Tag Archives: avant-garde

My Top 20 Albums of 2018

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Happy New Year!  It’s time for my annual check-in to confirm that we’re still alive and well, and that I still have terrible taste in music.

Sample size: 71 albums
Quality: This was a pretty damn good year for music. I feel like my list is significantly stronger than 2017 and competitive with some of the best years I can remember. My top 7 could have all finished first in lesser years.

20. Horrendous – Idol

progressive death metal

Sample track: Soothsayer

It’s a trip. If you can swallow the vocals, which hit me as a bit too classically tortured to match the lush soundscape the band’s presenting, you’re going to be treated to one of those albums that packs so much subtle flavor that I think I could spin it 100 times and still find something new. It doesn’t hit the aesthetic zone of infinite repeatability for me that I think I would need to fully embrace its nuances, but it’s admirable.

19. Carpenter Brut – Leather Teeth

retrowave

Sample track: Inferno Galore

Half of this album actually sounds like it was lifted out of a classic 80s video game and modernized. I guess that’s the point, and he’s not exactly the only person doing it, but this album stood out to me for some especially powerful cuts, most notably Inferno Galore. I don’t think this is an album that will stick with me terribly long. I’m not a fan of the vocals, granted they’re limited to Cheerleader Effect and Beware the Beast. The whole thing is way too abrasive for me to enjoy at length passively. But yeah, I enjoyed it more than the average album this year. Fun spin and my misgivings are trivial, not game-breaking.

18. Panopticon – The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness

bluegrass/folk/black metal

Sample track: Echoes in the Snow

I had the pleasure this summer of seeing Austin Lunn headline the grand finale of a three day music festival, and that pretty well confirmed his status as my favorite personality in music. He’s also one of the only two artists to steal my number 1 slot twice. That… won’t be happening this year. The Scars of Man has a few drawbacks for me beyond its unwieldy name. Despite clocking in just shy of 120 minutes, it’s less stylistically innovative than his last three albums. The folk and metal come in distinct packages with little overlap. The lyrics are repetitive and don’t reach far beyond a basic motif of winter wilderness and mortality. The melodies aren’t particularly gripping on the whole. The vocal delivery is kind of muted. Like a lot of my favorite musicians, Lunn has an aura of heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity about him that transforms many of his flaws into points of endearment. (It’s not a coincidence that I gave Mark Kozelek first place last year.) I think, in this case, that’s more of a salvaging factor than the catapult that propels it above the competition. It comes across to me as a really spontaneous work, like he sat down and just played whatever came to him without much concern about refining it. That’s cool. I enjoyed it. Just not on par with say, Roads to the North or Autumn Eternal.

17. Bosse-de-Nage – Further Still

post-black metal

Sample track: Down Here

A few of these guys were members of an internet forum I frequent before they gained decent success on the post-bm scene touring with the likes of Deafheaven, so I’ll concede a bit of bias. I loved their last album, All Fours, but it took me a while to reasonably conclude that I loved it regardless of having a (to be fair, very small) personal connection to the band. Further Still hasn’t had as much of an opportunity to grow on me as All Fours did. It was released later in the year, I haven’t been in as much of a mood for that genre, and it’s stylistically very similar to their last release. Without devoting too much completely undistracted time to it, I do want to say this album brings very little new to the table, but their matured sound was great where it stood coming in. I would hardly say that more of the same is a bad thing. Basically, I like this album a lot on its surface but haven’t had much of an opportunity to fall in love with it. I think I potentially could. 17th with plenty of room to move up.

16. Sumac – Love in Shadow

post-metal/experimental

Sample track: Ecstasy of Unbecoming

I feel like Sumac is on the brink of becoming my favorite Aaron Turner project. The potential is certainly there. It’s never going to roll out something on the magnitude of Isis’s Oceanic, but Sumac is definitely drifting down a path I can get excited about. I feel like large chunks of this album were the product spontaneous experimentation in the studio, and improv noodling with a metal aesthetic is emerging as a core part of his sound. It reminded me at times of one of the best non-2018 releases I discovered this year–James Plotkin & Paal Nilssen-Love’s Death Rattle. On a kind of small world aside, as I’m writing this I pulled James Plotkin’s Wikipedia page, and apparently he’s done mixing work with Isis before. At any rate, I definitely enjoyed the eclectic ride of chucking this album on in the background a few times, but more than anything I’m curious about where he goes from here.

15. Tomb Mold – Manor of Infinite Forms

death metal

Sample track: Final Struggle of Selves

Every once in a blue moon I stumble on that elusive death metal album that brings absolutely nothing new to the table and completely beats the shit out of me anyway, and Tomb Mold hit the nail on the head. I don’t even listen to death metal very often for all I meme about it, but I’ve been putting this one back on all year. It just gets everything right for my aesthetic tastes, I guess. The vocals nail a sound that feels brutal without being cheesy or grating on me. All of the tones blend together really well to form a tight package without competing against each other. It’s got a kind of groovy mid-tempo pace I can’t help but bob my head to. Guilty pleasure or not, it’s been a frequent fun ride.

14. Death Grips – Year of the Snitch

experimental hip hop

Sample track: Death Grips is Online

I managed to not discover Death Grips until late 2016, and they’ve still forced their way into the mix of my most listened-to artists ever. I think there’s a lot of really weird experimentation going on here even by their standards. It’s a pretty meaty album to try to sit down and embrace, and I can’t say I’ve ever gotten through it attentively from start to finish. Maybe not their most passively pleasing work, but there’s a lot of weird experimentation going on here that’s kept me curious throughout the year.

