For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere of Planet Earth today marks the winter solstice, which also means it’s the longest night of the year. Here’s some appropriately dark metal to get you through:

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF GOATWHORE, AGALLOCH, WARBRINGER, ROSETTA, ZEBULON PIKE, NOCTEM, THE WILL OF A MILLION, EXCOMMUNICATED, AND TRANSLATION LOSS RECORDS

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ve been running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the final group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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I haven’t a clue how the folks (folk?) at Blot Und Eisen convinced Sigh’s Mirai, Faith No More / Mr. Bungle’s Trey Spruance, Eyehategod’s Michael IX Williams, Agalloch’s John Haughm and Ghoul’s Digestor to submit to the Rorschach aka “ink blot” tests… but there you have it, and the results are fascinating! The Rorschach Test, for those unfamiliar, is “a method of psychiatric evaluation created by Hermann Rorschach in 1921. Psychologists use the test to examine the personalities of their patients.”

Here are just a couple of samples:

Spruance: “An orthodox church.”
Haughm: “The sky…as seen from inside a shallow grave.”
Digestor: “Hard to clean mess.”

Williams: “Beard of a sideshow pharmacist on display in East Cambodia.”
Mirai: “Two Rabbits In The Bush.”
Haughm: “Two siamese twin elephant embryos trying to escape each other.

Me, I just see a bunch of vaginas. I won’t ruin the rest for you; check it out at Blot Und Eisen.

-VN

Of all the great injustices in the world (oppressive leaders in the Middle East, the war in Darfur, Eastern European sex slave trafficking, the Yankees, etc), one stands gravely ignored: that Agalloch are more popular than Insomnium. To be clear I love Agalloch, but the deafening stranglehold of hype surrounding their really good but not OH MY GOD 2010 album Marrow of the Spirit was just too much to stand given it seemed to be based on more than just the music itself. Why don’t Insomnium inspire such fervor in metal fans? They’ve been a band for just about as long, traffic in essentially the same brand of melancholy doom-death and are, uh, better. Are they too awesome for their own good, soaring above the minds of whimsical hype-susceptible metalheads? Too slickly produced? Should they issue more limited edition vinyls that go for $300 on eBay? Are they too European???

No matter: as all Insomnium fans like reader Geoff Hansen know, Insomnium are “champions of excellence.” Axl told you on Tuesday about the new video and digital single for the song “Weather the Storm” featuring Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne on vocals; turns out that digital single has a B-side called “Beyond the Horizon.” It’s creepy and dark, and it’s entirely instrumental. Very Agalloch-y, I must say. Thanks to Mr. Hansen for sending it in.

-VN

FOR SHAME if you missed Agalloch’s recent tour across the U.S. — these shows were the definition of EPIC. Luckily for you (whether you were at a show or not), MetalSucks photographer extraordinaire Alyssa Lorenzon was at the band’s gig at the Sonar in Baltimore last week to capture some typically-killer pics for us. Check ‘em out after the jump!!!

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On Tuesday night Vince, myself, and our pal Juggalo Bob hit up Agalloch’s first-ever NYC show, and it was KILLER. I was totally exhausted and over-worked and ready for bed, and we got stuck kinda near the back so it was hard to see shit, and we still thought it was, like, one of the most epic things ever. Just in case there was any doubt that Agalloch own your ass.

If you weren’t there or, like us, had a shitty view of the action, don’t fret too much — ’cause (((unartig))) has, once again, captured some very nice live footage from the show. Check it out below.

Two words: “FUCK” and “YES.”

NPR’s also got audio of the entire concert streaming for free. Hooray for public radio!

-AR

[via No Clean Singing and Shay McCloskey]

Agalloch are currently criss-crossing the country, playing some cities for the first time ever (like New York, where we saw them slay on Tuesday night… more on that at a later date). They’re selling a tour-only 2xLP called whitedivisiongrey — a combo of 2008′s The White EP and 2004′s The Grey EP — for $30, limited to just 500 copies. Agalloch followers are completely fanatical about their merch, especially vinyl, so I’m quite honestly shocked that there are even any left at this stage of the tour. As usual, they’re already going on eBay for absolutely insane prices:

I mean… WOW, right?

