Hell- III (2012)

I spent a bunch of time doing a write up for this record, but then I realized that not only did I not like what I had written, but I was doing III a disservice. III is the closing chapter of the Hell trilogy. This is one of the best bands on the planet right now and their evolution over the course of their three full lengths is something to behold. Get it.

Try it.

Buy it:

Hell on bandcamp.

The cassette is already sold out. Vinyl is coming soon from Pesanta.

Vinyl Fetish: Stoneburner- Sickness Will Pass Pre-order

Sickness Will Pass is one of my absolute favorites of 2012. You can read me gushing about it here. So I'm ridiculously stoked that it's finally coming out on the preferred format. Unfortunately pre-orders opened on the same day as ticket sales for Maryland Deathfest, so my bank account hates me right now. Two variants are available for pre-order, red and black marble (limited to 100) and a standard weight black unlimited variant. There is also a super reasonably priced pre-order bundle that comes with a red and black marble LP and a shirt (pictured below). Go to Seventh Rule and buy this fucking thing. Right. Fucking. Now.

Pre-order from Seventh Rule

Eagle Twin- The Feather Tipped The Serpent's Scale (2012)

Many years ago Rob introduced me to a band out of Salt Lake City, Utah called Iceburn. Iceburn (later known as the Iceburn Collective) began as a hardcore band with progressive rock, metallic, jazz and even some classical elements. Iceburn's music constantly evolved throughout their career. Much of their later output had more in common with Ornette Coleman than it did with their Revelation Records peers. Iceburn went through approximately a billion lineup changes, but the driving force and sole constant member was guitarist/vocalist Gentry Densley. You may also be familiar with that name from Ascend, Densley's doom project with Greg Anderson. In 2007 Densley founded Eagle Twin with drummer Tyler Smith. Eagle Twin flew under my radar until last year when I finally heard The Unkindness of Crows. It's a fine album, but holy shitballs, The Feather Tipped The Serpent's Scale is like a Gatling gun turning those unkind crows into chunks of carrion and blood mist. Densley's tone is pretty much unrivaled in doom metal these days. His riffs and the grooves he creates with Smith could go toe-to-to with Sleep, Goatsnake and Yob at their absolute best. I will say I've never been big on this style of vocals in doom, but everything else is so goddamn righteous I'm more than willing to give them a pass. Strong contender for album of the year.

Try it.

Buy it:
LP/CD (Southern Lord)
Digital (Amazon)

His Hero Is Gone- Fifteen Counts of Arson (1997)

I'm parting with some of my vinyl collection, including some color variants of this album. I've listened to it 5 times already this evening making sure they're all fit to sell, so I figured, why the fuck not post it?

Fifteen Counts of Arson is one of my favorite albums of all time and I objectively believe that it's one of the greatest punk rock albums ever recorded...and it's not even my favorite His Hero Is Gone record, Monuments To Thieves holds that distinction. The order in which I rank those two will surely be objected to by some, but I think that just about all of their fans can agree that His Hero Is Gone managed quite a feat in having produced not one, but two all time greats of the genre. Pardon me if I get a little too self-involved with this one, His Hero Is Gone was one of the most important bands in my musical evolution.

I was 13 years old when this record came out, though I don't think I heard it until the following year (1998). At that point I was starting to move beyond punk rock and hardcore staples like the Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains and Black Flag. Bands like Discharge, Crucifix and Crass had given me an ethos to go along with my (just barely) teenage angst. But 1998 would prove a huge year for me musically. I would hear two bands that expanded my palate and completely changed the way I listened to music. One was Botch, though that's a story for another time, the other was His Hero Is Gone.

I imagine I must have downloaded it from the FTP site that some guys who posted on a message board I frequented ran, as that's where much of my music discovery happened in those early days of file sharing. Somehow I came into possession of a few MP3s, including "Professional Mindfuckers," "Sterile Fortress" and "Epidemic." I know that the phrase "blew my mind" is overused, but that's exactly what happened, my mind was fucking blown.

It was dark. Darker than Discharge or Rudimentary Peni (who I also loved at the time) and certainly had none of the levity of the latter. It was fast. I had heard some fast hardcore, but I had never been exposed to a blast beat before this record. It was slow. Sludge would later become my genre of choice, but this was my first exposure to the grimy stomp that's part and parcel of the genre. But most of all, it was heavy. Not the type of heavy that a bunch of meatheads would stomp around to at a hardcore show, but the kind of heavy that made you want to throw up the claw and bang your fucking head. It's almost solely responsible for sending me barreling down a musical path I might not have stumbled across otherwise and almost fifteen years later, Fifteen Counts of Arson remains one of my favorite albums of all time.

