Tag Archives: metal

Review: Nachtreich/Spectral Lore – The Quivering Lights

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I tend to avoid split albums. A lot of times, it seems to me, you just end up with two bands’ b-sides that they couldn’t justify releasing independently. But after my first glorious encounter last year with Spectral Lore–Greece’s one-man circus of musical awesome complements of Ayloss–I am ready to lick up any and every track he’ll throw at me. Germany’s Nachtreich, on the other hand, are not a band I would probably ever stumble upon without this release. I gather that they aren’t really metal. They have metal tendencies on this album to be sure, but from what I’ve read they fall more into the neoclassical sphere. But even if I wanted to skip over their tracks–and I don’t–you can’t really do that on this album. It is not a product of two bands throwing whatever they feel like into the mix, but rather a pretty well-planned collaboration.

Track: Spectral Lore – Quivering

At 46 minutes, The Quivering Lights certainly carries the content of a full length album. The track order, moreover, intermixes the two artists’ contributions to create a single picture rather than two shorter sides to a story. The album kicks off with Nachtreich performing a pretty piano and string piece that would not feel out of place in a movie soundtrack. The first four minutes of “Lights” invite the listener into a warm, subtle scene appropriate for the album’s cover art, and then a lot of things change. We suddenly find ourselves beneath a wall of heavy distortion and arpeggiated piano, as the violin carries on the opening lament to a slow drum plod. It’s a bit jarring–not necessarily in a good or intended way–and it ends as abruptly as it arrived. A calmer piano carries out into the first Spectral Lore track.

On “Quivering”, the track sampled above, Spectral Lore prove more than adequate to answer Nachtreich’s proficiency at writing soft, moody music for piano and string. This song too moves on into metal, but here you have a much greater sense of what’s coming. Spectral Lore, moreover, kick off the black metal in the same grand form that III had brought to my attention last year. Ayloss’s ability to flow in and out of tremolo and double bass is spectacular. The guitar melody is goddamn beautiful, and the drumming restrains itself to maintain a mood devoid of aggression. The fuzzy, expansive vocal noise Ayloss generates feels totally at one with the atmosphere, fading back into an endless horizon. There is no sense of departure from the original landscape set by “Lights”, but rather a sort of heightened state of awareness in which you see all of the shapes and colors in exquisite detail.

Track: Nachtreich – Ghost Lights

The only downside to “Quivering” is that it so overshadows the metal side of Nachtreich that it makes the latter feel almost laughably simplistic. This effect is forgotten soon enough, as Nachtreich’s second contribution, “Greyness”, gives us a beautiful viola and violin duet without any hint of metal (or piano for that matter). On “Ghost Lights”, Nachtreich return to heavy sounds in more measured steps. Growled vocals appear first, creeping up from beneath a shroud of string and piano. It seemed out of place at first, but the more I listen the more I like it. As with Spectral Lore, Nachtreich’s vocals don’t carry the slightest sense of aggression. But here there is no harmony, either. The feeling is of some fetid taint beneath the surface, darkening the landscape. When “Ghost Lights” finally dawns its distortion, the transition is far more natural and compelling.

“Vanishing”, the next Spectral Lore track, picks up right where “Ghost Lights” ends, continuing the same melody on guitar, but it soon proves to be the longest (mostly) continuous chunk of metal on the album. A good bit darker and more chaotic than “Quivering”, its quality is not as forthcoming, but considering how long III took to grow on me, I am not about to write it off. The final song on the album, “Reflection”, is six minutes of brooding acoustic guitar. It feels to me like a song that ought to lead somewhere, and I was a bit startling to realize the album was over.

All in all, The Quivering Light is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of Spectral Lore. Don’t let the fact that it is a split turn you away, and don’t blow off the Nachtreich songs either. But if you are new to the band, III is still the place to start. I wouldn’t say Nachtreich impressed me enough to seek them out, but another day and another mood I might yet have a go at them. Their 2009 album Sturmgang got pretty positive reviews. The two bands adapt to each other nicely, and if I sometimes get a suspicion in the back of my mind that Spectral Lore vastly outclass Nachtreich, well, the key word is sometimes. The feeling certainly does not permeate the album, and it easily could have given the way these bands aimed to create a single cohesive work. The Quivering Light feels less disjointed than a lot of albums by one band let alone two. I think the opening track, “Lights”, is the weakest link, and the album is a fairly solid ride through to the end once you get over than hump.

The Quivering Lights, by Nachtreich and Spectral Lore, is available on Bandcamp via Bindrune Recordings.

Review: Bosse-de-Nage – All Fours

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Bosse-de-Nage (pronounced something like “Boss De Nazh”) are a four-piece band from San Francisco. They pumped out their first three albums in a span of three years, between 2010 and 2012, and then took their time getting this one together while cultivating a friendship with Deafheaven that lead to a split 12″ and some enhanced name recognition. All Fours was just released via Profound Lore Records last week, and any serious student of extreme music owes it to themselves to check it out. Just when I thought nothing in 2015 could be more stylistically unorthodox than Liturgy’s The Ark Work (ok, that claim probably still stands), Bosse-de-Nage turn up with an album that’s going to leave me scratching my head for a long time to come. What’s so interesting about All Fours is that you can walk away with a totally different impression of what the band is doing depending on your personal musical background.

