Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 100 Greatest Metal Albums Of All Time” came out earlier this month, and ever since its release, the site has been sharing the personal lists that were sent in by some of heavy metal’s biggest names. So far we’ve seen the “Top Ten” from Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Lars Ulrich, and Corey Taylor, and today we have another one. Continue reading
Rolling Stone enlisted music writers and heavy metal icons to help out with their recent list of “The 100 Greatest Metal Albums Of All Time”, and today Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor has shared his personal list online.Continue reading
The case of Chrome Molly is a bit of a curious one. Perennial never-weres in the mid-to-late 1980’s, a few profile support slots aside, they never muscled their way into the conscious of the masses. Shuffling quietly into the ether with four albums under their belt in 1991, Hoodoo Voodoo is their second album (both earMUSIC) since returning in 2009 and theirs remains a style untouched by any musical development that has occurred post-1986.Continue reading
There is art in being able to give reverence to the founding, cultural milestones of a creative scene in a manner that still maintains a progressive bent and that is also in keeping with developing a wholly separate artistic entity. For while Wiegedood walk a left hand path Continue reading
Around five years ago, German/Dutch Symphonic Metal band Xandria threw off the shackles of the Middle Eastern and Celtic romanticism prevalent on their first four albums, switched singers and promptly transformed themselves into Nightwish. Well okay, maybe not quite, but the similarities between the two bands recently are striking to say the least and on new album Theater of Dimensions (Napalm) it would now also appear they’ve absconded with Dutch compatriots Epica too.Continue reading
Sepultura have never been interested in living off of previous successes. Respect the past, guitarist Andreas Kisser always stresses, without being bound by it. And with each new album, they stretch the goalposts a little farther, experiment a little more. Machine Messiah (Nuclear Blast) sees them pushing their creative inspirations further than ever before while maintaining the spirit and strength that has allowed them to thrive for over 30 years.
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To celebrate the release of their stunning 9/10 album Carrion Skies (Code666 – review here) The Watcher, guitarist and vocalist of England’s atmospheric post-Black Metal band Fen spoke to Ghost Cult on a range of subjects. In the first of four parts, with a further feature to follow in the next Ghost Cult digimag, he enthuses on the conscious injection of metal back into their sound that facilitated the statement album that should propel them to the head table…
“You look at a band like Paradise Lost. When they started out, they couldn’t be more Heavy Metal. Then they get to 24, 25 years old and then it’s ‘Heavy Metal is for losers. I’ve been listening to this for 10 years, it’s old hat. I’ve heard all there is to hear of this, it’s for bozos. I like Depeche Mode, let’s do that and let’s be all grown up’. But then it goes full circle, and when they hit their late 30’s they’re ‘God, I think I was a pretentious little twat back then! I actually do like Heavy Metal and I wasn’t anywhere near as clever as I thought I was when I went all experimental’.
“You see it a bit with the Norwegian scene, too, that all went ludicrously avant-garde in the late 90’s. It’s like they all went to university and thought ‘Ooh, I want to be clever now. What’s clever? Well, heavy metal definitely isn’t, so…’
“The thing is, I like Heavy Metal. I want to play Heavy Metal. It sounds a bit Bad News, but I love Heavy Metal. I listen to Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal.”
Once people stray away from the metal part of their sound they’re moving into a shallower pool of influences, and have a shortfall in their depth of knowledge. The problem is, bands not understanding these additional elements of their sound as much as they do the metal… I’m not saying don’t utilise these additional, non-metal influences, but make sure you understand what you’re doing…
“Exactly. It is dabbling. It’s going ‘I’ve been listening to a load of synthy 80s new wave bands recently, we can do something with that’. And there’s a danger for bands to get really carried away, and I think this is what was happening with us.
“At the start of last year, the end of the year before, we’d done Dustwalker (the band’s third album, also on Code666) and me and our drummer, Derwydd, had been listening to loads of Sad Lovers and Giants, The Chameleons and Snake Corps, all these guitarwave bands. Then, in rehearsal I thought I’d turn the distortion off, put a bit chorus and delay on it and, oh, we can sound like that… and it’s easy to carried away with it when you’re playing one style so much. But to your ears it’s a really fresh sound, and you’re like ‘Yes! We can do this!’ At points we were even talking about doing a whole album like that, a whole album with clean guitars.
“It was only when we got back from touring with Agalloch that we realised that we’d got completely over-excited about the fact that we do listen to some non-metal stuff and we can do a passable version of it. But it’s not really enough, and we did have to put the brakes on and take a look at it, and say ‘Are we just playing a slightly rubbish version of The Chameleons with some guy shouting over it?’ And in all honesty, we were.
“We took a really objective step back and looked at it, and a lot of the stuff that was originally pencilled in to be on the album was binned off. We had gotten carried away and were disappearing up our own arses.”
