With a Sunday night show to cap Thanksgiving weekend, veteran death metallers Exhumed stomped into NYC in support of their latest album “To the Dead.” (Read our review here.)
Tag Archives: Vitriol
FESTIVAL REVIEW: ROADBURN 2022 – Part 2
Rejoicing still in the simple fact we can have a physical Roadburn again, the final two days definitely wore on our pandemic shocked psyche and physique. Stumbling more and wearing down in a way I’m not used to, I mentioned to some friends during the weekend the Pandemic has made us all old, and 5 days on our feet now feel a lot longer. Saturday started with the feeling it felt like a Sunday, traditionally called the afterburner, because by that time you are fairly burnt out.
FESTIVAL REVIEW: ROADBURN 2022 – Part 1
After three years of waiting and longing, finally there will be an in person Roadburn Festival again. While the 2021 online edition Roadburn Redux, was in itself, innovative and the best digital festival I’ve seen set up during the dark days of the pandemic, nothing beats being physically shaken by bass heavy music and hugging friends from all over the world you only see once a year.
FESTIVAL PREVIEW: Roadburn Festival 2022 — Welcome Back!
As we continue to live in one of the most challenging times in history, one this for certain: music lovers are relieved to have somewhat of a return to normalcy. The return of live music, especially heavy music, provides the cathartic relief we have all been looking for. After over a year of postponements, cancellations, and livestreams, it’s a relief to get to experience live music, and return to experiencing art in the best way possible – together!
CONCERT REVIEW: Vader – Abysmal Dawn – Hideous Divinity – Vitriol: Live at The Warsaw
Love was not in the air on this Valentine’s Day. Nope. Instead, it was psychotic screams, blastbeats, shred guitar and a lot of headbanging, beer, and B.O. We assembled on a bitterly cold night in February to a fitting place. The Warsaw is the Home for Polish American’s in Brooklyn, set to welcome the 30-year and counting extreme metal legends, also from Poland, Vader. Vader is preparing a brand new album and recently released a new single, the brutal ‘Shock and Awe’ so lots of good fun was on tap. The Warsaw has actually become one of the better venues in Brooklyn with great beer, awesome bartenders, great event staff, Polish food (pierogies and more) and great sound and lights. We love coming here! The freezing cold night was no match for the sold-out show and a bunch of Brooklyn rowdy metal heshers and hesherettes. Continue reading
Vader Shares New Lyric Video for “Shock And Awe”, Tour Dates Incoming
Legendary Death Metal band Vader will kick off a slew of USA tour dates next week with fellow crushing bands Abysmal Dawn, Hideous Divinity and Vitriol on February 4th! To get you pumped up, Vader has shared a new lyric video for their track ‘Shock And Awe’, from their upcoming new album Solitude In Madness, due out this spring from Nuclear Blast Records. Watch the clip now! Continue reading
PODCAST: Episode 69: Kyle Rasmussen of Vitriol
Ghost Cult interview Guitarist and Vocalist Kyle Rasmussen of Death Metal band Vitriol to discuss their 2019 album To Bathe From the Throat of Cowardice (Century Media Records). The band had a huge year which included touring the world and made scores of new fans. Kyle gave us the lowdown on the band and we enjoyed our lively chat with him! We’re looking forward to seeing the band even more in 2020 as they are slated to tour first with Vader, Abysmal Dawn, and Hideous Divinity in the USA, followed soon after by a run of dates with Krisun and Gruesome in Europe. Check it out! Continue reading
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ALBUM REVIEW: Vitriol – To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice
Yeah, this sounds fucked upcoming from me the advocate of all things Death Metal, loud and slamming drums, but young extreme bands need to learn when to hold them and when to fold them. There are many moments of technical brilliance – leads and solos in particular – to be found in Vitriol’s To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice (Century Media Records), but they tend to get lost in a monochromatic cement sea. Continue reading
NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: September 6th New Music Releases
Liturgy – The Ark Work
If you pay any attention to internet forums or social media venues concerning Black Metal, strap yourself in and get ready for the waterworks. Liturgy’s 2011 album Aesthetica (Thrill Jockey) practically set those parts of the internet where panda-paint and studded armbands are still the law on fire with howling and recriminations – they were hipsters who didn’t understand Metal; they were disrespecting or even betraying Metal; anyone who liked them was a poser and personally responsible for the death of Cliff Burton.
The internet being what it is, of course, the other side were as bad, gleefully throwing around hyperbole about “transcending” Metal’s limitations and the death of the caveman headbanger. Four years later, the follow-up to this divisive album has been released, and in terms of honouring Black Metal’s traditions and aesthetics, it makes Aesthetica look like A Blaze In The Northern Sky (Peaceville). There will be tears.
Liturgy, of course, are entirely aware of this reputation. Setting out their stall from the very beginning, The Ark Work (Thrill Jockey Records) opens with that most Black Metal of clichés – the portentous synth intro – and turns it on its head. Fanfare opens with the parpiest keyboards we’ve heard since Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk (Candlelight), but uses repetitions, discord and glitches to turn it into something resembling Bal-Sagoth having a stroke – both triumphant and broken, familiar yet challenging. Aesthetically, the rest of the album takes its cues from this, blending glitchy electronics, parpy synths, jingly bells and programmed drums in with Liturgy’s usual guitars and… ahem… “burst beats” to create a dense, shifting wall of sound. It’s the vocals, however, which are likely be the biggest sticking point – the more traditional screams of Aesthetica making way for a withdrawn, chant-like mumble, clean yet muddied, and unusually passive and withdrawn for a Metal band of any kind. The internet has already had a massive coronary over ‘Vitriol’, in which vocalist Hunter Hunt-Hendricks “raps” – though in truth it’s more like Middle-Class Spoken Word than anything you’d find on a Hip-Hop album.
Musically, this is a much more varied collection than we’d normally expect from a “Black Metal” band – ranging from triumphant fanfares and surprisingly ferocious blasts through to languid, contemplative passages and shuffling, trance-like electronica – but Liturgy succeed in retaining a feeling of identity and purpose throughout. Even on the afore-mentioned ‘Vitriol’, it never feels like they’re throwing all their cool new influences against a wall to see what sticks – there’s a sense of purpose and intent here that separates them from the aimless hipsterish mess they’ve been accused of being. This is an ALBUM, not just a collection of point-scoring references, and it unfolds with an arrogance and forcefulness that is entirely Metal
That’s the most surprising thing about The Ark Work, as much as both fans and detractors alike would argue otherwise – it is absolutely Metal As Fuck. The Ark Work doesn’t always sound like Heavy Metal, let alone Black Metal, but it couldn’t have come from any other genre. Whereas their equally-controversial peers Deafheaven take fairly conservative Black Metal music and play it with a completely different attitude and aesthetic, Liturgy do almost the opposite, drawing on musical elements quite far from genre traditions, but always investing it with the arrogance, power and sense of sheer unashamed ludicrousness that has always marked the best Metal. Even the vocals make sense once you realise how utterly un-self-conscious they are, and what a massive middle finger to genre conventions they represent. You spluttered in disbelief when you first heard Hunter droning away on Quetzlcoatl? How do you think 80’s Trad Metal fans felt when they first heard Tom G Warrior?
Despite what you may have heard, The Ark Work is neither the ultimate transformation of stupid music into art nor the final betrayal of Metal’s values by the poser hordes. It is, however, one of the boldest, most distinctive and utterly unflinching Metal albums you’ll hear all year, and the perfect example of a band with a strong vision and a determination to walk their own path until the end.
9.0/10
RICHIE HR