Track: At Night

The album kicks off in post-metal mode, ebbing and flowing through a brooding, pessimistic mire beneath Bryan Manning’s desperate screams. Two minutes and change in, the song transitions to the sort of pounding fuzz that might call to mind Converge’s “Jane Doe”. As things continue to change, you get the feeling that it’s progressing towards an ever more desperate state. Black metal seems to play a major role in that intensification, with earlier passages reappearing in a more tightly packed onslaught of notes. The ending, for instance, revisits that Jane Doe sound, but the once cymbal-centric drumming is now competing with blast beats. “At Night” is a song in constant flux, and it could have been an erratic mess, but instead it’s strikingly fluid. Bosse-de-Nage manage to keep a thread of accelerating emotions taut throughout the long chain of ideas and influences that comprise it.

The next song, “The Industry of Distance”, sends a similar message. A simple, clean guitar lick repeats over bassy feedback for the better part of two minutes. Drums sneak up into a slow roll to cue distorted drawling guitar chords, and soon the song explodes in one of those beautiful melancholy post-black metal anthems we’ve been growing accustomed to. Instead of lightning quick tremolo and blast beats though, the drum and guitar initially seem to execute at half the frequency while Manning screams in his uniquely heartbroken style. It creates a sort of oscillating effect for an ear expecting black metal, every other note appearing to be missing. This eventually fills out into full speed tremolo and blast beats to complete another build-up through higher stages of emotional breakdown.

That’s my general metal take on All Fours. While a lot of what we’re calling post-black metal today diverges melodically from the genre’s origin, Bosse-de-Nage go further in exploring the techniques that characterize it. The drumming especially diversifies the package. Tremolo guitar and blast beats signify climaxes in a post-metal progression rather than perpetual constants, and a lot of care is given to make the development taking us there feel natural and captivating. Instead of the instant gratification of say, Liturgy or Krallice, Bosse-de-Nage effectively tap that post-rock tradition of “building up” to it.

Track: Washerwoman

That is probably a more accurate approach to understanding this album, because the band is firmly rooted in black metal. Manning at least has stated that he’s never heard of a lot of the other bands Bosse-de-Nage has been compared to lately. But the more this band diverges in technique from black metal, the more they find themselves labeled screamo and post-hardcore. If you’re familiar with that world of music, it’s a pretty fascinating truth. When bands play with the framework of a classic style, the boundaries of genre dissolve. Yes, “Washerwoman” could easily pass as a post-metal/black metal hybrid. Around the two minute mark it begins to sound strikingly similar to Isis. When the song breaks at four, they could be toying with black metal guitar by letting some of the notes ring out–a precursor to the proper bm onslaught that comes at five. But is that what you hear? Or do you hear a song straight off A Dead Sinking Story by Envy, peppered with spoken lines a la Indian Summer? It depends on where you’re coming from.

Envy-worship is actually how my brain interpreted “Washerwoman” on first listen, and I made immediate associations with other screamo acts throughout the album. I am not alone here. In the early reviews I’ve found so far, this album has been compared to Orchid, City of Caterpillar, Heroin, Moss Icon… Almost every track on All Fours feels extremely influenced by screamo. But it is not. It’s the same sort of thing that happened with Neige on Le Secret and Souvenirs d’un autre monde, when the pioneer of “shoegaze black metal” came out that he didn’t have a damn clue what “shoegaze” was.

I first mentioned screamo and black metal in the same sentence when Drudkh released Microcosmos (2009). “Ars Poetica”‘s climax screamed Orchid and The Kodan Armada and a half dozen other names to me as it slid up and down the neck with drum accents to punch it home, introduced by that classic clean guitar over tense, snare-centric drumming. Deafheaven’s Roads to Judah (2011) resurrected the idea, and Portals to a Better, Dead World (2013) by Cara Neir ultimately sealed it, making black metal screamo crossovers a certain reality. But was there any actual direct influence in any of these cases?

I used to think there was, and I know that Liturgy at least has a post-hardcore background, but any of these bands might have landed on their sounds totally independently. All Fours really sends that message home to me. It’s a window into natural affinities between genres. When Bosse-de-Nage break down the components of black metal into longer, more ringing tones while maintaining that post-bm sense of desperation, they are essentially playing screamo, and the way they seamlessly fuse it back into black metal instrumentation uniquely highlights the similarity. They’re playing post-black metal by definition, but in their approach the two styles are totally indistinguishable save through the cultures surrounding them. When a band can give me a new perspective on an entire genre of music, hey, that’s pretty cool.

Track: The Most Modern Staircase

Of All Four‘s seven proper songs, I am sold on all but “In a Yard Somewhere”. Each builds its way through catchy melodies and interesting stylistic digressions to a convincing emotional climax, and they do it differently from what I have heard before. That it is unique is obvious by the fact that so many people are tossing around band names from way outside of the box in an effort to define it. But there is one other hidden gem in Bosse-de-Nage that stands them apart from the crowd: the lyrics. Bryan Manning has an impeccable flare for the grotesque. From facepalm punchlines about poop and hookers, to really disturbing tales of insanity, to poems that make no discernible sense whatsoever yet pretend to hide some esoteric truth, nearly everything he writes is a ride in itself, independent from the music. Their previous album, III, defies any attempt I could make to describe it, and you should really just go read it all right now. Whether he’s meditatively contemplating a contortionist entering a box or explaining why turning yourself into a human tree was a bad idea, the wording is totally surreal.

The lyrics on All Fours are a little more difficult to decipher, because the stylized sleeve included with the album, for all its artistic appeal, is kind of hard to read. You lose focus trying to dig through it. But The Most Modern Staircase struck me most when I first skimmed over them, and knowing what he’s screaming (not the sort of emo laments his tone of voice might suggest) really enhances the music for me:

I traveled to the province of staircases. The great variety of balusters, railings, finials, and steps filled me with awe. Many looked welcoming, while others were intentionally obscured or blocked up, and some were decorated with vibrant warnings to anyone who might ascend. I found the most modern-looking staircase and climbed. After a while, I stopped on a landing to rest. This extraordinary landing was home to dozens of living statues–obsequious stone gods begging for spare hands. As I explored, a loud commotion with historic consequences occurred somewhere behind me. When I looked back, there was a curtain drawn around the event. I turned to the statues for answers, but they remained inert and silent, their jagged stumps eager for relief.

