Six albums into their career, SUMAC stretch the limits of what Metal can be with The Healer (Thrill Jockey Records) — a four-song, 76-minute double album of fluid, evolving, at times seemingly freeform Jazz Metal that requires some patience, but impresses with its expressiveness and creativity. Continue reading
So, we have got to sit down and talk about how subgenre crazy the extreme metal world has become. It seems like with every week that goes by another fresh batch of new “subgenres” enter the metal lexicon. You see Deafheaven can’t be filed under Black Metal because they’re really a Post Existential Crisis Alternative Shoegaze Latte outfit. Ice Nine Kills’ early stuff was metalcore, but nowadays they’ve drifted over to Slasher Showtunes. I wish good luck to whoever has to classify whatever Pyrithe’s Monuments to Impermanence (Gilead Media).
Following the news that former Entombed and current Entombed AD vocalist Lars-Goran Petrov was diagnosed with incurable cancer, Converge announced they would be donating 100% of the earnings from their 2013 guest-filled Entombed covers EP to Petrov’s GoFundMe. The EP includes five covers of Entombed’s “Wolverine Blues” with a different vocalist on each one. The covers were originally recorded to be spliced together as one track on Converge’s 2012 split with Napalm Death, but the following year, Converge released each vocalist’s take as its own track on this EP. In addition to Converge’s own Jacob Bannon, Nate Newton, and Kurt Ballou, the vocalists include Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac, Old Man Gloom), Kevin Baker (All Pigs Must Die, The Hope Conspiracy), and Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg (At The Gates, Disfear). Continue reading