VaccZine #5
Abort Mastication, Charnel Grounds, video games
In 2019, Abort Mastication released Dogmas, the Japanese quartet’s second full-length following an 11-year layoff, on Obliteration Records. I’ve wanted to hear it since. Until a couple months ago, making that happen required some old-world music hunting ingenuity. I ultimately didn’t bother because I found that process, one that I used to enjoy, to be newly irksome. Admitting that is embarrassing and depressing.
CDs of Dogmas are available, but the only ones I can find ship from Europe. Supposedly there’s a digital version. If it exists for purchase, I haven’t seen it. It’s not on Bandcamp, in other words. In fact, the only digital version I’ve seen in full is this YouTube autogenerated playlist that was created on March 22, 2021. And, indeed, YouTube is where I finally heard the entirety of Dogmas. It’s also where I heard Orgs, the band’s ripping 2008 debut. That one hit YouTube on April 23.
On the same day Dogmas was “provided to YouTube by DistroKid,” David Dayen published “Islands in the Stream” on The American Prospect. Great read. It paints a pretty horrifying picture of the state of music in the age of streaming, detailing how Spotify and YouTube screw over music’s lower classes. One of the piece’s interview subjects is Damon Krukowski, of Damon & Naomi and, perhaps more famously, Galaxie 500. “Krukowski calculated that to earn the equivalent of a $15-an-hour living wage,” Dayen writes, “a band would have to get 650,000 streams per month per band member.” At the time I’m writing this, the playlist for Abort Mastication’s Dogmas has 433 views. Brutal. But, more than the economics, this line from entertainment attorney Chris Castle punched me hard: “Spotify is benefiting from every single artist on the platform driving fans to them. The labels say they give you exposure. The line is that you can die of exposure.”
I’m on record bemoaning Abort Mastication’s lack of exposure, awarding the group “band least interested in promoting its good album” in a 2019 year-end wrap up. I…don’t feel great about that. It shouldn’t be a musician’s job, especially if that musician is signed to a label, to make sure you find their music. A musician’s job is to be a musician. And really, who says Abort Mastication wasn’t promoting Dogmas? It’s not like I’m especially plugged into the socials and Obliteration Records probably does a good job marketing to its region, that being Japan.
Part of the fun of being into metal is the thrill of the hunt. Obscurity is purposely built into the underground metalhead experience, weeding out the weaklings. It’s intentionally antithetical to the mainstream model of intentional overexposure. However, the homogenization of streaming platforms has pushed a one-size-fits-all marketing model on artists. Spotify assumes that every streamer wants to be Beyoncé. In turn, musicians are now expected to function like the PR arms of Fortune 500 corporations or major NPOs. If artists can’t do that, they must hack the planet. Either end leads to bizarro music biz bullshit. In metal, it’s still incongruous as hell receiving PR blasts hocking primitive war metal bands “freshly in conspiracy” with capitalism. In hip hop, a whole subculture of “type beats” exists to find placements for producers. You’re only as good as your SEO or algo-tinkering abilities, not your actual skill as a musician.
All of this has gotten harder and harder as predatory networks like Facebook try to squeeze artists for money as if those artists are actually small businesses flush with VC funbucks and beholden to investors. You’re a startup, and you’re a startup, and you’re a startup. This startupificiation is part of a grand collusion perpetrated by tech elites, forcing artists to utilize many social media networks to advertise wares that exist on separate networks that deliberately lack exposure-broadening features. This hoop-jumping is predicated on an illusionary benefit to the consumer, which is meant to offload these networks’ culpability. “Well, the consumer sets the market,” a sentient Spotify would probably whine as it makes sure it’s the only market available, pricing everything else, including its artists, into extinction. It’s just infuriating and bad and wrong like so many other things that we’ve been forced to accept so tech can “streamline” our lives without our consent.