All Fours: another formidable stalwart in a year that’s been crammed with way more stellar releases than normal. Pick up a copy on Profound Lore Records.

Review: Sumac – The Deal

Posted on by necromoonyeti

The funny thing about Isis is that their legendary status among metal bands has only escalated since the break-up in 2010. Mainstream rock artists sport their t-shirts, Wikipedia editors irrationally credit them as the founders of post-metal, and pessimists grasp at straws to sling negative criticism. They went out at the top of their game, and the fact is you will never hear a mediocre Isis album. They quit before that could become a possibility. The downside is that everything frontman Aaron Turner has contributed to since unfairly finds itself treated by the media as a sort of side project.

Maybe Old Man Gloom avoided that fate. The success in 2014 of The Ape of God (and its sister album, The Ape of God) finally got people to start talking about them as a proper band, not just another project involving “that Isis guy”. Sumac will have a harder time escaping the persona, because it is essentially a two man project between Turner and Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn. (Brian Cook of Russian Circles and These Arms are Snakes provides the bass as a “session member” and probably did not contribute to the actual song writing.) But regarding Old Man Gloom or Sumac as secondary projects implies a primary one. Isis is dead, and Aaron Turner most certainly isn’t. Sumac deserves to be taken seriously.

Besides, if The Deal is any indication, Turner is still well within his prime. This album is, for me at least, the best thing I’ve heard him contribute to since Wavering Radiant, and his style merges perfectly with Yacyshyn’s highly acclaimed drumming. I want more. I want The Deal to be the first entry in a long and productive discography that puts Sumac on the map permanently as an outstanding musical collaboration.

song: Thorn in the Lion’s Paw

The biggest negative comment I’ve heard about The Deal is that it sounds bland on first listen. While I never personally felt that way, it might be worth asking “what Isis album didn’t?” Old Man Gloom have written some pretty explosive material, but if you’re familiar with Turner at all you should be prepared to dedicate multiple listens for the album to grow on you. My initial impression of The Deal was of something blissfully even-keel. It generated that feeling of perpetual flowing motion that I always got off Isis albums, and for that it amassed way more plays than The Ape of God ever managed before I even got around to giving it close attention.

The “if Isis were really heavy” interpretation of Sumac definitely holds up over time, but what grows on me most is Nick Yacyshyn. If you take, for instance, the passage from 4:00 to 6:00 in “Thorn in the Lion’s Paw”, Turner’s sequence of brief repeated phrases could definitely border on bland were they the complete picture. They were never meant to be; he found a drummer in Yacyshyn who could plug the void with a really imaginative progression. In managing to somehow feel modest even when erupting into blast beats at the end, Yacyshyn lets you enjoy the build-up without being swept away by the intensity. It’s a tall order for music this extreme. It’s easy to forget how mellow Isis was in comparison until you go back and listen. The next track, “Hollow King”, focuses on Yacyshyn throughout, centered around a 3 minute drum solo over drone guitar that goes wild on the toms in a manner reminiscent of Atsuo Mizuno from Boris (speaking of post-metal legends).

song: The Deal

“Blight’s End Angel” has garnered the most attention, with its rewarding 10-minute progression that feels perhaps the most classically “post-metal” of any track on the album, but it’s the title track that stands out to me most, for better or worse. Throughout The Deal we hear Turner playing around with some mathy licks, enough to make me wonder if he’s been listening to a lot of Converge lately. “The Deal” brings this out more than most, along with maybe a touch of Mastodon and a pretty groovy if short-lived stoner metal beat down at 3:30. Nearly 14 minutes long, the song never really develops so much as it devolves, ending with an even slower tempo than its initial stretched-out plod. But its lack of speed, coupled with intermittent breaks into undistorted, mostly drumless transition passages, all serve to emphasize the real crunch and intensity of Turner’s guitar tones on this album. Compartmentalized into distinct movements rather than smoothly progressing, it really lacks the rest of the album’s flow. That does not really help its case, yet I do really like Turner’s math/prog tendencies in small doses, and the track makes sense in context. The break from the album’s smooth sailing isn’t an accident; it’s an end. The only remaining song, “The Radiance of Being”, is a rather pretty, minimalistic outro.

Over all, The Deal is pretty solid. The first 35 minutes drift along with a surprisingly pleasant vibe, given the levels of distortion and intensity. The title track is a bit harder to swallow, but its seeming lack of cohesion took a while to actually rub me wrong; it sounded just as good at first, but wore out faster than the songs before it. That’s easy to forgive. Of the post-Isis Aaron Turner projects I’ve heard, Sumac is easily the most appealing to my personal tastes. He and Yacyshyn make an outstanding team, and I would love to see them commit to a long-term partnership that builds off this album.

Pick up a copy of The Deal by Sumac on Profound Lore Records.

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.

