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Tag Archive: East of the Wall


Revocation

Boston’s Revocation are one of the finer exports of modern metal according to many a metalhead. Their all-encompassing, jack-of-all-trades approach delivers the goods for fans of almost any extreme subgenre out there, but never feels derivative or uninspired. Personally, I have yet to hear another band combine intensity, intelligence, skill, and emotion to such an extent, and I’m sure there’s others out there that would agree with me, based on the widespread recognition their 2011 opus Chaos of Forms and its successor Teratogenesis received.  Following a relentless tour cycle that is set to culminate with this year’s rendition of the Summer Slaughter Tour, the guys are going to release their upcoming self-titled full-length this summer. As the first proper release with new bassist Brett Bamberger (ex- East of the Wall) on board, this album is building up quite the anticipation within the community.

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Gifts From Enola, the four-piece post-rock band from Harrisonburg, Virginia, has called it a day and are disbanding after completing an impressive seven year career. The band released a statement via their website explaining why they decided to hang up their instruments after a somewhat successful career. This comes as a surprise since they just recently came out with a new album A Healthy Fear about six months ago that was well received by most people and were still in the process of touring it. But as the explanation says, being a touring band is no easy task and there’s nothing glamorous about breaking the bank to be able to play a handful of shows.

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I’ve gone on record multiple times gushing about how much I love East of the Wall, and everyone in the band, and while I’m still waiting for some news regarding their forthcoming record (here’s hoping it actually comes out this year) I have to say that I’m pretty content to wait a bit longer now that Matt Lupo, one of the guitarists and vocalists for the band, has just released the first EP under his new solo moniker.

The project is called opul, and the EP is titled Personnel. There are some elements reminiscent of East of the Wall, but opul is far more ambient oriented, with more airey vocals, that are also much more prominent in the mix at times, and less of crust or hardcore influence.There’s also a bit of stoner rock vibe to it all. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the thing, but it’s pretty entertaining, and it’s actually a decent length for an EP. With four tracks that average out to about five minutes apiece, the whole thing clocks in at an even twenty two minutes. So it’s a nice little EP that you can get for free, or you can buy it by naming whatever price you may desire.

You can stream the EP from the widget it above, and if you like it please give the man some of that dosh you have in your wallet. Cheers.

- EC

In the wake of a slow news season, we kind of have to grasp at straws to find something that really excites us. Fortunately for me, I really fucking love East of the Wall. Their 2011 masterpiece, The Apologist, was given a great review by Jimmy, and the album ended up making my year end best of list. And after almost a year I still love the album to death; playing it every few days. It just fits every possible mood I happen to be in.

So it’s not hard for me to get excited by little bits of information that the band has started to post via their Facebook page. On Thursday the band updated their status, saying this:

Recording drums for the album demos right now. It’ll be for 75% of the record. We still have one half finished song to get back to, and we may write one more.

Like I said, it’s not much, but the very idea of a new album from this band gets me all excited. As an added bonus the band posted the following photo and message:

See those red lights above the kick and snare tracks? That’s a bad thing. It means you’re sending too much signal into the recorder and getting some distortion. But we have the inputs on those channels set as low as we can make them. Seth just hits too damn hard.

Yeah, I’m excited.

- EC

Frames – In Via

Frames

In Via

01. Entrance
02. Departure
03. Encounter
04. Calm Wisdom
05. Stir
06. Reflections
07. Eris
08. Don’t Stay Here
09. End Of A Decade
10. Coda

 [04/20/12]
[Self-released]

Instrumental music has always been somewhat of a ‘living oxymoron’. It seems that by taking away the one element of direct communication between the band and the listener, you unwittingly open up a packed toy box of ways to make the listener feel a whole palette of emotion, whether it’s through fanatic delay pedal abuse or even the oft-neglected use of dynamics. That ‘wordless expression’ is what defines post-metal/post-rock and the application is what separates the amateurs from seasoned veterans — Frames, for whatever the reason may be, have this down to a tee. View Full Article »

So I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but a lot of awesome tours have been announced and hinted at over the past two weeks. It seems like every awesome band is getting buddy-buddy with another awesome band and trekking through North America together. The only thing I have to complain about is…none of them are coming near me.  Which sucks, but honestly I can live with not going because knowing that metal fans will have such a wide array of awesome shows to go to is enough to make me happy. Well, kind of.

Anywho, as it says up top Intronaut have just announced a small selection of shows with openers Black Tusk and East of the Wall. Now there’s only a handful of dates, but damn does that line-up sound nice. If I had to choose I think this tour would be the one I wound up going to…you know, if it were anywhere near me. Sigh.

[EDIT - EOTW and Black Tusk will be playing more shows without Intronaut. Full run of dates after the jump!]

- EC

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Intact – Cosmicgrindvortex

Intact

Cosmicgrindvortex

01. MUNI Casualties
02. Tenderloin
03. Intact
04. Sauregurkenzeit
05. Kharybdis

[10/16/11]
[Self-released]

Intact are a 3 piece mostly-instrumental progressive grind band from San Francisco. If that doesn’t pique your interest then you must be a sucker for conventions. This album is far from conventional. In fact, it is grind flipped on its head. This album captures the frantic nature of grind, but insists on having intention, different from the usual minute of insanity that you typically get per song. Intact draw out the progressive aspects of grindcore in a way where it becomes difficult to draw the line anymore.

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Once more unto the breach, dear friends. It seems we’re often the last out of our contemporary blogs to put up our ‘best of’ lists, and I think that’s a sure sign that we’ve given it much more thought, and as such are the definitive authority on music for all time ever — NOT that we’re simply too lazy to put it up earlier, and need filler for the time between Christmas and New Year (despite this being all we will be posting).

I talked last year about perhaps how arrogant it is to create these lists and pass judgement on the artistic merits of the year’s music; like there are only ten slots and the rest is tripe, and who am I whose opinions are more worthwhile than yours?

That still holds true to some extent, because we’ve met a lot of new friends this year who have shown us a ton of great stuff – but so does the fact that we work our asses off to listen to all this stuff, and also because, once again, I, and the others after me, filled out the damn application.

I feel this is going to become a continuing theme. I don’t mean it guys; I love you really. As you already have with my fellows, feel free to tell me what you think, and in particular what a huge bag of shite I’m talking; I won’t get offended, honest!

Up at this end of the spectrum, you’re getting your full-on, down to the wire, best ten-only lists (at least with myself and Dormition) – none of this copping out. It was tough, but these are the haggard survivors of the process, but are my personal favourites from the year; based not on technicality, on brutality, or how accomplished I think the release is. No, these are honestly the ten records (and not necessarily albums) that best represent my musical year; that gave me a certain feeling, and that I have come back to again and again, and will continue to do so long into 2012. The same was true of last year’s list; despite my obligations to the new, I still listen the shit out of the old.

BRING FORTH MINE LIST!

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I know this is usually done in the form of a countdown list, but I honestly couldn’t really decide on the placement of these albums. And in the end, who am I to say which album is better than another? I’m just an 18 year old kid who listens to music for fun. I love all of this albums, and I appreciate every band on this list, as well as the multitude of other bands that didn’t actually make it on my list. This year was crazy and there could have easily been 30 or 40 other albums on here, but of course time and space are an issue when dealing with writings. Hell, my original drafted featured 20 different albums, and 6000+ words. So thank me for cutting it down. Anyways, without further ramblings on my part, here are some of my favorite albums from 2011.

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