Awaiting the Firing Squad While Listening to Strange Extreme Music Feb 15-21
Oh hi, I wasn't expecting you there. Keep safe.
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Bronze Hall – "Night's Black Wings," from Embers of the Dawn (Black Metal – Fallen Temple). One of the hardest things to do in any art is make beautiful things adequately ugly, and ugly things adequately beautiful. A hard, hard thing. Bronze Hall, a Finnish black/trad metal project is doing this very hard thing effortlessly. And not only is it doing just that it just so turns out that they are a part of a wider circle of projects of which I was woefully unaware – Houre, Forgotten Vale, Kaikkivaltias, and others – that are just unbelievable. Unbelievable. All of them have relatively recent albums, all of which deserve your time and your money. Unreal.
Yuyeon – "5W1H," from This Apocalypse is Mine Alone (Experimental/Noise – Independent). To say that something is "crushing" is a commonplace trope (is there a non-commonplace trope?) of metal writing, usually reserved for writing about "the heavy part, but slower." I, however, like "crushing" when it describes the internal emotional landscape of the soul as it is being, well, crushed. So, Caligula, for instance, is a "crushing" album, and, somewhat differently, so is Things We Lost in the Fire. This first demo from what may be a (who the fuck knows anything these days) a new South Korean project is crushing in those ways. Music not meant for the living, and since I'm dead, it's meant for me.
Astre – "Les apôtres du vide," from Anemoia (Screamo/Black Metal – Independent). More new stuff, more stuff that emerges from the coming together of the unspeakability of human existence and musical instruments. This time the result is more on the cathartic, "am I going to explode while 'singing' this song?" variety, that I am, needless to say, a big fan of. Don't end with a preposition? Fuck that, of. Fantastic stuff that feels, to me, closer to aggressive screamo than it does black metal, who the fuck cares, it's great.
Glassbone – "K.F.I.V," from Ruthless Savagery (Death Metal – Iron Fortress Records). More French people up in this bitch (Astre are French too), but these fine folk aren't here to talk emotions to you. In fact, they would, I think, prefer to take emotions out of your body and insert a kind of primate, beat-down existence instead. If you're down with that kind of surgery then prepare to nod very violently to the sound of some pretty chug-tastic wonders.
Bekor Qilish – "Emptiness-Wrought Cognition," from Consecrated Abysses of Dread (Avant-Garde Black Metal – I, Voidhanger Recrods). The impossibly named Bekor Qulish are back with another flawlessly weird release that seems to build on their existing catalog of flawlessly weird releases to constitute one of the most underrated discographies in "the game." This incredible Italian project manages to compress about nine great ideas into what feels like two nanoseconds of music, amounting to what feels like a four-minute EP filled with nine double albums. None of this is true, but it's so fucking original and active and energetic that time really flies and stops at the same time. Also a bunch of cool guests this time around, which is kind of always the case but this time there's a Mick Barr too, and Mick Barrs are always a good thing.
Swords of Dis – "From Egalmah They Rode Toward The Howling Cedars Where the Blood of Beasts is Spilled and the Silence of a Scorned God Cracks the Earth," from From the Waters of Death (Avant-Garde Metal – I, Voidhanger Recrods). I mentioned this almost comically ambitious split collab a few weeks ago, but didn't write it up since I saw no point to do so when only excerpts were out. Now that the whole thing has been released, I just have to point out the mythological leviathan in the room and say that the fact that this project doesn't drown under the weight of its own pretension is already a feat in and of itself. Add to that the fact that it's easily one of the best releases so far this year, that it's creative and non-cliche in what really could have been a 70,000 Tons of Metal Dudes Reading Sumerian kind of calamity. Everyone on here is incredible – Serpent Ascending, Midnight Odyssey, and ÔROS KAÙ. But this is Swords of Dis' show, as far as I can tell. A masterwork of progressive, weird metal.
Hässlig – "Lone Wolves," from Kali Yuga Aural Terror (Black Metal/Punk – ). Mr. D.B. of a bunch of bands fame (Negativa, Delirant, etc) is apparently keeping BUSY, now in the form of a new aggressive split with fellow pissed person Opresija. If you seek the kind of music in which being kicked in the head is standard practice then you're not going to find anything this good this side of Kommodus. Prepare thine head.
Colin Stetson, Greg Fox, Trevor Dunn – "Reclaimer," from Nethering (Experimental – Invada). The master of cyclical breathing or something along those lines is back, this time with an all-star crew of Greg Fox (AKA the burst-beat guy) and Trevor Dunn (AKA the everything guy). Fox and Stetson have collaborated already on the wonderful and short-lived (?) Ex-Eye, and Fox and Dunn have relatively recently worked together in 2023. Here we find them in an improvisational mood in a piece recorded in 2018, which, weirdly, feels like nine lifetimes ago. I wonder why now, but who cares, I guess. It's awesome.
Black Vale – "Better When I'm Gone," from Into Dusk (Rock/Doom – Independent). This is just one of those things. I have no idea what this is, nor do I think that this is usually my sort of thing – I'm usually the insufferable-wall-of-noise guy. But there's something about how this release "swings" and feels that makes me happy. Yes, the mix is all wrong, and, yes, the cymbals are louder than the guitars, but this is, I think, a demo, and that's what demos are supposed to sound like – fucked up. Whatever, I think I like it a lot. The symbolism is, shall we say, not on the comfortable side, but let's hope it's just a bad hunch.
FIVE MORE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ONE: Errant, the solo project from Immortal Bird's Rae Amitay, released a cover of OK Go's "Last Leaf." Here's hoping an albums is coming. About time.
TWO: The great Atvm is apparently no more. I think.
THREE: The (also) great Yellow Swans, a band I had not even thought of in so many years, have apparently been releasing weird improv-style stuff for the past few years, with a couple coming out this month. Very cool for all you experimental folk out there.
FOUR: Not a huge trad metal person, but Stainless have a new album coming and they have Jamie Byrum (Black Breath) on drums and sound very cool.
FIVE: Was not aware of Necrofier, must have friends in the wrong places, but pretty cool melodic black metal. New album coming, new single out.
ONE LAST THING, PROMISE: I seemed to have forgotten about the new A Forest of Stars album. Again.