My Top 10 Metal Albums of 2014

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I don’t think a New Years rolls by that I don’t say something amounting to “odd-numbered years produce better music”. The trend inexplicably holds true once again. I actually listened to a good bit of new music this year–far more than I did last year at least–but when it came time to recap, my options felt… a bit lacking. The best of the best are still grand indeed, but the quality drifts away rapidly if I dig beyond a top 10. I’m pretty happy with the list I ended up with though, and I hope you’ll find something new and inspiring in the tracks I’ve sampled below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco5QNfpbIw

10. Agalloch – The Serpent & the Sphere (track: The Astral Dialogue)

Marrow of the Spirit was a pretty bold divorce from everything we’ve come to expect out of Agalloch over the years, for better or worse. On The Serpent & the Sphere, the band make a return to a more direct evolution of their regular sound. The album offers a nice mix of vintage Agalloch and further dabblings into the post-rock/metal sphere. It didn’t grab me by the balls and thrash me upside the head like say, Pale Folklore or Ashes Against the Grain, but it’s definitely a solid entry in the band’s formidable discography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqevYzJrhks

9. Cormorant – Earth Diver (track: Daughter of Void)

I was a bit more critical than complementary of Earth Diver when I reviewed it a few months ago, but that mostly boiled down to the feeling that it could have done with better production. Honestly, if I don’t own the cd proper I have no business speaking of such things, because for all I know my copy is just a bit lossy. The raw songwriting on this album is stellar, and I hope to hear more out of this band in years to come.

8. Bast – Spectres (track: Outside the Circles of Time)

I am not sure where Spectres would have placed on my year-end list had I had a bit more time to listen to it, but it could only have moved up from here. I’ve only had about two weeks to check this out and make a call, but I was dead convinced that it belonged somewhere in my top 10. The freshman album by this dirty doom trio does it all, and better than your band. With ease they develop a post-rock build-up into a bassy doom dirge, bust into a stoner metal rockout, and then fuse it into some pretty sinister black metal sounds. When black metal leaks its way into headbanging rock, really awesome things happen. Case in point: “Outside the Circles of Time”.

7. Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry (track: Clarissima Mundi Lumina)

A bit more down to whatever planet these guys hail from than the 777 trilogy, Saturnian Poetry is still a bizarre journey into another dimension that only Blut Aus Nord can seem to access. Its constant whirlwind of motion blasts us into a haze of celestial chaos, wherein the band’s synth chords and clean vocals command us to stare in awe and reverence. Few black metal bands on the market can claim to have forged as unique a sound within the genre as Blut Aus Nord, and they’re still breaking my brain in 2014.

6. Saor – Aura (track: The Awakening)

I tend to think of Aura as a straight-forward album that serves its purpose beautifully. Top-notch woodwinds and string paint a majestic Scottish landscape where the old gods still tread in all their glory, at one with the earth and its people. Without ever really breaching any new territory beyond the tried and true boundaries of pagan metal, Andy Marshall has managed to craft what is probably the most grand Gaelic/Celtic variant of the genre I have ever heard.

5. Boris – Noise (track: Melody)

I fucking love Boris. You know that. They could literally shit on an LP and I’d claim it shear brilliance. But thankfully, they keep pumping out one masterpiece after another instead. Noise is so layered in the band’s two decades of perpetual evolution that I don’t think you could begin to grasp what the hell is going on here if you didn’t already know half their discography by heart. It’s a little bit of everything they’ve done before all crammed together in yet another novel new way. No other band in existence sounds anything like this, and at the same time few bands have borrowed more liberally and diversely from other musical scenes than the bastion of badass that is Boris. Boris Boris. Boris! God damn, this is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePHvl9vFmeo

4. Woods of Desolation – As the Stars (track: Unfold)

As the Stars is 2014’s Aesthethica, albeit of more modest proportions. If the obscure Welshman known simply as “D.” could append to his public image anything approaching the epic douchiness of Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, it might even be popular. (Ok, I’m one of the few people who’ve actually read Hunter’s writings and think he makes some valid points, but whatever.) This album is a bloody mess in the least figurative of ways, and it’s exactly the sort of raw sincerity that I love about post-black metal. In a new scene that divorces black metal’s brink-of-the-abyss soundscape from its machismo closet-bound harbingers, the bands that play with their hearts on their sleeves tend to touch closest to home. As the Stars offers neither the epic intensity of Liturgy nor the refined sound quality of Deafheaven, and the metal world is sure to forget it in time, but my brief love affair with Woods of Desolation will be remembered fondly. Its humble reach is part of what makes it endearing.

3. Harakiri for the Sky – Aokigihara (track: Jhator)

I hold my top three choices for 2014 in a league far above the rest. Aokigihara is an absolutely enormous bastion of sound that presses the weight of its world on your shoulders from start to finish. And that world is heavy indeed, because it is firmly rooted in reality. Harakiri for the Sky doesn’t play that tried and true metal game of glorifying violence. It shoves some real modern nightmares in your face and says “this is really, really terrible, and there’s nothing we can honestly do about it.” I can see this album attracting a “DSBM” label, which is typically shorthand for “wallowing in self pity”, but Aokigihara is the real deal. If it doesn’t leave you feeling a little sick inside, you aren’t paying enough attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7gOluNjyrs

2. Spectral Lore – III (track: The Cold March Towards Eternal Brightness)

At more than a dozen listens through this album, I am still not sure what to make of it. 87 minutes of music crammed into seven tracks is pretty hard to swallow, and to make matters worse, the first two tracks are its weakest by far. I find it next to impossible to commit myself to a full attentive listen from start to finish, and it’s not an album that offers much on the surface. Yet, I can’t escape the feeling that something really special is going on here. My mind may drift away for three or four minutes at a pop, but I am always drawn back into some beautiful synergy that dances on the brink of euphoria. 2014 might be at an end, but I haven’t finished listening to III by a long shot. I am going to keep plugging away until I’ve got it fully within my grasp, and when I do I think I might regret passing it by for the #1 spot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDswlTV0Vhg

