READERS’ CHOICE: THE ALASKAN EDITION
Reader Sam Britch wrote us a very nice e-mail asking us to give some exposure to some Alaskan bands. I only know two Alaskan metal bands off the top of my very pot-filled head, Turbid North and 36 Crazyfists, but those bands are both okay by me, so… yeah, let’s do this thing.
Glass Halo — Apparently drummer Dave Holt is the brother of 36 Crazyfists guitarist Steve Holt (STEVE HOLT!). But this doesn’t do much for me. It sounds like nu-deathcore… that’s the only way I can think to describe it. It’s just way too simple for its own good… you can take a lack of variation and make it hypnotic — see, for example, pretty much every Jesu song ever — but you have to start with something that sounds cool, and, alas, this does not.
Witness the End — This band has worked with Brock Lindow… holy shit, 36 Crazyfists are like the Kevin Bacon of Alaskan metal. ANYWAY, this is not for me, either. It’s basically As Blood Runs Black with jumpdafuckup sections. Oh, and clean vocals. None of which are things I appreciate.
Kallahan — This band has the most professional sheen of these acts thus far, but their vision for heavy music still doesn’t mesh with mine. It’s metallic hardcore, but… I can’t even muster the enthusiasm to say anything about this. I’m sorry. This is depressing. I might need to take a break and listen to something else for a minute.
No, no. I can soldier on. C’mon, Sam, gimme something good to listen to!
Korupture — Okay it’s hard to talk about this band, ’cause Sam sent me a link to their Facebook page, which doesn’t seem to have any music on it, and I so I followed that to their MySpace page, which only has samples of songs on it, and frankly, I’m too lazy to do any more detective work. But based on what little I can hear, I would say that this is far and away the best band on the list so far. It sounds like schizo techy proggy deedily doo stuff. I can’t tell if they can write a song or not ’cause the samples are too short. If they can write songs, they’re probably swell, and if not, well, some of you will like them anyway.
In conclusion, listen to Turbid North. Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
-AR
