I had about 15 seconds, so it was just ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘have a great show’ type of stuff. Even so, he seemed to be genuinely nice (in his fake accent) and appreciated each fan that went in to meet him.
Just got back from Raleigh DeathFest III, headlined by Widow and INTER ARMA, but also featuring lots of great NC/VA metal, including Datura, Mo’ynoq, Murdersome, Deathcrown, Abhorrent Deformity, and Necrocosm.
These guys utterly blew my fucking head off. The intensity, power, and sheer, shuddering, crushing heaviness of their live act has to be seen to be believed. Goddamn.
Widow were also excellent in a classic heavy metal sort of way, and played an extra long set because local favorites Eldritch Horror had to cancel last minute due to illness and guitarist-loss :)
And cuz I’ll never pass up the chance to rep great NC metal
Here’s a band new to me, Author & Punisher. It’s probably best described as industrial doom metal. Lots of ambient noisecore, slow driving beats, and fuzz. It’s also a one-man band by some guy in San Diego.
This is one of my favorite songs of theirs so far, but there’s another 6 or 7 albums I need to catch up on to see what else lives up to this one.
I am especially fond of the vocal harmonies.
The vocal harmonies in that track remind me of another favorite album of mine, Tyrant, by a group called Down I Go
Here’s a couple samples of them:
And finally, I’ve been putting a lot of time into Murder Construct lately. They’re sort of a collaboration of people belonging to other higher profile bands. I don’t know if any of them have enough fame to qualify this project as a super group, but the music itself is pretty super.
Anybody heard of this print magazine? Heavy Music Artwork
Focusing on the visual elements of heavy music.
Expensive to order back issues, and the ones I want are sold out anyway. :(
According to what I normally enjoy, I should not be digging on this, but I am:
I missed seeing those guys two nights ago cuz I was at the beginning of a nasty sickness that I’m just now getting over. Them and Bell Witch. Was gonna be a hell of a set…
Did you guys know this was a thing, and no one told me?
(When You Wish Upon a Star)
D-Metal Stars, a bunch of Disney covers. Apparently they did a whole album a couple of years ago. It’s power metal, of course. Kinda wish they’d had the guts to do a full-on black or death metal set.
Do not, under any circumstances, listen to It’s a Small World. It will never leave your head.
There’s a lot of Disney metal versions out there that aren’t sanctioned, of course. This is an amazing Let It Go video, for instance, by the incredible Leo Moracchioli. Use of the toy instruments is just genius.
That’s really fun. My daughters went nuts dancing around when I played this one for them (Thanks to @ArmandoPenblade for the tip!) :
June 2018 Albums of the Month
Another strong month of metal releases is in the books (I’m counting today’s releases in July since I won’t have time to listen to them until next week). Khemmis continued their upward trajectory, we got a bunch of good metal-adjacent rock, (Ghost, Orange Goblin, and today’s Night Flight Orchestra), and the usual grab bag of cool stuff in other genres (though sadly we seem to be in a few-month drought for great power metal). The biggest standout for me, though, has to be Zeal & Ardor. When there was a bunch of buzz for their debut EP a while back, I checked it out and thought it was a cool novelty but that its components (black metal and slave spirituals) didn’t quite gel into a cohesive whole. But the debut album realizes every drop of potential and then some.
Steel
- Zeal & Ardor - Strange Fruit (slave spirituals / black metal)
- Hoth - Astral Necromancy (meloblack)
- Khemmis - Desolation (doom / epic)
Iron
- Subsignal - La Muerta (prog)
- Ghost - Prequelle (occult rock)
- Kataklysm - Meditations (melodeath)
- Orange Goblin - The Wolf Bites Back (rock / stoner)
Bronze
- Powerglove - Continue? (gametal)
- Nervosa - Downfall of Mankind (all-female thrash)
- Trillium - Tectonic (symphonic/gothic)
- Exmortus - Sound of Steel (thrash/death)
- Soliloquium - Contemplations (doom)
- YOB - Our Raw Heart (doom)
- Arthedain - Infernal Cadence of the Desolate (atmoblack)
- Anicon - Entropy Mantra (black)
Only two recent releases that really did anything for me this month:
Marduk - Viktoria
Nocturnal Graves - Titan
(unfortunately some June stuff I wanted to listen to didn’t land on Google music yet, like Runespell, Spectral Wound, Embrace of Thorns…)
Thanks for that. Khemmis was really good and somehow I have never seen them even though they are a Denver band.
Finally about done with your list, which has some excellent entries as usual. Continue? is definitely one of my albums of the year so far, and I get to see them in a few weeks here in Raleigh, which is awesome :-D
I really appreciate the Zeal & Ardor, Khemmis, and Arthedain recs in particular; those are doing awesome things to my ears that I wouldn’t have likely heard otherwise :-D
Also really dug Viktoria last month, @Profanicus. I’m hoping to get to your other two recs today.
I got to see Insomnium and Oceans of Slumber recently. OoS kinda stole the show completely, as Insomnium had some serious issues with Markus V’s amp rig that had his guitar cutting out all night long. I’m not too perturbed by that, since I saw those guys last year, too (playing almost the same set), but the whole thing was really worth it thanks to Oceans of Slumber :-D
Oceans of Slumber
Insomnium
Also stumbled across this earlier and kinda dug the gothy shlockiness of it. Vox verge close to both Type O Negative and Fear Factory at points, which ALSO rubs me very much the right way.
I quite like this song for similar reasons to you. Going to check these guys out.
Marduk albums are always a solid bet. :)
Well, I think I’ve found my ‘Album of the Month’ for July already… :)
Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods
I’ve really been digging that the last few days. Ahhhh Immortal :-D
Also, @Giles_Habibula, this one felt like it might be up your alley a little:
Lucifer, a fairly new outfit out of Germany and the UK, featuring a kinda blazed out 70s hard rock vintage of oldschool metal licks. Not gonna win any points for innovation, but it’s still damned catchy!
Heh, it’s not just Immortal, it’s old Immortal - with Demonaz back in place of Abbath.
I enjoyed the Abbath-lead era albums well enough (or the first couple at least) but I much prefer the return to this more ferocious incarnation. Glorious! :)
You know, not long ago, I was really rooting for Ghost to make it, but I since I don’t pay any attention to the Billboard Charts, I hadn’t realized they were doing this well until someone sent me this.
Thus, it is with great disappointment that I must declare that they have officially “sold out” and I can no longer be a fan. : (
Actually, it’s worse, because this story is a week old, and it’s still at number one this week.
Worse than that, where the hell is “Dance Macabre” on the charts? You know, Ghost’s second single from this album released many weeks ago to great acclaim (on YouTube anyway). It’s a far better song (though not at all metal), and I don’t see a trace of it, not even on the dance charts, where it belongs.
This has been my first foray into the bewildering wonderland known as the Billboard Chart website, where Billboard apparently has so many damn charts that it’s a wonder anyone can find anything there.
Oh, and thanks for the video, @ArmandoPenblade.
You have correctly identified what I tend to like. :)
OTOH, it’s not that difficult, since I think I have the narrowest scope of interest in this entire thread. But I’m working on it!
And as usual, your concert photos are awesome.