13. Midnight Danger – Malignant Force

retrowave

Sample track: System Outage

Everyone I’ve sent this to has basically just told me “yeah, that sounds like the 80s alright.” Maybe if I was more familiar with the genre, it wouldn’t sound that special to me. I can’t say for certain; I’m not an avid pursuer of new trends in electronic music the way I am with metal. But I have definitely heard a lot of music in a similar vein to this, and none of it impresses me quite as much. I guess if you’re listening to it as “lol 80s” they might all sound alike? I think the album is packed with compelling loops and manages to plod forward with a really heavy beat while never becoming abrasive enough to shift me from that mindset of a cyberpunk dystopia. So yeah, there’s definitely a lack of extensive genre exposure on my end, but this has been my default go-to when I want to engage this sort of aesthetic for most of 2018.

12. Summoning – With Doom We Come

atmospheric metal

Sample track: Silvertine

Summoning have been one of my favorite bands for going on 15 years, and I’ve only been treated to three new albums in that span. So yeah, I was pretty hyped for this, and it would have been hard to screw up. I frequently queue up their entire discography and just let it roll for ten hours straight. I have never heard another band that sounds anything like them, and their sound pings every fantasy nerd pleasure point in my body. Much like it took Old Mornings Dawn a couple years to settle in as a rock in their anthology and not just epic by default, With Doom We Come doesn’t yet stand out distinct to me as something other than more Summoning. It’s hard to say if and when it will get there; at nearly 50 plays through, I know every track by heart but couldn’t tell you from a 30 second session which album they hail from. Maybe that’s a sign that none of them are particularly stand-out cuts. Is it as independently enticing as Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame or Dol Guldur to me? Nah, but the band that can do no wrong for me did no wrong in 2018.

11. A Forest of Stars – Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes

psychedelic black metal

Sample track: Precipice Pirouette

At this point, 2015’s Beware the Sword You Cannot See has pretty firmly cemented its slot among my all-time favorite albums. I didn’t expect Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes to compete with that, and it doesn’t, and that’s fine. If Dan Eyre’s lyrics have tipped over from dancing on the fringes of nonsense to completely incoherent rants, there’s still no lack of awkwardly well-spoken venom. If the compositions are a little more direct, they’re just as immense and driving. I’m not sure what I would think of this album if I experienced it with a blank slate regarding the band, but I would probably like it even more. They have one of the most unique and compelling sounds of the 2010s. I don’t think this is their best work, or even particularly close to it, but in terms of enjoyment, I’m just thrilled to have some new material to spin by them that doesn’t significantly deviate from the sound I’ve grown to love. I guess if I have one complaint, the album tends to meander a bit too long on some post-rocky vibes that never build up into the climaxes they’ve mustered in the past. Kind of torn on [i”>I really really like it[/i”> but want it to be more, and that’s what landed it just shy of my top 10.

10. Bongripper – Terminal

doom metal/post-rock

Sample track: Terminal

If you like to hear 45 minutes of the same thing repeated in deep distorted tones, this album might be for you. For better or worse, it’s for me. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before. There’s not enough here for me to really point and go “now that was something”. They just landed on some killer riffs and grinded them into oblivion. I got to hear them play the full album live this year, and I was totally in the zone for it just rocking back and forth. I think the album experience is about the same, and half the time I click play on it I catch myself staring off into space 20 minutes later. A hell of a lot of bands play this style. Most of them don’t actually suck me in to the point of distraction. I’m not sure what’s particularly different about this one to pull it off, but here we are.

9. Kids See Ghosts – Kids See Ghosts

hip hop

Sample track: Freeee

I never much cared for Kanye outside of a small handful of tracks dominated by guest artists. His lyrics and the arrogant attitude that resonates in his vocal style just rub me the wrong way. I actually had a sort of epiphany when I was compiling my year end list and this album kept popping up as a contender. It hadn’t yet registered that, for once, I just kept listening to him. I guess Kanye the rapper is a little less prevalent here–I won’t miss 4th Dimension if I never hear it again. Maybe it’s Kid Cudi’s influence, maybe it’s a general shift in focus, I don’t know, but this is the first time where I really found myself not merely conceding that Kanye is a talented producer but actually personally loving his songs. Feel the Love, Freeee, and Reborn are all fantastic, and the vast majority of the album keeps me engaged on a level I am not used to associating with Kanye West at all.

8. Haru Nemuri – Haru to Shura

hip hop/j-pop

Sample track: rock ‘n’ roll wa shinanai

I guess the basic idea behind this album is pretty straight forward, albeit unconventional. It’s j-pop except she’s rapping. The song writing verges off in a lot of novel directions that I have no baseline to really qualify in terms of originality, but they keep the album interesting from start to finish. The thing I like most though is her vocal expressiveness. The passion and tension and angst is impressively tangible for foreign language spoken word. I didn’t think I would have much to say about this, and I don’t. It’s great. Listen to it.

