There’s a moment pretty early in Napalm Death’s latest, Utilitarian, where I knew I’d love it. After “Circumspect,” an oddly effective mood-building track, “Errors in the Signals” kicks in with a fierce stop-start tech-grind riff. Then at the ten second mark, it becomes Napalm Death. You know what it sounds like: Danny Herrera brutalizing the drum kit just a notch faster than everyone else, Shane Embury and Mick Harris summoning a dervish of grind chaos while Harris and Barney Greenway try to out-shout one another, with Greenway sounding, as always, like his teeth have been gritted for so long that he has permanent lockjaw. It’s that “SHIT YEAH” moment that’s made Napalm Death stand out as long as they have (they’ve been a band in some form or another longer than I’ve been alive), even despite a laughably inconsistent lineup until relatively recently. And that’s the best thing about Napalm Death now: spazzy grindcore kids may worship the barely-reined chaos of Scum while deathgrind bands get hard for Harmony Corruption, but late period Napalm Death belongs to, well, Napalm Death. And around ten seconds in to “Errors in the Signals,” even though there’s still 45+ minutes left in Utilitarian, you know what’s coming. You could argue it’s predictable. You could also argue that it’s a testament to the fact that it’s pretty impossible to get sick of Napalm Death. Most bands with their track record may sound winded; the guys who made Utilitarian sound as vital as they ever have.

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Not enough can be said about the miraculous change Goatwhore made on 2009’s Carving Out the Eyes of God. A relatively small tweak — the inclusion of the occasional hummable thrash riff — suddenly opened the band up: instead of a cold, perfect-to-a-fault killing machine, they became a well-functioning doomsday device. From there, they just spat out a series of surprisingly well-crafted songs. Not much has changed on their latest, Blood for the Master, but not much needed to: Goatwhore’s latter-day appeal rests in perfecting a model then wringing as much as they can out of it. After seeing dozens of once-mighty bands stumble over tone-deaf prog or ill-used pop songwriting, staying the course could be the best decision they’ve made. If it ain’t broke, just keep reappropriating Exhorder riffs to maximum effect.

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I haven’t really been on board with Lamb of God actively since As the Palaces Burn. I’ve kept up with them, but after a few spins (especially with their last two albums), I’ve been disinterested. The familiar Lamb of God sound is there, but the appeal isn’t. It’s not bad music, just sort of… existent. And for a band often hailed as one of the torchbearers of modern metal, that’s not enough. True, they aren’t the same scrappy bunch of Southern longhairs that made the weird, dark groove metal of New American Gospel – nor should they be — but for me, that didn’t excuse reasonably inoffensive metal on cruise control. But after a while, I recognized that it could simply be me and my relationship with LoG fandom, and chocked it up to a “no offense, but this isn’t for me anymore” frame of mind.

Regularly, here is where I would say, “But Lamb of God’s latest, Resolution, restores my faith in their ability to slay motherfuckers like a hybrid of Ted Bundy and Genghis Kahn,” or something less caffeinated and hackneyed. But I’m stopping short of that, because there’s still that slickness Lamb of God added around the time of Ashes of the Wake that doesn’t sit well with me. That being said, this is the first album where I feel like they’re comfortable in their role as a well-funded major label act. Sure, the production is slick, and there are a few bizarro-radio singles here, but more importantly, the music sticks while still being thoroughly Lamb of God. The songwriting may be a little more streamlined, but there’s also more underneath it than there had been as of late. Perhaps Resolution is not the bridge upon which old and new LoG fans can high-five eachother — if such a thing is even in the cards — but a little more of a warm welcome than I’ve come to expect from them.