1. Panopticon – Roads to the North (track: The Long Road Part 3: The Sigh of Summer)

The first time I heard Roads to the North, I was routing a rather lossy early leak through my Droid into the particularly horrendous sound system of my wife’s Mazda 6. (My 2006ish Nissan Sentra has godlike audio and the car was half the price. What’s up with that?) I definitely did not think on that initial listen that it would end up my favorite album of the year. With a properly purchased copy through my headphones, it’s easy to tell why an album as subtly mixed as this would translate to crap when pushed through crap. I am absolutely captivated by the melding of sounds on this album. It’s simply beautiful, and you couldn’t ask for a more conscientious artist to craft its folk, post-rock, black metal, and melodic death metal melodies than Austin Lunn. The lyrical and thematic content of Kentucky showed him to be one of the most honest musicians in the metal scene. On Roads to the North, he translated the spirit of Kentucky into sound. Kentucky is the album I think about. This is the one I actually listen to, over and over and over again.

Happy New Year!

Review: Agalloch – The Serpent & the Sphere

Posted on by necromoonyeti

If someone asked me what the most significant metal band of the past decade was, I am not entirely sure which name I would ultimately drop, but the elite circle of finalists would definitely include Agalloch. Pale Folklore (1999) and The Mantle (2002) pretty much defined America’s brand of folk metal, influencing countless bands to come as that global musical movement picked up steam. Ashes Against the Grain (2006) gave us one of the earliest incarnations of post-black metal on record. It might not sound much like what that term conjures to mind today, but in its day it was monumental, and time has not lessened the epic weight of tracks like “Limbs”.

But then there was Marrow of the Spirit (2010). This album was ugly. I can’t think of any better word for it. I won’t go so far as to say it was bad, but it was sufficiently displeasing to my senses that I never engaged it long enough to responsibly draw that conclusion. I didn’t want to listen to it, and it left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t really want to listen to The Serpent & the Sphere either.

Agalloch – Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation, from The Serpent & the Sphere

But I did listen to The Serpent & the Sphere. I listened to it quite a lot, actually, in the background as I worked or played games. It was pushing a dozen on my last.fm charts before I got to thinking “Hey, I ought to give that new Agalloch album a spin and review it.” Wait, have I heard this before? “Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation” had been lulling me into such a passive state that I must have forgotten I was listening to anything at all by the time its ten minutes ran their course.

It’s the antithesis to Marrow of the Spirit‘s “Into the Painted Grey”, in a way. Where that track summoned in me the instant urge to rip my headset off my ears and put on something else, “Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation” dug its way into the back of my skull and set its roots where I would barely notice them. It didn’t just get tuned out; it etched itself in my subconscious. And it’s no wonder. On my first really attentive play through, with the volume blaring, I find the track completely enthralling. It’s a brooding neofolk masterpiece best experienced without anticipation. If you listen wondering where it might lead, you are bound to grow impatient. If you just embrace it in the moment and let it consume you, you’re in for a treat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco5QNfpbIw

Agalloch – The Astral Dialogue, from The Serpent & the Sphere

The next track, “Serpens Caput”, is a gorgeous and rather brief acoustic instrumental, and then “The Astral Dialogue” kicks off like Pale Folklore was just released a year ago. The many inattentive listens before had engrained the melody in my mind without my knowing, and the familiarity was so strikingly similar to their 1999 debut that I found myself shocked to realize I had only first heard the song a few months ago. A dubious avant-garde interlude at 3:14 aside, “The Astral Dialogue” is old school Agalloch to a T. At least, I should say, the composition is. The feel is a bit different. Where Pale Folklore was as crisp as a cold winter sunrise, The Serpent & the Sphere has a much fuller sound. (Youtube, as usual, can’t hope to capture it all.)

The Serpent & the Sphere feels a bit frontloaded, with the opening 20 minutes being the most compelling, but “Dark Matter Gods” and “Celestial Effigy” carry on the Pale Folklore mid-tempo folk metal tradition. “Cor Serpentis” offers another fabulous acoustic interlude track much like “Serpens Caput”. I think the album loses steam a bit on “Vales Beyond Dimension”. We get a catchy hook at the beginning and near the end, but the plod in between feels a bit contrived.

Agalloch – Plateau of the Ages, from The Serpent & the Sphere

“Plateau of the Ages”, the final track before a brief acoustic outro, more than makes up for any second thoughts about “Vales Beyond Dimension”. It kicks along in the Pale Folklore tradition we are by now thoroughly reacquainted with until 4:20, when we hit a wall of post-rock. It switches back after a two minute taste of things to come, and we get the real grand post-rock exit from 9:30 to the end. It might not be the most breathtaking use of the genre that you have ever heard, but I love the way Agalloch take it and make it their own, masterfully fusing it to the sound that has defined them for years.

I have actually read a lot of comments suggesting that Agalloch lost their touch on The Serpent & the Sphere. It’s hard for me to see any grounds for that. I suppose it is not much like Ashes Against the Grain really, and not at all like Marrow of the Spirit, but I don’t regard those albums as Agalloch at their best. Ashes might have been their most significant work, but my heart was always for Pale Folklore. The Serpent & the Sphere feels like that album, more than anything they’ve released since it. Oh, it might not be quite as catchy, and it’s certainly not as raw or black metal infused, but it’s a pleasant blast back to the Agalloch I loved most.

