The Booster: Black Metal #1
Black metal I like that's out now
Hey, The Booster is back. In order to get these posts out quicker, I'll be splitting them into categories: black metal, death metal, grind, doom/sludge/stoner, heavy/power/speed/thrash1, a catch-all "other," and non-metal stuff that metalheads might like. Once I write 10 blurbs in any one category, I'll hit publish. Here's my intention: The time between posts might be days. It might be weeks. Hopefully it stops being months.
I realize that readers liked the old format because of the breadth of coverage, but the copy was sloppy and the ungainly posts took forever to finish. Like, I still haven't published stuff I wrote for the July edition…and it's now September. I need a drafts exorcism. Suffice to say, The Booster hasn't been serving its intended purpose as a quick adjunct post briefly detailing stuff I like.
That's it. Those are the changes. I'm still hoping to write in-depth reviews once I have more time to dedicate to the VaccZine. Also, yes, RBOTD will come back once life calms down. Sorry!
Oh, last thing: I now have the option to narrate these posts. Do you want that? Shoot me an email or tweet if you do.
Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture (Code666 Records/Aural Music)
Hostile Architecture is one of those forward-thinking, unhampered-by-convention albums where you could break a section down into a thousand tidy comparisons and then have all of them undone by the next riff.2 Naturally, as this Glaswegian outfit is so chameleonic, comparisons become a grand tour of your own touchstones. For instance, if I may go full Machine Music, Ashenspire is like Code, Skyclad, Kayo Dot, and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum were trapped in a cabin during a blizzard. Does it actually sound like that? Hey, you be the judge. And even then, your dialed-in comp will be swept away by the next section like a wave crashing over a sandcastle. So, part of the appeal of Hostile Architecture is just marveling at those sections themselves. It's akin to opening a pack of trading cards and pulling an experimental digression led by a saxophone, then black metal lashed by a violin, and finally prog made unpredictable by a prepared piano.3 But, really, the album as a whole is more impressive than any one part, a unique, singular experience further shaped by deep, literate lyrics. Best way I can put it: Alasdair Dunn and co. are on one.
Death Wailing - I Fear Not Death, No. Life. (Forgotten Sorcery Productions)
I haven't had restful sleep in years. Not great. Deleterious, yes. It's like getting the bends by trying to re-enter reality too quickly, a thick mist that never lifts, doors in the mind never to be unlocked again. Death Wailing's newest album, I Fear Not Death, No. Life., captures what it's like to suffer sleep deprivation because, well, you can take Jankro Wailing's word for it. "All songs were recorded straight after getting out of a futile bed," Wailing wrote in the Bandcamp notes. "Either recorded at home or at my studio of choice. Most songs are drunkenly improvised. Ones who share common ailments joined me in this." Opener "Fermention" clatters and clangs around, lost in a blindingly angry haze, irritated by everything, and forever frustrated. It's sludge because hell no, we're not playing faster. It's also black metal in the shambolic, alcohol-soaked Tangorodrim tradition. But even that approach is undone by exhaustion: No. Life.'s last three tracks are delirious drone, spoken word, and Legendary-Pink-Dots-gone-black-metal weirdness. The workouts grow more abstract, similar to those EOD episodes when voices invade fragmented thoughts. Can relate. Not sure I want to listen again, we're definitely in the too-real zone. But hey, there's solace in connection. I feel you, Death Wailing. Another day in an unending graveyard shift. Another day when it feels like someone scooped out your brain with a melon baller. If you know, you know, and you wish you didn't.
Fog Kingdom - Of Long Forgotten Battles (self-released)
Fog Kingdom4 is a France/Canada collabo between two prolific musicians. On the Canadian side, there's Wyrm, best known to me for Erythrite Throne. On the French side, there's Secret Corridor from Ardente and Starlight Salvation. Of Long Forgotten Battles, a three-song EP, picks up where Promo '19 left off, ripping through sprightly castle metal augmented by the catchy-leads sensibility of dungeon synth. The best song here is "Through Fields of Blood and Bone," a near-10-minute sprint that debuted as a single last year. The melody is power metal-grade, like lofi, run-around-the-ramparts Lost Horizon. But don't snooze on "These Castle Walls Cry Out in Spite and Torment," which has a delectably punkish bridge.5
Homeskin - Life's Wishes to Tears (self-released/ruego)
"Dripping Chalice" will launch a thousand bands. Black metal plus hyperpop, a perfect marriage of seemingly opposed styles because the end-game emotions line up. It sounds so natural now that someone has done it, but, of course, someone needed to take the first leap. That seems like Homeskin's MO. Creative fusions abound on Life's Wishes to Tears. If music left behind residue, this album would be what you'd scrape off the communal speakers at a music college.6 "Peel My Flesh Again" is like Ruins tasked with deconstructing DSBM. "Feign" has an early Sigh vibe mashed up with Cap'n Jazz, provided you're hearing that mashup in an empty parking garage. I've rewound many of these tracks to confirm that I heard what I thought I heard. Sometimes yes, a lot of times no. Needless to say, this is my favorite Garry Brents release this year. That's saying something. The productive player is surely in double digits at this point, with Homeskin, "a daytime counterpart to Gonemage set in reality instead of dream realms" per the bio, accounting for eight of those releases alone. And, you bet, Life's Wishes to Tears's seven tracks sound like eight different albums.