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Wormed
TBA
Label – Willowtip
Release date – TBA

Wormed are a part of an elite cabal of metal bands that release a smattering of demos and EPs, follow them with one staggering full-length, then drop the mic and head home (see also: Weakling, Demilich, Repulsion). But if a certain band whose name rhymes with Shmynic reminds us of anything, it’s that it’s entirely possible for your band to reconvene and pick up where you left off (or if you’re a band that rhymes with Shmynic — I’m talking about Cynic here — you pick up as if you’d been making albums all along and have your second record sound like an immaculately evolved version of your original self). And although Wormed haven’t been gone as long as the previously mentioned bands, they haven’t put out a full-length since 2003‘s Planisphaerium, a century and a half in internet time. But that album was both of and incredibly ahead of its time, so it’s highly improbable that their upcoming second offering won’t be at least interesting, if not a full-on sci-fi tech-death masterpiece.

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You can’t blame me for being wary of a solo project by Kevin Hufnagel, the guitarist for Dysrhythmia and the revived Gorguts. To kneejerk cynics like yours truly, it spells disaster: a clusterfuck of riffs and solos too noodly for either of those bands would be saying something. And the other end of the spectrum could be worse: an acoustic project that’s 40 minutes of empty, gnarled arpeggios reverberating off of nothing but the listener’s dwindling patience. Good guitarists left to their own devices run a higher risk of getting lost so far up their own asses that their spines snap like popsicle sticks. So thank our goddamn lucky stars that Hufnagel (a man who’s name seems to be destined to be shouted by Jerry Lewis) chose to instead make a beautiful album filled with lush, amorphous textures in Transparancies. A far, far cry from the dissonant prog/avant-metal of his most well-known bands, it’s just shy of forty-five minutes of densely textured abstractions that wander back and forth through emotional residencies, but never definitively landing in one. But it’s the ambiguousness that drives Transparencies, often reaching for a point that may or may not be there.

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I’d say I don’t get why Sexcrement don’t get enough love, but… well, it’s right there in the name, in that it is their name. Then again, it’s not exactly false advertising: their sole (for now) full length is called Genitales from the Porno Potty, and just look at the title of the EP above. But fecalphilia and secretion obsessions aside, they’re a great fucking band. And with loose, groovy, mid-paced death metal done right, XXX Bargain Bin, Vol. 1 sinks its hooks deep in you for the seventeen minutes it manages to stick around. Then it hurls some bus fare at the dresser and heads out, leaving you wanting more. They get the ratio of filthy to formidable right, in that they don’t feel the need to tone down the former to compliment the latter.

Though it’s technically just an odds and sods EP (two studio tracks, three live ones), it’s not a bad place to start with Sexcrement. The studio tracks (“Well Hungover” especially) show off the band’s tightness and relative polish, while the live tracks (and they’re a GREAT live band, by the way) are a well-documented expression of their chemistry. The riffs are fierce and the grooves are deep; it’s like a stench you can’t wash off (partially because you don’t want to). The thin coat of grime that seemingly covers everything gives it an alluringly dingy quality. In the end, XXX Bargain Bin, Vol. 1 may not be something you recommend to polite company, but deep down, you know it’s better than another squeaky-clean prog-metal album about Xibalba or whatever. It burrows deep, catering to your senses of both joy and shame. So, you know, a good fucking time. Now, where’s Volume 2?

-SO

I’ll just come out and say it: what a shit year, huh? Natural disasters galore (up in my little corner of New England, we had a tornado, earthquake, and late-October Nor’easter that left everyone without power for a week, all in the span of a few months) following a brutal summer that included a “heat dome”; continued economic misery compounded with heretofore unseen governmental ineptitude due to partisan gridlock/higher-than-normal choad ratio in elected office; the death of The Last Great American Entrepreneur, Steve Jobs or the canonization of child labor enthusiast/capitalist sociopath Steve Jobs, depending on your perspective; new blockbuster Nickelback and Evanescence albums; and the continued existence of Dancing With the Stars, Fox News/MSNBC, Kardashian-related programming where none of them are naked, and of course, the Twilight franchise, which has made the GDP of a small country where emotionally vapid teenagers don‘t fuck each other. If you didn’t wake up a few mornings hurling your alarm at the fresh sunlight sneaking into your room, you had it lucky and were most likely in the minority.