RIP Dave Brockie, 1963-2014

Posted on by necromoonyeti

One of the greatest minds in music passed away yesterday at the tragically early age of 50. You’ve probably never heard of David Brockie, but I bet you have at least seen a few images or video clips of him on stage as Oderus Urungus, the well-endowed Scumdogian leader of GWAR. Beyond masterminding the band’s famous in-your-face stage antics, Brockie managed to infuse America’s most politically incorrect band with some incredibly clever lyrics and a sardonic whit that seemed to criticize the real atrocities in this world even while pretending to glorify them.

Here is a look at the more human side of the late, great David Brockie. You will always be my favorite live musician, and you’ve taken us beyond hell! I hope you can rest more peacefully now.

My Top 10 Metal Albums of 2013

Posted on by necromoonyeti

It’s that time again. In spite of 2013 being pretty much the worst year of my life, I found it a lot easier to select a top 10 list than in 2012. Odd-numbered years almost always seem to produce a wider selection of good music, and I can confidently state that each of these at least border on excellence. Here goes:

10. Ihsahn – Das Seelenbrechen (track: Regen)

There was never a bad Emperor album. Ihsahn’s solo career hasn’t been quite as consistent. The Adversary was an outstanding start, but I barely noticed angL. After was a blast, Eremita something of a bore. Well, what do you know; the cycle continues, and Das Seelenbrechen is outstanding. Eremita seemed all about rhythmic grooves and eclectic interludes, neither of which painted a grand picture for me to take hold of. Das Seelenbrechen, without reducing any of the progressive rock peculiarities for which Ihsahn is famous, reinvests its tension in song structure and the subtler stuff of atmospheric appeal. At times it delves heavily into the world of drone metal, with Tobias Ørnes Andersen pulling off his best Atsuo impression and Ihsahn showing that his unique vocals are pretty well suited for the genre as they stand. The most impressive track on the album might be “Pulse”, if only for the fact that Ihsahn was able to stray so far from his comfort zone and still pull off an excellent song, but my personal favorite has to be “Regen”.

9. Ash Borer – Bloodlands (track: Oblivion’s Spring)

I missed out on Ash Borer’s acclaimed 2011 debut and the 2012 full-length to follow, but the Bloodlands “EP” (it’s still 35 minutes long) found itself well embedded in my subconscious this year. Like many of my selections, I never really sat down and gave it my undivided attention from start to finish. It was a busy year, and most of my albums were experienced as background music rather than a main event. I was kind of surprised to find just how many times I’d listened to this album throughout the year. It was never really on my radar, but I kept playing it time and time again. A twisted, bleak, highly atmospheric recording, Bloodlands successfully captures a traditional black metal vibe that is neither overly passionate nor distractingly aggressive. It’s a pleasant break from the otherwise welcome trend towards a less sinister, more humanizing approach to the genre.

8. Westering – Joy (track: This Will Quiet Us)

Joy is definitely the weirdest album I’ve heard this year that actually worked. Bryan Thomas’s second release as Westering is a cracked window peering into folk, industrial, and maybe even 80s pop scenes, sensible to melodic appeal yet firmly rooted in black metal tradition. To label it another “shoegaze black metal” album would hardly do it justice; the warbling walls of distortion don’t angelicize the metal, but rather demonize the more direct pop elements, creating a final product basked in darkness yet awkwardly catchy and familiar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6dRnT4Bj8

7.Ensemble Pearl – Ensemble Pearl (track: Island Epiphany)

It’s sad that this album has gone almost completely unnoticed in 2013. It’s sad that people regard it as another Boris album, or as “Boris and Sunn O))) Part 2”. Because, while it shares much in common with Altar, the cast is quite different and the end product surprisingly even better than its predecessor. While Atsuo Mizuno and Stephen O’Malley reunite, Takeshi and Wata are out, as well as Greg Anderson. Michio Kurihara steps up to the plate along with a fellow I’ve never head of–Bill Herzog–to complete the lineup. The sound these four have managed to assemble is flawless. Smooth as glass and black as night, Ensemble Pearl is a compelling example of music’s capacity to paint a scene more vivid than sight can ever offer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcimCb52O9w

6. Paysage d’Hiver – Das Tor (track: Macht des Schicksals)

Like Ash Borer, Paysage d’Hiver provided ideal background music for me throughout the year. With a similar appreciation for late 90s/early 2000s atmospheric black metal aesthetics, Das Tor presents a significantly noisier, more trance-inducing break from current metal trends. I fell in love with this album’s capacity for endless repetition as the backdrop for work, reading, and just about any other activity that requires concentration. This particular style of black metal has always really zoned me in and helped me to focus, and Paysage d’Hiver’s take on it is substantially better than most.

5. Mechina – Empyrean (track: Anathema)

Fear Factory’s 1998 opus, Obsolete, was the last industrial death metal album to really blow me away. A lot of bands go there, but few, at least in my experience, are willing to fully nerd out into uncompromised sci-fi fantasy. There is something about the death metal mentality that inclines most bands to play with their nuts out, and it rarely works in their favor. Mechina don’t fall for that. They have no qualms whatsoever about employing clean vocals, dramatic symphonics, and operatic hymns to serve their end. Empyrean paints a lush vision of a futuristic world of technology and galactic combat on the brink of apocalypse. Really stellar stuff. … ha..ha… hmm…

4. Summoning – Old Mornings Dawn (track: Old Mornings Dawn)

It took Summoning seven years to release a new album. I would not be surprised if they were hard at work on it that whole time. Not quite as perfect as Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame, Old Morning Dawn is nevertheless an instant essential within the Summoning discography, never wavering an inch from the solid sound they forged a decade ago. I can’t think of too many albums I’ve anticipated for this long that didn’t let me down (Falkenbach’s Tiurida in 2011 might be the most recent exception), and for that, coming from one of my favorite bands ever, Old Mornings Dawn easily slides in towards the top of my chart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHrKDcRadg

3. Cara Neir – Portals to a Better, Dead World (track: Peridot)

I remember when I was first getting into black metal and a friend of mine was doing the same with screamo. They seemed like two incommensurable paths at the time. We’d trade the best of what we found, and I love a lot of screamo because of it, but that was his genre and this was mine. There just wasn’t all that much in common between Carpathian Forest and City of Caterpillar.