Try it.

Buy it:

LP

Digital

Belzebong - Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves (2011)

Look at that name. LOOK AT IT. Say it out loud. Feel the way it rolls off the tongue. Did you just chortle? I did the first time I said it out loud too. Not sure I need to do a big writeup on this one, with a name like that you should have a pretty good idea of what you're getting yourself into. Big, riffy, groove-laden, instrumental stoner doom following in the footsteps of the masters. You either love this style of music or it does absolutely nothing for you. Personally, I think this happens to be one of the finest exemplars of the genre since Bongzilla's Gateway.

...proceeds the Weedian...

Buy it:
Vinyl (Discogs)
Digital

Stoneburner- Sickness Will Pass (2012)

Migration by Buried At Sea is my favorite doom record of all time, regardless of subgenre. That might seem like an odd choice to many, but I've never heard an album as unrelenting and suffocatingly heavy. I'd go so far as to call it the heaviest album of all time (and those of you who know me know that I tend to do so without the slightest provocation). Growing up a punk kid who loved powerviolence I didn't know people made music that slow and heavy or that I could possibly enjoy it so much. I remember staring agape at the car stereo after hearing that titanic crash at the beginning of Migration for the first time. The closest analogy I can come up with is when, suddenly, a gigantic chunk of glacier breaks off and slams into the ocean with a roar. Since Buried At Sea is no longer with us, I always keep my ear to their grave, anxiously listening for bands down there nibbling at their sodden corpse. At times Batillus reaches Buried At Sea levels of trudging hugeness, but they've got their own sound and are on their own path that only on occasion winds its way through that corner of the graveyard. For the past few years I've been keeping an eye on Portland's Stoneburner who feature guitarist Jason Depew formerly of...you guessed it...Buried At Sea. Thus, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Sickness Will Pass for a number of months now.

Does it deliver? Boy, does it ever. Don't think that, based on the above, Stoneburner is a Buried At Sea clone. Far from it (though I could get down with that, I like plenty of Discharge clones). Like Migration, Sickness Will Pass starts out with a thunder clap and immediately hits some of the same lows (and I mean that in the best way possible). This album is vicious. If Eyehategod is a PCPed-out first timer stabbing wildly and making a mess of things, Stoneburner are a seasoned vet, knifing you methodically while staring you in the eyes with a completely flattened affect. But as I said, this isn't Migration Pt. 2. Soneburner has plenty of tricks up their sleeves in the form of bluesy southern sludge riffs, Yob-esque pedal driven bits, guitar solos, up tempo sections and double bass.

This album is tremendous and in addition to capturing a spot amongst my favorites of the year it's made me completely reevaluate some of the notions I had about Buried At Sea. Being the most visible member and the member whose other projects I was most familiar with, I had always attributed much of Buried At Sea's sound to Sanford Parker. Sickness Will Pass changes all that. The tones, the riffs and the malevolence I now see were the work of one Jason Depew and he's back with another absolutely killer piece of doom history.

Try it.

Buy it.
Physical (CD)
Digital

No vinyl yet, but I will certainly be making a post about it when it becomes available.

Hell- Hell I (2009)

Holy fuck. I would love to say I slept on this band, but I really didn't. I downloaded a copy of this record sometime in 2010 and it just didn't grab me. As I said in the Gilead Media Fest review post, it might have been due to the extremely poor quality vinyl rip I had at the time (a much, much better rip is linked below) or maybe I just didn't give it a fair shake. Either way, now I see the light. The ugly, ugly light. Sludge isn't exactly a genre for the faint of heart or the causal music listener, but Hell are really on another level. I don't usually key in on vocals in metal music, it's a riff driven genre so that tends to be what I latch on to, but Hell I boasts some of the most torturous, inhuman vocals I've ever heard. Black metal dudes who think they're the bee's knees need to listen to this and have their egos stepped on a bit. But like I said, metal is riff driven music, so how 'bout them gits? Well, they're fucking huge. Imagine Thou at their most pummeling, like that riff in "Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean," but ALL OF THE TIME and you'll get the idea. Can't get enough of this record, listen to to goddamnit.

Get it here.

Unfortunately, this is currently out of print and not available digitally other than the above vinyl rip.

