the songs, but eventually I discovered Morgion, Grave, and Opeth on the basis of these songs.

W.A.S.P.: The Headless Children

I was in my hometown a few weeks ago, which is unfortunately down to only a couple of used music stores these days.  I had not been to one for a long time, so I decided to go.  Sometimes used music stores have some unexpected gems, I got Destroyer 666's Cold Steel  at this same store.  Other times, there is nothing particularly interesting.  Well this time I managed to get some decent stuff.

I did a post on W.A.S.P. a few weeks ago.  I was still listening over and over again to the two albums that I had from them when I went to the used store.  I saw this album and recognized it from some decent reviews I had read, so I decided to give it a shot.  This was one of those times where I managed to get a gem.

The Headless Children is the album where W.A.S.P. began to shed some of the cheesier, over-the-top aspects of their sound.  The songwriting matured quite a bit on this album and the band went away from being a typical partying glam band, albeit a much more metal one than some of the other groups that dominated MTV in those days, to being a very impressive traditional metal band.  There are still some moments where the old W.A.S.P. shined through, but for the most part, the band had changed quite a bit, and for the better.

There are some damn catchy songs on here, such as "Mean Man" and "Maneater".  As I said, there are definitely some elements here that really resemble the old band, but they also drifted somewhat away from the catchy poppier sound.  The most obvious example of this is the title track, which is an incredible song from start to finish.  The band is not focused on making catchy, radio-friendly music, or shocking audiences like "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)".  And that is not the only example.

W.A.S.P. matured on this album.  As much as I liked the earlier group, I like this version even better.  This one has been playing almost everyday since I got it.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 82

ARTIST:  Sepultura
ORIGIN:  Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
TITLE:  Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
LABEL:  Cogumelo Records
YEAR:  1986
GENRE:  Thrash/Black/Death Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Troops of Doom"
NOTES:  I was in the middle of my massive obsession with Sepultura when I picked this one up.  Of course this one is completely different than anything I had heard from the band to this point.  I was mostly sticking to the groove metal era of the band.  So this was a major difference from what I had been used to up to that point.  It was the most raw and chaotic album I had heard.  So it took me a little while to really get into.  But once I did I was hooked.  This is still my favorite album by the band.  It also features the band's first EP.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 81

ARTIST:  Alice in Chains
ORIGIN:  Seattle, WA (United States)
TITLE:  Unplugged
LABEL:  Columbia Records
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Grunge/Heavy Metal (Acoustic)
FAVORITE SONG:  "Would?"
NOTES:  I was skeptical about this one before I got it.  I had seen the MTV special, but I was not sure I wanted the album or not.  The fact of the matter is though that some of Alice in Chains's songs really translate well to the acoustic guitar.  It would have been bizarre for the band to play "Man in the Box", "Them Bones", or some of their other heavier stuff, so they stuck to the more mellow stuff, and it worked quite well.  Staley's voice really conveys a lot of pain that he was going through at the time.

FMA Reviews: Fastkill: Bestial Thrashing Bulldozer

Originally reviewed here.

I have seen a lot of complaints that all of the thrash metal released today is just bands copying what has been done by the big-name bands of the 1980's, in particular the Big Four. This is simply not true. Obviously there is the wave of bands from the United States and England that are trying to recapture past glories of the Bay Area scene. Of course there were other scenes in the 1980's, scenes that have been largely ignored by newer thrash metal bands, for some unknown reason. 

Enter Japan's Fastkill, a band clearly influenced by the much more chaotic, and yes, bestial, thrash metal bands of the 1980's. We are talking clear Slayer, Destruction, and Kreator worship here. Japan has produced a few bands like this, with King's-Evil being another name.

