Black Hate – Through the Darkness

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How many black metal bands in the past have proven to be truly progressive, innovative or even avant garde? You might find several bands that fit that niche. Even some big acts in black metal could be included under the Progressive black metal umbrella, such as Enslaved and Ihsahn. Let’s turn our attention to Black Hate now. Hailing from Mexico, the promising group have released an album that pushes the “black metal” label in directions seldom seen. With Through the Darkness we have an album that breathes new life into tired black metal tropes and dares to stand on it’s own. So what do they do differently that sets them apart from their peers? What can we correlate Through the Darkness with to find out what makes it unique?

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Hey! Listen to Eldjudnir!

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As time goes on, more and more boxes are checked off when it comes to metal. Initially, something extreme would come into fruition and explode. With a plethora of new inspiration and plenty of unexplored material, genres like black metal could cultivate innovative sounds for decades. We’ve seen black metal be a counterculture to thrash and death metal. Then we’ve seen it start to get incorporated into the things it stood against such as grandiosity and ambiance. Then when it came for the third and fourth wave of black metal bands to start making music, an entirely new breed of black metal band was born. Black metal unto itself, dabbling in atmosphere and venturing into entirely different aesthetics and even forgoing the notions of metal. But what happens when you try to create Black Metal with entirely different sonic elements?

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Brain Tentacles – Brain Tentacles

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Brain Tentacles is a three-year-old project with members from Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio. They recently signed to Relapse Records and worked on their self-titled debut album, to be released on September 30. The formation is similar in shape to Trioscapes: a trio comprising a saxophonist, a bassist, and a drummer. However, the comparisons stop there, as Brain Tentacles’ doomy, sludgy, saxophone-filled metal is far from the progressive fusion rock of Trioscapes.

Just Give Up On Everything And Listen To Vermin Womb

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Stop sharing those try hard Nihilism memes (guilty) and pay attention. The twenty minutes of music available from Vermin Womb is hot to trot and ready to fuck your soul back into the ether. Grinding and bellowing out of Denver (the US capital of grind?), Primitive Man’s Ethan McCarthy spearheads another trio of life plunderers. Unlike the Man, Vermin Womb don’t do slow. Nah. They do full tilt, blasting death and grind. The sort of music that even your closest metal friends will still refer to as “just noise”. Fuck those friends. They don’t know a thing.

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48 – I Apologize In Advance For This…

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… terrible content! So, this week the blog met up at NYC to celebrate Eden’s wedding. We had no opportunity to record a real cast, but my philosophy with the podcast is to not skip a week no matter what, so I just temporarily lowered my standards for quality! So, this week you get two random recordings of blog people having pointless conversations in noisy environments. If that doesn’t sound appealing, I totally get it! You should come back next week for your regular programming. If it does, well, whatever rocks your boat! Either way, thanks for listening to the podcast, and send Eden some congratulations! See you all next week.

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Clipping. – Splendor & Misery

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Experimental rap group clipping. always seem to be pushing the envelope when they release an album. With their debut midcity they used abrasive white noise to back gritty raps, pulling bangers from the static. With their sophomore album CLPPNG they added a diverse palette of sounds and samples (At one point they use an alarm clock beeping for a beat) while still staying gritty/heavy hitting and took what made them great to new levels with catchy tracks, technically impressive rapping and engrossing stories. Now on their third full-length Splendor & Misery, they’re taking aim at a sci-fi concept record which depicts the struggles of a slave who is the lone survivor of an uprising on a slave transport ship in the cold, unforgiving reaches of space. If anyone is capable of properly executing something like this, it’s clipping..

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Check Out A New Song From Aviations!

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I feel like if you go to Berklee College of Music, you either graduate to become a world famous musician or you end up playing in a band and become a world famous musician. That’s been the case countless times before, and this time is no different. Aviations was formed there by two guys who lived in the same dorm who both just really wanted to play some fantastic prog rock. Now you can see what I mean by jamming “Dizziness Explained” off their upcoming record The Light Years. Check it out! The single is among the more chaotic things the band…

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Good Vibrations — A Day To Remember Are More Metal Than Your Band

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2009 was a landmark year for me when it came to music. Releases from Every Time I Die and The Black Dahlia Murder were the soundtrack to my first experience of living on my own and, slotted somewhere between the two, Homesick by A Day To Remember became a “guilty pleasure”. The dyed in the wool metal head in me was conflicted. Torn even. I knew that the pop driven choruses and “she left me, boo hoo” lyrics were something I should have already got past but the songs were just too catchy to ignore. What business did a pop punk band have dropping savage, infectious breakdowns all over their material? Why do I still listen to this band, unironically? Because A Day To Remember are metal as fuck and I’ll fight you after class on the football field if you disagree.

Virvum – Illuminance

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A few months ago, Simon wrote an excellent piece about the fast-growing phenomenon of post-tech death, succinctly describing how early progenitors such as Cynic and The Faceless all the way to recent up-and-comers Wrvth and Fallujah have combined progressively-minded atmospheric and melodic sensibilities with the relentless and intricate attack of traditional tech death. While still a bit of a nascent trend that only saw its earliest beginnings as recently as the turn of the decade, it’s still enjoyed immense popularity throughout its lifespan, particularly because it’s really not an easy combination to pull off successfully. But Swiss newcomers Virvum do exactly that. Debut album Illuminance throws out…