Here’s the thing: tour-only vinyls by some metal band aren’t exactly Hannah Montana tickets. In other words, you’ve got to be a fan to even know they exist, and you’ve got to pay for a ticket to the show and attend that show to even have access. Street scalpers ain’t exactly in on this scheme. Which means the people selling these items online (not just this tour vinyl… this happens EVERY TIME Agalloch release ANYTHING) are big fans of the band who are looking to make a buck (or $150, as it were) on the backs of their heroes. What do we think of this??

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Grayceon‘s recent Profound Lore release, All We Destroy, is an album that’s more that worthy of your attention: cellist (!!!)/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (who’s also a member of Giant Squid, and has played with Agalloch, Om, and a bunch of other killer bands), finger-pickin’ guitarist Max Doyle, and a drummer Zack Farwell have created an album that’s as haunting and emotional as it is heavy. The top-notch songcraft, combined with Perez Gratz’s ghostly vocals and elegiac cello playing, ensure that there is truly no other band that sounds like Grayceon in the modern metal scene. And that fact increasingly seems to be a miracle.

Grayceon are playing three shows at SXSW this week — you can get all the details here — so now seemed like an ideal time to e-mail Perez Gratz some irritating questions. Luckily for us, she seems to have a good sense of humor.

After the jump, read all of Perez Gratz’s thoughts on the cello, the songwriting process for Grayceon, the cello, the lyrical themes of All We Destroy, the cello, Revolver‘s “Hottest Chicks in Metal” issue, the cello, the ukulele, and the cello.

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I have been to practically every South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) since the second one way back in the ’80s. I love the atmosphere of the conference, from its much smaller and humbler days back then, to its over-blown monstrous corporate whoredom current-filled state. But as I have noted here in the past, SXSW has almost always been severely lacking in official heavy metal-friendly sanctioned showcases. If you ever wanted to get your real metal fix at SXSW, you usually had to depend on the non-sanctioned day parties that are thrown around town concurrently with the festival.

Not this year!

I can honestly say that the organizers of SXSW have finally woken up to the beast that is heavy metal and have gone out of their way to cater to our needs. Kudos! Huzzahs! and Hurrahs! to them.

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Grayceon’s Jackie Perez Gratz auditions for the new Whitesnake video.

I’d be super curious to see Grayceon live; as Cosmo Lee points out at Invisible Oranges, since the trio consists of a cellist/vocalist (Jackie Perez Gratz, who’s also a member of Giant Squid, and played on Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit), a guitarist, and a drummer (Max Doyle and Zack Farwell, respectively), so “Two-thirds of the band performs sitting down.” That might make for a low energy show when compared to the live act of most metal bands, who thrive on getting physical, physical on stage.

But if any band can pull it off, it’s probably Grayceon. Their new album, All We Destroy, was our own Satan Rosenbloom’s pick for 2011′s edition of “Albums That Will Fuck Your Face Off,” and that dude has good taste.

Now you can preview the album for yourself: the aforementioned Invisible Oranges is streaming the track “A Road Less Traveled.”

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It’s pretty rare that a band touring one single region of the country they’re already from is news; then again, not many bands are the mighty Agalloch. This is the first time they’ve come to our neck of the woods in seven years, so, yeah, it’s kind of a big deal. Sez gee-tarist Don Anderson:

“After seven years we are pleased to announce that we are returning to the East Coast for a series of performances with our good friends and fellow Profound Lore recording artists Worm Ouroboros. We’ll also be playing dates in both select areas of the South and Canada. The last time we played on the East Coast was in February of 2004 with The Gathering and Novembers Doom. People can catch ongoing updates on the upcoming tour via our official Facebook page.”

Worm Ouroboros, in case you don’t know, shares drummer drummer Aesop Dekker with Agalloch (and Ludicra, for that matter), so… hope that dude is in good shape!

