NINE SONGS I LIKED THIS WEEK IN LIST FORM – FEB 18-24

Another week of senseless living buoyed by the existence of good people. I guess that's a good general description of life, or something. There's a new interview with Theophonos (Ex-Serpent Column). I encourage you to read it but more so to just listen to his music and support his music (buying it!). Keep safe.

As always, check out my various interview projects and other cool shit. And if you'd like to keep abreast of the latest, most pressing developments follow us wherever I may roam (FALSE!) (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and now also a tape-per-day series on TIK TOK!), and listen to my, I guess, active (?) podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple), and to check out our amazing compilation albums. You can support my unholy work here (Patreon), if you feel like it. Early access to our bigger projects, weekly exclusive recommendations and playlists, and that wonderful feeling that you're encouraging a life-consuming habit.

1. Ara – "Traum," from Blutroter Mond (Crust/Black Metal – Into Endless Chaos Records). The best way to describe this absolutely fantastic album would be to say something like "Shades of Rigorous Institution Only With a Lot More Killing Joke in It." I mean, just writing that sentence gave me so much joy, so just imagine how much bliss I got from the music! Songs that feel like the missing link between 80s post-punk, 80s hardcore, and 90s black metal. I have no idea if that makes sense. But it rules. FFO: Rigorous Institution, Gruzja.

2. Horseboy – "Sinner Supremist," Horseboy (Screamo/Post-Hardcore – Tomb Tree Tapes). Still walking down the post-whatever path this this one, albeit from a somewhat different angle. Noise rock that feels like screamo, screamo that feels like noise rock, and a whole cacophony of sounds and shrieks that results in pumping adrenaline and an overbearing sense of alienation into my frail body (I see what I did there). Cool. FFO: KEN Mode, Intercourse.

3. < c o d e > – "A Cloud Formed Teardrop Asylum," from Neurotransmissions (Avant-Garde Black Metal – Amor Fati Productions). Code have quite quietly become that rare sort of metal legend – let alone black metal legend – that continues to be as relevant as ever due to the fact that they continue to make amazing, genre-defying, space-inhaling music. Their previous album, 2021's masterful The Flyblown Prince was easily one of the best black metal albums of this young decade (see 2021 list), and given the jagged majesty of this first single from an upcoming album for Amor Fati, this next one will be right up there as well. Unstoppable, incomparable, perfect. FFO: Dødheimsgard, Vemod.

4. Owl – "Cryptid," from Ghosts of Summer (Dissonant Death Metal – Total Dissonance Worship). A very pleasant surprise, especially given I don't actually remembering ever listening to Owl, not that I can recall at least. So this short release kind of came out of nowhere, and despite the fact that, at times, it borders on some metalcore tendencies I'm not a huge fan of, it delivers some compelling, visceral and quite beautiful performaces. The jewel in the ugly crown being, naturally, this track. Unrelenting, almost obtuse passion and violence highlighted by some wonderful dynamic moments. FFO: Nightmarer, Meshuggah.

5. Antichrist Siege Machine – "Sisera," from Vengeance of Eternal Fire (War Metal – Profound Lore Records). This week, if I'm candid here for a moment, was an especially packed shit cake even given the overall shit context of the past few weeks. A close family members fell deep into a horrible medical situation, and the sense of strain and anxiety that has been our everyday since the war started just become, somehow, much worse. So you'd think given all that I wouldn't care if some random band released the new single from their upcoming new release of ultra-violent and intense brand of metal. And you would be wrong. This not only made my week, it practically saved my life. FFO: Life-saving with metal.

6. Chapel Perilous – "Angra Mainyu," from The Tower of Silence (Melodic Black Metal – Independent). The debut album of a black metal band of which I have never heard is not a likely thing to just immediately press "play" on upon first sight. But there's some context here, weird context, in that I had just taught my war writing students about the Chapel Perilous incident (Sir Lancelot, look it up) as a result of teaching one of the greatest works of literature since the dawn of man, David Jones' In Parenthesis, (look it up). So, I was a bit taken with the coincidence of it all, and then proceeded to be taken by the actual album. Beautiful, dynamic, at times ferocious black metal. Just straight-up awesome. FFO: Woe, Ash Borer.

7. Coffins – "Spontaneous Rot," from Sinister Oath (Death Metal – Relapse Records). Beyond the Circular Demise was such a great fucking death metal album that Coffins thought they better take five fucking years to follow it up with a proper release. Which is kind of par for the course for these Japanese legends, who routinely drop classics every century or so. This first track off of the very, very welcomed follow up to that perfect album sounds just as creative and friggin' heavy as one would come to expect. Money in the death metal bank. FFO: Vastum, Dead Congregation.

8. Alcest – ״L'Envol," from Les chants de l'aurore (Post-Black Metal – Nuclear Blast Records). Look, I swear to the old gods and the new I have a nasty blurb ready for this one even before taking a first listen. Alcest has become such low hanging fruit in the last few years and my hand was already reaching for the pluck. And then the song played in the back ground and I began daydreaming about a magical childhood in the forest surrounded by fairies and a machine that pumps out infinite Sprite and, well, fuck it. They've still got it, those sentimental French gnomes. They still fucking got it. FFO: Fuck you.

9. Secrets – "Shining Spear of Starlight," from Towards the Nightside​.​.​. (Symphonic Black Metal – Amor Fati Productions). You know, I was just perusing through the discography of the now long-defunct label Fallen Empire Records. I think I did it as a kind of nostalgia for a bygone era, where one label seemed to suck into its core so much of what I love about music (also relevant to this week's interview, with one of the last FER artists, Serpent Column). When it came apart there was a time where Mystískaos tried to take up the mantle of black metal creativity, but they too kinda-sorta ended at some point. Making the world in which we live, at least from the very narrow view point of "people following Alex Poole, H. V. Lyngdal, Markov Soroka, etc bands," into a weird decentralized space where weird shit can kind of come at you from anywhere. But, at least part of that vacuum has been taken up by the already perfectly curated Amor Fati, with this debut from new symphonic project Secrets just being further proof of that strange claim. Basically yet another part of the Alex Poole Symphonic Universe along with Ars Hmu, Ringarë, and Gardsghastr, this is precisely the kind of Emperor worship that actually sticks the landing. Powerful, dark, at times outright scary, and, as always, much grander and larger than real life could ever be. A life lived through art and imagined as so much darker and better than real life ever was. That was what Fallen Empire had going for a whole, and that spirit is, happily, not yet dead. 

FIVE MORE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

ONE: Acathexis (speaking of former FER artists) have a new album coming, and a new track.

TWO: New Nekrofilth, for all you sick speed fiends.

THREE: Innana-related Coffin Curse is dropping a new slap of sick death metal on yer heads.

FOUR: For the general state of mind and state of the world I will quote from Has Erich Nossack's depiction of the 1943 bombing of Hamburg. Not because it describes my physical reality, I would think it describes the physical reality of others – those who have felt the sharp end of the stick of war, and who continue to feel it as we speak. But because it sums up the feeling of walking around with a constant fear of a kind of end. Translation by Joel Agee:

FIVE: Couch Slut is coming with a new album via Brutal Panda. Will probably write more about this next week.

ONE LAST THING, PROMISE: Looking for very cool hardcore? New Hate Force.