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Cynic’s Carbon-Based Anatomy EP highlights this week’s release slate, while White Wizzard, Blut Aus Nord, Bloody Panda, Coliseum and more are also releasing new albums. Let’s take a look after the jump.
Technically, summer isn’t over until September 23. But to hell with that! Days are gonna get shorter, the weather’s gonna get cooler, and everyone will soon celebrate the birth of the one true me. So there’s really no point in hanging on to the last vestiges of summer. Good-bye and good riddance. What better way to hail the moodiest season of them all than with some Blut Aus Nord?
The French “avante-garde” black metal band are, admittedly, a little full of themselves. Refusing to be lumped with other, more popular black metal acts, who they refer to as — and this is the best line ever — “childish Satanic clowns.” Wait, does this make them the original black metal hipsters, then? Oh well. Despite that, I still like them. I didn’t get to listen to 777 – Sect(s) until quite recently, and if I’d heard it sooner, I would’ve considered putting it on my year’s best so far list. It has everything I’d expect in a Blut Aus Nord record; lots of reverb and that glorious industrial influence that I always appreciate in music, whatever the genre.
And yet, 777 – Sect(s) is a little lackluster, especially compared to some of their earlier stuff.
Last year (and the year before) I got way too busy with this thing called life and missed out on a lot of quality music. I am here to rectify the error of my ways, month by month.
Here are the April 2011 releases that got under my skin, burrowed their way into my brain, made my ears bleed, or simply tickled my unmentionables:
This week sees new releases by Graveyard, Periphery, Blut Aus Nord, Septicflesh, Winds of Plague, and tons more. MS new release expert Vic Vaughn takes a looksee at each after the jump!
Blut aus Nord’s 2003 post-black metal touchstone – The Work Which Transforms God – was a lot like a David Lynch movie: I wanted to like it more than I actually did. Taken on a song by song basis, the album is striking (even if being in the right mood is still necessary). But as a whole, the album is indigestible, a jagged, abstract chunk of atonal Godflesh-via-Burzum avant-garde metal. I respected the hell out of it, but when pressed, I couldn’t say when I listened to it. And even though I’ve maligned clean singing when unnecessary (hell, I’ve done it numerous times on this very website), TWWTG was a little too rough even for my liking. The French kvltists’ latest, Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars, seems to have taken my concerns to heart, eschewing the slow industrial trudge of their last few records and indulging in some melody and atmosphere, focusing less on being obscure. It’s to The Work Which Transforms God‘s difficult credit that Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars can be seen as a lightening up despite being a broad, inventive, and fucking brilliant black metal record that makes all the right moves, pushes all the right envelopes, and never tries to hard. Easily an early contender for black metal record of the year, the album is another chapter in the band’s mission to redefine black metal, even if doing it by easier-to-swallow means.
