Blog: INVISIBLE ORANGES - THE METAL MP3 BLOG

If you have perused the Invisible Oranges home page at all over the past few weeks, you have most likely noticed the blinking image that is our co-sponsorship of the Hail!Hornet/Zoroaster tour. And with the first tour date kicking off tomorrow in Wilmington, NC, it seems only right that we give away two tickets to one awesome reader for the tour date of their choice. Featuring members of Weedeater, Buzzov*en, Sourvein, Alabama Thunderpussy, Birds Of Prey, and Parasytic, Hail!Hornet is a southern metal supergroup that is definitely worth seeing on this, their maiden tour voyage. [...]

. . . I will be frank. Despite having known about Sunn O))) since I was 13 years old, I had not heard their first true album, ØØ Void , until its recent 10-year reissue. I was familiar with Sunn O)))'s work from White2 onwards, but lacked the interest to delve further into their past. All I had heard and read indicated that early Sunn O))) was fairly uninteresting: long, tedious exercises in maximum volume that sought to perfect the formula of Earth 2 before actually expanding upon it. However, the journey to [...]

Speaking as someone who is slow to respond to things, it took me a while to gravitate toward Dark Castle. The negative implications of gimmickry associated with two-piece bands were, unfortunately, what initially came to my mind. However, upon listening to their previous record, Spirited Migration , then later seeing their association with the almighty YOB, and consequently giving a good listen to last year's excellent Surrender to All Life Beyond Form , I was impressed by how multifaceted the Florida natives really are, with a rich musical background and broad range of influences from many different styles [...]

. . . Have you ever listened to Manowar's song "The Gods Made Heavy Metal"? It's an example of a lyrical meme that has been circulating through metal since time immemorial. I started thinking about the purpose of such songs and came to conclusion that while I greatly enjoy them, there are numerous aspects of songs like "The Gods…" that bother me. I love songs like "The Gods…", "The Book of Heavy Metal", and Rocka Rollas' recent masterpiece, "Metal the Posers to Death". These songs are fun. They're cheesy, but in a good way, like a [...]

"Better To Live On Your Feet Than Die On Your Knees" is a quote that has been attributed to Mexican revolutionaries, Catch-22 and a one-0ff Rise Against song, but one-man act Matthew Widener (Cretin, Citizen) is bringing it to the grind game as the album title for his latest project, Liberteer . Equal parts fast and furious, this record is a blasting procession of anachro-grind. The album does not come out until January 31 via Relapse Records , but today we have a sneak preview for you in the form of the track "We Are [...]

Falls of Rauros' The Light That Dwells in Rotten Wood somehow didn't make it onto IO's year-end lists, a damn shame given that the album is a shining example of catchy and grandiose blackened folk metal NOT from the Pacific Northwest. No, Falls of Rauros isn't Cascadian, though I imagine the band's native Maine offers many of the same natural inspirations that bands from the Northwest corner of the United States draw upon. Falls of Rauros isn't an Agalloch clone, either, though fans of Agalloch certainly won't leave their comfort zone when listening to Falls of Rauros. [...]

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. . . If Christian Mistress' second LP was a brand of cigarettes, it would be unfiltered and would contain a barely legal amount of nicotine. It'd come emblazoned with a label from the Surgeon General warning potential consumers that it may aggravate the conditions of those afflicted with Chronic Headbanging Syndrome and Air Guitar Disorder. And it would still be bought and compulsively ingested by every metal addict who could find a pack. I feel like I need a patch for this thing. The promo's been on my hard drive for three weeks now and listening to [...]

. . . I'm an '80s baby. People still speak of the '80s as metal's golden age and for good reason. Many of the musical and cultural tropes we associate with metal developed during that decade. The eighties gave us The Number of the Beast , Reign In Blood , and Master of Puppets . It gave us Evil Chuck, Kronos, and Quorthon. It also gave us the Parents Music Resource Council and the "Suicide Solution" lawsuit against Ozzy Osbourne. I was but a twinkle in my father's eye for most of the [...]

For many people . . . OK, most people . . . jazz and metal exist in different worlds. Perhaps on some people enjoy listening to both types of music, but the two combined seems like something that just wouldn't work. Hank Shteamer, too, enjoys both types of music, but he intentionally seeks out nodes of intersections between the two musical forms and tries to understand them via in-depth conversations with musicians from both worlds. His blog, Heavy Metal Be-Bop , is where those conversations take place. Here he shares with us his sixth foray into the topic, [...]