7. Thou – The House Primordial

doom/drone

Sample track: Diaphanous Shift

This has been one of my favorite background pieces of the year. It’s hard to describe what makes one drone-centric album more appealing than the next. I think this presents a very full wall of sound that at times approaches a state I could only describe as noise, but thick bass tones still drive the album, and it’s peppered with bluesy riffs that suck you into direct engagement just long enough to consciously remind you that you’re enjoying this without becoming a distraction. The fullness of it is definitely a distinction from the more classic doom/drone hybrids I dabbled in but could never really embrace in the early 2000s. Khanate but huge is definitely a comparison that comes to mind. At any rate, this is a style that appeals to me more and more as I get older, and The House Primordial absolutely nails it for me. It’s kind of crazy that this misses my top 5, for all I’ve enjoyed it. 2018 was a competitive year.

6. Zeal & Ardor – Stranger Fruit

African-American folk metal

Sample track: You Ain’t Coming Back

Zeal & Ardor is a project that began with the novelty game of trying to mash up atypical genres of music. Black metal and African American spirituals worked out pretty tight, and here you go. This is a pretty exciting album for me, personally, because it’s not something I’ve ever heard done before and it approaches an idea I’ve been kicking around for a long time. Don’t let the “metal” tag deter you; I think this is an album that should be pretty accessible to people unaccustomed to heavier music. The gospel, soul, and African American folk traditions get the spotlight. The metal’s primary function is to present it in a more intense and pressing light. I think there might be some Tom Waits influence going on here too. At least, Row Row very distinctly reminded me of Clap Hands. It’s a really interesting project, and the song writing is solid on the whole. I feel like the lyrics could have dug deeper, and the studio gloss did start to wear on me after what must have been at least three dozen plays, but Stranger Fruit was a pretty integral part of my 2018 music experience.

5. Wayfarer – World’s Blood

post-black metal

Sample track: The Crows Ahead Cry War

Picking up where the cover art leaves off, this album sets an unmistakable western American atmosphere within the opening seconds. A brooding, atmospheric journey that calls to mind elements of Altar of Plagues and Spectral Lore, their song-writing is impeccable, but it’s the thematic niche that really sets this apart as more than a valiant rehashing of what’s been done before. So much of the black metal listening experience is a passive journey. I think the reason it’s my favorite genre is because you can thoroughly enjoy an album on repeat 100 times without zoning in attentively enough to pick up on half of its subtleties. It’s the art that keeps on giving. Wayfarer’s unique aural imagery of a bleak Great Plains landscape haunted by the ghosts of its butchered inhabitants sets the meditative focal point for immersion, and the rest exhumes itself ever more over time. This will be an album I’m still spinning regularly half way into 2019.

4. Primordial – Exile Amongst the Ruins

Irish folk metal

Sample track: Sunken Lungs

I’m not sure how I fell out of touch with Primordial, but I have no recollection of their last album. Exile Amongst the Ruins didn’t blow me away out the gate quite on par with the raw energy of the 2011 work that really made me fall in love with them, but Nemtheanga’s voice can carry just about anything, and this release might be just as compelling in a much more subtle way. I guess it’s kind of easy to dismiss because Primordial have been playing pretty much the exact same sound forever, but I feel like they landed on a really robust vibe for this album that sustains throughout. It’s morbid, but it’s all so pretty at the same time. It’s really kind of soothing to listen to, in a roundabout way. Relative to a lot of other bands I love that have put out decent-but-not-their-distinctly-best works in 2018, I think this has the most potential to stick around and continue to grow on me. Maybe a few years from now it will be my default Primordial go-to album. I think it’s possible. Nine months is a short time to form conclusive opinions about a band that’s been pumping out solid material for 25 years. I feel an endearing bond with this one that’s hard to put my finger on.

3. Tropical Fuck Storm – A Laughing Death in Meatspace

experimental rock

Sample track: You Let My Tyres Down

A couple of months ago someone sent me The Drones’ Shark Fin Blues, and that was the first time I’d ever encountered Australia’s reasonably well-known frontman Gareth Liddiard. I still haven’t actually gotten my hands on any Drones albums, but I scooped up his side project, Tropical Fuck Storm, the minute their first release hit the shelves. God I’m in love with this guy’s style. He feels completely unhinged and free rolling through his songs, in both his vocal performance and his chaotic brink-of-collapse guitar execution. A Laughing Death in Meatspace blasts that in your face out the gate with my favorite track on the album, You Let My Tyres Down, but this project offers a lot more on the edge beyond Liddiard’s guitar. The second track introduces an often revisited electronic side that’s just a eclectic. The lyrics tap a political frustration that appeals to me. All-around outstanding effort that pings a lot my personal tastes. This is the first time in a while I remember feeling this strongly about an album that is fundamentally rock in origin.

2. Imperial Triumphant – Vile Luxury

avant-garde black metal

Sample track: Swarming Opulence

When I linked this album to one of my few acquaintances who actually enjoys metal, the first response I got was “Gustav Holst”. I dig it. Perhaps a trifle influenced by French black metalers in the vein of Blut Aus Nord and Deathspell Omega, New York City’s Imperial Triumphant are largely forging their own uncharted path. The album’s portrait of “vile luxury” twists high art instrumentation into demented vomit, injecting bombastic convulsions of classical brass and jazz piano into a soundscape of highly disharmonic and technical black metal. It’s a really brilliant vision, I think, derailing the traditionally sophisticated arts into pure hedonism. The theme of the album is apparent on its aural face, and they’ve got a jazz aesthetic to their performance that makes it limitlessly repeatable for me despite a level of abrasiveness that outmatches just about anything I can think of that brings a vision beyond inaccessibility for its own sake to the field.