Kryatjurr of Desert Ahd - Unbearable Nightmares of Heat and Desertification / Ecological Grief - Relentless Visions of Fire and Aridification (self-released)
This anonymous trio from Australia dropped two records of lofi atmo black with a sandblasted mix and master by Markov Soroka. Musically, think of the wind-tunnel weirdos in the Prava Kollektiv if they gave Davros the mic. But really, the better point of reference is...have you ever been face to face with a wildfire? There's something hypnotic about the wall of flames as it devours whatever is in front of it. Maybe it's just how the ash particles, whipped by hellish winds, dance around like ghosts. Kryatjurr of Desert Ahd is a landscape with familiar contours that are otherwise burned beyond recognition. However, it's simpler than that. Both of these recordings explore the sheer unrelenting oppressiveness of heat. There's something about walking around in 110-plus °F during the early afternoon that's impossible to explain to anyone else who hasn't endured it. Unbearable Nightmares of Heat and Desertification and Ecological Grief - Relentless Visions of Fire and Aridification get you close, from the oven-roasted trems to the panting dog samples that make me anxious as hell. In all senses, a preview of things to come.
Lysergic Mirror - Perceptual Purging (Jems Label)
That Perceptual Purging will likely spend 2022 shrouded in obscurity speaks to how much good material black metal is generating right now. Lysergic Mirror deserves better, and I think people will find it eventually once they're done digging themselves out from the avalanche of Trhä albums. This hallucinogenic take on second-wave material is too good not to be known. And, if there's one thing you should know, it's this: The Portland, Oregon, project is an expert in the hanging drone. These trems sound like the Northern Lights look, or, better yet, the way the moon is reflected in a lake. It's enveloping, capturing your full attention, and swallowing you up until it's just you and the ripples and undulations. That said, it's also forceful as heck. "Intact and Shattered," and boy, aren't we all, nails that quintessentially black metal sleight of hand of being simultaneously aggressive and strangely relaxing. The blasting drums and pugnacious guitars leave a mark, but the mesmeric movements of the songs massage that mark out.
Mourir - Disgrâce (Throatruiner Ṙecords/Total Dissonance Worship)
Another "I wrote about this for the column" attempt at catching up. I covered Disgrâce, Mourir's second album, in the July column.7 Can confirm: still rules, still lowkey obsessed with "La pluie, le torrent, la boue, le vent, la lave." That song continues to be a masterclass in building tension, and I'm even more impressed by its taut progression a month later. More importantly, though, the rest of the album has taken shape for me. Closer "Soit" might just be the brightest/bleakest highlight. That track moans with urban malevolence, a particular kind of danger that lurks within a city's shadows. A band like Imperial Triumphant tries to capture that danger with Gatsby gilding. Mourir is like a Swans-y no-wave band given Albini's sonic space that went evil in the margins.8 More austere, more threatening. Realer. Still haven't seen a lot of chatter about Disgrâce, which confuses me. Give it a spin if you haven't.9
Scarcity - Aveilut (The Flenser)
My album of the year. If you want a more detailed, feelsier writeup, I'll point you to the bleb I wrote in the June edition of the column. One thing I didn't point out that Grayson Haver Currin nailed in the Pitchfork review is that Aveilut is a great album to run to. Brendon Randall-Myers's rhythmic sense seems to match running gaits perfectly, not unlike the earlier Meshuggah albums. So, first and foremost, I think this is one of the better albums examining grief. That has to be the lede. But, for those who need to read this, Scarcity is also quite the cardio partner. The waves of intensity match the highs and lows of a long-distance workout, runner's high and all.
