Orbweaver, Paria (Ger): U Jam!

It’s normal to be fickle. Some days, a fan is fed up with metal that blazes no new trails; you’re basically like, Ugh all these bands just crank out the same stuff. It’s originality and adventure that you value. Other days, you hail the creatively unambitious band for its focus on quality, not needless exploration or genre mishmash. Look at AC/DC, you say, they don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Ah what a complex soul you are :) But today, either of those moods will do for two bands that make micro-tweaks to extreme metal with wildly entertaining results. Check out Orbweaver, whose tech-death is flavored by skronky Piggy-isms and doomy pace. Think Dillinger Escape Plan covers played by Gorguts, or if Obituary started mixing mushrooms and meth, or if Hate Eternal was playing through injuries. Their Strange Transmissions From The Neuralnomicon also reminds me of when we used to infuriate our drummer by playing guitars with the three high strings tuned down a half-step. Listen to the 30-minute EP below!

Sure, death metal can be cerebral and weird, but pure black metal addresses not the brain but the spirit. So is that why Neige Eternelle, Watain, and now Paria (from Germany) send me into a trance? Is that what causes not the ripping-open-shirt and moshing-frenzied-like-my-spirit-animal trance, just the normal kind of trance where I stare unmoving for entire songs? Is not this supra-gutter black metal inherently psychedelic, blurry, and anti-thought? Yes, yes, yes. And Paria’s Surrealist Satanist is a super yes: its moments of experimentation riveting, its wails and walls elemental — perfect for our many fickle needs. Crank it:

Get Orbweaver’s EP here. Paria’s Surrealist Satanist is available here.