1. Thou – Rhea Sylvia

grunge/sludge

Sample tracks:
Deepest Sun
Restless River

In the broader picture of the band, 2018 might be remembered as the year when Thou lost their minds and pumped out four new albums and two splits, but Rhea Sylvia stands, for me, leagues above their feature release Magus, or anything else they’ve ever recorded, for that matter. The raw melody crafting on this album is mindboggling. Thou have never been shy about their love for the 90s grunge classics–one of their splits this year was a Nirvana cover album–but I feel like on this run they went all in for trying to actually write grunge music without changing any of their established doomy sludge tones. The result is Alice in Chains pressed under a ten ton weight, enhanced with the modern trappings of post-rock’s all-encompassing influence on metal over the past 20 years. I am blown away from start to finish.

Previous years on Shattered Lens:

2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017

My Top 15 Metal Albums of 2015

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Fourteen years posting a year-end list somewhere, and the rule never changes: odd-numbered years produce more good music. Thankfully, we just concluded 2015. 🙂

15. Deafheaven – New Bermuda
14. Peste Noire – La Chaise-Dyable
13. Mgła – Exercises in Futility
12. Veilburner – Noumenon
11. Botanist – Hammer of Botany

10. Enslaved – In Times (track: Building With Fire)

It’s amazing that after 24 years and 13 studio albums, Enslaved still routinely make it into my year-end top 10. They have continually evolved without letting go of their black metal roots, and the consequence lately has been a long stretch of memorable, prog-rock infused releases that keep up with the times and never grow stale no matter how often I resurrect them. If In Times won’t stick with me quite so permanently as Vertebrae in 2008, it still achieves everything I’ve come to expect of them lately and has managed to entertain me more than the vast majority of other albums I have heard this year. I think I have a bit of a subconscious inclination to prioritize newer bands, but #10 was as low as I could justify dropping this one.

9. Krallice – Ygg Huur (track: Wastes of Ocean)

Like any Krallice album, Ygg Huur takes dozens of listens to ingest. What struck me at first as a rather disappointing, spastic blathering of sound comes together much more coherently if you give it its due time. That being said, it is still a sharp break from their previous four albums, and it lacks that element of progression and overarching vision that has traditionally made this band, for me at least, infinitely repeatable. (I have listened to Krallice more than any other band in my life by a large margin, and they only came into existence in 2008.) Ygg Huur is a brief an meandering mood piece that does not, perhaps, maximize the band’s song-writing talents, but I’ve enjoyed it plenty never the less. More avant-garde than post-black metal, am I allowed to love it and still hope it was just a one-time experiment?

8. Ghost Bath – Moonlover (track: Golden Number)

This is a pretty gorgeous post-black metal album that I’m surprised more sites haven’t picked up on for their year-end summaries. It lacks a touch of refinement that might have earned it higher standing, but the song writing is fabulous. Moonlover delivers a well-rounded package of post-rock infused metal that seems to pay a good deal of respect to Alcest and Amesoeurs, but their undertone is bleak and depressing. It’s a sad album in a way that makes me think of Harakiri for the Sky’s Aokigahara last year, but peppered with little bursts of joy that will bring a smile to your face.

Oh yeah, metal’s not supposed to make me smile. Check.

7. Sumac – The Deal (track: Thorn In The Lion’s Paw)

I never really got into Old Man Gloom. Make what you will of that. The Deal certainly wasn’t Aaron Turner’s most well-received album, but I personally enjoyed it more than anything he’s contributed to since Oceanic. A lot of that has to do with Nick Yacyshyn’s brilliant mastery of the drum set, but I also feel like Turner’s chugging out riffs that really sink into my head more than I’m used to. It’s like a doom metal reinterpretation of Isis, albeit with less progression, and I love the subtle stylistic diversity he brings to the field on this one. It has moments that remind me of everything from black metal to Converge. (And it probably wins this year’s ‘most listened to in my car’ award. <_<)

6. A Forest of Stars – Beware the Sword You Cannot See (track: Virtus Sola Invicta)

Beware the Sword You Cannot See is one of the most eclectic albums I have heard in a long time that I still managed to really enjoy. If I could begin to put a finger on how to describe it, I would have reviewed it ages ago. Black metal at its heart, it weaves a wild mix of strings and spoken word and avant-garde breaks around that core. I like it, quite a bit, and I think the vocals and lyrics (at least, what I can make of them) might be its strongest selling point. I really don’t know what to say about this album. Hear it for yourselves, and be prepared to give an attentive listen–possibly many–if you want to soak it all in.

5. Blind Guardian – Beyond the Red Mirror (track: Grand Parade)

It’s pretty hard to measure the worth of an epic power metal band on a list that is heavily dominated by innovative new styles of music. I don’t think I would have felt entirely comfortable with my positioning of this album no matter where I put it, but I tried to make the cutoff a sort of drifting point between albums that really made me reflect and albums that I just really enjoyed, because there’s never going to be a particularly deep hidden truth to a Blind Guardian track, but they’ve proven a dozen times over to be the ultimate kings of all fantasy-themed music. In the broad scheme of BG’s vast discography, I would probably place Beyond the Red Mirror fourth, after Nightfall in Middle-Earth, At the Edge of Time, and A Night at the Opera. That translates roughly to: it’s awesome.