ANYWAY, these shows should be killer; I’d also imagine they’ll be sold out, so you best go get your tickets ASAP. Here are dates, courtesy of Metal Underground:

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Word of who was gonna be on the bill for this year’s Scion Rock Fest, the totally free annual metal super-show, got out yesterday — hell, Wormrot even decided to just go ahead and confirm their presence at the festival. So in that regard, the official announcement of this year’s fest is a little anti-climactic.

Until you realize, holy shit — there really is gonna be a free festival with Morbid Angel, Obituary, Death Angel, Municipal Waste, Agalloch, Wormrot, Kvelertak, Atheist, Black Breath, Nails, Fuck the Facts, and tons more awesome bands. That is a fact about which one ought never to complain.

You can RSVP for the event here starting tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the finalized poster:

-AR

What a great morning it’s turning out to be!!!

Either after or before (but please not during) you’ve checked out The Human Abstract’s “Faust,” head over to NPR, where they’re streaming the new Agalloch album, Marrow of the Spirit, in its entirety. I’d be shocked — shocked, I say! — if it didn’t end up on a whole shit ton of year-end lists. And Profound Lore won’t officially release it for another week… so this is your chance to be impatient and hear it right fucking now.

And besides, if you crank that shit, you probably won’t need any coffee this morning.

Like I said, Marrow of the Spirit — which I’m just learning was recorded and mixed on fucking analog, in case you didn’t already admire these dudes enough — comes out November 23 on Profound Lore. It’s a must-own. Toss my salad if you don’t like it.

-AR

Lost in the fracas that surrounded the new Agalloch song released on Friday was the fact that there were actually two new Agalloch songs released! The second, “Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires,” is streaming at Viva Hate Records’ website, and like “The Watcher’s Monolith” it’s epic. Epic epic epic. We know Agalloch are epic… maybe it’s time for another descriptor?

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It seems like just about ALL of you have e-mailed us about this since it debuted Friday afternoon (when everyone in the MetalSucks Mansion was, regrettably, at meetings or sleeping off a post-Devy/TesseracT hangover), but in case you somehow made it through the whole weekend without hearing the good news: Stereogum is streaming a new Agalloch song, “The Watcher’s Monolith.” (Bonus — they also have an interview with guitarist/vocalist John Haughm.) It’s our first sampling of the band’s new album, Marrow of the Spirit, and it is, needless to say, awesome awesome awesome. I mean, again, I’m assuming you all know how fucking great Agalloch are, given how many of you e-mailed us, but if you don’t… really, don’t bother taking my word for it. Just go listen.

Marrow of the Spirit comes out November 23 on Profound Lore.

-AR

Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out the latest from Deafheaven.

Black metal is a music of destruction, but not as an end in itself. Just as devastating fires are necessary to maintain the evolution of a forest, the outsized musical gestures and inflammatory rhetoric of black metal are aimed at razing the world so that we may begin anew. Strange, then, that it’s only been in the last five years or so that we’ve seen black metal sprouting so many new branches. It’s a sad irony that a music so opposed to orthodoxy should be so concerned with notions of purity.

San Francisco’s Deafheaven are one of a growing legion of young American black metal bands (also including Krallice, Velnias and Liturgy) whose music captures that duality perfectly. There’s plenty of violence in the outpouring of blastbeats and guitars on their self-titled demo (briefly introduced by Vince here), but the violence feels transformative, baptismal, even comforting. Deafheaven’s arcing guitar harmonies lead to conventionally beautiful places; they even fly directly into the sun for the major key flashes of “Daedalus.” It says a lot that the acoustic instrumental “Bedrooms” feels totally at home among the beautiful carnage that surrounds it. It’s just as emotionally complete as the louder tracks.

While Deafheaven’s music shares surface characteristics with the classic black metal sound, this demo is so distanced from Mayhem and Immortal as to be another kind of music entirely. It engulfs rather than tramples, shimmers where so much black metal rattles. These descriptions alone do not make Deafheaven good or bad. But they do amount to an important shift in aesthetic values, one that makes black metal more listenable without taming its spiritual thrust. It’s a shift that has clear predecessors in Weakling, Wolves In the Throne Room and Agalloch. Do Deafheaven offer a take on this strain of black metal that the others don’t? Not really, though they do streamline the sound a bit. Do they offer that same feeling of cleansing that I get when I listen to the aforementioned? Oh, yeah.