Or perhaps I’m being dramatic. Or it’s certain I’m being dramatic. But even metal, at least on the surface, had less than a banner year. Morbid Angel violently shit the bed with their new album, as did Metallica. Limp Bizkit returned and Korn not only continued to exist but, with Skrillex’s assistance, provided dubstep with a pretty sweet shark-jumping moment. Even Jeff Hanneman got a FLESH-EATING VIRUS from a SPIDER BITE, which was bad enough without mainstream media outlets condescendingly pointing out how “metal” that was. But there were bright spots, as there always are. Hell, Autopsy, Exhumed, and Brutal Truth all put out excellent, peerless albums despite the noticeable handicap of being in the soccer dad demographic now. Perhaps we — and by “we,” I mean “I” — focus too much on the negative. But while theoretically the night is darkest before dawn, perhaps there will never be another dawn, and we have an eternity of endless night with a moon as black as sack cloth and boiling seas and lambs opening seventh seals and so on awaiting us. Here’s this year’s soundtrack to that possibility.

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It feels a little odd reviewing stuff like the Pyramids/Horseback split and the new House of Low Culture release for a site with “metal” right there in the goddamn name. They aren’t “not metal” in the “they’re almost more of a shoegaze band” sense, but are aggressively unconventional in terms of even basic popular music construct. In fact, the only thing even slightly metal about either of these releases is less than two-and-a-half minutes at the beginning of Horseback’s only solo song on the aforementioned split. And theoretically, that’s fine: there’s no rule on the books that says being involved in heavy bands — as members of House of Low Culture have been and are — means you can’t take part in projects that are the antithesis of metal altogether. Or at least there shouldn’t be.

But these two releases pose a very interesting question: does a project’s mere existence in contrast to its creators’ most well-received work make it worthwhile? Or, in this case, does it make it even listenable?

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Who doesn’t love origin stories? Most people, because they’re usually clunky and slow the story down? Oh. Well, in some cases — or, in few cases — they’re fascinating, shedding light on a character or story you love, if not possibly outshining it altogether. And while Astomatous may not outshine the band some of them would join — nimble-fingered proggy black metal titans/objects of Sammy O’Hagar’s unending and slobbering adoration Krallice — they’re certainly a fascinating look into the past, as well as standing confidently on their own merits. In fact, despite being recorded five years ago — practically ancient in Twitter time — The Beauty of Reason, their sole release thus far (and available via their Bandcamp page), holds up unbelievably well.

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You’ve gotta feel for melodic death metal bands in 2011. They’re like the birdhouse builders of metal: sure, building a birdhouse isn’t an easy thing, and takes time to master your craft. But then after years of making quality birdhouses, suddenly Home Goods and Wal-Mart are shitting them out by the thousands, and people just go there to get them instead of to you, because they‘re cheaper and get the job done (the job here being housing birds). Then one day, here you are, a decent-enough birdhouse maker in a world that doesn’t care enough to spend money on handcrafted birdhouses, and you theoretically have to start over at 53, when all you were really good at was building birdhouses. So your options are make a half-assed attempt at another career, or continue being fairly good at making birdhouses in an ever-increasingly limited market. If you’re lucky, the economy will improve and people will arbitrarily decide that birdhouses are a thing at which to throw their money. But can you afford to bet on that kind of luck?

Crafting competent melodic death metal isn’t easy, either– let alone good melodeath — and if you’ve put enough time into your band, you have to stick with what you know. So, basically, Nightrage’s Insidious is an album that would have taken 2003 by storm that sounds perfectly fine now, just a little lifeless after years of its genre of choice being pounded into the ground. How many more times can we hear straight-up melodic death metal riffs with a lacquer of big-ass studio production and still be interested? Nightrage are fine at what they do, but before the inevitable melodic death metal revival of 2016, they need to be doing more to justify their existence.

