Good things on the Whorizon

Mortuary Drape - Tolling 13 Knell

I posted this one waaaaay back when I first started this blog, but it is one I keep coming back to and for the past couple weeks I haven't been able to listen to too much besides it. The riffs awesome, vocals awesome, atmosphere amazing....and the drummer is the guy that drummed on Janvs's Vega album, goddamn! This is the very essence of Italian SpookProg. How many black metal bands can get away with singing "La la la La la la la la" for a chorus in one of their songs (Winged Priestess)?

Only one

Tolling 13 Knell

Inquisition - Forever Under/Anxious Death

Before Inquisition played droning transcendental black metal, they played equally amazing tech-thrash...and called Columbia home! Truly one of my favs, I feel bad I missed em at St. Vitus (less than a mile down the road from me ugh!) this past weekend, but here's a vid from the show...unfortunately I don't think they played anything from Forever Under...

Forever Under/Anxious Death

Shinjuku Thief - The Witch Haven

Bombastic ambiance that borders on martial industrial at times, but retains just enough of the drone influence to keep everybody happy. I've been cranking this when I've been doing P90X...strangely good workout musick.

The Witch Haven

Magma - Udu Wudu

My fav Magma release featuring one of the greatest songs of all time....behold the Zeuhls of grandeur!!

Udu Wudu

Death Ambient - Drunken Forest

Dramatic thundering sonic disintegration featuring a who's who of contemporary experimental musicians. Give avant-garde a chance!

Drunk In The Forest

Asbestoscape - Asbestoscape

Haunting ambience that will rock your nutz off. An enviable feat.

Asbestoscape

Tiermes

A great one from mysterious and "Unholy" Finnish heart throb Tiermes.

Unorganic Beings

Psyche Out: Don Bradshaw-Leather - Distance Between Us

Dark Psychedelia will be the name of the game around here for a little bit, and I wanted to start things out with an enigmatic album that I just recently stumbled upon: Don Bradshaw and a gal named Leather's soul-occult psyche freakout from '72. It's difficult to even describe this. I can only say it is haunting, powerful, horrific, insane, beautiful....I could go on but I think I'll stop right there. Do some research on this guy, it's fascinating the conjecture and mythology that people go into. Does no one actually know who this was?!? Anyway, I've been listening to these youtube clips the past few daze and I advise you to do the same. No link, but music this ephemeral should not sit on your computer anyway, it should settle deep in your mind only to come alive during those darkest moments when surreality can offer the only escape.

Cro Magnon - Zapp !

Sometimes you just gotta get your RIO skronin'-groove on. FUckin' loooooove this album....so come on, get Zapped!

Zapp !

Empty Grave - Inside The Man There Is An Empty Space Which Has The Size Of God

Dear God (literally), I just had to post this one...extreme Christian goregrind. I don't even know...what the fuck??

The Size Of God

Himinbjorg - Haunted Shores

Psychedelic transcendental pagan metal from these French heathens.

Haunted Shores

Organ - Apoplexy In Six Parts

Norway's mysterious Organ were an incredibly gifted group that presaged the sound that Ved Buens Ende would morph into with Virus. 2003's Apoplexy In Six Parts is sort of a missing link between those two bands (sonically at least, not personnel wise). Very cool instrumentation...there'll be a convoluted clean guitar passage going on and just some incessant blasting underneath. This is actually really similar to what DHG did on Supervillain Outcast. No vox really, but occasionally some disturbed samples will make an appearance (fellatio, Donald Duck?) Definitely one of the forgotten gems of weirdo Norwegian black metal, and an important step forward for the post black metal genre.

Apoplexy In Six Parts

Judas Iscariot - To Embrace the Corpses Bleeding

Have been listening to this one a lot, especially during my lunchtime runs along the Hudson. Probably my second fav US black metal after this one.

Embrace It

Black Reign - Legion

Super obscure and otherworldly power metal from Agent Steel vocalist John Cyriis recorded after they broke up for the first time. Wicked Wisdom indeed might be the worst thing ever, but this might just be the best.

Let It Reign

Ekpyrosis - Ein Ewiges Bild

A clean sweep...listening to this is like eating a spiritual altoid...the cinnamon kind. Coldness and warmth simultaneously...oddly refreshing.

Ein Ewiges Bild

Water Borders - Harbored Mantras

One of the biggest surprises for me this year was finding out about this album and being absolutely floored by it.

Harbored Mantras

The Ash Eaters

Seeing as how the year is almost out, I'm gonna take a break from doing German posts and focus on the year that was in music....culminating in a Top 10 list of course!!
The dude from Brown Jenkins sent me a demo of his new band earlier this year, and I neglectfully forgot to post it...seems he's been quite busy cuz already a second demo is hittin the interwebs, so I thought what the hell, I'll just post both of them! Ash Eaters is a new project, but not wholly separated from the Jenks in sound and aesthetic...Audially projecting the Lovecraft tradition of terror through non-Euclidian geometry…angles that are just all wrong. This is music that is just all wrong, but indeed all the better for it. I wonder how Jenks composes? Does he do the Jarzombek thing and write out obtuse chord structures only to invert and twist them with malevolent pleasure? Or is he in communication with the great Cthulhu cult letting the telepathic utterances of the dreaming dead infiltrate into his own subconscious? Maybe a little bit of both haha!!

Cold Hearts

The Cruel Side

Desalin/S.A.P.

Well, I mentioned Desalin in my Lunatic Invasion post so I figured I might as well put them up here; and while I'm at it, their sister band Satan's Almighty Penis. Both bands are great technical black metal; Desalin more on the thrash side, S.A.P. more on the epic mysterious side. Mastermind Lord Sardonyx is a master of the riff, and I can't quite help but think that there is a very twisted sense of humor here...Into The Cunt Of Chaos is a total play off a Manilla Road album title (a band with which they share many songwriting characteristics believe it or not), not to mention their hilariously offensive band name, eat your heart out Rotting Christ. Still, it's the music that matters, and on that front both Desalin and S.A.P. are as serious as they are bizarre. Hat's off to you Sardonyx.

Desalin Demo'97

Into The Cunt Of Chaos

Pulsing Feral Spire

Siren - The Calling...

Posted this one a while back, but it deserves special mention once again. Stumbling, bumbling doomy black metal that sounds like a collection of Countess B-sides. If that description doesn't make you hit the link immediately, then I'm afraid you have good taste and virtue and there is absolutely no hope for you. What's your stalling...er, I mean calling?

The Stalling