September 29, 2016

While I'm being positive, and because nominally running blogs do this sort of thing from time to time, here is some music I am presently enjoying. Most of it is screaming. 

Tolkien nomenclature is omnipresent in the black metal scene, which is odd, because the man himself was emphatically Catholic, insisted his most famous work was "essentially Catholic", and black metal... isn't. Most famously, Burzum and Gorgoroth borrow their names from his canon, then scream about satan. Barrow Wight, thus, is something of an overcorrection: A band that takes its name from Tolkien, then writes songs almost wholly in-universe. If that sounds silly--and fun!--that's because it is. It's black metal in the style of proto-black 80's giants like Venom, Celtic Frost, and Bathory. Which is to say, it rocks. 
 

Black Fast is a bit of a throwback also, insofar as thrash metal basically always is. 

I didn't set out with a theme of "bands that sound like they could maybe be 20-30 years old", but here we are. Venom Prison are death metal without any tech/prog wankery, and a bit of hardcore edge. 

I saw Cloud Rat open for Wolves in the Throne Room last week, which is a bit odd, in that WITTR is one of the more famous (and famously overserious) atmospheric black acts out there, and Cloud Rat is just a ripping grindcore three-piece. I also mistakenly always assume they're a straight edge band, because they are vegan, and those things are weirdly intertwined in my head--at least, when it comes to bands whose genre ends in -core.

Elder is nominally doom, but like many in the genre, take a lot of cues from older psych rock. The opening guitar noodling gives away that much. 

Mgla is impossible to pronounce, less hard to describe. It's modern black metal, that has no interest in gazing back towards Helvete, or playing with other genre's toys. 

Here's an acoustic thing, with clean vocals. I know, right?

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