Some bands just get it right.
Inter Arma have been building towards a wonderful record and this most definitely is it.
It’s bleak and it’s beautiful. At turns joyously uplifting, at others crushingly heavy. I’m fucking enchanted.
Black metal and Pink Floyd are stirred in equal parts through soaring psychedelic sludge to create something unique and utterly compelling.
Oops, my beaver is aflame. Please call the fire brigade.
I’ve squirted a fair dollop of love on the upturned faces of stoner doomsters The Sword over the life of this blog.
Warp Riders was in my Top 10 of 2010 with sharp-edged thrash riffage lacing their stoner/doom and a sweet space opera theme.
I’ll always be fond of their debut Age of Winters (2006) for helping lead me back to the path of metal even if they couldn’t get more on Ozzy and Tony’s dicks if they set up their amps in the Sabs’ pants .
We’ll gloss over the shit in the sandwich that is their dreary middle record Gods of the Earth.
BUT I think I might be getting a bit bored of their shtick. New song Veil of Isis – streaming over at that steaming turd of a mag Rolling Stone (!) – is just a bit by-the-numbers.
It’s by no means bad but the riffs feel recycled from The Sword rather than just from Sabbath while the vocal melody also seems mighty familiar.
It’s reasonably catchy and shit, I prefer it to fucking Lamb of God or some other drivel, but it feels a bit safe, yaknowworrimean?
Pop-punk this ain’t kids
Samothrace may have just released their sophomore record Reverence to Stone. Yet this dispatch from Monkey Towers, while Samothracian in subject, will barely mention that.
Instead, my thoughts about that record’s 2008 predecessor, Life’s Trade – hands down one of the best records I have heard this year – have finally coagulated.
So, in the absence of my having got my arse in gear to properly digest the new one, you can read Sawtooth Wave‘s take on it, if that’s what you are after.
Otherwise, let’s see if we can get a handle on an album that takes 47 minutes to unravel four songs.
RIP a great record label
What utterly bastardly shitty news: Hydra Head will shut its doors in December.
Label head and Isis legend Aaron Turner emailed his customers tonight to break the bad news. They can simply no longer afford to run the label.
Love or loathe Hydra Head, there’s no denying they have released some pretty important records since that first Vent 7″ in 1995.
Monkey Defies Gravity 