Times have changed, and much for the better. I’ve tossed around “screamo” and “black metal” in the same sentence before (Roads to Judah), but this is certainly the most raw realization of the two as one that I have heard so far. Portals to a Better, Dead World is another fine product of a new era of metal artists informed beyond their flagship genre. It might not achieve the fame of Deafheaven’s Sunbather, but the two go hand in hand.

2. Deafheaven- Sunbather (track: Dream House)

And that brings us to the most hyped metal album of 2013. Sunbather turned more heads than Roads to Judah, and certainly more than Liturgy’s Aesthethica or Krallice’s Diotima back in 2011. But while the mainstream world regrettably failed to recognize that year as the grand coalescence of heavy metal’s mid-2000s paradigm shift, on Sunbather we reap its fruits. This album is not the novelty many would like to make of it; it is an affirmation of things already come to pass, and a glorious one at that. Music seems to come in sequences of waves, the reluctant undertow of their predecessors slowly dissipating beneath the growing weight of those rushing to shore. Sunbather basks in a new era of aesthetics and ingenuity first dreamed by the likes of Ulver, pressed into form by Agalloch and Alcest, and finally swept into the mainstream three years ago. Love it while it lasts, and amuse yourself with the die-hards that will rip this to shreds rather than embrace it.

1. Peste Noire – Peste Noire

And then there was one. I proclaimed Peste Noire the best album of 2013 about an hour after it leaked back in June, and nothing since has come even close to shaking that resolve. I’ve been doing a “top 10 album” list now every year since 2002, and Peste Noire is the only band to ever take the #1 spot twice, but never mind that. Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor has absolutely nothing on what you will experience here. Let’s try “top 10 metal albums ever recorded”. I have never heard anything quite this clever, filthy, intelligent, and depraved in my life. Famine’s “black ‘n’ roll” sound has never been better, and Peste Noire can rightly be regarded as the refinement of all of the finest features of his past four albums rolled out into one.

The album is heavily enhanced by Famine’s new willingness to tell us what it’s all about. Up through the release of L’Ordure à l’état Pur in 2011, it was anyone’s guess what Famine’s peculiar album antics were all about. He was completely inaccessible as an individual, and his lyrics have always been in French. The man behind the music has since emerged full-formed as an internet personality, conducting interviews, approving lyric translations, and responding to forum inquiries in surprisingly fluent English. He’s revealed himself as an extremely culturally and musically informed character with a sardonic sense of humor that seems to abate the more offensive features of his image, and he completely reformed my view on L’Ordure à l’état Pur–an album I’d initially disregarded, but have since grown to love.

I tried to give Peste Noire a fair review over the summer, but I couldn’t quite do it justice. This article does. Skip to 20 minutes in the above video if you care to hear my favorite track on the album: “Niquez Vos Villes”.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

Horror Music

Posted on by necromoonyeti

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFSDR1iJrZ4

I suppose if I asked most people what music they identified with horror, John Carpenter’s “Halloween Theme” and Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (The Exorcist) would come up first. After that, you’d get a lot of Rob Zombie and Glenn Danzig. So right off the bat, you’re looking at an enormous variety of sounds and styles connected mainly by association. While John Carpenter’s work was intentionally composed for the film in which it appeared, “Tubular Bells” was originally a 50 minute progressive rock opus that was anything but sinister or foreboding in its full form. Misfits was a goth punk band that happened to favor horror themes. White Zombie’s horror imagery was more a matter of crudeness and vulgarity in the spirit of GWAR; their sound was a frontrunner in the emergence of industrial groove metal, and the greatest “horror” associated with Rob was the countless terrible nu metal spinoffs. A couple of “top ten horror songs” lists I stumbled upon even list Bobby Boris Pickett’s “Monster Mash” and Richard O’Brien’s “Time Warp”. I mean, “Monster Mash” is a fun Halloween song, sure, but horror? Really? And the Rocky Horror Picture Show does make me want to vomit, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Suffice to say, “horror” music is not a genre at all. Simply associating a song with a scene or theme is enough to relate them; Huey Lewis and the News will probably make me smile and think of Christian Bale chopping people to bits in his apartment for the rest of my life. But there are definitely certain musical attributes that conjure in us a less glitzy feeling of dread than Hellbilly Deluxe. That skittering cockroach beat in the background of Halloween is completely unnerving; Carnival music is way creepier than Stephen King’s It; Black Sabbath’s appreciation for diabolus in musica virtually invented heavy metal; and it took a firm dose of the blues in 1988 for Danzig to capture a sense of the sinister that Misfits could never convey.

I don’t believe that any particular musical formula is the coalescence of evil. The music we find most haunting is derived from association too, but it connects in more subtle ways than say, the fact that a particular song appears in a horror film or mentions witches in the chorus. The real deal distorts what comforts us, denies our sense of order, and pries upon our innocence. Through a musical medium as through any other, horror focuses on shattering the lens through which we perceive reality as an ordered, logical construct. It reminds us of the real nightmares in life while nullifying our means to counteract them. It takes us to the world of the child, where emotional extremes enhance our senses of comfort and terror alike.

