Summer is finally, fully upon us. The East Bay is a great place to be during the summer. It’s sunny, and usually just hot enough without being too ridiculous – although there’s plenty of 90 degree and over days in which I do my best to cling to my trusty, but short-range, 5000 BTU air conditioner.
Summer also means lots of great shows and tours happening around the Bay. Right about the time this column hits the mighty Mayhem from Norway are set to play at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge along with Ludicra, Dekapitator and Amber Asylum. It’ll be the first time Mayhem has played in the US with singer Atilla Csihar, the vocalist who recorded the legendary De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas LP, the best black metal album of all time. No doubt, they’ll be playing many tunes from that great album, which they generally avoided before Atilla rejoined. This should be a show to behold.
A week after Mayhem, the Melvins will be doing two nights in San Francisco, the first performing the entire Houdini album and the second night doing the highly influential Lysol album, and Eggnog as well. As a long time Melvins fan this will be a summer highlight. Fucking Lysol!
Gigs from Christ On Parade, El Dopa, Wormwood, Intronaut, Phobia, Book Of Black Earth and Slayer are all on tap for July and August as well.
Summer started early in Austin, Texas this year where a week after Chaos in Tejas, the Emissions from the Monolith festival went down. Austin was typically humid, in the mid 80 degree range, and overcast and rainy for most of the Memorial Day Weekend.
I had originally bought a plane ticket to Austin for Emissions in order to meet up with two bands I’ve released records by, Coffins and Graves At Sea. Both were set to play at the time. However, the shady promoter of the event, after making multiple promises to buy plane tickets for Coffins (they are from Japan) decided to never give them the money, or even tell them. So Coffins had to back out. Later Graves At Sea backed out, for reasons I’m still not aware of.
So, knowing both bands were not playing, but being locked into a plane ticket, my friend Jason and I went anyway. The good news was that I’d still have the opportunity to meet up with and see Samothrace from Lawrence, Kansas, as well as some others like Middian, Rwake, The Makai, etc.
I’ll spare you, dear reader, of all the details of the weekend, as it’d take too long to recall it all, but needless to say we were treated very well in Austin, met many great friends and become closer with the ones we already had. Special thanks to Maria Mabra for letting us stay at her house all weekend.
Highlights of the weekend included Samothrace’s in store set at Snake Eyes Vinyl to a small but floored crowd. Middian played a crushing set, both at Snake Eyes and at Emo’s,, both times ending their set with a raging, albeit slightly slowed, version of Black Flag’s My War. Rwake’s blackened tarpit sludge destroyed all and Weedeater played their stripped down, stoned, late-period Buzzoven riffs with aplomb, after breaking down and nearly not making it.
What’s nice about Emo’s is it has two stages in the main building and you can pay for one show and apparently go between both. So, we ended up getting to watch Melt Banana who was playing in the main room. They played a terrific set of melodic hardcore meets total spazzed out insanity.
I do hope if Emissions continues on next year that it’ll be a more organized effort, and delivers on all the bands it advertises. I talked to many people who were disappointed at Coffins notable absence. Hopefully we’ll get them over for a tour in 2008.
As I go over the stack of new releases I received in the past month, there is unfortunately a lack of anything that really blew me away. The one exception would be the demo from Samothrace. 3 crushing tracks over 25+ minutes of ultra heavy, slow motion doom crust apocalypse. What sets them apart is the bands sense for adding great minor-key melodies and a dynamic ability to build a song up to a crashing mid-paced peak. The best demo I’ve received in ages. The band can be reached at samothracedoom@yahoo.com.
The latest album from Ensepulchered is called The Night Our Rituals Blackened The Stars, and has actually been out for about 6-8 months at this point. This is keyboard heavy black metal, focused on more ambient, moody, moonlit forest style haunting. Although Xasthur’s name is dropped in comparison, Ensepulchered hardly manages to create the thick-hazed, suicidal fog of that one man band, and instead remind more of early Dimmu Borgir, or a less good Emperor demo. The keyboards are so high in the mix that most of the time no discernable riffs can be made out, and the drum machine is too obviously a drum machine. On Autopsy Kitchen Records.
A far more grim and dark album comes from a project called Diagnose: Lebensgefahr and its debut album Transformalin. The “band” is basically one man, Nattramn who did a band called Silencer some years ago that turned out to be very influential on the current crop of bedroom black metal superstars. As the story goes, Nattramn, was institutionalized shortly after Silencer split, and this album, made with money from the Swedish psycho wards he was held in were part of his therapy. A great story regardless of its truth, and indeed Transformalin sounds like the work of a man on the brink. The album is not metal all, but actually darker and more disturbing. Tracks of black industrial noise, dark ambient textures, spoken passages of madness and torment and military style marches all bleed out through the razor sliced veins of the albums 11 tracks. Reminds at times of the work of Nordvargr, the prolific Swedish noisebastard behind MZ.412 and countless other projects, and perhaps Boyd Rice. An album I will certainly listen to repeatedly. Also on Autopsy Kitchen.