4. Bosse-de-Nage – All Fours (track: A Subtle Change)

Am I a little biased since I got my initial rip of this direct from frontman Bryan Manning? Probably not, but in my weird little world that’s still a bragging point. 😉 Like Cara Neir’s Portals to a Better, Dead World in 2013, All Fours takes everything I love about screamo and turns it into post-black metal. This might be a coincidence. I’m pretty sure the band claims no direct screamo influence (don’t quote me on that), but the consequence is the same. These guys have worked their way into the top-tier of bands pushing metal in new directions today, and, more so than their previous albums, All Fours really strikes me as a well-rounded composition that possesses the maturity to fully deliver its vision. And Manning has a way with lyrics that’s… well… you just have to read them.

3. Obsequiae – Aria of Vernal Tombs (track: Orphic Rites Of The Mystic)

When I first heard Obsequiae, it was one of those rare moments where I went a-ha, you are that band that’s going to pioneer the style I have always desired but been too inept to create myself. I can guarantee you without much doubt that, of all of the albums of 2015, Aria of Vernal Tombs will find its way into my playlist the most for the longest period of time. Ten years from now, I will probably still be listening to this album when its competitors are all but distant memories. Like Summoning, they fit a unique mood for me that no other band has really begun to approach. (Perhaps Opeth’s Orchid crosses into this terrain, briefly and insufficiently.) A collection of captivating medieval melodies that press themselves upon you by-and-large through euphorically well-mixed guitar and bass (the bass on this album is absolutely gorgeous) rather than traditional instrumentation… my god, I’ve been waiting so long for a band that sounds like this, and they’re easily my favorite new discovery of the year.

2. Panopticon – Autumn Eternal (track: The Wind’s Farewell)

It’s amazing to think that, in the absence of one album this year that won my heart in a landslide, Panopticon could have taken my #1 slot in 3 out of the last 4 years. To put it bluntly, Autumn Eternal is Austin Lunn’s best album to date, and Austin Lunn is arguably the most accomplished metal artist of the 2010s. An incredibly versatile musician who can sample uninhibited from the melting-pot of styles that is post-black metal, Lunn’s newest offering is a mindblowing amalgamation of post-rock and black metal that leaves the more popular bands of this persuasion choking on his dust.

1. Liturgy – The Ark Work (track: Kel Valhaal)

What can I say…. it didn’t make Pitchfork’s top 25? I will probably look back on The Ark Work as one of the most underrated albums ever recorded, and I think its merits have more in common with Radiohead than with anything that has ever derived from heavy metal. It constantly threatens to collapse into a blundering mire of amateur garbage, from the excessive bell tones to Hunter’s marshmallow-mouthed rap vocals. This might be the turn-off for so many listeners, but it is necessary, and the key to this album is in how Liturgy always manage to somehow hold it together. It’s the musical equivalent of your kindergartener handing you a crayon scribble that, on second glance, turns out to be a Picasso.

On Aesthethica, Liturgy explored a very explicit reinterpretation of black metal that found quite a bit of inspired company among bands who were beginning to recognize and explore the similarities between black metal and post-rock. That album helped to define a movement, but it only achieved the band’s vision in a very direct sort of way: through rhythm and melody and progression. The Ark Work nails Hunter’s vision home with an extremely more robust and precise pallet, bringing lyrics and glitch effects and atypical instrumentation and a totally unorthodox approach to metal vocals into the fray. If you listen to a track like “Vitriol” and can barely take it seriously, that’s part of the point, but barely is the key word. Every risk and gamble they take ultimately works, and I am unabashedly unashamed to blare Hunter’s trap beat ‘occult rap’ at max volume out my car stereo. 😀

You might listen to The Ark Work and hear some childish clusterfuck, but I hear absolutely brilliant attention to detail–a musician completely in control of the degree to which his work teeters on the brink of nonsense. Top 20 all-time contender? I could go there. Leave your fear of speaking too fondly of Hunter Hunt-Hendrix at the door and just embrace this album with the assumption that he knew exactly what he was doing. You won’t be disappointed.

Previous years on Shattered Lens:

2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014

Neon Dream #14: Blut Aus Nord – Epitome XVIII

Posted on by necromoonyeti

The dream has to end somewhere. Science fiction seems to agree on that. Futuristic technology produces what biology could not: logic-based systems so functional and adept at survival that humanity becomes obsolete. Whether we assimilate into a borg colony or a zerg hive mind, imagination is pretty screwed. Our best bet might be something like The Matrix. Perhaps some utility will compel our robot overlords to spare the sheep who spawned them. Yay!

I cannot say what it must feel like to be enslaved by a post-human species, but I fancy it would sound a lot like the 777 trilogy by Blut Aus Nord. Between 2011 and 2012, these French black metal legends offered up a journey through a world that was beyond dystopian. Discordant melodies and unorthodox rhythms taken to the extreme are usually a recipe for disaster–the tools of technically proficient but creatively deprived math rock and avant-garde musicians I would only listen to under duress. Blut Aus Nord masterfully avoided that pitfall by envisioning a coherent aesthetic framework and driving the music forward as a consistent conceptual progression across 18 tracks. Radical experimentation joins forces with dark industrial grooves to place the listener in a futuristic, post-human world where mechanical gods rule apathetic over mortals bred in gestation crates.

The trilogy does not actually offer any textual insight into what its world is supposed to be. The minimal lyrics are highly esoteric, and Blut Aus Nord ultimately leave it to the instrumentation to tell their tale. You might not experience it as a futuristic world at all, but rather as some bleak corner of hell from which a lost soul digs through the madness and witnesses his overlord. But as far as it speaks to me, the 777 trilogy is the vision of a feckless human slave awakening from his dream into terrifying, incomprehensible world. He slowly comes to understand his master and, perhaps, ultimately assimilates into the hive mind. The final track, “Epitome XVIII”, is a grim, cold trance in which a soulless machine reigns on triumphant.

