I don't listen to as much metal as I'd like to. It's a curse of having broad interests and only so many hours in the day. It's one of the reasons why I keep these Metal Monday threads alive. It forces me back into the forge, back into the genre that first helped me come to terms with my critical style and learn to enjoy analyzing and writing about music in the first place. They're a good reminder as to why I try to do this every night, examining the strange and underappreciated and trying to make sense of it the best I can. It continues to be a worthy exercise for me and one I don't see myself giving up any time soon. But you're not here to see me write about myself, right? You're here for the mayhem, the macabre, the mutagenic... you're here to read about some ugly, ass music, and friend, have I got you covered... Welcome to another Metal Monday.
Deludium Skies - Ichor (Trepanation Recordings)
I've encountered more than a few malevolent combinations of jazz and metal since starting this blog, but Karl Pelzmann's Deludium Skies is the most malefic. The projects (6th?) LP titled Ichor is the spiritual inculcation of the shadow side of folk and jazz, a ritualized janus turning, beseeched from the earth by bewitching, plangent guitar chords that sound like they are echoing up from the chimney-like hallow of a scorched and blackened tree. In some ways, the rhythmic textures of the album have an unassumingness about them, like they are wondering off into the depths of a thorny grove out of curiosity and naivety rather than a lust for mischief, but the combination of wailing flutes and saxes carry too much of a sour air about them, and in peering through the fog of disorder they muster one will be inevitably be met with the red-ringed stare of a maere clinging to the back of these tracks, inciting them forward into the wicked woodland to do its malign bidding. There are no happy endings to be found here, only a twisted fable of folly. Ichor springs to the ear like a fairy tale read to you by the monster slithering beneath your bed.
Argentinian black metal artist IER is known for his complex, ambitious, and impenetrable albums. He made one about Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan a few years back that was nearly half the run time of the film that inspired it (an hour and twenty minutes vs three hours, in case you were wondering). His latest, 物の怪 ("Monster"), does not appear to have nearly as precise of a thematic origin as some of its predecessors, but it is certainly as, if not more, daunting in its enterprise. Beginning with the twelve-minute "日本の都市伝説 Vol.1" we are feted with a full course of arresting and confrontational forms, starting with a viciously primal tear of DSMB, which loosens its twisting, noose-like grooves enough to liberate a messenger's arrow of hope from its binding contortions, a shot that hurdles through a dashing thrash solo only to stumble facefirst into the submerged tomb of some swamp lurching death metal, a murk-steeped trudge which is then rinsed clean by a shower of firey feedback and sonorous power chords, a necessary cleanse that frees the track from its decaying manicules so that it can once again break into a sprint, this time accompanied by a skittering peel of progressive-funk riffs. It sounds wild, and it is. And what's more, none of it is out of place. Not when IER starts scatting like Jonathan Davis on later tracks, or when he combines Converge style post-hardcore with Spanish folk guitars, or even when he does his best interpretation of what Incubus might sound like in corpse paint. It all works as a single, wholly realized, thoroughly integrated, and bewildering lusus naturae. Monster is the right title for this album, in more ways than one might think possible.
If there was a combination of styles that could represent humankind's enduring resistance to being reduced to the level of mere, mechanical instruments and extensions of the machines of their masters, it would be melodic death, old-school metalcore, and groove metal. As it stands, this untrammeled trifecta of muscularly, defiant antagonism to domination all cohere in the sound of Mothflesh and their future shock dispeller Machine Eater. It's pretty much At the Gates driving down the throat of Poison the Well in order to detonate a massive djent-triggered Car Bomb. That last sentence may have been tortured, but this music isn't. The barrage of massive, propellent grooves and the formidable combination of clean singing and guttural death howls are as awe-inspiring as a volcanic eruption and just as likely to shake your world to its foundations. Every riff sounds like another ground-to-air missile shot up the exhaust port of a Skynet satellite. With Mothflesh on our side, the future of humanity is looking brighter than ever.
Royal Thunder - Wick (Spinefarm Records)
Nothing like a little hard rock out bubbling up from the South. The certifiably fiery and appropriately titled Wick is Royal Thunder’s third full-length LP, and their first since leaving metal mogul Relapse for Finnish label Spinefarm. It's hard to understate the power and charisma of front-woman and bassist Miny Parsonz's vocal performance, or how well her imploring and vengeful cries are complimented by the group's boozy psychedelic and doom metal-infused roots rock. Think Alabama Shakes with some mid-career Mastodon riffs swapped in. Both Miny and lead guitarist Josh Weaver escaped from cults in their youths, which is a fact that you can read into if you want, but I'm inclined to believe Miny when she insists that their songs are actually about building new relationships and forging your own path in life. Their current mantra is, “The Past is Over,” a saying they adopted after finding it scrawled above the entrance to a hotel on a European tour, and I think it's a good coda for us all to meditate on whenever we've felt like we may have lost our way in life. You can't go back, but you can soldier on. If nothing else, its a bit of intellectual cud to chew on while you sway to the swaggering rhythms of the ponderously claustrophobic "We Slipped" whose pounding beat and slapping grooves will help you break out of whatever mental prison you find yourself holding up in these days. Then there is the magnificent Joplin-esc crooning on dark gospel confessional "Plans," the somber piano balladry and elegantly blighted dalliance of "Push", and lastly, the morbid tension building brood of the shadowboxer with razor laced inlines that is "Turnaround." Sadly, this is the last full LP that Royal Thunder has released, but they still tour quite regularly and even released a single earlier this year, which gives me a great deal of hope that their return to the recording studio for another LP will be forthcoming, if not inevitable.
