i wonder:
how many grindcore bands have already been named after ronald poppo?
New Panopticon Track
Austin Lunn has released some great music over the last few years. He’s a part of the doom supergroup Seidr (who put out one of the best records of 2011). Earlier this year he released a free demo of expansive, doom-laden black metal under the name Kolga. He even did session drums on the most recent Falls of Rauros record. But he’s most well known for his one-man black metal project Panopticon.
Initially a fairly straightforward and middling black metal band, the 2009 album Collapse began to incorporate some country influences and traditional bluegrass elements amidst the frenetic drumming and tremolo picks. Since then he’s released numerous splits and another full length, last year’s phenomenal Social Disservices.
The banjos and slide guitars took a backseat, as much of his post-Collapse output was either contemplative, (almost) post-rock or furious, raw black metal. His new record Kentucky, purported to be the first of two records focusing on Lunn’s home state, brings together his disparate influences, creating something uniquely American, yet simultaneously universal.
Decibel just released the first track off Kentucky, “Bodies Under the Falls.” Immediately you know you’re hearing a Panopticon song: the deliriously fast drumming (Lunn has maybe the most distinctive playing style in US black metal), Lunn’s muscle-y scream, the multi-layered guitars. But the flute that mixes into the cacophony in the opening salvo? That’s new. There’s a beautiful, sad banjo section about halfway through the song. Strings take over and the song crescendos to a frenzied climax before coming full circle, ending on the same riffs and flute on which the track began.
Given the gradual shift towards experimentation and the incorporation of new elements that’s become prevalent in US-made back metal, Lunn’s bluegrass-black metal doesn’t seem nearly as crazy as it once might have. Here’s hoping for a great full length. Kentucky is out next month on Pagan Flames/Handmade Birds.
Say what you will about the Brits: they know their doom. Conan “Sea Lord” from Horseback Battle Hammer. The final 2 minutes are drone like you’ll rarely hear elsewhere.
Mutilation Rites - Empyrean
2011 was a banner year for American black metal. Both coasts (and everywhere in between) saw incredible music released: in the east Tombs, Falls of Rauros and Liturgy. In the west Ash Borer, Alda, Fell Voices and Lake of Blood. And while similarities exist, none of these bands could be considered clones of any other. Each has a unique twist or trait that others lack.
In the US scene, gone are the comparisons to its Scandinavian forbears. No more is the dogmatic devotion to lo-fi aesthetics and corpsepaint (for the most part). US-made black metal has essentially become black metal in aesthetic only. And this is a good thing.
By expanding upon the palette brought to us by Bathory, Darkthrone, Burzum and whoever else you feel like name-dropping, American bands have finally broken free from the rigidity of form that is black metal. Some of the best BM records of the last couple of years (Path of Totality, Tahoma, A Rose For the Dead, Mounds of Ash, every Krallice record) play with said form to the degree that one could argue they aren’t black metal at all.
Enter Mutilation Rites. More a thrash band than black metal (listen to Fogwarning), Mutilation Rites hail from New York and sound nothing like Krallice or Liturgy (this is also a good thing). They’re ferocious, primal and violent. But they aren’t lo-fi or cartoonish or endlessly reliant on tremolo picks. The shades of the second wave are there, but they don’t dominate. The result is the first great record of 2012. Pitchfork has the album streaming now, click the above link.
Flense /flens/ (v): To slice the skin or fat from a carcass, especially that of a whale.
The Flenser has quickly become my favorite label. Last year Profound Lore and Gilead Media were neck in neck for that honor (and it is quite the honor, let me say). But with Gilead being at something of a standstill release-wise and Profound Lore increasingly focusing on death metal, I’ve started looking elsewhere for aural satisfaction. Since delving deeply into The Flenser’s catalog, this label has stolen my heart.
Primarily releasing black metal (the label’s roster includes Panopticon, Palace of Worms, Black Fucking Cancer, Necrite, Bosse-De-Nage, and Obolus), The Flenser started in 2010 in San Francisco’s Bay Area putting out Palace of Worm’s The Forgotten. Since then some of my favorite records (the Panopticon/Skagos split, Seidr’s For Winter Fire, Lament by Obolus) have seen release thru this label.
Vinyl is their bread and butter and the love of format is obvious, with the care put into each new release beyond admirable. But, the label is smart enough to know that not everyone wants to or can own records. They have a fantastic bandcamp (currently featuring over a dozen releases) that sees frequent updates and new additions. I’m always glad when I see a label handing out demos or the occasional full length for free.
Jonathan, the label’s owner and sole employee, just did a brief but illuminating interview with SF Weekly.
picked ‘em up from the printers yesterday. that’s bone. and the lettering is something called cillian braille.
(via thebluthcompany)
I can’t entirely get behind the idea of reissues when a product is still readily available. It smells of opportunism and money grabbing to me. That being said: this cover is amazing and stupid and perfect for Southern Lord’s upcoming Dopesmoker re-release. There’s rumors that the record will have a new mix. Honestly I don’t care.
