(from Unpopular Opinion Rick Perry)

Whew, what a week. I don’t know where you all are, but here in NYC it’s 5pm and it’s already been completely dark outside for a while. FML. Here’s what happened this week:

• Corey discovered that our “Best of 2011″ lists weren’t as bad as you thought they were with fancy mathematicals to back it up.
• Axl and Vince live-chatted it up with y’all and fielded all your stupid questions… and a few good ones.
• We interviewed Giant Squid’s Aaron Gregory, Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, and Nikki Sixx.
• We premiered new music by Lamb of God, Whores, Abysmal Dawn, and Nothnegal.
• We laughed at the BBC’s distorted view of metal culture not once but twice.
• We announced that we’re retiring some of our older t-shirt designs and that we’re having a fire-sale to get rid of them; get ‘em while you still can!
• Vince pondered a new ranking system that could supercede Soundscan.
• We cracked jokes about another laughable Rolling Stone Top 100 lists of guitarists.
• We introduced Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick as our new NFL columnist; please direct your hatred of the Packers his way.

Vince out.

-VN

photo by Daryl Darko

Aaron Gregory of Giant Squid wears so many hats that he’d easily clear out a headwear shop. He’s a former fish store owner, a student, a scuba diver, a graphic designer, and the guitarist and vocalist of Giant Squid. Gregory and his bandmates, including his partner Jackie Perez Gratz (also of Grayceon) recently released Cenotes, a more than worthy follow to the critically acclaimed album The Ichthyologist. Cenotes is also a key component to a storyline Gregory is creating for a graphic novel. Gregory’s fascination with the sea started when he watched Jaws as a kid. It scared him shitless, but changed his life. The new father discussed his aquatic fascination and Giant Squid’s new album recently with MetalSucks.

Click to read more…

This week’s list of releases covers a lot of ground, between the sludge punk of Black Tusk, Noctem’s blackened thrash, a heavier side of Russian Circles, East of the Wall, Carnifex, Hammers of Misfortune and much more. Check it all out by clicking below.

Click to read more…

These albums might even have some good music on ‘em, too!

ANYWAY:

• As I’ve said before, I’m not really a fan of Maynard James Keenan’s Puscifer project, but my man crush on Keenan is such that I actually feel severe guilt over said lack of fandom. And Pusicfer’s latest, Conditions of My Parole, might have the best album art of the year. Spin (still a thing!) is now streaming the entire record in advance of its release on October 18 via the cleverly named Puscifer Entertainment. I’ve listened to a lil’ bit of it and I feel about it pretty much the way I feel about all Puscifer, which is that it’s not bad, but not interesting to hold my attention against all the other great music out there right now, and really Maynard just get back to the business of TOOL as soon as humanly possible.
• Giant Squid’s Cenotes comes out October 25 on Translation Loss, and also has totally bitchin’ album art (above… FUPAs for the win). Now the whole thing is streaming at NPR (New slogan: “NPR… it’s not just for old people anymore!”). I’m actually listening for the first time now, and while Giant Squid have yet to produce anything that I love as much as Metridium Fields (“Ampullae of Lorenzini” might be one of the most beautiful songs in any genre written in the past ten years), they’re still way out ahead of most of the pack, so you should at very least give this a listen and see if you dig it. I mean, you’d do as much just to be able to make fun of Design the Skyline, so, y’know, fair is fair.

Long-standing music website Pitchfork, heralded by many as “The MetalSucks of Indie Rock,” has been getting a healthy dose of heavy lately. This must be due to the return of writer Brandon Stosuy, a rad dude and devoted metal scholar we know from the NYC scene who helmed Stereogum’s metal division for quite some time. I’m not exactly sure of the timeline and current relationship between Stosuy and both blogs, but this much is certain: more metal is always a good thing, especially since Brandon covers an end of the metal spectrum we sometimes gloss over. This week’s Pitchfork premieres-du-jour: new tracks from Boris and Giant Squid.
Click to read more…

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.

Click to read more…

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.”