Needless to say, I don’t want digital formats to be this important. While digital has made my procurement of music a whole lot easier and turned me into a far more knowledgeable music writer (not to mention saving me moving-day wear and tear on the few remaining back muscles that haven’t been turned into crab meat), it has created a listening environment that I don’t exactly love. That is to say, if something doesn’t exist online, I usually don’t hear it because why would I put extra effort into seeking that stuff out? If I don’t hear it, I don’t buy it or review it. As a listener, this makes me less prone to take chances. Risk adverse. I know what I like and there’s an infinite amount of that already out there. I mean, I have a hard enough time keeping up with the music that finds me. And that sucks! Something about this contract seems broken to me. Me, the consumer, is supposedly prospering thanks to this easily accessible, cheap/free trove of nearly all recorded music. Think of all the exploring to do! But, more often than not, I feel like the broken link in the chain.
I came up in a time when people still mailed each other mixes, local radio stations still played local artists, and consulting liner-note thank-you lists was a viable way to find new bands. I remember sitting in parking lots waiting for DJs to ID tracks. I remember browsing catalogs and picking up albums unheard. From a more objective perspective, it’s hard to understate just how important tape trading was to metal’s late ‘80s/early ‘90s maturation. Once you chip off the patina of nostalgia, all of that shit sucked, too. It was an immense pain in the ass and limited musical consumption considerably. Like, those weren’t the glory years. Bands were routinely obliterated by fickle labels that didn’t care about them, in debt forever thanks to phantom charges for non-band services and insidiously exorbitant advances. Not just majors, ether. Earache did its worst dirt before mass adoption of MP3s.
The internet of utopian wet dreams was supposed to do away with all of that, allowing bands greater access to its fans. Instead, the new bosses are far worse than the old ones. If it feels like there’s no right answer, it’s because a right answer would require the hyper-rich ceding their ability to get richer. Not happening. They don’t care about the impact of their decisions beyond hitting some opaque, short-term growth target that’s always shifting upwards. This is all Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, knows. “There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” Ek said. So much for any genre that’s album-centric.
Routinely, Spotify is painted as a win for you and me because we can spend our old earmarked music budgets on something more fun, like catastrophic healthcare or child care. Really though, Spotify is the market and the end-user has replaced the old band-obliterating labels. Oh, you play guitar like a god but you suck ass at getting into hot playlists and other AI-broadening endeavors? Welp, that blows. Perversely, in the old model, I don’t think it would’ve taken me this long to hear Abort Mastication. At the very least, I wouldn’t feel like such a dirtbag for missing them.
Dogmas is good, by the way. Great at times. Abort Mastication was started by Kyosuke Nakano, the drummer who ripped it up in No One Knows What the Dead Think. Takanori Kubo from Butcher ABC plays bass. That’s a lot of star power for those in the know. However, the band’s most interesting elements are the guitars and vocals. Tatsurou Kageyama shreds through a ton of styles in pursuit of escalating rippage. There’s a whole lot of Napalm Death-esque grind, Red Chord chonk, Antigama dissonance, and Human Remains ferocity in his playing, sometimes in that order, more often all at the same time. Those riffs put this band in league with another under-exposed entity, Noisear. But the person who puts this over the top is Kazuho Kawakami, who tries on a different vocal style every section, almost as if he’s a lead instrument. It’s a real breakout performance. And now you can finally hear it, for better or worse.
NEW ARRIVALS
SPOTLIGHT
Charnel Grounds - Molecular Entropy Examined in the Bowels of a Great One (self-released)
Oh hell yes. I know nothing about this band other than its creator(s) has heard Artificial Brain. In particular, this is like something caught between the gravitational pulls of Arty B and post-slam Afterbirth. Tech-y, spacey, awesome-y. The one-two of “Desecration of the Host: Madness Complete” and “Soul Scavengers of the Abyss” might be my favorite back-to-back jack this year. I think what really works for me is that Molecular Entropy Examined in the Bowels of a Great One has some of the energized spaciness that briefly ensorcelled the [prefix]core kids that mapped the skies after Cave In's Until Your Heart Stops crashed to Earth, ugh, 23 years ago. I'm sure Regurgitator of Infinite Wisdom, Burial Shroud Defiler, and Consumer of the Damned Abyssic Scavenger: Unknown to Light, Predator of the Cosmos (I'm sorry, should that be Dr. Regurgitator?) would slap me in the shoggoths if I said this reminded me of Jairus since this is obviously very death metal throughout. Ah, but my dumb brain is my dumb brain, so thank you for this needed br00falized update to Hopesfall, you mysterious sixteenth six-toothed metalhead.
