Don't Try #9

The big news since last month is the announcement of reunion shows by both Carcass and At The Gates. Both bands have become even bigger in death then they probably were in life and these shows will give an opportunity for the bands to be heard in their element by a younger generation of metalheads.

Despite At The Gates being responsible for some of the worst style advancements in metal, influencing a thousand cutely sleeved and well-coiffed metalcore bands with 5 or more words in their names, the band is responsible for some of the best metal of the 1990s. Not only did they create the much praised “Slaughter Of The Soul” album but also the superior earlier works “The Red In The Sky Is Ours” and “With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness”.

Carcass as well grew out of the UK grind scene into a full on metal band with their classic opus “Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious” and the much-maligned-by-early-Carcass-fans brilliance of “Heartwork” where they finally shed nearly all comparisons to their early symphonies.

Both bands dissolved in the late 1990s with At The Gates going out at the height of their popularity; Carcass having already floundered to some extent with the rather limp attempt at radio metal of “Swansong”.

I was fortunate enough to witness both bands live before they called it quits. Carcass played twice at the Berkeley Square during their Heartwork tours. Pitch Shifter opened one of these shows and I can’t recall who else, although a local addition to one show came in the form of notorious Bay Area rapper, Rappin’ 4-tay; who was subsequently booed off the stage in an opening slot that still baffles the mind.

At The Gates played direct support, first to Napalm Death, also at the Berkeley Square, and again at one of the best metal shows I’ve ever witnessed supporting Morbid Angel at the Trocadero in San Francisco. The opening slot on that show was filled by the now legendary Dissection.

This was a hotly anticipated show. I had just recently gotten Dissection’s new record “Storm Of The Light’s Bane” and was only beginning to discover why it is so deservedly named (by me) as one of the great metal records of all time. At The Gates was supporting “Slaughter Of The Soul” which at the time was still fresh and had not been played out to the extent it has 10 years on. Morbid Angel still had David Vincent as their bassist/vocalist (in other words, they still had relevance) and were supporting their major label released “Domination” LP.

I arrived at the show well before the gig began only to find that the hordes had already cleaned out all the merch for both At The Gates and Dissection. I had hoped to score some Dissection gear having already obtained a “Slaughter of the States” tour shirt from At The Gates at the Napalm show. It wasn’t to be. Every death metal head around was well-equipped with Morbid Angel gear by this time so their merch was readily available.

Jon from Dissection was sporting a sleeveless Kreator shirt and had yet to become the muscle-bound skinhead ex-con of recent memory. All band members were decked out in leather gauntlets and bulletbelts. No corpsepaint for Dissection, they were never that sort of band. They had a short time to play, but made the most of it, churning out classics “Where Dead Angels Lie” and “Nights Blood”.

All I recall about At The Gates’ set aside from it being overall amazing was the killer version of “Terminal Spirit Disease” that they tore through with ease. And Tomas Lindberg (he also of Skitsystem) having very long red dreads. Morbid Angel crushed as they always did while Vincent was still in the band.

Immediately post-show I returned to my friend’s car to find him passed out drunk and sporting a black eye. Apparently he’d gotten into a fight during Dissection’s set defending the faith. Someone had made the mistake of insulting King Diamond, said friends hero, and he felt the need to protect the Great Dane’s reputation, and ended up being ejected from the club.

So with the two bands reforming to play European festivals (and rumors of US shows as well) I have to wonder if they’ll really be as effective as they were all those years ago when they were still making the effort to be a band. I’m not a big fan of nostalgia, and generally think it best to let sleeping dogs lie. At the same time, it’d be great to hear the old classics one last time. Now if only Entombed would reform their real lineup and tour the “Left Hand Path” album…

Not a whole lot of great shit to speak of this month. The Howling Wind is another project of the prolific Mr. Killusion, one of the masterminds behind such heresies as Unearthly Trance, Thralldom and the wonderful Villians project. Stripped down black metal in the mid to later period Darkthrone style (when they’re being serious) is the sound The Howling Wind are cult-ivating on their debut “Pestilence And Peril”. Raw stuff, with fairly simplistic, enjoyable riffs and acidic distorto-vox, comparable to, but not as good as, the excellent Blodulv.

Lyrically it’s somewhat vague, but they seem to be done in an apocalyptic crust style, but much more vaguely and from a black metal perspective. Titles like “Stealth Eugenics” and “Forced Into The Pits Of Technology” give some idea and there seems to be a distant sense of a full concept going on. Human harvesting, and the sterility of modernity. Brought to you by Profound Lore Records.

Burning Witch is back. Sort of. Southern Lord has just released a double CD called “Crippled Lucifer” which collects most of the Witch’s material in the form of the “Towers” LP and the “Rift.Canyon.Dreams” LP. This was a very early Southern Lord release and has now been redone in an expanded form.

First the music. If memory serves, nobody really cared too much about Burning Witch during their actual existence. It was one of O’Malley’s first musical forays of note and still sounds more interesting then a lot of doom being done today, but it’s nothing groundbreaking. Perhaps due to the huge success of SUNN0))), Burning Witch has achieved a kind of legendary status. Now, I’m not saying this ain’t good. It is. But it never felt to me up there with the best of the genre at the time.

