Hey, why not have 26 more or less random recommendations? With many of these, I may try to highlight slightly lower-profile acts that I think are deserving of more attention. With some of them, I’m just stricken down by the almighty power of the fucking riff thunder, and thus find myself unable to do anything but recommend them whilst my arms flail frantically in uncontrollable air-drumming.
1. Across Tundras, Dark Songs of the Prairie. This album is bleak, desolate, and totally awesome. If you’re looking for a companion piece to Earth’s Hex album, or especially to The Gault’s sole (and magnificent) album Even As All Before Us, look no further. A perfectly evocative title, some pleasingly tough-to-classify jangly-type doom, or maybe post-metal-ish drone? Hard to say, but the vocals are slightly off in that way which suits the music just right.
2. Black Witchery, Upheaval of Satanic Might. I’m not in the mood for this very often, but when I am, blasting Black Witchery is the fix for just about any funk. Completely trashy, crypt-sodden black/death metal which sounds like it wasn’t produced so much as heard over a rusted-out radio through a neighboring building, recorded to a dubbed-over tape, which was then pissed on and set ablaze. Filthy metal for bastards.
3. Control Human Delete, Terminal World Perspective. A black metal and industrial/electro hybrid which, instead of aiming for the grimier, urban blight soundtracks of The Axis of Perdition or Blacklodge, paints a slick modern sheen with its grand gestures at futuristic rage and decay. More Blade Runner than Rust Belt, let’s say.
4. Doomriders, Darkness Come Alive. One of last year’s absolute best face-melters. I’m not so much interested in quibbling over whether this is more hardcore or metal, punk or classic heavy posturing. This is Converge goes Motorhead. This is song after song of relentless metallic glory, and your ears are begging for it.
5. Ewigkeit, Conspiritus. This project from James Fogarty, ex-of Meads Of Asphodel, is actually fairly poppy, but features some really tasteful electronic and experimental heavy/vaguely-black metal. A bit like a more contemplative Control Human Delete, in terms of this here list, but with more space to catch one’s breath. Maybe think of a more heavy metal latter-day Frontline Assembly, plus a bit of Devin Townsend.
6. Frost, Cursed Again. Complete and utter (DMDS-era) Mayhem worship from Mick Kenney (he of Anaal Nathrakh, Mistress, etc., etc.), which even features Attila on vocals here and there. Whereas Anaal Nathrakh took the basic blueprint of Mayhem’s foundational black metal blasting and amped up the filth by adding a layer of industrial atmosphere and grinding intensity, Frost put that filth back where it started, with some seriously no-frills blasting and doomy stomping.
7. God Dethroned, Passiondale. This band didn’t get nearly enough love for this World War I-themed album of supremely classy and melodic death/black metal. The title track, in particular, is apt to get stuck in one’s head for days upon days of musical trench warfare (eh?).
8. Havoc Unit, h.IV+ (Hoarse Industrial Viremia). This band is the successor to …And Oceans, but where that band’s slicker electro-leanings (particularly on Cypher, which had that mid/late-90s cyber-goth feeling about it) proved occasionally wearing, Havoc Unit are full-on harsh and experimentally noisy black metal. Rabid density is the order of the day here. Somewhat akin to a metallic version of Venetian Snares’ harsher albums.
9. In The Woods…, HEart of the Ages. Okay, so I was going to pick Iperyt’s Totalitarian Love Pulse for my ‘I’ recommendation, but figured I was already leaning a little too much on the avant-garde industrial/black hybrid. Chances are it’s been too long since you played this album. Compared to their later works Omnio and Strange in Stereo, HEart of the Ages occasionally comes off as clumsy and over-ambitious, but this actually increases its charm for me. These folks were at the very forefront of the black metal avant-garde: this album was out in 1995, the same year as Ved Buens Ende’s Written In Waters and Fleurety’s Min Tid Skal Komme. Not a fucking bad year, right?
10. Jarboe & Justin Broadrick, J2. So, this collaboration doesn’t come off quite as successfully as Jarboe’s collaborative album with Neurosis, but she, ex- of Swans, and he, ex- of Godflesh and current of Jesu, Greymachine, Final, and God knows what else, work quite well together. If you’re expecting this album to sound like any of JKB’s heavier projects plus Jarboe’s unearthly vocals, you may be a bit disappointed. To their credit, I think, this album sounds like an out-and-out collaboration, rather than Jesu + a different singer. Well, maybe except “8mmsweetbitter.”
11. Kvist, For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike. I just can’t plug this album enough. It’s got that perfectly compressed production feel, where the drums just rip along effortlessly. Folks here went on to form Urgehal, so there’s clearly a great legacy, but for me, this is where it’s at.
12. Lysergene, Critical Mass. Okay, so this one’s not really metal. This is a side project from one of the guys in British extreme/funeral doom stalwarts Esoteric. This is a collection of lengthy, thick pieces of various kinds of electronic experimentalism, from dark ambient to drum and bass and industrial soundscapes; it actually makes a pretty decent companion to some of Esoteric’s work (particularly their earlier pieces of soul-corroding bleakness, Epistemological Despondency and The Pernicious Enigma).