The cover art leaves no doubts that the music contained therein is going to be fast, intense, and destructive as all hell. And Fastkill definitely delivers on those promises. With rapid-fire riffing, jackhammer-drumming, and the banshee-like shrieks of frontman Toshio Komori, this is a total maelstrom of pure, unadulterated thrash metal. The speed and intensity of the riffing is reminiscent of the early records of the aforementioned Slayer and the Teutonic thrash wave. The songs are all short and lightning-fast with the longest track being just under four minutes and nothing else coming close. The brevity of the songs and the take-no-prisoners, constant and fast riffing leaves the listener gasping for breath, their head reeling from the sonic assault. It's a good thing, really.

The first couple of times I listened to this, I really did not care for the vocals. They are high-pitched and often resemble the whooping of birds the way they emerge out of the music. Komori does do the high-pitched Araya-esque blood-curdling scream well. After a couple of listens, I got used to his voice and it does not bother me nearly as much as it did early on.

This is a punishing and brutal thrash attack. An impressive tribute to the much more chaotic sounds of early thrash metal away from the Bay Area.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 80

ARTIST:  Voivod
ORIGIN:  Jonquiere, Quebec (Canada)
TITLE:  Negatron
LABEL:  Mausoleum Records
YEAR:  1995
GENRE:  Progressive/Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Nanoman"
NOTES:  I had heard a few songs by Voivod up until this point.  This was my first album by the band though and I always liked this one.  It was not the easiest album to get into as there was not a lot of catchiness, but once it took hold, I loved it.  There are a number of different versions of this album with some additional songs.  I unfortunately only have ten tracks on mine.

Bandcamp Mayhem: Randomness

I was on Facebook recently and a couple of ads caught my eye for bands on Bandcamp.  Not having much else to do at the time, I decided to check them out.

CROW BLACK SKY: PANTHEION

Crow Black Sky captured my attention because they are from South Africa.  I have not heard much metal from the African continent, so I am always intrigued when I run across a band from that region of the world.  Crow Black Sky is a melodic black/death metal band from Cape Town in South Africa.

The first thing that is noticeable is the frequent use of keyboards to achieve a symphonic effect.  This is a calculated effort to provide an epic atmosphere.  The result is similar to the better albums by Dimmu Borgir and Hecate Enthroned.  The guitar tone is suitably dark and crunchy and provides some interesting riffs.  The vocals are fairly typical for melodic black metal style.  Think Naglfar and Luna Ad Noctum for reference points.  They are delivered in a rough, deeper rasp.

The only real issue I have with this one is that some of the songs are a bit on the long side.  The album tends to drag a little bit in places.  Other than that, this is a decent album.  It is not something completely original and mind-blowing but it is certainly entertaining.

Bandcamp.

THE DEADSTATION: EPISODE I: LIKE PEERING INTO THE DEEPEST OCEAN ABYSS

Okay, the title of this album is pretentious as all hell.  It also does not help much that four of the seven tracks make up the "Like Peering Into the Deepest Ocean Abyss" saga.  I am not sure if they refer to it as a saga, but dammit I am going to refer to it as a saga.  Despite the ridiculously long album and song titles, the songs themselves are relatively succinct.  That's good.  It is easy to ignore the long titles that way.

Well if you could not tell by the album title, The Deadstation is a progressive metal band, somewhat in the vein of Dream Theater, Queensryche, Manticora and other groups.  The music is energetic and upbeat.  It is extremely melodic and for the most part faster-paced.   The songs have a more progressive structure, but the band keeps things from bogging down with some very impressive lead guitar work.  There are a couple of filler tracks on here, but that is not terribly surprising from this genre.  The vocal work is impressive and mostly consists of higher-registered singing.

This is a reasonably interesting release.  It probably does not do enough to stand out among other progressive metal bands, but it is a fun listen.

Bandcamp.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 79

ARTIST:  Prong
ORIGIN:  New York, NY
TITLE:  Rude Awakening
LABEL:  Epic
YEAR:  1996
GENRE:  Industrial Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Mansruin"
NOTES:  I had heard of Prong before.  I think everyone had heard "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck". But this was the first album I had heard.  I liked a lot of industrial metal at the time and I knew that Prong had taken that turn.  For a long time, I listened to this album every day.  It has been quite awhile now and I definitely prefer their earlier crossover material, but this was for the most part my indoctrination into the band.

