Tagged: dmoore

Tune in to the latest episode! This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

"Do you guys like Manowar?" This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

Hardcore Rises This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

Hey now baby, get into my big black car This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

...but the war goes on This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

Pearls before swine This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

• Wormed - "Stellar Depopulation"

Broken language, broken teeth This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

• Pristina - The Immoralist

The sound of perseverance This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

... Everyone knows that metal styles are no longer moored to geography. Norway may produce lots of black metal and NOLA may produce lots of sludge, but you can find those styles pretty much anywhere else, too. Still, genre markings often indicate homeland, and it’s tempting to take them at face value. When you open Helcaraxë ’s Bandcamp, the following indicators scream “Europe” (and “Germany” in particular) louder than white linen capris on a man: -Blaring, fresh-off-the-Tor-Books-presse s dragon cover art -Scrolly logo -Unpredictable umlaut in the [...]

. . . Generally speaking, live albums and metal don’t mix well. (The exceptions— Live Undead , No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith , Live After Death , et cetera—prove the rule. Unleashed in the East is at least partially a studio album.) I can think of two reasons why this is the case: -The best live rock albums usually come from bands that improvise and interpret onstage—think Allman Bros. Most metal songs are rigidly structured, so there’s no element of surprise on live albums. -Metal is heavily, heavily contingent upon instrumental [...]

If I could set a day aside every week to spend listening to new music, I would. If I could tack two hours on to the end of each day solely for new music, I’d do that too. If I did, I still wouldn’t have time to listen to all the worthwhile new stuff that’s coming out every week. We’re drowning in splendor. As much as I’d like to, I can’t set aside a day every week to wallow in promos. I work full-time, and when I’m not working, various other interests and necessities compete for my leisure [...]

. . . . . . YouTube and metal are both storehouses for unrewarded effort. Why do people assemble 90-second supercuts of Don Draper saying “what?” Why do people learn to speedpick at 300 BPM? What recompense do they hope to earn? I don’t know, but I’m glad they do it. This video combines the two to great effect. Some YouTube user—he calls himself LegonardoDaFinci—has put together a stop-motion music video for Cryptopsy’s “Phobophile”, from None So Vile . The video consists of ‘live’ footage interspersed [...]

. . . . . . This is Graven’s debut EP, but Graven isn’t really a new band. Three of these four musicians played in the excellent Baltimore band Swarm of the Lotus. SoTL was a make-up/break-up case after eight years together, they split in 2006, reformed in 2009, and then re-split up in 2010. They managed to release two albums and an EP during their turbulent run. Their second, The Sirens of Silence , remains a favorite of mine. Functionally, Swarm of the Lotus lives on through Graven. If you told me [...]

. . . It appears that the experimental sludge band Harvey Milk is throwing in the towel, or at least going on hiatus. From a Steel For Brains interview with drummer Kyle Spence that ran on December 3rd: What’s the future for Harvey Milk? Are you guys currently writing new material? Or are you kind of taking a break? Nothing planned. We went to Europe in May, and the UK, for three weeks, and we never really talked about it or anything, but we knew [...]

. . . Vanquish in Vengeance is Incantation’s first album in six years. Strangely, their profile has grown considerably during their silence. (Perhaps I should say “John McEntee’s profile,” as he is the only permanent member of a unit that has seen some 50 members pass through its ranks.) When 2006’s Primordial Domination came out, Incantation was out of step with the death metal world. The tech arms race was peaking; Necrophagist was one of the genre’s most celebrated bands, as strange as that sounds now. The pendulum has since swung [...]

... This release represents two phenomena that fascinate me: non-metal side projects from metal dudes, and self-contained pocket scenes. The label in question, Tofu Carnage, is an in-house operation. It came into existence last year as a means for the Dallas sludge/black metal band Dead To a Dying World to release their own material. (Their excellent debut is available for free streaming and download on Tofu Carnage’s Bandcamp . Since then, Tofu Carnage has gone about releasing music by increasingly strange spinoff bands—Akkolyte, a Naked City-styled jazzgrind act featuring DTADW drummer Stefan Gonzalez, and now [...]

Sometimes, acting on the right impulse at the right time can create a legacy. For Lord Worm—better known to his English-tutoring students as Dan Greening—it took just one album to become a legend: None So Vile , Cryptopsy’s 1996 sophomore effort. Though Worm delivered strong performances on two other Cryptopsy albums, his alcohol-fueled NSV sessions made an epochal splash. When I think of someone “raving and gibbering,” I think of Worm’s opening lines from “Crown of Horns”. After almost five years away from metal, Lord Worm has returned with a new band. Rage Nucléaire, which [...]

... It’s always a little strange to write about musicians you know personally. You worry that you’ll lose perspective on their music or treat them with too much kindness. I know Flourishing better than I know most bands, having shared a practice space with them for about a year. Fortunately, I have little reason to worry about favoritism—other writers at publications like NPR and Stereogum share my enthusiasm. It helps that Flourishing the band is difficult to connect with Flourishing the individuals. In person, these three men are genial and, like many [...]

. . . This question has been floating around in the back of my mind for a few weeks now. It surprises me that a genre so preoccupied with death and social collapse would fail to ask it more often. Metal has already grown larger and lasted longer than many of its progenitors expected it to. One of them, Ronnie James Dio, said that metal will never die . He is dead now, sadly. So it goes. I assume that metal will die off eventually because metal is a human contrivance, and it strikes me [...]

. . . w^w^^w^w came out a few weeks ago now. Ordinarily, I try to finish reviews before the album’s release date, but I don’t feel so bad about my tardiness here. Car Bomb is not beholden to normal album-release rhythms. Nor are they beholden to the music biz in general. Car Bomb has escaped reliance on labels, producers, and distributors more thoroughly than most. They have been mostly silent since 2007’s Centralia . Relapse dropped them in 2011. I thought they had disbanded because of the harsh realities described in vocalist Michael [...]