An integral part of the Fen sound has always been that it comes from black metal and the inherent extremity of black metal first, despite the fact that you are often compared with bands like Agalloch and Alcest, who are much lighter, much “nicer”…
“I like Agalloch and I like some of the early Alcest, but it’s a bit of a lazy comparison I think. Particularly with this new album, we’ve set ourselves apart from that. I mean, touring with Agalloch for a month… they do that stuff really well, but we don’t want to sound like that. They’ve got that sound nailed. We sat down and said we needed to define ourselves, we needed to really underline what we’re about.
“Unfortunately there are bands out there who don’t take that step back until it’s too late, until it’s ‘Oh shit, we’re not as clever as we think we are’, but I can see it from the other side of the fence, that it’s easy to get swept up in it. Everyone gets whipped up into a fervour, and gets all ‘We can do it! This is so different! Look at how versatile we are!’ , but any competent musician can turn their hand to doing a vague version of another style, but doing it well is a different thing.”
“Dustwalker is a metal album, but we did go down a certain route. There’s a lot of atmospheric stuff on there, there’s a whole song on there that’s got no distorted guitars whatsoever. With this one, we thought ‘We’re in the mood for metal, we want to do some metal!’ We’re an extreme metal band and it’s almost become a cliché for bands that are in the post-black metal scene to shed the trappings of black metal, and that’s not a game I’m interested in playing.
“I want to reassert our credentials as a metal band.”
Carrion Skies can be purchased here
STEVE TOVEY
While the UK may lack the swamps or deserts that inspire our fellow Sabbath-worshipping cousins across the pond, we more than make up for it in grim urban sprawl, which is more than depressing enough to fuel our own fertile sludge scene. So what better time to take a look at a new split release (on Future Noise Recordings) from two homegrown lurking horrors that dwell down in the deep?
First up we have Blackburn trio Bastard of the Skies who have been knocking around for a good eight years or so now. While adhering fairly rigidly to the well-defined sludge template with the plodding, mid-paced rumble-along that is opening track ‘Yarn’, there is a pleasing undercurrent of menace and violence in the riffs and delivery which is just quite nasty sounding, frankly. This is exacerbated by vocalist Matt Richardson’s strained and haggard vocals which appear to have been recorded in some grimy cellar bereft of light and hope. ‘Bao Fu’ continues the trend, adding in a few Sourvein style anti-grooves before the brief curveball of ‘Wounder’ increases the pace. Closing number ‘Old Vessels’ veers into doom territory and makes good use of quiet/loud dynamics before locking into a monstrous groove to finish things off. Lovely stuff.
Erdington trio Grimpen Mire have also been doing the rounds for a similar length of time and their experience on the toilet circuit has clearly paid dividends for they have evolved into a tight and thoroughly abrasive unit with an appreciation for Black Flag at their most unpleasant. ‘The Hollow Wreck’ coils and slithers menacingly like a venomous serpent while ‘Vermin Hive’ does its best to wear the listener down with waves of monolithic misery. Eight minute closer ‘Fragments of Forgotten Craft’ starts slowly but then adopts some Wounded Kings-esque Hammer Horror vibes that go down a treat, ending things in suitably sinister style.
A cracking release that shows just how healthy (or should that be fetid?) the UK sludge scene currently is. Well worth a look.
7.5/10.0
Bastard of the Skies on Facebook
JAMES CONWAY
When metalcore came along at the turn of the century to wash away the juvenile dross of nu-metal there was much rejoicing. After all, what could go wrong with bands delivering their own interpretation of Slaughter of the Soul’s legacy? Quite a lot in fact as the scene quickly reached saturation point with a seemingly endless parade of silly-haired whippersnappers recycling the same old riffs and same tired themes.
Orange County quintet Scars of Tomorrow never ascended above the D-grade despite releasing five albums in as many years on Victory Records between 2002 and 2006. After originally disbanding in 2007, they have reformed and recorded a new album, Failed Transmissions (Artery). The question is, if they weren’t good enough when the scene was in full swing what relevance do they have now?
The answer is none.
Absence has not made the heart grow fonder and Scars of Tomorrow have not learnt any lessons in their time off. They are still ploughing the exact same furrow they had exhausted of all resources back in 2006, offering up a thoroughly generic and uninspiring selection of Norma Jean-aping riffs combined with the odd It Dies Today-esque melodic flourish and of course, breakdown after goddamn breakdown in case you had forgotten that metalcore bands of this ilk wish they were tough enough to be part of the hardcore scene.
Featuring no memorable, heartstring-tugging choruses, riffs of any power, presence or anything approaching their own identity, the existence of this record is a mystery, for it serves no purpose. Metalcore is dead and buried, the kids have moved on to new and fresher things, and the members of Scars of Tomorrow should be devoting their time into producing music with half an ounce of relevance to today and not just assuming that a half-hour rehash of their old sound will be enough after so long away.
Utterly pointless and shockingly complacent.
3.0/10.0
JAMES CONWAY
