Disques of Doom

Got some new records to add to the collection! Another trip to the new (to me) record store yielded some nice finds. Let's dive into them shall we? Darkspace - I Yes there is something written on the front cover here, but the black-on-black colour scheme makes it hard to get a decent photo. Darkspace is an ambient black metal group from Scandinavia (shocking, I know) and this is a repress of their first album. I used to listen to their interstellar brand of heavy metal a long time ago, and never expected to find a record of theirs just on the shelf at a record store, so colour me pleased. The ambient passages are cold and foreboding, complimenting the atmospheric style of black metal it is combined with very nicely. Long sections of blasting drums accompanied by epic tremolo picked riffs that wash over the composition. The harsh, tortured vocals focus on the vastness of space and the unknown darkness that fills it, rather than satan or demons. Black Breath - Slaves ...

SixBrewBantha – Blight Grindcore is a fascinating genre of music, the ethos of which seem to come down to “all things more extreme than everything else”. The culmination of hardcore punk and heavy metal's sordid affairs; grindcore is the ultimate expression of punk's fuck-you attitude and heavy metal's technical wankery. Often very talented musicians dedicating their time and skills to playing something as far from what is traditionally understood as “music” as possible. As a genre grindcore is characterized by incredibly frenzied, and immensely heavy, short songs piled onto short albums, implying that such a magnitude of fury is difficult to maintain, or possibly even enjoy, for very long at single go. This was a style of music I overlooked for a long time, it was something beyond my understanding, I couldn't comprehend quite why someone would make such non-music. Over time I have come to appreciate the anger and outpouring of such overwhelming emotion and...

New album time! At the recommendation of a friend I went to check out a new record store this week and was happy to see some very interesting stuff there. Including a couple of albums I simply could not leave behind. Tombs - The Grand Annihilation I really like Tombs a lot. I think they have a great style; a fusion of black metal and sludge/post-metal, and they are always writing new stuff that sounds fresh and takes things in new directions while still being unmistakably Tombs. They wear their inspirations pretty openly with lots of USBM riffing and blasting, then diverting into sludgy territory with occasional Neurosis-like vocals. This album was well received and I enjoyed it a lot, also the bass sounds great on it, a great tone and layered into the mix very nicely. I'd been looking to pick up this album for a while band had been unable to find it at any other record store I looked in, so I made sure I was leaving with it. Great stuff from a great band. Forteress...

Selections from the Archive - Volume 02 This week the selections I have are some top notch doom metal records. Not a lot of genre blending going on here, these bands dig deep into the traditions of doom and present something that celebrates those traditions and works with them in their own ways. I enjoy all of these records quite a bit, they make for a heavy night of listening. Green Druid - Ashen Blood This is some fuzzed out, riff-tastic, slow tempo doom metal. Coming to us from Colorado, Green Druid wear their herbal influence on their sleeve and make some fine heavy music. The songs are long and meandering, in a good way, like a long journey through saturated guitar grooves, with a heavy inspiration from some more psychedelic streams of thought, fancy that.The high pitched vocals act as a counterpoint to the heavy riffage, and are occasionally countered themselves by some raspy, black metal sounding shrieks worked in here and there.  Elder - Reflections o...

APES - Lightless On the platter today is yet another Canadian extreme metal group. This time it is APES, blackened hardcore coming to us from none other than Montreal, QC; the Canadian capital of extreme metal (BC does okay, but let's face the facts here). Yes, I am making it a point to cover a bunch of lesser-known Canadian metal acts first, mostly just because I like them and want to write about things I enjoy. I could have held on to them until I was better at this and do them real justice, but I've never been good at waiting. I'm also going to try something a bit new with this review: I'm going to talk about the vinyl itself and it's packaging a little bit more in this and future reviews, and talk a little about what I like or dislike about that aspect of the record separate from the album contained therein. Lightless is APES debut record as far as I can tell, they seem to have a couple of shorter EPs on cassette tapes floating around but this is t...

Grabbed some new vinyl this weekend, these are all records I have not previously heard but my research into the bands and their sounds leads me to think I will enjoy them. Fen - Winter Atmospheric black metal with an emphasis on the atmosphere. Long songs with vast build-ups to epic crescendos. I've listen to some of their previous work on older albums and always enjoyed what they were doing so I am stoked to give this record a listen. At over 70 minutes long this one will be quite the journey through endless cold and darkness, reportedly their most epic yet. Skeletonwitch - Devouring Radiant Light The newest album from Skeletonwitch is reportedly quite the departure for them, reinventing their melodic-death/thrash sound with a healthy dose of black metal influences. Reactions to this change (predicated by the loss of their original lead singer) seem mixed, with some people feeling his voice was integral to their sound and others appreciating this evolution....

Selections from the Archive - Volume 01 These posts will highlight a small selection of records from my honestly meager collection. These will be records I think are cool and worth checking out, they might be more unknown niche band, they might be more popular, some of these might get a full review at a later date, some might not. Today I want to look at some very good albums rooted in the hardcore genre. Code Orange - Forever This album is top-notch and not exactly an underdog, I've seen it on a number of "best heavy metal of 2017" lists. Code Orange play excellent aggressive hardcore that's also pretty metallic. This album has some interesting noise elements that actually quite liked, such as passages of droning static between some songs and some sharp abrupt ends to a few songs. This band is also noteworthy for not having a lead singer, instead; three members of the band all sing various parts with hardcore shouts, deathier screams, and even some cle...