With Southern California black metallers The Funeral Pyre making this blogger’s year-end list (again) in 2010, what better time to catch up with frontman John Strachan than on the cusp of another year, jam-packed for the band with new tour dates, new music, and new(-ish) releases? Plus, he’s got a few picks of his own from last year — and a few gripes — to boot.

On the eve of the January release of a Vultures At Dawn 180 gram LP, MetalSucks took some time to talk with Strachan about the band, the album, and Forest Moon Special Products, Strachan’s record label with more than a few admirable releases under its belt. The conversation after the fold.

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Exhausted Prayer
Worst of All Possible Worlds
Label – TBD
Release date – TBD

It’s not much of a stretch to say that Exhausted Prayer are the only black metal band I know that sound like their home city of Los Angeles. The lengthy tracks on their 2005 EP Looks Down in the Gathering Shadow shifted from dissonance to wide-open “tall” harmonies, sounding like a brakeless car ride over L.A.’s cracked mess of freeways onwards to an endless sunset. Swansong and Heist’s guitars worked in gauzy textures and criss-crossing melodies even at their most furious, often breaking out into tasteful solo breaks; drummer Mike Caffell (also in Dreaming Dead, whose debut Within One was my favorite album of last year) kept the gears shifting relentlessly, investing his deft blasts with the deep pocket that so many of his trigger-happy black metal peers can’t muster. Like Ludicra or recent Enslaved, Exhausted Prayer’s black metal grows and consumes us gradually rather than than mowing us down with static blasting. As much as I adore Exhausted Prayer’s three-part vocal attack, this is one of the few black metal bands that could probably do fine as an instrumental group.

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Having an outlet through a prominent web media site like metalsucks.net is a blessing in so many ways. It took a while for me to realize, but honestly having my shitty ideas read by thousands of shitty people is a power that I should harness and use to project something positive onto the metal scene. Since Metallica haven’t called me about ghost writing their next album yet, I figure I should still try to do some good for the heavy music community and turn you people on to some bands who don’t have a label buying ad space on Metalsucks. Here is a list of bands I am angry at the public for not liking:

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