HIGHLIGHTS
Cadavoracity - Vitiosus forma exilium (Unmatched Brutality Records)
The Unmatched Brutality Records cosign is really all you need to know. Goes hard and fast like Brodequin did before it. This new EP is a collabo between two solid brutal death metal scenes, Indonesia and Thailand. Polwach, he of Cystgurgle, Biomorphic Engulfment, Ecchymosis, and Theurgy, among others, is why you're clicking. His drumming is nuts. There are even those killer moments of let's-do-a-snare-roll-because-fuck-it that Internal Suffering used to do back in the Chaotic Matrix days. The guitars sound like angry frogs getting tossed into an industrial blender by Brusdar Graterol. The vocals sound like a dragon's death rattle. It just rips.
Dyskinesia - Micturating Deposits of Grit Through the Urinary Tract (self-released)
Let's get me into a heap of shit: Better than Sanguisugabogg, this trio's more lucrative death metal endeavor. Bandcamp user cayman_cider summed this one up by writing, “I can feel my IQ dropping when it plays, so you know it's the good stuff.” Indeed. Dyskinesia is turbo-dumb slams, like a grittier, nastier, more depraved Epicardiectomy, a band that already sounds like it has a brain injury. The isolated-vox Hetfield sample made me laugh pretty hard. But the gags and turbo-dumb vibe kinda obscure how good these riffs are. The band can play. Drummer Cody Davidson infuses his rhythms with a bunch of syncopation, hitting you with the Shammgod whenever you start to space out. That gives this a bounce that I'd expect more from...like...Timbaland. Gets you moving, in other words. I don't know, dudes. Maybe tell Century Media you're sticking with this one instead.
Effluence - Ballistic Bloodspray (self-released)
Man. I have no reason to suspect this wasn't made by humans, but it definitely sounds like something an AI would cook up before its innards suffered the dreaded click of death. Encenathrakh, and Encenathrakh alone, is the comp if you need one, but Effluence is its own sort of free jazz, brutal death nonsense. The harsh cuts are hilarious, like these songs are snippets of hours and hours of improv sessions knitted together to sound as bugfuck as possible. My favorite part is when they cut the blasts for an archaic synth that rises from the grave. As soon as that synth shakes off the dust, it's run over by Mack truck blasts. The last two tracks have a clarinet. It sounds like the end of heavy metal. I don't know where we go from here, but I'm happy to be here.
Eremit - Bearer of Many Names (Transcending Obscurity Records)
I believe I am on record describing last year's Desert of Ghouls, a meaty EP of doom/sludge, as “swing[ing] slowly, like Conan's ballsack.” This is one of those market-ready one-liners that doesn't really make sense, but I felt like Don Draper writing it and I'm now available for all of your sticker writing duties. ANYWAY, this German trio's second album is a big swing forward. The band has always exhibited some epic inclinations, but it pushes it to the edge here. Three songs, 66 minutes. The best stuff plays with dynamics, building atmosphere with hushed strums. [*whispers*] Foreshadowingggggg. Those riffs soon evolve into ballsack-crushing RIFFS. I've only listened to this with headphones and the dogs in my neighborhood still hate this album. Better still, those riffs are stripped down to be maximally hummable, making for a hooky listen that flies by every time.