. . . There is a reason that metalheads still love Venom. In many ways, that band is the ultimate example of what idiots poke fun at metal for—sleazy spandex-clad blasphemy with seemingly no sense of humor about itself. But somewhere in Welcome To Hell and Black Metal is a truly awesome coming together of elements (including the time they were released in metal's history and the production budget) that make them perfect. Such masterpieces are impressive but rarely imitated well. Midnight are from Cleveland, Ohio, and man, do they fucking [...]

. . . Technical thrash—that is to say, thrash by musicians positioning their own instrumental skills as a musical focus—feels like a contradiction in terms. Of every extreme metal subgenre, thrash is most closely related to punk, therefore rock and—far enough back—dancehall music. Thrash is dance music: like swing, tango and salsa (music from before electronic disco beats turned all dancing into mindless bump 'n' grind), comes with a roster of traditional song structures and staple beats that correspond with certain dances—circle pit, push pit, skank, beat-down and wall-o-death. Thrash, the word itself, is a verb, one [...]

While I tend to be juvenile and ignore bands that seemingly come from out of nowhere and get everyone all moist in the pantaloons (i.e. Ghost, Rebecca Black, etc.), I couldn't ignore Ancient VVisdom's infectious hymns to Satan on their newest album, A Godlike Inferno . Ancient VVisdom is not a metal band, and A Godlike Inferno is not a metal album, but I find their music - as subjective as this term is - heavy . There is no denying the novelty appeal in catchy, even pretty, hook-heavy odes to Ol' Scratch, woven [...]

As a heavy metal fan, Krisiun has always been a quandary for me. You see, I like Krisiun. I like their music. I like the concept behind the band's music. Until 2009's The Southern Storm , I never actually liked any of their albums proper. Nevertheless, I've always appreciated the band's existence. Heavy metal needs a band like Krisiun, a band dedicated to playing death metal as if the genre's artistic palette froze after Covenant was released. The Southern Storm changed everything. Prior to Storm , a Krisiun song was a [...]

. . . To understand Ugh! , we have to understand how the record deals with hate. For clarity's sake, I mean hate in the sense of misanthropy, not racism, homophobia, etc. On a side note, when I listen to Bathory, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, and the earliest second-wave black metal records, I don't feel any sense of hate or misanthropy. At some point, I feel like hate was appended to the black metal lexicon of emotions, and it fits perfectly. I think I'm in the minority about the first/second wave records though. Am I? The sense [...]

View the rest of Carmelo's photos of the show here on his flickr. View a clip from the short film, You've Always Meant So Much To Me, here .

Years before establishing himself with The Devil's Blood, Selim Lemouchi paid his dues touring and gigging with metal and rock bands. Unlike many young musicians, these weren't happy times as he learned his craft and traveled the world. Instead, the guitarist and songwriter suppressed what he felt was his true calling, struggled with drugs and alcohol, and at one point was bedridden with severe depression. Salvation didn't come from therapy or Christianity or self-help maxims. Instead, Lemouchi had a number of spiritual experiences – moments he says can't be explained outside of music - that led him to embrace Satanism. [...]

Obituary has been writing and recording death metal for almost a quarter century. They emerged from the Florida underground in 1989 with the genre defining Slowly We Rot, survived the metal slump of the '90s, and showed the new century what death metal is all about in 2005 with Frozen In Time. Obituary is now bringing their decidedly old-school death metal sound to the social networking generation; the band streamed a New York City show live for free in November with the help of Unation, and recently redesigned their web site to strengthen their relationship with fans. But music continues [...]

Jean-Paul Sartre said action precedes essence. In other words, our actions define our identities—you are an honest person because you tell the truth, and not vice versa. If you lie you become in essence a dishonest person. Re-interpret: metal bands stop becoming metal bands when they stop making metal music. So how can Decibel magazine call Opeth's Heritage the second best metal album of 2011? They listed Mastodon's The Hunter directly behind it—the record that traded in Neurosis riffs for Beach Boys harmonies. Old Opeth . [...]

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