Neon Dream #12: 芸能山城組 – Kaneda

Posted on by necromoonyeti

If you are looking for a careful plot showcasing the new challenges of a technologically advanced, post-apocalyptic earth, then Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 classic Akira is not a great option. The film does not try to raise any questions, the story is vague, and it revolves around characters who are empowered supernaturally, not enhanced through technology. Akira‘s legacy lies in its music, art, and shock value.

Set in a dystopian Neo-Tokyo in 2019, 31 years after the ubiquitous cataclysm uproots every tenet of modern society, Akira displays a violent, futuristic world where law and order amounts to little more than brute force. The military police force is ruthless. Suspects are executed in public spaces with no concern for who might get caught in the cross-fire. When protests turn to riots, machine guns and tanks bulldoze down all opposition to the state. In one memorable scene, a group of protesters is bombarded with tear gas, and a choking helpless civilian staggers into an unclouded space that happens to be occupied by a policeman. After a moment’s pause, he blasts him in the stomach with a smoke grenade at point blank range. The incessant violence permeates everything. Within the first ten minutes, the hero, Kaneda, has murdered a half dozen members of a rival gang for entering his turf. The antagonist, Tetsuo, while certainly not evil, does not think twice about slaughtering the millenarian following attracted to his psychic powers.

Akira keeps you attentive with an endless escalation of weirdness and destruction. At every turn, events outpace your expectations, culminating in a transformation sequence that is not even worth trying to explain. I suppose it does raise one question, and only one: “What the fuck did I just watch?” It only works, though, because the art is so distinct that it leaves little to the imagination. Akira is a visual tour through everything that the most dystopian, vulgar cyberpunk city is supposed to be.

The soundtrack, composed by Tsutomu Ōhashi of Geinoh Yamashirogumi (芸能山城組), is inescapable throughout the film. It’s a bit of a counterbalance to the grim, futuristic visuals, relying heavily on Japanese and Indonesian traditional instrumentation and avant-garde vocals. It focuses more on capturing Akira‘s supernatural side, both in style and in strangeness. The opening track, “Kaneda”, does this while racing full speed into the heart of a towering metropolis.

Review: Pyramids – A Northern Meadow

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Pyramids are four seemingly random Joes from Denton, Texas, who have managed to attract some huge names in the world of music, possibly through their completely ridiculous album covers. Well, maybe not that, but the genre-defying oddity known as Pyramids and their associated acts have shown an uncanny knack for recruiting stars to their projects. Originally signed to Aaron Turner’s (Isis, Old Man Gloom) acclaimed Hydra Head Records, they managed a transition to metal’s newest cutting edge label, Profound Lore, as soon as the former went defunct. Their self-titled debut in 2008 scored Colin Marston (Krallice), Vindsval (Blut Aus Nord), and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu), among others, to contribute to a remix album, while band leader R. Loren’s White Moth and Sailors with Wax Wings projects have featured David Tibet (Current 93), Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot), Jonas Renkse (Katatonia), John Gossard (Weakling), Simon Scott (Slowdive), Hildur Guðnadóttir (múm), and Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride), to name… a few? The 2009 follow-up, a collaborative album with Nadja, featured Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins), and there’s an Ulver remix of it floating around out there. They also lead some cassette tape project with 49 bands I’ve never heard of and This Will Destroy You.

In spite of the absolutely ridiculous, confounding string of names I just threw out, this band remains pretty damn obscure. A Northern Meadow, their first full-length since 2009, may well change all that, with positive reviews on sites like Pitchfork Media ensuring them a moment in the spotlight. Moreover, Colin Marston and Vindsval are active guest musicians this time, with pretty encompassing roles.

track: “In Perfect Stillness, I’ve Only Found Sorrow”

The opening track, “In Perfect Stillness, I’ve Only Found Sorrow”, kicks off with Marston’s quintessential tremolo and Vindsval’s equally iconic drum programming, while R. Loren’s vocals quickly cue us into the fact that this isn’t going to be a straight metal album. Instead, we face a prolonged melancholy that finds its essence in the vocals and never really resolves into anything. This brooding approach carries throughout the album, but as the minutes tick by you can notice a slight sort of development–little hints at a more complex animal below the surface. “The Earth Melts Into Red Gashes Like The Mouths Of Whales” rises out of the plod for thirty seconds of really catchy guitar before dissolving back into bleak noise. “The Substance Of Grief Is Not Imaginary” feels like a Blut Aus Nord song in slow motion, offering all of their accustomed madness with none of the speed or volume, while Loren briefly confounds the mood with a really beautiful but short lived vocal melody. “Indigo Birds” extends the vocal presence, with Loren singing longer with more effects and range. As the song dissolves out into distorted droning and ultimately three minutes of dissonant synth, the album approaches a modest transition in character. The interlude resets the mood, allowing the remainder of the album to take, I think, a slightly more abrasive or confrontational approach.