Majestic Downfall - Aorta (Personal Records)
We just wrapped a podcast segment on Paradise Lost's Obsidian and the band's post-Depeche Mode return to death/doom relevancy. The Fates decided that I should hear this album right afterwards. Cool, thanks Fates. This is it. This is what I wish Paradise Lost sounded like. This Mexican quartet nails those Mackintosh leads but wraps them up in riffs that are heavier and more downtrodden. Swallow the Sun and early Katatonia are the other comps, of course, but this is still heavier than most, even sneaking into the brutal terrains of the Morbid Angel-inflected Weeping Sores. Jacobo Córdova, who is the long-running member in this long-running death/doomer, has a bass tone that thwaps like a blue whale plucking a transatlantic cable. (FYI, I play bass badly, which is why these blurbs tend to be bass-focused.) But, you're here for the riffs. The riffs are good; dour, crawling, beautiful in the way that painful memories can be. The smartest thing that Majestic Downfall does with those riffs is it varies the tempos, making these longform tunes sound pleasingly multifaceted.
Nadja / Disrotted - Split (Bad Moon Rising 惡月上昇/Roman Numeral Records)
I lost touch with Nadja after When I See the Sun Always Shines on TV. Great album. So great, in fact, I didn't think I needed much more of the band after that. That's kind of the problem when you're so prolific. You either net a few diehards who are with you for the long haul or you shed the more fair-weather fans who don't want to budget the time to stick around once you’ve peaked. So, it took this split with Disrotted for me to dip back into Nadja. I was really fond of the former's Cryogenics, so it was an easy sell. Glad I bought it. “From The Lips of A Ghost In The Shadow of A Unicorn's Dream,” Nadja’s contribution, is excellent, a slomo trudge of expert float metal, taking me back to the Corrasion days when shoegaze-y doom was still pretty novel. I still think Leah Buckareff's bass tone is a miracle, the thing that really makes this band. It has that deadly Type O buzz to it that I’ve heard few other bands capture. Disrotted’s side, “Pastures For The Benighted,” is expectedly excellent, a brutish sludge banger that, underneath the feedback squall, is like walking through a neon-lit city during a nighttime rainstorm.
Turris Eburnea - Turris Eburnea (Everlasting Spew Records)
Man, did I whiff on this one. Nicholas McMaster plus Gabriele Gramaglia, the latter being the duder in Cosmic Putrefaction, The Clearing Path, and Summit. Gramaglia's other projects haven't really landed for me. This one, though, is pretty special. It's death metal but it's also subtly weird, like a possible path that might've opened up during death metal's early '90s explosion. There's been a lot of weird death metal lately, of course, but what sets Turris Eburnea apart is the riffs. Some real good ones in here in that they are real death metal riffs. Varied, too. There's the propulsive choppa choppa, trem shivers, and disquieting lurches. The riffs just feel classic without retreading ground. That helps integrate the weirdness (bass twidles, classical guitar) better. Everlasting Spew gives a FFO of “Gorguts, Artificial Brain, StarGazer, Dead Congregation.” I don't think that's wrong, but I'd probably sub out StarGazer for Ingurgitating Oblivion. Anyway, don't miss this like I did. I hope this wasn't just a COVID one-off.
Tvær - Uvaer (Bindrune Recordings)
The best version of this I've heard so far this year. Under the atmo black umbrella, but I think this sits closer to stuff like Havukruunu because (a) there are riffs and (b) those riffs rip. This is the Minnesota(!) quartet's debut full-length, though they managed to get a live album out before this one. (Quickie lineup note for nerds: Drummer EC also plays in the underground all-star group Aberration that also has peeps from Suffering Hour, Nothingness, and Void Rot.) Anyway, worth the wait. Music fits the very good album art, which itself is nice because derpy dungeon synth bands have been dunking all over black metal in that regard lately. The flow of these five tracks is in the Cascadian zone in that it just keeps building in intensity, wave after wave. But after the push, they know when to pull, breaking things down to solitary strums. Nothing you haven't heard, but it's nice to hear it done this well.