Wake - Thought Form Descent (Metal Blade Records)
You know the story. Wake, Calgary's Rotten Sound, evolves from grind to epic blackened death. "We wanted to create something that was big and expansive that doesn't rely on brutality," guitarist Rob LaChance said in an excellent interview with Justin Norton that appeared in Decibel. "We wanted to focus on our songwriting, and we don’t want to be considered a rerun machine." Once content to blast back alleys to bits, the quintet expanded its scope a couple recordings back and now moves mountains, powered by a melo emotionalism that at times sounds like a sped-up Primordial and at others like Lykathea Aflame descendants such as Sutrah and Augury. Thought Form Descent, the band's newest and best album, is another evolutionary step forward. It's a burner, a big muscular blaster fueled by the same octane poured into Ulcerate's tank, but it's also infused with catharsis and introspection. Towering riffs and rumbling-across-the-sky growls10 are swathed in first-cold-breeze-of-fall textures and melancholic leads, achieving that rare balance of non-doom brutality and vulnerability. It might even be the best synthesis in this space since Irreversible Mechanism, the great Belarusian prog death band that pulled this same trick of synth-/lead-swathed lushness on its excellently titled Immersion.11 If I may borrow that title, "immersive" is a dead-on descriptor for tracks like Wake's "Mourning Dirge (Repose of the Dead)," a seven-minute reverie of relentless riffing that delivers on the unite-everything promise of omnicore, in this case Revocation, Inter Arma, and the wind-off-the-mountain sweep of Isa-era Enslaved. *full Stephen A. Smith voice* BUT: Emotions! Feelings! Goddamn. Really, though, what makes Wake Wake, and what makes Thought Form Descent so good, is its ability to outrun the storm. Like old Disillusion, Wake doesn't hunker down to weather the emotional bombast, choosing to stomp the gas and drive its way out of its feelings with death metal riffs. The storm chases it.
Xenoglyph - Spiritfraud (Translation Loss Records)
Do the masked black metallers in Xenoglyph exist without Blut Aus Nord? Hard to guess the influences of others, although that sure doesn't stop a lot of us idiot writers from trying, but the line between the two feels pretty direct. I mean, the way the riffs are layered into a steel wool whole is something out of the Vindsval playbook. But, crucially, Xenoglyph is not a clone, establishing its identity simply by pursuing good songs and finding its voice along the way. "We wanted this to be not the 'most evil' opus we could assemble," the band, speaking in full kayfabe as aliens who came to Earth to escape robotic overlords, said to Decibel, "but rather the most musical and memorable effort we were capable of." This desire to be musical and memorable turns Spiritfraud into Xenoglyph's breakout, something that makes a longer-lasting impact than the evocative but more cryptic avant-inclinations of its debut, Mytharc. That album was good, but the well-composed grandness of something like "Iconocide," where the band ends up in sweepingly epic mid-paced black metal territory, is what will stick with you. Lot of spirit, not a fraud, its own thing. Although, BAN fans will find a lot to love here, too.
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I hate this grouping, but I barely cover thrash these days.
You know, just one of "those" albums. You see 'em all the time. *Hank Hill voice* Yeeeeep. It cracks me up that I write like this.
Oh yeah, a swatch of fabric from Otrebor from Botanist's jersey, in this case their hammered dulcimer, is your rare patch insert. What a pull. What a tortured analogy. This is why you subscribe, surely.
Not to be confused with *checks notes* Kingdom of Fog or the part in the "The Ripper" when Halford sings "darkness and fog" and the echoes get super cool.
May I turn heel and play the role of a heretic? Hear me out: How about blackened pop punk?
What are we calling this? Speaker jam? Is that too gross?
Life has been kicking my ass over the past two months, so I haven't loved anything I've written in a bit. Brain has been displaced, basically. Re-reading, I think I gave Mourir a fair shake in that one, though.
A lot of Mourir reminds me of a black metal version of "Budd," one of the all-time Albini classics from the band that shall not be named.
Also, French continues to be one of the most underrated metal languages. I would've tried harder in French class if I could've written a report on this Toulouse quartet instead of watching reruns of Téléfrançais!
It's worth noting how uncompromisingly brutal Kyle Ball's vox is throughout.
As you can tell with all of the prog death comparisons, Wake should probably be filed in the death metal Booster. That said, did you read the intro? I need this published ASAP for my sanity. I can't look at this anymore. And, since this is the end of this post, neither can you.