Track: “I Am So Sorry, Goodbye”

The second half of the album is more distinct, with more drive in the guitar and a faster rate of transition. “I Have Four Sons, All Named For Men We Lost To War” starts off with the most crushing tones on the album, enhanced in their finality by the still slow pace set by Vindsval’s drums. “I Am So Sorry, Goodbye” has a really memorable industrial groove, with some synth tones that invoke for the first time in me a real vision of something… perhaps ancient, a sort of primordial ruin made all the older by Loren’s forlorn, beautiful vocals. Like “Indigo Birds”, the song dissolves out into low-tuned guitar and synth droning, but the feeling is more complete. The substance of the song gives you more to reflect on in the haze of noise that follows.

On “I Am So Sorry, Goodbye” and growing throughout the remainder of the album, Loren’s vocals start to sound subtly reminiscent of Chino Moreno to me–high-pitch meanderings that feel slightly unstable yet always harmonious. It’s an effect he pulls off well, and it makes the album feel rather back-loaded to me. “Consilience” wraps things up with a turn back to the darker side. More chaotic, and with a new touch of pessimism to the vocals, it concludes an already morbid album on a particularly bleak note. Oppressive synth creeps its way in a bit earlier, and a hard stop takes us to fading noise and silence.

A Northern Meadow leaves me with pretty mixed feelings. R. Loren has a clear aural agenda that he sticks to throughout, yet I can’t escape the feeling that the album’s highest points were those most distant from the overarching theme. The beat-down opening of “I Have Four Sons…”, the synth early in “I Am So Sorry, Goodbye”, Marston’s driving 30-second sweep in “The Earth Melts…”, the short-lived vocal burst at the start of “My Father, Tall as Goliath”… I find myself anticipating these finer moments through a lot of the moody grind, rather than just enjoying the ride and taking the highs as they hit me. That grind has a lot of character at times, especially the further into the album I get, but not enough to match the talent Loren was working with here.

I guess I would say that A Northern Meadow is a very unique album, and I love Loren’s dedication to uniting awesome musicians, but I don’t feel very compelled to keep listening to it as the novelty begins to wear off. If its slightly chaotic morbidity strikes a chord with you, you might love it, but if you can’t connect to that feeling it will inevitably grow tedious at times. Marston’s noodling isn’t extensive enough to keep me constantly engaged the way a Krallice album can–a tall order, considering how equally brilliant that band’s other three members are–nor do I think Vindsval’s drum tones hold up in this sort of mono-tempo drag. It doesn’t help that both musicians inevitably play themselves. Like say, Humphrey Bogart or Morgan Freeman, they are so distinctly themselves that you feel like you’re hearing the actors, not the characters they are meant to portray. There is nothing of the instrumental synergy both produce in their main bands. I don’t hear the chemistry of two great musicians working together here. I just hear two great musicians, like some mash-up with Loren mixing vocals and synth into the pot. There may be some truth to that: if I understood Loren’s recent interview with Decibel Magazine correctly, I’m pretty sure Vindsval and Marston had no direct communication while crafting this.

I’m not saying A Northern Meadow is bad. Not at all. But it does leave me wanting something more. I can’t help but wonder what could come out of Loren, Marston, and Vindsval sitting down in a recording studio together, and I suspect it would be something more substantive than this, with a lot more motion and a lot less gloom. But that meeting might be pretty difficult to arrange, and who knows whether they would see eye to eye if Loren had allowed them less freedom to do their own things. I might yet get into this, if I can get over what it isn’t sufficiently to appreciate what it is.

Review: Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I am definitely not a time-honored, faithful fan of Blut Aus Nord. They managed to evade my radar for over 15 years before the 777 trilogy brought them into the broader spotlight. Sect(s) impressed me from the start, but in a twisted, bewildering way that was not necessarily enjoyable. It was a car accident you slowed down to gawk at in spite of your better judgment. It was a disturbing feast of dementia. I did not hop on The Desanctification right away, naively expecting more of the same, and it was only with Cosmosophy that I finally caught on to just how intelligent and creative Blut Aus Nord could be.

I didn’t go back in time and pick up their classics, but I did eagerly await their next album with zero assumptions about where it might go. This seemed like a band that could do anything they set their mind to, and judging by Kristian Wåhlin’s cover art, it would be something fairly distinct from 777.

Blut Aus Nord – Paien, from Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry

What I found was an album that kept a lot of basic elements intact, but, sure enough, sounded nothing like 777‘s cyberpunk journey through a hellspawn-ridden hive mind. Saturnian Poetry feels like much more traditional black metal on the surface, though you will be hard pressed to write it off as such. It takes about five seconds to realize that the blurred tremolo will not be content to loop into any stereotypical black metal monotony. The song jerks upward in a frantic fit, and by the 40 second mark we’re already on to a new rotation. Celestial keyboard “aaahhhs” and a barely sane pattern of motion rip your eyes wide open, and the clean, ethereal vocals at 1:20 tower above as an apathetic higher being uninterested in quelling the chaos beneath it. When the blast beats and constant motion do break, it is never long enough to calm the mood. It is an avant-garde, progressive approach to black metal that I can only compare to Krallice, only where they remain raw and brutal to a fault, Blut Aus Nord mellow out the drumming and keep the eye of a graceful keyboard looming ever above you.

You are being watched as you thrash about into empty space as hard as steel. We don’t know what that eye wants, but we sometimes catch a glimpse of its perspective, as at 5:10, as the beat slows to a plod and the sweeping guitar takes in a vast vision far beyond your natural senses.