The Communion are a New York band who smartly made their demo less than 10 minutes long. It’s rare I give a demo more than a 10 minute chance unless it totally hits me over the head so it’s great to see a band (however consciously) aware of that, making their demo short and sweet, and as a result, far more interesting and effective. The Communion mix up some grind influences, but more often then not slow down to a rhythmic lurch. Nothing revolutionary here, but strong songs that probably come off killer when they play live. myspace.com/thecommunion
A few blackened morsels from the Moribund label this month. First up, a raw CD version of the split LP of a few years back from two of Finland’s ugliest cults, Horna and Behexen. Horna especially have released a lot of material over the years. Their four tracks on this split, all titled in Finnish, have a lo-fi but solid production aesthetic and they come from the filthy and evil school of black grime. It’s raw and nasty, with a mix of faster and mid-paced tempos that naturally recalls Darkthrone (not as good obviously) and manages to sound morbidly epic without long, drawn out tunes. Behexen’s three tracks are longer and given more space to build on. The production is not as raw as the Horna tracks but not even approaching the polish of major label black metal. Epic grandeur without the use of pompous keyboard passages and noodley acoustic parts. I prefer their full lengths By The Blessing Of Satan and Rituale Satanum, but these are solid tracks.
Returning this month is the mysterious Italian one-man project known as Fear Of Eternity. Moribund has released several albums from Fear of Eternity, all of which were recorded well prior to their release. This album, Funeral Mass, is apparently the first. This is ultra-keyboard heavy black metal that’s most similar to the Italian horror soundtracks of the cult legends Goblin. The only thing that makes this black metal are the use of heavy rhythm guitars in the background that give a foundation to the tunes and the vocals which are more silly then evil sounding but nonetheless fit with the tunes. If the characters sitting in the closet from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth movie attempted to make a black metal record, Funeral Mass would be it.
Apolstolum plays so-called atmospheric dark metal that the label compares to forefathers of the genre like My Dying Bride, Katatonia and Anathema. Apostlum aren’t as good as any of those bands on their debut mini CD Anedonia. Musically it is depressive, melancholy and dark but they lack the dynamic ebb and flow of the prior mentioned bands, as well as the oppressive heaviness the early recordings by those bands recalls. While the vocals on Anxiety Attack are at times embarrassingly bad, the mix of heavy riffs and clean, catchy goth style playing shows that the band does have the potential to do something more substantial. Full on black metal is thrown in occasionally for good measure. Their cover of Katatonia’s unfuckwithable Brave is musically completely faithful, and if it weren’t for the more mediocre production, less impassioned though note-for-note guitar leads and the shittier vocals (though who can ever really equal Opeth’s Mike Akerfeldt when it comes to vocals) you’d never know the difference.
All the way from Japan’s S.M.D. records comes a split CD between Japan’s Ryokuchi and Australia’s Fire Witch. Ryokuchi is a sort of experimental tribal doom duo consisting of just bass and drums. Songs build very slowly over several minutes and when the first track Homura finally explodes around the four-minute mark it’s much more of a slow, plodding Melvins/Thrones crawl then OM style transcendence. Both musicians are masters of their weapons and wield them with skill and conviction. With the popularity of bass/drums duos lately the time could be right for Ryokuchi to invade the States. Fire Witch are a band with two bassists and a drummer, playing a messy, unstructured stoner doom with a bluesey faux-Ginn style solo here and there and songs that veer off into meandering, experimental, totally wasted tomfoolery. As a stoner you’ll probably love these tracks. As a drinker like me, probably not so much. Like if Electric Wizard and Acid Mothers had combined in their embryonic states.
Finally we finish this month with what one might facetiously call Finland’s metallic answer to The Pogues, Korpiklanni whose Tervaskanto album on the Napalm label is referred to as Finnish Humppa Folk Metal. Like a lot of metal, particularly classic metal, if you can look past the obviously embarrassing aspects of the album and just appreciate it for simple-minded, beer-drinking fun, then you might be able to enjoy Korpiklanni. In Finland where the pop and metal world’s frequently collide with bands like Nightwish and Children of Scrotum I have no doubt this band is probably playing to a few thousand drunk Finns on outdoor summer festival stages. They probably go down like the Dropkick Murphys at a Red Sox game. Anthemic, folk melody driven, huge chorus, traditional drinking songs, metalized for stadium consumption. Good fun for a party or to play a joke on your way too serious metal buddies or elitist punk rockers. Recommended for fans of Blind Guardian, Isengard, Flogging Molly, etc.
That’s about all for this month folks. Reach me at the info below, until next time – DON’T SLOW PART!
Dave Adelson, Don’t Try, 2340 Powell Street, #117, Emeryville, CA 94608 USA, donttry@20buckspin.com
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