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The moment that best defines Årabrot’s latest comes about 30 seconds into the album’s title track and opener, “Solaranus” (the album is technically called Solar Anus, but close enough). The song starts out with a sole Kylesa-esque riff with occasional drum accents, all fuzzed out and reliably solid. But then the band kicks in, and they follow along, with one noticeable exception: the focal point of the riff has gone from a nice, reliable stoner foundation to an offputting brown note, dipping slightly lower than what the song had set you up to expect. And at that moment, you’re torn: is the riff showing too much of its hand in trying to be revolting, or is it a brilliant subversion of expectations? It depends on your head space when you approach it at first, but then it coalesces. Like all good noise rock, it’s full of a sense of danger that things are going to go full-on off the rails and be impossible to listen to. It’s a struggle between what’s palatable and what’s offensive, and what percentage of one can coexist with the other. In the case of “Solaranus,” it leans harder toward the latter as the song goes on. But the track is the longest on the album, more than twice as long as most of the others. It sets a killer tone for the rest of the record, which seems catchy from there. Solar Anus will be an endurance test for some, but for lovers of abrasion, it’s a personalized Valentine. Granted, that Valentine probably has a picture of a woman shitting on some amputee’s chest, but affection’s affection.

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It’s hard out there for a son of Northern darkness. The internet has only made black metal’s rigid (and downright silly) ethos only more cagey, and the older the greats get, the less interested people are in hearing your fairly pointless retread of it. We’re close to twenty years away from black metal’s infamous peak, and there are still people insisting it shouldn’t evolve. So if one wants to get more than seven people interested (which you’re not supposed to, but slathering on pancake makeup clearly isn’t solely for your benefit), what is there to do?

The answer, of course, is plant one foot firmly in the past and jam the other into the future. Getting the balance right is imperative (well, in terms of remaining a black metal band, not so much in terms of making good music… see: Nachtmystium, Enslaved, Alcest, and all the other bands for which guys like me perpetually have cartoon hearts swirling over our heads) to properly avoid sounding like your making a cloying play for relevance or simply falling flat on your face. For two great examples of that balance, take the new albums from Craft and Taake (out now Stateside on Southern Lord and available on Candlelight in North America on November 1, respectively). Perhaps too otherworldly for black metal diehards in parts and too orthodox for the “IT’S SILLY LOL” crowd, they exist in the excellent middle for the rest of us.

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Cynicism is a dangerous thing to give in to. That being said, it’s hard not to give in, and in the waning days of humanity (or, you know, just the shitty stretch of time we’re living in right now), the status quo machismo of metal doesn’t always hold water, so it’s hard not to blanket oneself in misery and despair. And not the self-loathing/shoegazing kind, but the writhing in agony variety. And sludge/doom collective Beneath Oblivion excel in this, providing a charred landscape of molten riffs on their appropriately histrionically-titled latest album, From Man to Dust. It’s a hard-to-digest bruiser, but despite its uninviting abrasiveness, it’s never superfluously obtuse or dull. It takes some easing into, but once there, it’s fascinating.

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One-man death metal is a seemingly odd prospect: the genre is so wed to the idea of 4-5 guys hunched over their instruments, doing their thing. But it does make some sense. Death metal’s technicality requires a ton of practice time to get your chops up to snuff, and not every drummer is Kevin Talley, not every guitarist Erik Rutan, etc., so it could be argued that it’s best to rely on one’s self for the most desirable results. Granted, it’s not as prevalent as it is in black metal — where it can seem like 64% of all of it is made by one-man projects — but it’s an interesting subset. And these guys actually play out from time to time, so it’s not all jacking off and hoping somebody notices. The goals are the same as with most death metal bands, just with 80% fewer guys.