Wheel - Preserved in Time (Cruz del Sur Music)
“She Left In Silence” started to click for me, so welcome to the highlights, Wheel. This German doom quartet is like if early Solitude Aeturnus caught a case of Warning. Wheel doesn't quite circle the drain in the gloriously bummed-out fashion of the latter, preferring a functioning aching wistfulness, but there's an engaging bit of melancholic longing throbbing underneath each of these seven tracks. And none better than the one mentioned above. Pretty sure that's what Pallbearer was meant to sound like. Bonus: decent solos throughout. Good stuff.
Want to keep up with what I think is good this year? Follow my lists on RateYourMusic: 2020, 2021.
THE LISTICLE
Five video game songs that should be metal songs. Metallized video game music obviously has a history. You know exactly the sort of headbangers prone to widdle some 8bit leads. So, let’s take a crack at some older, more unexpected fare. I’ll also try to find the weirdest, yet still plausible cover style.
5. Daytona USA - “Let’s Go Away”
Cover in the style of: Demo 1991 Cynic
This was stuck in my head when I was getting vaccinated, which is probably why it’s here. MO-DERNNNNNNNAAAA. IT’S IN ME. I think sane people will tell you that this should be a straight up the middle heavy metal song with light speed metal parts. Thundersteel-era Riot, etc. Me, an insane person, thinks this should be fusion prog death. Maybe put a sick salsa breakdown in there and send it off to Atheist.
4. Super Mario Galaxy - “Waltz of the Boos”
Cover in the style of: early Esoteric
I think you could make a strong case for fitting this into the My Dying Bride universe given the use of strings. Might as well go full funeral doom, then. Early Esoteric, with its maximized, galaxy-ending density, would do fun stuff with this. I am also the idiot who thinks that any song with a wistful melody would make for a funeral doom classic. Shape of Despair should 100 percent cover “Human Nature.” I have bad takes for eons.
3. Out Run - “Splash Wave”
Cover in the style of: Opeth’s “Deliverance”
The thing about the Out Run soundtrack is how many different sections each song speeds through. You’d need a metal band that can pull off journey songs. “Splash Wave,” in particular, would make for a whopper thrash song. That said, I kind of want to hear what that bouncy B-part would sound like as an Opeth dirge.
2. Space Harrier - “Main Theme”
Cover in the style of: Running Wild’s “Blazon Stone”
The correct answer here is probably something like Lost Horizon. But hey, I think a Running Wild version of this would rule. Although, I must admit that I’d be into a Viking metal version, too. Hades? Black metal bonus: Use this as bait to convince Aeternus to be good again.
1. Mega Man Rock Force - “Circuit Man”
Cover in the style of: Intestine Baalism
Mega Man Rock Force is a fan-made game and, befitting of some true nerd shit, it has the best knock off Mega Man music. “Photon Man” also crushes. Naturally, this is a song made for Maiden. So, I would like to hear one of the heaviest melodeath bands take a stab at it. Dual Leads Man.
BUT I GOT ONE THING LEFT TO SAY
New logo by the god, Mike Teal. Got another one that will debut once I print real-deal paper zines. The plan is to bundle 10 digital VaccZines into a print copy with some extras like reprints of past pieces. More info on that later.
Plague Rages Podcast #2 has been recorded. And we thought the first one was hard.
I’m reporting out three possible intros. I decided to drop this one in as a tweener as I don’t know how long I’ll be in the trenches on those.
I’m mulling over doing a bi-monthly playlist pod where I jam some songs that are hanging around my head, old radio style. Is that of interest? Like, do you want to hear the remix of Black Moon’s “I Got Cha Opin” in a block with Pepe Bradock’s “Deep Burnt” and Jake Roberts’ original WWF theme? Lemme know. I’d open a separate free Substack for it if so.
If you’re reading this on Friday, it’s Bandcamp Day. Buy some shit.
Got a question? Email us! plagueragespod at gmail
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