The carnival tune and music box are prime targets, conjuring in our minds a time when fear was more potent. The brief piano loop, the simple hum, the monotone drone–these bring us to solitude and isolation through minimalism. Effective horror themes offer no comforting symphony or rock ensemble to encase us in a nuanced world. They surround us with something singular and far from warm, or with nothing at all. The wind chimes warn of a storm; when none is coming, the darkness is all the more unnatural. The cathedral bell, a sign of fellowship on a Sunday morning, also tolls for death. A twitch, a buzz, a repeated knocking, a bit of static–things that would otherwise annoy us–exploit the close connection between discomfort and tension.

Or else we can completely overwhelm the senses with noise that strips away the familiarity which typically diminishes extreme music’s effect, leaving us a nervous wreck. When Blut Aus Nord chose to employ programmed, industrial blast beats in their 777 trilogy, they effectively eliminated the one element of the music that would have sounded too familiar to disturb. Instead, the epileptic guitar finds companionship in a persistent, unnatural clatter designed to place us permanently on edge.

Other bands have found other means to the same end. Peste Noire’s unique “black ‘n’ roll” sound enlivens a standard formula for “evil” music with a pep and a grin, giving the brutalizer a human face in the spirit of medieval sadism. Sunn O))) are inclined to drone on for ages, developing a false sense of comfort before infusing their deep buzz with a caterwaul of shrill pitches and clattering chimes. (I actually had a guy start freaking out on me at work one day when “Cry For The Weeper”, which he didn’t even notice playing, hit the 3:55 mark.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTsj5Bz2hPY

And lastly, we can’t forget the power of lyrics to render a song gruesome. The stereotypical lines of a black metal song–nonsense about necromoonyetis and an appeal to Satanism far less disturbing than the average Christian commentator on Fox News–are pure cheese, and they entertain us in a manner similar to your typical zombie flick. But when you first heard Smashing Pumpkin’s “x.y.u.”, you probably got a feeling more akin to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Horror in lyrics is something a bit the opposite of horror in sound; it strikes us most deeply when we can be convinced that there is absolutely nothing supernatural about it. There are certainly a few exceptions–Townes Van Zandt’s tall tale in “Our Mother the Mountain” chills me to the bone–but generally speaking, the real atrocities committed throughout human history far exceed the limits of our imaginations. Vlad Tepes was worse than any vampire, and from Elizabeth Bathory and Ariel Castro to Hernando Cortes and Adolf Hitler, we are flooded by examples of direct personal cruelty and dehumanized mass slaughter. When a song manages to make us think of these individuals and events beyond the safety blanket of historical narrative, an authentic feeling or horror is hard to deny.

Ten Years #28: Týr

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Decade of last.fm scrobbling countdown:
28. Týr (1,101 plays)
Top track (75 plays): Hail to the Hammer, from various albums
Featured track: Regin Smiður, from Eric the Red (2003)

Viking metal, pagan metal, folk metal, call it what you will–it’s pretty impressive that Týr have managed to capture an extraordinary vision of the Norse past with absolutely no traditional instrumentation or synth choruses to speak of save the human voice. Since their second album, Eric the Red, Týr have revolved around Heri Joensen’s breathtaking vocals. Their unique brand of progressive rock instrumentation is heavy enough to blast out your stereo and yet entirely subservient to the driving vocal anthems. I would be very interested to gain a better understanding of where Joensen’s dedication to tradition gives way to his unique creativity as one of the most innovative musicians making music today–of the extent to which his vocals are derived from Faroese tradition. With an educational background in both vocals and Indo-European linguistics, he probably has a better idea than most of how traditional Germanic and Norse singing must have sounded, and I feel a sense of solidarity between the band and other students of folk vocalization such as Latvia’s Skyforger. At the same time, I gather that Norse musical tradition is a far more elusive beast than its eastern counterparts.

As a modern band, Týr seem to me the most central act of the whole “viking metal” scene. The term is a bit of a ruse, in so far as it lacks both the stylistic conformity of most genre labels and the acknowledged generality of catch-alls like “folk metal”. Whether a band might garner the label depends upon so many nuance factors that it is much easier to agree upon which acts ought to receive it than to discuss why. Attempts to properly define it are few and far between. The Wikipedia article on “viking metal”, for instance, is largely substantiated by a thesis on folk metal submitted by Aaron Patrick Mulvany in 2000. That is only 12 years removed from Bathory’s Blood Fire Death–now a quarter of a century behind us–and two years prior to one of the most significant bands of the “genre”‘s debut. With the utmost respect for anyone who acknowledges folk metal as a legitimate subject for scholarship (I’m looking forward to reading Mulvany’s thesis, available online, over the next few days), I would ascribe to him the gift of prophecy were it not hopelessly dated. But while I would say that Bathory was fundamentally black metal, Amon Amarth death metal at their core, Falkenbach hopelessly under-appreciated, and Thyrfing given to fantasy, the inherent catch-all-ism of progressive metal (not the Dream Theater worship standardized derivative) lends to Týr a sense of authentic originality. As a metal act they do their own thing, and that makes their tradition-influenced vocals and lyrics emerge with no strings attached.

Týr’s music is neither too confrontational nor too fanciful to be generally accessible. They are, in the very least, the first band I would recommend to an inexperienced listener who asked me what specifically Norse-derived folk metal sounded like. Their sound bleeds an authentic scholarly interest in Norse culture and plugs the myriad gaps with progressive rock that is both down to earth and impressively original. You’ll find no fallback to Tolkien here (album cover aside), and no hell-raising or Transylvanian hunger either; it’s something a bit more Apollonian, and exciting all the same. If I could pick any one artist to spend an evening in a pub with, Heri Joensen may very well top my list.