Click to read more…

Grayceon
All We Destroy
Label – Profound Lore
Release Date – March 1, 2011

To quote a Coalesce album title, there is nothing new under the sun. Wait, shit – that was actually a passage from Ecclesiastes. See what I mean? Forty-odd years since metal’s birth, it’s tough to innovate beyond folding in a genre or influence that you wouldn’t think would work in metal. While I don’t believe that “originality” always trumps craftsmanship and verve in importance, I do miss the early days of my metal listenership, when everything sounded new to my virgin ears (as opposed to my current whore ears).

That’s why I was so stoked to have my face first fucked off by San Francisco’s Grayceon, around the time their self-titled debut came out on Vendlus a few years back. Here was a band that was unique through and through. You don’t find many metal bands with a female lead singer that refuses to play the siren role in some dork’s maiden-rescuing fantasy LARP. You’ll find even fewer bands with a cello as a lead instrument, and even fewer than that which utilize finger-picked electric guitar. Grayceon feature all three. More important than those eyebrow-raising bullet points, Grayceon make a wholly new music, one that grafts medieval cadences and the pastoral textures of early British prog onto a bedrock of supremely headbangable, ornate riffing. And there are no seams. Grayceon make metal, yes (and amazingly heavy metal at that), but they draw equally on …And Justice for All as they do Guillaume de Machaut.

Click to read more…

Blame it on the rigors of moving home cities yet again, or changing drummers as frequently as Spinal Tap, or trying to best their universally hailed first album Metridium Field: Giant Squid sound exhausted on The Ichthyologist. More depressed than angry. Not so overtly metal. Lethargic in their rhythms, loose in their playing. Maybe it’s all intentional, given the stark emotional terrain of the source material – based on band leader Aaron Gregory’s graphic novel of the same name, The Ichthyologist records the thoughts of a numbed narrator as he turns to the sea to escape the pain of personal tragedy and loss. Gregory’s lyrics dwell in dank, lightless places. If on Metridium Field Giant Squid were skimming the sea’s surface in search of their namesake seabeast, this one finds them sinking, pulled down into the fathomless depths.

Click to read more…

I can’t say enough good things about Giant Squid. They just fucking rock your face off. Period. If you dig bands like Mastodon and Kylesa, you will dig Giant Squid. And they have a new album coming out, The Ichthyologist, for which they’ve now released the artwork (above) and track listing. And, oh yeah, an awesome new song, “Blue Linckia,” which you can hear right now on their MySpace page.

Here’s a statement from singer/guitarist Aaron Gregory:

Click to read more…

In 2006, San Francisco’s Giant Squid released Metridium Fields, which is, to put it mildly, a fucking doozy of an album. Lucky for all of us, then, the band has just completed work at that record’s follow-up, as singer/guitarist Aaron Gregory tells us in a press release:

Click to read more…

Alright. Whose ass do I kick for having never introduced me to Giant Squid? ‘Cause with all due respect to Mr. Vince Neilstein’s newfound love of Sikth, last night I discovered Metridium Fields, Giant Squid’s 2006 debut for The End. And this shit is the real deal Kool Aid.

I’m not even sure how to describe the band’s music. Male vocalist Aaron Gregory sure sounds an awful lot like Serj Tankian, but Giant Squid are no SOAD wanna-bes; the music is slow, but I’d hesitate to call it doomy or even moody; there’s definitely some prog elements, but not in a super-dorky Dream Theater kinda way; and if I use the word “sludge,” I fear some of you may conjure images of Crowbar and their ilk. Nor is the music as rage filled as Rwake, although, like that excellent band, there is a totally unexpected use of banjos, organs, etc. I imagine stoners will eat this shit up like a pot brownie, but, hand to God, I was totally sober last night and my mind was still blown. I think maybe the best band I could compare them to is Jucifer, but they’re much more full-bodied than that particular duo.

And, oh yeah, the cover art by Aurielle Gregory – Aaron’s wife – is friggin’ gorgeous.

ANYWAY, while I continue to have my mind blown and kick myself for not having heard this album last year when I should have – seriously, I’m contemplating buying a record player just so I can buy their new 7″ split with Grayceon – you should head over to their MySpace page and check ‘em out, or, if you’re really too lazy to do that, watch the below video of them performing their song “Neonate” in Texas last year.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/5K-zbWW9jpc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

-AR