Comprised of medieval-style choral music sampled, distorted, looped, and layered, Sapiduz approaches the listener like ice forming on a lake, taking the free-form and slowly building structure out of it through interruptions as much as consistency.
1 CommentDruadan Forest – Portals (2022)
Coming from the Tolkien and Beowulf drenched aesthetic of dungeon synth, Druadan Forest shares more with the ambient cosmic acts of the 1970s and the post-black-metal soundscape experiments of the late 1990s, but aims more like a conventional ambient band for a circular but deepening mood.
No CommentsTags: druadan forest, dungeon synth
Best Death Metal of 2021
As the socialized world of love and trust winds down in revealing its own incompetence and corruption, we turn toward the dead genres of underground metal, hailing the few who carry on a message no one understands for the sake of speaking clarity into the howling void of sense that is human activity.
34 CommentsThe Future of Music
This seems as good a time as any to note that the music industry, which peaked in 1996, has since died from a lack of ideas.
9 CommentsVulnificus – Innomination (2021)
Recursive percussive riffing dominates the leading riffs of this short EP while gurgling vocals provide a background rhythm and minimal digital drums keep pace, allowing Vulnificus to speak almost entirely through guitar and an overactive bass that adds some rhythmic depth.
4 CommentsTags: death metal, vulnificus
Dead War – Grandfather of War (2021)
Working within a fusion of war metal and death metal with undertones of melody, Dead War bash out high-energy anthems which use distinctive riff forms to differentiate songs but manage song development through an interplay of riffs on either side of a riff-chorus pair.
No CommentsWhat Is The Metal Philosophy?
Most attempts to understand metal have focused on lyrics and interviews with musicians, which both fails because they usually pick lower achieving musicians and because most people do not consciously know why they do what they do, especially in artistic genres based on emotion, gesture, and metaphor.
7 CommentsTags: metal philosophy, Nihilism, solipsism
Neoconservatives At Fox News Go After Death Metal, Aryans
As you may know, people like me are classed as “antisocial” and “unrealistic” because we are realistic, or look at the origins of things and their likely consequences instead of human social function. Consequently we find it hard to get along with either public political stripe.
5 CommentsTags: conservatives, leftists, metal philosophy
Grieve – Funeral (2021)
Black metal established a template, with the original bands knowing that they were the last gasp of sanity before the egomania of humanism took over, but some have carried on. Grieve knowingly works with variations of the template but makes a compelling, carefully-crafted release.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, grieve
Crone Visions – Devour (2021)
Imagine combining gauzy mystical Brit-pop with Gothic sensibilities and stoner doom riffs that pick up the tempo enough to avoid a post-pizza slowbrain groove, and you have the basics of the Crone Visions approach: pop songs over surging but laconic riffs and occasional psychedelic lead guitar.
1 CommentTags: crone visions, Doom Metal, psychedelic