FMA Reviews: Schattenbrandung: I - Apophänie

Originally reviewed here.

Blackened doom metal is kind of an odd concept. Some of the earliest better-known black metal bands were often very fast-paced with thrash metal and punk influences. Think Immortal and Gorgoroth's earlier work for examples. Doom metal on the other hand is quite the opposite. Obviously over time the atmosphere became the major element in black metal and that is where black and doom metal were able to eventually find a common ground. Blackened doom would not have worked in the mid 1990's. It works better now. 

Meet Schattenbrandung, a German blackened doom metal band. This is the band's debut album after forming in 2009. Their songs on their album are not named, but instead represented by Roman numerals that are weirdly out of order and missing VI. Their inability to count notwithstanding, this is some surprisingly decent stuff in places.

The songs often alternate between heavy and faster-paced riffing and more melodic noodling. It is quite the contrast and it probably would come across better if it was not done so frequently. I find myself enjoying the heavier material much more than the lighter stuff. Oftentimes when they go lighter there just is not anything else really going on. Very few vocals, just some light drumming and melancholic guitar chords. There is not too much to the melodic soft sections.

The songs on this are often very long. The shortest one is almost seven minutes long. The band tries to break up the monotony by switching gears somewhat frequently with tempo shifts and the aforementioned alternating hard and soft sections. Sometimes this is effective, sometimes it feels as if the band is having troubles figuring out what to do next and ending the song is not one of the options.

I do not want it to seem like this is a bad album, it is just a little overdone at times. The good parts are very good and they do outnumber the bad. It would be nice if the band would cut down on the soft sections, or at least shorten them. The rest of the material does sound pretty good.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 78

ARTIST:  Queensryche
ORIGIN:  Bellevue, WA (United States)
TITLE:  Operation: Mindcrime
LABEL:  EMI Music
YEAR:  1988
GENRE:  Progressive Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "The Needle Lies"
NOTES:  This is one of the greatest metal concept albums of all time.  The story is engaging, with clearly identifiable characters.  And of course the guitar work of Chris DeGarmo and the vocals of Geoff Tate are incredible.  One of the most talented duos in metal.  These album has a number of classic tracks, but "I Don't Believe in Love" is the big hit.

Reader Submissions: Nonsun: Good Old Evil

Nonsun is a Ukrainian duo that plays an amalgamation of sludge metal, doom metal, and drone metal.  They recently released this EP and contacted me to take a listen.

I will admit that this one took a little while to get into.  The band switches gears somewhat frequently between sludgy doom metal, which I enjoyed, to moments of random feedback and noise, which I really did not care for.  Nonsun is a very harsh listen.  There is nothing particularly pretty about anything that the band does.  When they are playing the more metallic parts, the tone is muddy and hostile and the vocals are rough.    The noise parts are very grating on the ears as well.  Of course, all of this is the point.  Nonsun is not trying to be particularly pleasant.  They are trying to be as loud and painful as possible.  And in that respect they certainly succeed.

There are moments on the second track "Rain Have Mercy" that border on the catchy.  As such, that is probably my favorite track on the EP.  It also has far fewer noise moments.  Of course with the good comes the bad, and third track "Message of Nihil Carried by the Waves of the Big Bang" is a complete noise/drone track.  The final track makes up for it with its very slow burn leading into nothingness.

As I said, this one took a couple of listens to get into.  There are some moments I did not care for, but by and large they were outnumbered by the good parts.

Nonsun bandcamp page.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 77

ARTIST:  Megadeth
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Killing is My Business...And Business is Good!
LABEL:  Combat Records
YEAR:  1985
GENRE:  Thrash Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Skull Beneath the Skin"
NOTES:  Megadeth's debut album achieved a level of notoriety with the cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots".  Due to label pressure, the album had to be re-released without the cover song.  I have the version without it.  This also featured "Mechanix" which was an early version of the Metallica classic "The Four Horsemen".  Quite an impressive debut.