Sleep always towed a fine line between the absurd and the serious and this cover fits that aesthetic wonderfully. This vinyl will look great in 20 years when your kids blow the dust off it and ask you what the hell it is.
New cover art for the 2012 Southern Lord reissue
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Daughters
—Daughters - Cheers Pricks
Hey! Remember This Band?
Daughters was a Providence, RI-based noise-punk band with angular guitars, attention deficit drumming, and unintelligible sing-screaming vocals. Fronted by vocalist Alexis Marshall, Daughters featured a rotating cast of guitarists and bass players, with drummer John Syverson and guitarist Nick Sadler the only other constancies in the band. The group started in 2001 and called it quits sometime in ‘09, with a few intermittent breakups, fallings-out, and implosions in between.
Their music was typically labeled “mathcore” but don’t let such a jackassy qualifier turn you off. Daughters was fast, abrasive, technical (without being showy or obnoxious or remotely progressive in the traditional sense), spastic, and probably the closest thing to punk rock since hardcore in the 80s.
If punk means saying “fuck you,” Daughters was punk. The band, and more specifically Marshall, was intent on fucking with expectations, with each record being a deliberate attempt at shrugging off of that which made the previous record well-liked. Live performances tended to be a study in confrontation and pissing people off seemed to be the only real purpose.
It’s somewhat disingenuous to call Daughters an art band (at least in the way Locust is), because in some ways they were less a band and more a vehicle for subverting expectations and antagonizing people (check out Live at CBGB’s, Stupid to hear Marshall’s crowd interaction, it is great). Their live shows were always volatile. Lex was seemingly always drunk or on something (and sounding a lot like Mitch Hedberg). Most of the lyrics read like love letters from a misogynist suffering from undiagnosed BPD. Black humor pervades everything.
The band seemed to revel in not giving people what they wanted. Sonically, the only consistent trait of each record is the chaos and speed. Initially they were a fairly simplistic, hardcore band, Depending on your opinion, Daughters either progressed or regressed into a mathy metal band with somewhat untraditional song structures.
Canada Songs, their debut, features shrieking, indecipherable vocals, long-winded, asinine song titles (ex: “Nurse, Would You Prep The Patient For The Sexual Doctor” and “I Slept With The Daughters And All I Got Was This Lousy Song Written About Me”), of which no song is longer than 2 minutes and is essentially a middling post-hardcore albumlet, clocking in at a whopping 11 minutes. People loved this record (my guess being for its simplicity and lazy aggression).
Sophomore record Hell Songs slows down the chaos somewhat, has actual riffs, lots of feedback, horns and sees Marshall ditch his shriek, instead singing like a drunk Elvis-Nick Cave-Morrisey hybrid. Hydra Head put out this release and it shows. The quality of song writing, production and the songs themselves is the highest of Daughters “career.” As an album Hell Songs is almost perfect and shows a band genuinely progressing and attempting new things (and succeeding: listen to “Cheers Pricks” as compared to “Fur Beach”).
As was always their tendency, Daughters disappeared for several years after 2006’s Hell Songs, touring very occasionally but mostly lying dormant and incommunicado. Very suddenly a new album was announced in late 2009 for a mid-Winter 2010 release. Initial press mentioned a somewhat new sound for the band and promised touring in the near future.
The self-titled (and final) album is glossy and easy on the ears in comparison to the previous two, has traditional verse-chorus-verse song structures, loses the whining, circular riffing for a low-end heavy sound and is arguably their most accessible (Pitchfork gave it an 8.2). It’s for these reasons the band broke up.
A month prior to the record’s release Marshall gave an interview proclaiming his hate for Daughters and blaming guitarist Nick Sadler for, essentially, ruining the band. It’s a classic example of band members not seeing eye-to-eye and going their separate ways: Marshall wanted the band to be inaccessible and abrasive while still progressing artistically; Sadler wanted more people to listen to the band and made an album accordingly.
It’s unclear whether or not Daughters is still an entity, but for all intents and purposes they are not. Although Marshall and Syverson are technically still in the band, Daughters has been inactive since Spring 2010. Sadler currently plays in indie rock band Fang Island. Marshall seems to have slipped rather happily in anonymity. Syverson may or may not be drumming in a band called Snowbird.
Daughters leaves behind a brief but furious legacy: three LPs, one 4-track EP, and an appearance on a Birthday Party tribute record. Their entire recorded output is under an hour.
(via v0mous)
Lycus: black, doom, harsh, expansive without being obnoxious. Think Dark Castle but harsher, angrier, less spacey.
The Flenser released this demo and it’s up for free. I expect good things from this band.
Update (April/2012): their bassist quit and forced them out of the Gilead Festival.
Samantha Marble takes good pictures. Like you didn’t know. I’m seeing Tombs in Boston next week and hoping to have an ear drum (or my soul) explode. I’m slowly but surely making headway on my “Bands to See Before I Die” list.
Tombs live at Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY on March 3rd, 2012.