Granted, the shows aren’t always riveting, as I learned with Bloodsoaked. When I saw them (er, him) at New England Deathfest two years ago, I was struck by how utterly fucking boring it was (in contrast, Putrid Pile — another notable one-man act — managed to put on a surprisingly lively show despite being just a nerdy looking dude in a Devourment hat and a drum machine). And when I heard about their/his latest album — The Death of Hope– the name stuck with me. And while I may have been underwhelmed with Bloodsoaked live, on record, they’re fucking magnificent. It’s death metal for guys who would wear an Obituary long-sleeve and clip-on tie to their sister’s wedding: the dirty, technical yet straightforward stuff. Nothing you haven’t already heard, but certainly the type of stuff that you can never hear enough of. Thirty-one minutes of claustrophobic, atonal riffs and last-breath-from-a-corpse’s-mouth vocals, all of it great.

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Landmine Marathon are a competent death metal band. To their fans, that may sound blasphemous; to casual admirers, it may sound like I’m underselling them. But, really, isn’t that a compliment? To be a band that a) can play their instruments, b) can play their instruments without Pro-Tools tinkering, c) leave something of an impression all while d) still playing ball in the rigid rules and orthodoxies of death metal is quite a feat; we’re so conditioned to seek out the BEST OF THE BEST that sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are competent bands out there doing great work. So while I don’t think the metal world would be any different if Landmine Marathon weren’t in it, I’m certainly glad they’re around to roundhouse kicking motherfuckers in the face. And Gallows, their latest, is a great front-to-back listen of gruff, unpretentious death metal. Nothing more, and that’s for the best.

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Perhaps right before the deluge of fall releases hammers us with “PUT ME ON YOUR YEAR END LIST!” demands, it’d be a good idea to take stock of what’s come out thus far. It’s been a good year for metal– as, admittedly, are most years — despite the absences of new Neurosis or Pig Destroyer albums (which, once again, could apply to any year). And even though there are a few albums I haven’t gotten around to hearing just yet (Altar of Plagues, Vastum, Disma, Origin, Shining), haven’t been lucky enough to hear (Revocation) and haven’t spent nearly enough time with yet (Wolves in the Throne Room), there’s been quite a bit to marinate on thus far. So allow me to jump on the ship Axl, Vince, Corey, Gary, Anso, and Leyla are already on and name a few I deem noteworthy. In no particular order, of course.

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Even in Today is the Day’s hard-to-classify catalog (Deeply disturbed psychogrind/doom with apocalyptic deathfolk influences? Intense grindy noisecore with suicidal outlaw country asides? Christ, who the fuck cares?), Pain is a Warning is somewhat of an anomaly. Granted, there are elements on it that have been touched on my the band before — big-ass riffs and quiet, contemplative moments — but… something’s missing. Early TITD albums (and Kiss the Pig, of course) were akin to starting up a conversation with the guy standing alone and twitching at the train station: he’ll be intense, at times hard to relate to, have some interesting things to say, and ultimately very much not for everyone. There’s been a tense wall of standoffishness to the band’s stuff, and that’s what made it great. If it was your thing, it was like someone was speaking to an intensely personal place. If it wasn’t your thing, it was incredibly unnerving. Even the folks in the middle would at least say it wasn’t a band they could listen to every day. That element is missing on Pain is a Warning.

Well, not completely, but it’s more manageable on their new album. And while the NEW THING=NO DEAL! kneejerk reaction awaits, Pain is a Warning, a curveball in a career full of them, is boldly different, and thus, fucking excellent. Whereas something like In the Eyes of God is taut and jittery like a rabid animal, Pain is a Warning is elephantine. We know what Steve Austin sounds like when he’s pissy, losing his religion, furious, murderous, bummed out, depressed, despondent, and fairly angry; what does he sound like when he just wants to bowl shit over? Pain is a Warning answers that question.