The most interesting thing about Burning Witch were the vocals of singer Edgy59 which alternated between Buzzoven style snarl and St. Vitus-esque croon. But thumbing through the booklet, looking at photos of the dude, it’s not hard to believe that he ended up in a LA-style nu-metal/glam type of project post-Witch. It’s slow, it’s plodding, and every now and then the music rocks a bit. Graves At Sea often draws comparisons to the Witch, but the honest truth is Graves rocked heavier and harder than the Witch ever did.

The original version of “Crippled Lucifer” was a single CD that contained maybe 7 of these tracks and some were also collected on vinyl on the Towers LP which was released by Chris Dodge on Slap-A-Ham, another possible reason they’ve achieved cult status. How many records like that did Dodge release? Not a helluva a lot. Back around 2000 I was working for a label called Necropolis (Necrapolis is more like it) and we had boxes of the Rift.Canyon.Dreams LPs that weren’t going anywhere at the time. If only I’d kept a box! (Incidentally we also had copies we couldn’t give away of the killer Weakling LP, now going for around $150 on evilBay).

The redesigned booklet is thick with photos and a color-scheme that bites Jesu’s first release on Hydrahead. There’s a lot of useless pages, but the band photos and Dodge’s liner notes make it worthwhile. Aaron Turner of Isis also wrote some notes. In an ideal world the liner notes would have been bigger, more abundant and spread out more. Instead they are magnifying glass small and squeezed onto one page of the pretentious 40 page booklet.

Worth mentioning is the zine O’Malley used to do around the same time Burning Witch existed. Descent it was called and was done in cooperation with Tyler Davis who now heads the Ajna Offensive label. Excellent read if you can track down a copy with equal parts metal and experimental noise, tons of reviews, and despite their sometimes tired elitist attitude about things, great interviews with bands you didn’t see being interviewed everywhere else.

Another reissue comes in the form of Skullflower’s IIIrd Gatekeeper on the Crucial Blast label, now remastered, heavier and louder, by Scott Hull. Originally released in 1992 by Justin Broadrick on his Headdirt label it has been out of print for some time although not impossible to find by any means. This is Skullflower at its most accessible, if that is the right word; for even at its most accessible Skullflower still goes over the heads of most. Improv style Psych-noise guitar workouts layered over a foundation of slow, plodding Godflesh-like industrial-dirge rhythms (real drums though unlike Godflesh). “Saturnalia” has the building blocks of later post-rock heroes Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s epic guitar symphonies, while the Swans-like repetition in “Rotten Sun” is almost primitive in its application of trance-inducing rhythms.

Excellent liner notes written by RKF, whoever that is, detail a large part of the Skullflower story up through the bands eventual dissolution in 1996 (re-emerging in 2003 as a solo venture for Matthew Bower). Housed in a nice gatefold CD jacket. An LP version should be on the way later in the year and according to Crucial Blast honcho Adam they’ll be looking to reissue a lot more of the early Skullflower material, including the much sought after “Last Shot At Heaven” LP which followed IIIrd Gatekeeper on the Skullflower timeline.

Vreid is a Norwegian band whose new album “I Krig” is an amalgamation of lots of big time black metal bands like Arcturus, Dimmu Borgir, etc. Vreid however is not as blatantly pretentious as either of those bands. The riffs are solid and the production is crisp and clear with a sound alternating between epic and folky. Vocals invoke the standard black metal rasp but occasionally go for the clean Viking chorus and spoken vampire voice. Though it has interesting moments throughout, ultimately “I Krig” falls short as it lacks the intensity, attitude and darkness that makes black metal a potent form. It’s typical big label stuff; decent but ultimately forgettable. On the Candlelight label.

Also on Candlelight, Killing Joke fans might enjoy the debut of October File called “Holy Armour From The Jaws Of God”. Not only is the album produced by Jaz Coleman and has a guest vocal from the man, but musically speaking October File is definitely paying a nice tribute to their most obvious influence (ironically, not Die Kreuzen). And while it’s clear October File raise the flag of the Joke with pride, the album is interesting enough to not be a mere imitation. The vocals are pissed in the modern metal way and this album might possibly cross the line into Headbangers Ball territory if the band agrees to comb their hair pointier and get the proper tattoos. At the very least the band might help spark a resurgence in interest of Killing Joke, who by the way lost an important member with the recent death of bassist Paul Raven (rip). Also, new rule: no debut album should exceed the 42 minute mark. At 55, this album could drop two songs and be just as effective if not more so.

Being nearly the end of the year it’s time to recall some of the best of 2007. Some of the best heavy records for 2007 in this writers opinion that you should seek out immediately:

Cobalt – Eater Of Birds
Darkthrone – F.O.A.D.
Magrudergrind – Rehashed
Wolves In The Throne Room – Two Hunters
The Endless Blockade /Hatred Surge – Split LP
Big Business – Here Come The Waterworks
Black Cobra – Feather And Stone
Watain – Sworn To The Dark

There were plenty of other great records, some I’m sure I’m forgetting, and some I just didn’t get to hear but these ones probably got the most play-time on my headphones during 2007 as far as heavy albums released during the year. And of course it wouldn’t be ethical to include the stuff I released on 20 Buck Spin all of which are fucking brilliant, ahem. The Slammy for best live bands has to go to Kylesa and Ludicra, the two best metal bands in the States period, and I’m looking forward to new records from both during 2008.

And that finishes another exciting column for this month. Until next time, stay whiskey bent and hell bound!

Don’t Try, 120 State Ave NE #136, Olympia, WA 98501. donttry@20buckspin.com