Blut Aus Nord – Metaphor of the Moon, from Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry

Blut Aus Nord is a band you can sense beyond the limitations of your ears. That was something that struck me from the first time I ever listened to Epitomes 1 and 2 on Sect(s). Where so many experimental black metal bands aim to invoke a feeling, Blut Aus Nord paint a sensory world. The motion of the guitar is so pronounced that you feel the notes cascading around you. Metaphor of the Moon opens amidst a tornado, everything spiraling downward in a rush of energy that encircles you. Wherever their songs might be headed, I tend to feel trapped within them in body–some twisted wonderland where keyboard and clean vocal spirits gaze upon me and invisible forces and amalgamations of lead guitar swoop all around, discernible only through some super-sense that informs me of their presence without ever forming a solid image.

But if I had to pick a fault in Saturnian Poetry, it would be the overly traditional percussion. Beats carried the day in the 777 trilogy. The band’s experimentation with unconventional drum tones added the final layer needed to complete the unique quasi-physical world of their music. On Saturnian Poetry, the lack of this element serves as an occasional reminder that I am, after all, only listening to a song. “Metaphor of the Moon” is the track that seems to extend beyond my attention span the most, at least to a point. I can latch on to it at just about any moment if I choose to, but it sometimes fails to hold me long without some effort on my part.

Blut Aus Nord – Clarissima Mundi Lumina, from Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry

That being said, these guys are a clear cut above the vast majority of their competition in the black metal scene. It is hard to believe that France, once known for the raw and unadorned acts of Les Légions Noires, could give us three of the most significant post-black bands of our time, but Blut Aus Nord, Peste Noire, and Alcest surely stand as a triumvirate of progression and experimentation in 21st century metal. Saturn Poetry will never top the 777 trilogy in my books, and generic drumming is to blame first and foremost. Yet I’ll not soon forget a closing track like this–the listener sacrificing himself to madness, screaming towards that eye above, catching unintelligible glimpses that only make his violence more desperate. It never ends, never finds resolution, just continues to implode in perpetual waves of self-destruction. I don’t know that the song, or the album as a whole, has any clear passage. There is no apparent journey here or grand enlightenment at the end, though perhaps I ought to find the first two Memoria Vetusta albums before I pass judgment. Either way, Saturnian Poetry is another shattered window into that twisted, imaginative world that only these French masters can conjure. Whether I see in it precisely what the band intended or not, I definitely see something words cannot easily describe.

It’s also worth mentioning the Debemur MoRTi EP released earlier this year. It offers a unique cover of “Bastardiser” by Pitchshifter that I think you will all appreciate.

Review: Blut aus Nord – 777 Sect(s)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Blut aus Nord have released eight albums, and prior to this I’d only heard their last one, Dialogue with the Stars. So shame on me for thinking they were a rather chilled out black metal band with space-themed music and a lead guitarist with progressive rock tendencies. Fans of the band might hear a lot of consistencies in 777 Sect(s), but I could barely tell it was the same group. For better or worse.

Epitome 1

Because if Dialogue with the Stars was a pleasant ride, 777 Sect(s) is a chaotic nightmare. “Painful to listen to” is a description few bands acquire by intent, and bravo to them, I guess, for breaking from that norm. 777 Sect(s) tours some astral wasteland–some distant dimension of post-industrial horror that you’d really rather just avoid but can appreciate all the same. After about five and a half minutes of running for your life, just when you can barely stand any more of it, the music finds a safe haven, a place to reflect on the monster you’ve just engaged. It is remarkably effective, with the outro of the first track giving you time to catch your breath before gazing out from your refuge onto Epitome 2.

Epitome 2

The music describes what you’re looking at better than words can–some vast vulgar hell that marries a cyberpunk scene to an installment of the Doom series. Take what you will from this song. It seems to me like the centerpoint around which the rest of the album is designed–a portrait of the world you’ve briefly escaped from and are doomed to dive back into after seven minutes’ repose.

Epitome 5

777 Sect(s) isn’t like some Hollywood action-horror flick though, packed with distracting eye candy and special effects. It has its highs and lows, its moments of intensity and calm, but nothing is ever pleasant. After the second track you are never again permitted to live in the moment or appreciate the vastness of it all. No, it’s more realistic than a movie. You’re there, and it’s a shitty place to be, so there will be no relief. The feeling of dread never goes away, constantly nagging and distressing you. Blut aus Nord see to it through a series of songs that are not only ugly but sometimes downright annoying. The annoyance though–the repetition of unmelodic nonsense no matter how often the songs beg for coherence–can’t be directed at the band. You know that it’s intentional. You know that you’re not supposed to like it. So it manifests instead as anxiety.

Epitome 6

Even the closing song, the only coherent track besides Epitome 2, isn’t something you can really enjoy. Like track 2, it’s more of a grand view of the hell that surrounds you, but unlike that first look, where the recognition that you were a part of it had not quite sunk in, you’re not going to leave this one feeling good about yourself. The fear and disgust are ever present.

The end result is an album I never want to listen to again. You know, a lot of black metal, especially atmospheric scene-setting stuff, is really enjoyable if you aren’t too stubborn to appreciate the darker side of things. But this album, for me at least, doesn’t tap into the dark and vulgar. It harnesses fear and distress as its focal points, and does so not in real-world settings that anyone with a backbone wouldn’t be startled by, but rather within a nightmare. That’s something I’ve not come to sufficient terms with yet to enjoy. Perhaps what I take from 777 Sect(s) isn’t quite what the band intended, but there’s certainly something there for the taking, and it’s not for the meek.