13. Menace Ruine, The Die Is Cast. Second album from these weirdos. The first record was a lot more industrial and harsh noise. This one trades in a bit of that, but throws in vocals that recall none other than Nico, were she to be wrapped in power lines and thrown into a bottomless pit, left to cast her songs up out of the vanishing darkness. They’ve got a new album out, too, which I’m hoping will eventually drop to a more reasonable import price.
14. Nasheim, Evighet/Undergång. Compilation of the demos from this Swedish black metal band. Nothing groundbreaking here, but these are artfully crafted pagan black metal anthems for connoisseurs. Plus, this release tacks on a faithful cover of Bathory’s “Blood Fire Death.”
15. Orange Goblin, Healing Through Fire. A previous rant on stoner metal notwithstanding, this album absolutely RIPS. Messing with these guys would be like just plain asking for a broken bottle kiss on your ribcage.
16. Pyramids, Pyramids. See my review of Pyramids’ collaboration with Nadja for a sense of what they might sound like. But then, throw out any thoughts of what you think they might sound like, and just listen to ’em, because I guarantee they don’t sound quite like anything else you’ve heard. Truly mesmerizing stuff.
17. Primordial, The Gathering Wilderness. Yeah, I know – fuck you. I don’t own any metal that starts with ‘Q’. Sure, I could have plugged a recommendation for Queensryche, or even Queen’s Night at the Opera, or maybe even post-Kyuss groovesters Queens of the Stone Age, but instead, I’ll use this poor under-utilized letter’s slot to plug Primordial’s best album. Hands down. This album is damn near perfect. If you haven’t heard it, well, I’m not going to be overdramatic and suggest that your life has no meaning, or that we’ll have to revoke your metalhead credentials or anything, but please: Go listen to it.
18. Reverend Bizarre, In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend. Long, slow, drawn-out classic doooooooom from Finland. I waited way too long to check these guys out because I thought their music would be boring. Turns out my brain just wasn’t ready to be dragged down to experience the world on the Reverend’s terms. But I am ready now.
19. Stormlord, Mare Nostrum. Truly epic blackened power metal from Italy. I can’t believe you aren’t listening to this right now, as you read these words. This shit is so tasty.
20. Thralldom, A Shaman Steering the Vessel of Vastness. Final album from Thralldom, one of Ryan Lipynsky’s many filth-encrusted metal ventures outside of Unearthly Trance. It’s frankly astonishing, the number of moods and textures that are presented in each of Thralldom’s uniformly brief albums. Less driving and Celtic Frost-y than Unearthly Trance’s last two albums, but never quite losing the plot in a thicket of ambient sound effect fuckery.
21. Unholy, The Second Ring of Power. More slow, slow doom from Finland, but this from the mid-90s, and sounding altogether possessed by evil static demons. You can call this doom/death if you like, M-A.com, but there’s way too much avant-garde weirdness going on (especially for 1994!) for such a conventional label.
22. Void, Posthuman. Another black/industrial act, this time featuring Czral and Kvhost from Dødheimsgard, whose 666 International is not a bad point of reference, though that album is slicker and more futuristic. Void’s sole album (to this point; let’s work on that, please, chaps) is altogether colder and meaner, sounding very much like a grey autumn’s walk through London’s seediest alleyways and deserted Underground stations.
23. Worms of Sabnock, Dark Harmonies. Another Meads Of Asphodel-affiliated project (should be enough of an endorsement there); this one plays a bit more straight-ahead, highly tremelo-ed second wave(-ish) black metal, but sits quite nicely alongside some of the earlier Ludicra records, especially in the percussion department. Quite tasty stuff.
24. Xasthur, Telepathic with the Deceased. Right, not particularly ‘underground’ here (which, when you think about it, is really odd, given how antisocial and offputting Malefic’s music should be to most people), but I didn’t really feel like dragging Xibalba into things. This album gets some bad press, I think, but it remains one of my favorites of the (now defunct) Xasthur project of one-man fuzz-drenched melodic black metal carpet-bombing. The interlocking guitar and keyboard melodies have rarely sounded so twisted and sickly as on this one.
25. Yakuza, Of Seismic Consequence. Truth be told, I’m still undecided about this record. Plus, I know everyone and his grandmother is recommending this. Anyway, I’m a little light on “Y”s, so it was either this or the released-without-a-splash album by YcosaHateRon, a dark ambient/industrial/noise project featuring, oh, who can I remember, Killjoy from Necrophagia, Attila from Mayhem, and some dude from Aborym. Problem is, I recently decided that I hate that record, so despite the fact that I can hardly tolerate the vocals on the new Yakuza album, I’ll throw it up there.
26. Zozobra, Bird of Prey. This album is heavier than you. It is also criminally overlooked sludge/hardcore/doom with that classic Hydra Head touch.
Read Full Post »
“Let’s play some slow riffs,
Spinal Tapdance 