Vinyl Fetish: Baroness- Yellow & Green Pre-orders

Pre-orders are up at Relapse for the new Baroness album Yellow & Green. Looking forward to this one. Heard some demoed versions of some of these songs and I think they're going to turn off a lot of the less open minded Baroness fans. Whatever, dimwits will be dimwits. Available as a standard 2xLP and a deluxe pressing in which the LPs are housed in a 28 page hardbound book.

Standard Pressing:

7000 Black
1000 Yellow A/B Green D/C
1000 Black 180 Gram

Deluxe Pressing: 

1500 Yellow Opaque
500 Orange Cream
500 Dark Green
500 Yellow/Green Split 

 Get it here.

Vinyl Fetish: Thou/Mohoram Atta- Degradation of Human Life Test Pressing

I told Rob I wasn't going to post this, but I decided that if I went ahead and did so it might light a fire under his ass and he might actually order a copy rather than wait for weeks and complain to me about how he didn't get a copy when it sells out. I don't know how many test pressings Halo of Flies had for this release, but I doubt it was very many. "Shorties With MP40s" is one of my favorite Thou songs and easily their silliest song title. This also features Thou covering "Screaming At A Wall" by Minor Threat, the fastest thing they've done to date. Dude from Halo of Flies said he's going to write "a cute little note" for everyone that buys a copy and "maybe I’ll toss something else in as well."  Don't sleep on it.

Get it here.

Download the Thou half of the split here.

Vinyl Fetish: Coffinworm- The Great Bringer of Night Pre-order

Well, it appears that the mighty Coffinworm's 2009 demo The Great Bringer of Night will see a proper (read: vinyl) release via The Flenser. Two bonus tracks from the same recording session bring the total up to 5 songs. This might not be essential for some of you as the only song that didn't make it onto their absolutely crushing full length was "The Inner Caligula," but if you love this band as much as I do it's worth the 15 bucks for that song alone. Remastered by James Plotkin, limited to 120 copies on gold vinyl and 380 on black.

Get it here

Download the demo here

Masakari- The Prophet Feeds (2010)

Cleveland, Ohio in the house! When I think of Cleveland and hardcore, I think of two things: H100s and 9 Shocks Terror. Masakari...don't sound like either of those bands. They are however, big fans of His Hero Is Gone and Tragedy (who happen to be two of my favorite bands of all time) and it's pretty obvious when you listen to their music. Dark, crusty, D-beaty goodness and like HHIG, Masakari are as adept at playing at grindcore speeds as they are at sludge pacing. Don't really think I really need to say much more than that. Highly recommended.

Masakari recently made their entire discography free on bandcamp. If you're smart you'll grab the rest of it when you head over there to download this album and if you're not a dick you'll throw them a few bones. Make sure to check out the cover they did of the entire Fight Back Ep by Discharge. It fucking rules!

Get it here.

 Buy the LP (Tankcrimes).

Vinyl Fetish: When Hell Comes Home Split 7" Series Vol. 1 Thou/Kowloon Walled City

Pretty stoked about this. I wasn't interested in enough of the records in this series to order a subscription, so I was worried about having to wait for the ones I did want to pop up on eBay/Discogs and shell out a ton of cash for them. Fortunately, Hell Comes Home has decided to to sell them individually. This split features Kowloon Walled City covering "July" by Low and the almighty Thou doing a cover of "4th of July" by Soundgarden. Rob and I have been jamming on the Thou cover non-stop for about a month now, it's so good. Haven't had a chance to listen to the KWC cover yet, but this one is worth it for Thou alone.

Get it here.

A Scanner Darkly- A Scanner Darkly (2006)

I had started in on doing a lengthy writeup on this album before I went to the A Scanner Darkly last.fm page and realized that the description on said site was as good if not better than anything I was going to write. So here it is:

"As a humble tribute to Philip K. Dick (one of the greatest science fiction writers- and one of the best novelists of the 20th century) A Scanner Darkly draws influence from Dick’s hallucinogenic alternate-realities and the seemingly incompatible musical worlds of sludge, drone, grindcore and prog-rock to create their own synergetic brand of sci-fi metal that is as intelligent as it is brutal!

Alternately lightning fast, brutally crushing and whimsically self-referential, ASD’s self-titled debut is both a tribute to- and an embodiment of- the paranoid, psychotic world of Philip K. Dick."

Combining some totally awesome tunes with a devotion to all things Philip K. Dick (Dickish?), one of my favorite writers, is a huge win in my book. Don't make the same mistake I did and dismiss this band as simply metalcore and ignore them for years. 

Get it for FREE from Gilead Media's bandcamp.

This guy is out of print, but Amazon seems to still have physical copies.