Friday the 13th, the final installment

The final installment of my extended Friday the 13th album dump. Take a listen, let me know what you think!

After the Burial - Rareform


Every summer I make it a point of going the the Summer Slaughter tour, which has in the past had such awesome headlining bands as Necrophagist, Vader, Dying Fetus, Suffocation and more. However, the line-up usually includes a good amount of up-and-coming bands which get to play in front of a large audience drawn in by the more well-known acts. Whoever is selecting these newcomers has (generally) a pretty good ear, and I've been pleasantly surprised each year I've gone. After the Burial is one of those surprises from this past summer. Their name and album art give the appearance of a run-of-the-mill deathcore band, but take a listen and you will discover a very talented and technical death metal band (with no squeals!). Keep an eye on these guys, it sounds like they're going places.

Favorites: Ometh, Cursing Akenaten

Get it here.

The Meads of Asphodel - The Early Years


I have posted in this blog before about The Meads and how amazing I think they are, so if you're curious check out this post for more info. The Early Years is a compilation of the band's EPs, their half of the Jihad split with Mayhem, as well as miscellaneous covers and other songs they have done. Great as an introduction to their music or an addition to their discography if you've heard them already.

Favorites: I'd heard most of this already, but I really enjoyed the synth-heavy cover of Bulldozer's 'Neurodeliri' as well as 'Og's Last Stand' and 'Bleed for Me'

Get it here.

Viraemia - Viraemia EP


Another young, up-and-coming band from Phoenix, Arizona of all places. Viraemia is an extremely technical brutal death metal band that was recommended to me by my friend Will because of a link he clicked on accidentally while reading a different blog. I don't have too much to say about these guys, except that they're an interesting band and, if they keep up this kind of intensity in their music, they'll go far. Also, points for not having the cadaver on the operating table be obviously female-bodied - there can be brutal death metal without misogyny!

Get it here.

Fluisterwoud - Langs Galg En Rad


Black metal from the Netherlands, Fluisterwoud is one of those bands that I hear recommended often but only bothered to get their full-length debut, Langs Galg En Rad, in the past year. This album is very good - the band plays fairly straightforward 'raw' black metal, but tracks like the introductory 'Een Sinister Schouwspel' and the closing title track add some creepy atmosphere. Also, the album art is badass. Like many great bands, Fluisterwoud put out a single excellent album before breaking up (with another, post-mortem release which came out this year). Are they worth the hype? You'll have to check them out to answer that question.

Favorites: Langs Galg En Rad (the outro!), Hoer Van De Zeven Hemelen

Get it here.

David Bowie - Station to Station


Probably my favorite David Bowie album of all time. Flash back to 1976. David Bowie is an effete, coke-addled mess whose persona "The Thin White Duke" makes controversial allusions in support of fascism. I quote Wikipedia at length:

According to biographer David Buckley, the Los Angeles-based Bowie, fuelled by an "astronomic" cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975–76 "in a state of psychic terror".^[6] Stories—mostly from one interview, pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone—circulated of the singer living in a house full of ancient-Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from The Rolling Stones, and living in morbid fear of fellow Aleister Crowley aficionado Jimmy Page.^[4] Bowie would later say of L.A., "The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth".

Out of this maelstrom comes Station to Station, one of his most acclaimed albums. Containing such classics as 'Golden Years' and 'Wild is the Wind', it's a must-have.

Favorites: Station to Station, Wild is the Wind.

Get it here.

Orgy - Candyass


This one takes me back. Candyass by the band Orgy was one of the first cd's I ever bought, and was definitely one of my most played of all time. Readers may remember these guys from their popular cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday'. That track came off of this, their debut album, which was released in 1998. For those who have not heard them, Orgy is synth rock which incorporates elements of industrial, New Wave and goth music into their sound and appearance.

Favorites: love the whole damn album

Get it here.

And that's a rap! I hope you enjoyed these posts, and please give me some feedback (these posts took some time and energy). Until next time...

Bitter, Sarastic, Brutal

The Meads of Asphodel - Damascus Steel

What do you get when you combine Biblical apocrypha, militant secular humanism, medieval English armor, and a hefty dose of misanthropy? Mix them together and you find yourself with one of England’s best-kept secrets: The Meads of Asphodel. Surfacing from the depths in 1998, they are anything but standard fare in the world of metal. They bill themselves as “English Fucking Black Metal”, and never fail to live up to and surpass the standards set out by a country from which emerged so many great bands in the past.

Like many of the better contemporary black metal bands, the Meads occupy the niche of ’experimental’ music. They can play more traditional, ’grim and frostbitten’ black - their 2000 debut The Excommunication of Christ was based largely around this style - but even then it was evident that the Meads were something different. Metatron’s voice is dry and raspy but he doesn’t growl or scream, making for some unique vocals which have been likened to “someone with throat cancer who really would like to sing, but coughs up intestines every time he tries“#. Don’t worry, his voice isn’t as ugly as that might lead you to believe, but it is unique. While The Excommunication… featured the more stripped-down instrumental section of traditional ‘cold‘ black metal, by the following album Exhuming the Grave of Yeshua guitarist and the drummer at the time Jaldaboath had begun flexing his muscles. And lest your preconceptions about black metal get the best of you, know that Metatron and company have produced a techno song - the remake of the demo “Book of Dreams” on Exhuming… - and covered Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” (the latter, of course, with their signature sense of cynical humor).

It is this sense of cynicism, along with a good degree of humor, which pervades this music. For example, a verse from their Armstrong cover states: “I see ethnic cleansing / pain beyond belief / whole nations murdered / sorrow and grief / and I think to myself…”. Their latest EP, In the Name of God Welcome to Planet Genocide, contains songs such as “My Beautiful Genocide” and “A Baptism in the Warm Piss of Slaughtered Children”. They also have a taste for impressively long song titles on their tracks over 10 minutes, naming the last track on 2005’s Damascus Steel “Behold The Kindred Battle Carcasses Strewn Across The Bloodied Dunes Of Gilgamesh Mute In The Frenzied Clamour Of Death's Rolling Tongue And Ravenous Bursting Steel”. Life’s a joke, and it’s deadly serious.

If there is an issue with the Meads, it is their perceived anti-religion and especially anti-Islamic stance. The latter has gained them an unfortunate following among racists, xenophobes, and Muslim haters of all stripes in their native England as well as here. And indeed, a shallow reading of the band’s songs can lead to the conclusion that the Meads do indeed hate Islam. Their split with Mayhem, entitled Jihad, has songs entitled “Jihad - the Gristly Din of Killing Steel” and “Assassins of Allah”. At the beginning of “Behold the Bloodied Dunes…” on Damascus Steel, the muezzin’s call to prayer precedes the crash of thunder. Christianity too comes under fire, as there is a general tendency in their music (especially their earlier work) to criticize the divinity of Jesus as well as the Church of Rome. Yet if one simply examines their website, one will find the motto "The Meads of Asphodel believe in all peoples' right to live in peace, free from the shackles of inflicted dogma and servitude". What the Meads are critiquing, it appears, is not any specific religion so much as fundamentalist interpretations of such which lead to violent conflict and the deaths of innocents.

So, if you can appreciate excellent music and insightful social commentary conveyed through a mushroom-induced haze by men in medieval English armor, this band’s for you!