Somewhat embarrassingly I’ve had Christhammer, the latest by Louisville, KY outfit Stonecutters, on my desk for probably about a year now. I’ve been meaning to write about it and the complex stoney / progressive / psychedelic metal grooves contained therein all this time but… I was too busy holding back the electric car. Sorry dudes. But I owe it to you to finally deliver, because Christhammer is one hell of a record certainly deserving of the attention of the MS faithful.

Seeing as MetalSucks is developing an outpost in Eastern Kentucky I’m somewhat fascinated with the metal scene there. And though the MS Kentucky Korner is a good 2.5 hours from Louisville, I’d love to see Stonecutters and their Simpsons-loving riffs when I’m down there some day. Stonecutters have a few gigs lined up in Central Kentucky, so if you live nearby go check ‘em out and let me know how they are live. In the meantime, jam with a few tracks from Christhammer on their MySpace page.

-VN

As Axl told ya’ll, I was down in Northeastern Kentucky this weekend setting up a homestead for the soon-to-be-built MetalSucks Mansion Appalachia Annex. That shit is real! My first stop was at a Home Depot just over the border in West Virginia to buy supplies. As I was tooling around the store with a shopping cart full of random odds and ends, some dude looked at me quizzically, and perhaps a little skeptically of this bearded New York Jew he asked “I don’t mean to be nosey… but what are ya’ll doing with a hatchet and a cooler?” If I’d been on my game I would’ve come up with a witty/metal answer about chopping bodies up or something, but I failed. Maybe I should’ve just said “Just going out to the dance club, you know, usual night on the town.”

Anyway, the drive to and from KY is not a short one. We got a bit of a late start, and as night fell we were somewhere in the sharp, angular hills of West Virginia, the rolling, jagged green cliffs holding dense, white fog like something out of an epic metal music video. As daylight quickly faded, it was one of the most serene and beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. The mood called for Opeth. Blackwater Park became the soundtrack of choice and was the absolute perfect match for this epic, epic part of our journey. Not gonna lie, I was kinda pretending in my mind that we were driving through the Swedish wilderness. Not that I actually have any idea what the Swedish wilderness looks like. West Virginia = Sweden??

Here’s Opeth performing “Bleak” live a few years back.

-VN