Root - Live In Brno '93

Morbid ritual of Root band ano 1993. Vid not from this concert, but give's good insight into early Root in concert, back when Big Boss was still rockin' the Jerry Garcia look.

Live In Brno

Head East - Flat As A Pancake

Sausage biscuits...Harleys...Flapjacks...Schlitz...strawberry wine...funk organ

If any or all of these things appeal to ya, you're going to love this album right here.

Flat As A Pancake

Beelzeb - Misanthropes Aurora

As an addendum to that Shroud post I offer up Mr. Lug Beelzeb's solo onslaught (joined on drums by Phaul Bokrug).  Sometimes mystical sometimes furious, always fucked up, this is a pretty great album.

From their website: "An identification with BEELZEB's prose means that "you are really in trouble", -to the effect that this art compels the listener to the recreation and enjoy with different forms of sinking-. So there is no middle point - or it's meant to be so-.
Sites and dimensions which one is driven to, run in the manner of a seducement towards a point of no return; - one won't be back being the same, for will have fed his soul with visions and evocations whose nature impregnates the self in such a way )perhaps like an intimate whisper) that the focussing on emotional universe is deeply altered-."

Oh and come on these glamour shots, goddamn!

Misanthropes Aurora

Shroud - Chamber of Suicide

Grim Spanish black metal. For the longest time I thought this album was called Thamber of Suicide which intrigued me very much.

Shroud's sound reminds me of very early Darkthrone, like Snowfall era Darkthrone...Very cool (cold) riffs that inhabit an emotional depth lacking in nowadays black metal. If the cover art and band pictures don't hook ya, the music certainly will.

Thamber of Suicide

Sculptured - Embodiment

Awesome prog metal that breaks the barriers between art rock and death metal while still kicking ass and taking names. Imagine a drunken jazz hall brawl between King Crimson, In Flames and Lux Occulta refereed by Emerson, Lake, and/or Palmer. As a medical illustrator, I thoroughly enjoy the images...I think one John Haughm is responsible for the layout.

Embodiment

Joyless - Without Support

Damn, a new Joyless?! This really was a nice surprise, and a fucking strange one! If you thought Wisdom & Arrogance was off the wall, hang on to your bicycle shorts cuz this one bounces between depressive coffee house ballads and surf rock record scratching to banjo solos galore and off the cuff warbling. I'm still reminded of the Cranberries (the chick's voice), but there is something undeniably Japanese about this; like a mixture of Cornelius and the less aggro moments of Melt Banana. Gonna be a favorite of mine I can tell already.

Without Support

Eric Friesen - Friesen Hell & Friesenberg Concertos

Neoclassical shredding spectacular. Beautifully bestial interpretations of Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart by one half of Twin Peaks fanatics Windham Hell. Read a very cool interview with Mr. Friesen right over yonder.

Friesen Hell

Friesenberg Concertos

Death Axe - Demo '85

What happens when a bunch of 12 year old Danish kids get together buy a 4 track and press record?
The answer, of course, is absolute maniacal mayhem and brilliance!!
I must admit that I have listened to this primitive little curiosity waaaayyy too many times, enough so that these songs have sunk into my consciousness.... I will catch myself humming "Night of the Slayers" on the subway and singing "Dark Eyes" in the shower. You better be careful, or this might happen to you too. Where the fuck were these kidz' parents anyway?

Dark Eyes

Threshold - Within the Expanse

This isn't the British Progressive Power metal band.  This one is French and it is nasty.

Within Her Expanse

Steel Mammoth - The Kingdom Of The Golden Hammer

This record has been described as a mixture of "The Cult, Manilla Road, Voivod, uh, Dire Straits, the new Darkthrone, and Judas Priests's earliest, more psychedelic stuff (Rocka Rolla)." and I'm gonna go ahead and add ZZ Top into that casserole as well. Bake on high with the right ingredients and you'll be glowing like a radiated coyote in the clear desert night.

The Kingdom Of The Golden Hammer

Abigor - Satanized (A Journey Through Cosmic Infinity)

Abigor have never released a bad album...just albums of varying degrees of greatness. Satanized is one of their stronger efforts for sure, in fact for a while I thought it was their swansong as they broke up soon after its release (thankfully they got back together and recorded the stunningly ballsout Fractal Possession).
You can chart Abigor's career much as you can chart the progression of civilization. Abigor began in the forest (Verwustung), man began in the forests...gathered into feudal groups during the Middle ages (medieval themes of Nachthymnen through Channeling the Quintessence of Satan)...and after some technological advancements reached out into the cosmos (this album and thereafter).
Never had Abigor been this technical in their approach, veering at times towards math metal territory. One may at times get the impression that this is the black metal version of Calculating Infinity.
Don't fight the chaos, just sit back and let the convoluted guitar work wash over you, beckoning you into the polluted morass of an erupted supernova...the entropic din of a maelstrom reaching beyond this terrestrial realm; probing the neutrinos of ascendance for the Evil that lurks among the stars.