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All Pigs Must Die: even after a decade of band names evoking countless forms of violent death, dying fetuses, every disease in a medical dictionary, and hundreds of creative methods of vaginal demolishment, that name sticks out. It reminds me of how Pig Destroyer got their name: wanting to go with the most confrontational moniker they could conjure, they went from Cop Killer to Cop Destroyer to Pig Destroyer. But whereas that band has a paper-thin veil of vagueness as to what their moniker means — me, I thought they were a Mike Patton-y or Devin Townshend-esque squiggly omni-metal band until I actually heard them — All Pigs Must Die don’t fuck around. If your uncle is a cop, you can’t wear their shirts to cookouts (and as an added bonus, if your older sister is a vegan, you can’t wear their shirts to her solstice gatherings). And with a name with all the subtlety of a bottle of Old English being smashed over your face, it’s pretty easy to tell what they sound like: hardcore. Serious fucking hardcore. And I can’t tell if their name is so appealing because their brand of annihilation is so alluring, or if their brand of annihilation is so appealing because it’s attached to that name. All I know is I can’t stop saying it, or at least find reasons to say it as often as possible.

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(photo by Seth Ballentine)

It’s been just a little over a year since Isis called it quits, but Aaron Turner has managed to keep busy (which isn’t out of the ordinary): he put out an album with Mamiffer (the band he’s in with his wife, Faith Coloccia) as well as starting up a new record label, SIGE. He’s also been working on posthumous Isis releases as well as reissuing the band’s long out-of-print live albums (heavily culling from Oceanic and Panopticon material, and cool enough to be streamed by Metal Sucks). So even though his highly influential and beloved group is done, he’s not coasting in early retirement (or getting a day job and riding off into the sunset, telling neighborhood kids about the glory days when he toured all over the country for a decade in motherfuckin’ ISIS).

While Turner isn’t know for his stodgy release habits (he’s also a member of House of Low Culture and avant-garde metal supergroups Greymachine and Old Man Gloom), Isis looms largest, and Turner not only seems at peace with that but enthusiastic about it, thankful for the people who have supported him and his art over the years. At the same time, he doesn’t have any reservations about how it ended or that it did, but simply accepts it as the end to a chapter in his life, albeit a chapter he has no problem reminiscing about. In a recent conversation with Metal Sucks, Aaron discussed the demise of his most well-known band, future Isis releases, and how running SIGE compares with running Hydra Head.

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A new Thou release is as expected and shows up as reliably often as a new season, so it can be a little hard to keep track of them. Being wonderful, generous, and generally superior people, we here at MetalSucks wants to help by streaming their new EP, The Archer and The Owle, right here, right now.

Picking up — quite literally — where their last full length left off, it’s full of the band’s distinctive dredged melody and the torturous crawl of their sludge/doom riffs. And while I want to rip on it for being packed with filler — it consists of one new song, two older ones, and three covers — it makes sense. Summit’s closer “Voices in the Wilderness” gets a new context in which to breathe, and benefits greatly: as a finale to an hour-plus album’s worth of doom, the listener may reach it tapped out. But as the opener of an EP, it unfolds lusciously, alternating between scorched earth sludge, metalgaze beauty, and folky intros and outros. “Summit Reprise” works the same as it does on Summit, as a breather and mood builder, as well as re-imagining “Wilderness”‘s melodic themes. The band also prop up Kurt Cobain’s ode to homeless people befriending animals and enjoying a grass-and-fish-centric diet for a fairly straightfoward (yet fairy revelatory) cover of “Something in the Way,” as well as introducing the world to Pygmy Lush with two covers of their songs at the end of the EP. “Bonnet Carré,” Archer and the Owle‘s sole new track, is vintage Thou, full of mile-high lumbering doom riffs and shattered arpeggios dragged across ten-plus minutes. Even in semi-abbreviated form (thirty-eight minutes, a full length for most bands, a brief excursion for these guys), there’s plenty for Thou fans to latch on to (or re-affiliate themselves with) here.

The Archer and the Owle is available for preorder on colored 12″ vinyl and cassette (!) via Robotic Empire. It comes out August 2. And make sure to check out the band’s site for Thou updates and an obscene amount of free music. And speaking of free music, check out new Thou below.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

-SO