Question Of The Week: All This Weekend’s Parties Curated by MetalSucks
Say, have u ever been to South By Southwest festival and conference thingy? Since 1987, it’s every March in Austin, Texas. It’s fun! Everybody parties, u discover five or six new favorite bands, u put faces to names/voices and hug people u see rarely but gab with regularly, cool panels, long lines that force u to barf/crap in weird places, open bars, hotel bed, repeat! Yaayy!
But some years u can’t attend cuz that week u are in a wedding or your cash is tied up in a counterfeit jeans operation or whatever. sigh That’s life but still u cry cuz SXSW is a festival of discovery (and rediscovery). In other words, it kills u to miss out on the random artists u get into over the five days. Bummer. F ck it, we’ll just invent a SXSW home edition in today’s MS Question Of The Week! Let’s curate your listening weekend! All u have to do is jam a few of 2013’s must-jam jamz each day as recommended below by our top metalicians — and sell us on your nice recent finds in the comments section.
Fearless. Controversial. Half-baked. We give it to you straight every Friday afternoon. Straight to your own private music discovery weekend! Here’s this week’s question:
·
Inspired by fun ways to listen to a lot of awesome new music over a few days, we asked our staff the following:
Hey what new album must MetalSucks readers listen to this weekend?
Read and jam then write below!
·
SAMMY O’HAGAR
Darkthrone
The Underground Resistance (Peaceville)
Listen The Underground Resistance full stream (here)
Latter-day Darkthrone isn’t joke metal, but there’s a certain goofiness to what they’ve been doing. That’s why The Underground Resistance is so comparatively weird. It’s a straight-up blackened crust punk/trad metal album with no winks to its audience. It’s one thing to go from being a black metal band to a fun little metal band; it’s another to go from fun to respectability. That put me off at first. But Resistance has grown on me. It makes me feel things. If you asked me five years ago whether the guys who wrote “Hanging Out In Haiger” could make me feel anything other than a beer buzz, I would have slapped you in the jaw. But here we are, with Darkthrone taking their hybrid of Amebix and Mercyful Fate to another level. You can still have a few beers with it, though.
·
ABYSMAL SHAWN
Darkthrone
The Underground Resistance (Peaceville)
Listen The Underground Resistance full stream (here)
In all the fuss about Kvelertak recently, no one seems to notice that Darkthrone is doing this stuff better. Just read the MS interview with Fenriz and try to tell me that you can’t hear the same down-to-earth authenticity in this record.
·
GRIM KIM
Dread Sovereign
Pray To The Devil In Man (Roadburn Records)
Whispers about this new project of have been circulating since Roadburn announced the band’s maiden performance, bolstered by a pedigreed lineup and speculation. Now that Dread Sovereign have posted the first single off their upcoming 12″ debut, any fears should be allayed — this shit rules. Nemtheanga’s voice is one of metal’s most unique and readily recognizable, and his soaring, histrionic register suits the gritty, old-school doom feel “Thirteen Clergy to the Flames” serves up. Backed by the considerable talents of his Primordial cohort Sol Dubh on drums and Dublin young gun Bones (who also bounces between death metal horrors ZOM and rock’n’roll deviants Wizards Of Firetop Mountain), this new project sees Nemtheanga in fine form, stripped of the heavy burden he carries in his main band and allowed to embrace his more primitive inclinations. Judging from what I’ve heard, the rest of the album aims just as true, invoking the dusty catalogs of Saint Vitus, Candlemass, and Bathory; in their own words: “Not intended to re-invent the wheel just to give it a good kicking in the true old evil metal fashion.” Well done then, lads.
·
ANSO DF
Nightmare Air
High In The Lasers (Saint Marie)
Listen High In The Lasers full stream (here)
U always hear that some great festival memories are made super-late at night, when some developing band plays at like two a.m. That’s when your energy is gone, u are wiped out after 15 hours of festing. U couldn’t possibly scream another comment or drink order, nor snake through throngs to the bathrooms — holy shit suddenly u are too tired to actually fight your way out of the club. There’s a foggy debate in your head, like, Should I collapse here and be carried to the hotel? Can I attempt to depart under my own power and with dignity? But that discussion is ended by that band’s first couple songs. They’re awesome! Your mind gets a distraction while it evens keel, the frayed emotions are soothed by excellent jamz, and fun is no longer a chore. U prob still barf on yourself but that’s for the best, and by staying up u have avoided a sad vomit-asphyxiation in your sleep. That’s the blurry fatigue dimension where the house band is Nightmare Air. U jam?
·
EMPEROR RHOMBUS
Vreid
Welcome Farewell (Indie Recordings)
I really dig the weird vibe this band has been cultivating their last couple of albums, and their newest pushes it even further. The mix of blackened thrash with these weird occult melodies really gets me going. It’s a weird one — might take a couple of listens to really get into — but definitely worth it.
·
SATAN ROSENBLOOM
Head of the Demon
Head of the Demon (Ajna Offensive)
Slow to mid-paced occult metal from ex-members of Kaamos, A Mind Confused, Gods of Grief and Saturnalia Temple. Augmenting this Swedish group’s occasional Celtic Frost worship is a wheezing organ, and knotty guitar lines that would make Bergraven proud. Sometime’s it’s super-spare and creepy, sometimes it rocks balls, sometimes it’s just plain weird. It’s always compulsive listening though. It’s like the best demo you never heard – it sounds ancient but feels new.
·
DAVE MUSTEIN
A Million Dead Birds Laughing
Xen (self-released)
Frenetic, experimental grindcore! These guys have a pronounced death metal influence, and incorporate all kinds of unexpected sound passages amidst the brutality. Their latest release Xen is a little more focused than their first, Force Fed Enlightenment — the album has an eerie, cohesive vibe to it even as the songs themselves are highly varied.
·