Satanized

Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

Time to get your green on folks. Once a year we celebrate the Emerald Isle, and Primordial are about as Irish as a sauced leprechaun, and play some pretty good epic style naturalist pagan metal to boot.

Word of advice...if you're gonna kiss something green today, make sure you've had a few Irish carbombs beforehand...

Get "Jig"-gy with it

Atrocity - Hallucinations

Atrocity are an oddity of a band; starting life as an unorthodox technical death metal beast, they morphed into a, well...atrocious goth metal band - complete with whinnying chick vocals. So suffice to say I don't care much for nowadays Atrocity albums, but Hallucinations is a horse of a very different color.

Released in that halcyon of death metal years 1990, Hallucinations tells the story of a drug addict's descent into hell, and the schizophrenic nature of the music certainly paints a vivd portrait. Leads come out of nowhere, bass breaks put you in the mood of jazz...the kind played in a jazzhole that is dank and degenerate, full of junkies looking to score that next fix. The songs are so inexorably fucked that I have to believe someone in the band was listening to Zappa or Beefheart. Many of the riffs are so bizarrely phrased as to be completely out of the death metal lexicon, especially for 1990!  

The amazing thing about Hallucinations is despite it's bizarreness, it carries some serious catchy hooks. Take the main introductory riff to the title track. That'll stick to ya like peanut butter.  There are only a few other death metal albums of that time that possess these unique characteristics of other-worldy eerieness and charming memorability (Nespithe, Soulside Journey, In Pains if you must know). A definitive classick of the weird-ass branch of old school death metal.

Hallucinations

Barry Miles - Magic Theater

In the vein of RTF and Weather Report and all that is hot...that's all ya really need to know.

Silver Bullet

Pi - OST

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609...

Yes, because it's March 14th... and because its also got some cool cuts on it.....movie kicks ass too.

Pi

Weather Report - Sweetnighter

You have to be good to play jazz, especially hot jazz.  And with jazz (in fact with anything) the hotter the better. Now if you aren't in the know as to the origins of hot jazz, this album is one of the best primers in da world. Uptempo licks coming at you from all angles, Shorter horn blasts and Vitous bass grooves ringing in ya ears. Some may call this fusion, which it is, but it's also red hot music to get that ass shakin' and fingers snappin'.
If you listen to just one song, make it Boogie Woogie Waltz. That is a piece of sublime transcendence beauty.

Sweetnighter

Sup - Anomaly

Well somewhere along the way these Frenchies decided that Supuration was too long and shortened it up to Sup. Their previous album The Cube is fantastic, a kind of death metal that instantly transports your imagination.  Anomaly is darker, more rock-based with gothic overtones, still just as awesome, but in a different way, like a doomier more lugubrious cousin to the great Finnish band Babylon Whores. 

Anomaly

Sieges Even - Lifecycle

Awesome technical thrash from Germany with vocals that are a bit hard to handle. Take a little pain with your pleasure.

Lifecycle

Saros - Acrid Plains

Techy folky black metal from San Fran.  These boys and girl have taken a big chunk of inspiration from old school Metallica, y'know back when they could write a song that was worth a damn.  Leads are tasteful and emotive bringing to mind the beautiful woodsy feeling that Agalloch used to play on Pale Folklore... there are even Schuldineresque moments that arouse a wave of nostalgia to the late Death masterpieces Perseverance and Symbolic.  In short, Acrid Plains has a little bit of everything for the discerning metalhead.

Acrid Plains

Pegasus Metal

A couple gems in this most underground of all genres.

Raw Energy

U8

Smohalla - Smolensk Combustion

Smohalla play music that sounds like a Symbolist painting come to life.  Very impressive French black metal with fucked up songwriting and romantical twists.

Smolensk Combustion

Virus - The Agent That Shapes the Desert

My dreams have come true a new Virus album!  I have professed my love for Czral before, and the ol' boy does not disappoint in the slightest. This new one takes their brand of Voivodian tin pan alley swagger to more arid climes...more of a refinement on past meisterpieces Carheart and Black Flux than a wholesale sonic leap forward, and that is MORE than fine by me.  Oh Czral, don't ever change baby.  Fucking album of the year.

The Agent That Shapes the Desert