(3.5 Horns Up)

-SR

Download Deafheaven’s demo over yonder.

Profound Lore will (I guess I should say “presumably”) continue their unfuckwithable streak with the November 23 release of Marrow of the Spirit, Agalloch’s fourth full-length, and first since 2006’s Ashes Against The Grain. Here’s the album art:

Unfortunately they haven’t released any songs off the album yet, but, hey, an announcement of a new Agalloch album alone should be enough to get you rock hard.

The band is also doing four tour dates Allerseelen in December. Dates are as follows:

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It’s like this band doesn’t even WANT anyone but their most die-hard fans to find out about their releases.

This time the item in question is a 7xLP set that comes in an engraved wooden box, limited to 350 copies; given, the only people that are gonna shell out $200 (€130) on something for any band are the die-hards anyway, but you’d think they could benefit from oh, I don’t know, an announcement on their website or MySpace page? But that apparently is too much to ask for, as was the case with their last release. Is an announcement too un-tr00 for this kultest of kult band? Call me crazy, but I’d think the band (and the label issuing this release) would actually want to sell these.

Then again, MS reader James Keglor emailed us about this set and we, in turn, are posting about it. So I guess Agalloch are doing something right (aside from making awesome music, of course).

-VN

Wait, what? A new Agalloch album came out? Last week?? And we didn’t even know about it?? Deja vu all over again.

Only by browsing Metal-Archives.com did MS tipster Loudden Mathias realize that he, us, and seemingly the entire world had missed the boat on the latest from the Portland, Oregon doom/folk metallers. The Compendium Archive, released on the Vernal Equinox of 2010 (that’s the first day of Spring, March 20th), is a two disc set limited to 250 hand-numbered copies. Disc 1 is a “Best Of” featuring material from From Which of This Oak, Of Stone, Wind and Pillor and Promo ’98 and Disc 2 contains “assorted works & rarities.”

So with only 250 copies available you better get to ordering one right quick if you’re a fan of this excellent band, as we are. The only problem is we’re not sure where the fuck to get it. The band’s official website hasn’t been updated since 2008 and their MySpace page makes no mention of it. Google just turns up a bunch of results of people asking where they can get this release.

All this begs the question… is this compilation even legit? A blog on Agalloch’s MySpace warns of counterfeit From Which of This Oak tapes making the rounds on Ebay. I wouldn’t put something like this past an overzealous Agalloch superfan looking to cause a stir on the Internet; people are fucking weird and will do anything for attention. If anyone can shed light on this situation, kindly do let us know!

-VN

So, uh… apparently Portland, OR epic doomsters Agalloch — perennial MetalSucks favorites — have a new DVD out called The Silence of Forgotten Landscapes. The band’s official website makes no mention of it, nor does the band’s MySpace page (save an inclusion on the discography). No other metal sites seem to be reporting on it, and a Google search of “Agalloch The Silence of Forgotten Landscapes” turns up a bunch of torrent sites and, finally, a buy page on The Omega Order. Save the wise tip of MS reader Daniel Guzman, I never would’ve known about this release, Agalloch’s first into the visual realm.

Leave it up to the members of Agalloch’s Fan Page to actually provide some real info about this release:

First-ever DVD from the mighty Agalloch. The main feature of this DVD is a show recorded on March 29, 2008 in Belgium — eight tracks culled from the band’s three albums to date, totaling over 70 minutes. Features another 50 minutes of extra material, which includes about 10 minutes of original music written and performed by John Haughm. [By request of the band, $2.50 of each DVD sale will be donated to a nature preservation society that protects parts of northern Belgium and southern Holland.]

Well, what gives, dudes? There are lots of folks I know who would be interested in this release if only they knew about it. Way to completely drop the ball. The DVD’s been out for a week now and I haven’t seen a single press release or article. Maybe the DVD really sucks and they’re ashamed of it? Who knows. If any readers have the DVD, please tell us how it is in the comments.

Since neither the band or record label seem to care enough to share this information with you, we have the tracklisting and a list of bonus features after the jump, taken from the fan page.

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