May 072021
 

 

The usual insanity of our in-box reached a fever pitch overnight, because it’s another Bandcamp Friday. That fever has been building all week in anticipation of the day, with the typical flood of new music reaching typhoon proportions. I’ve diverted some of that flood into this collection, a baker’s dozen of new songs and videos that range from the dreamy to the decimating, and includes both the re-surfacing of old gods and the emergence of promising new names – but without the usual artwork or my usual wordy reflections. Not everything is available on Bandcamp, but where it is available there, I’ve included links.

Mother’s Day is also on Sunday, but thankfully that doesn’t seem to have added to the torrent of releases. In catch-up mode, I’ll continue recommending more new music that day and on Saturday (if you don’t keep swimming, you drown). By the way, for those of you who don’t live in the U.S., “Mother’s Day” does not stand for Motherfucker’s Day, so most of you won’t have any reason to celebrate.

Continue reading »

Aug 012016
 

Krieg-Photo by Hillarie Jason

 

(Neill Jameson (Krieg) returns with the third installment of a three-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

One thing I’ve come to realize while doing this series is my mix tapes in the late ’90s were fucking great and anyone who was forced to drive with me during those times should start a kickstarter to throw me a parade. The other thing I’ve realized is how fortunate I was to come up at a time when all this was actually happening and not a footnote in some elderly man’s rantings twenty years later. The emphasis on performing music you were passionate about versus the current metal scene’s (sometimes) inane need for innovation meant that while you might be getting three dozen variations on the same Darkthrone or Emperor songs, at least they still possessed something special.

The conversation around black metal at the time was easier to digest, too, since it was basically all based on a form of honesty that isn’t really around any more, and there wasn’t someone standing up on a soap box because they were offended you owned a Burzum record. While I value the deeper intellectualism that the contemporary era can bring, it also has its shortcomings, especially in people’s perceptions.

Anyway, this is the final piece of my three-part black metal series. My list is obviously far from complete and I may revisit it someday, but for now here’s six more: Continue reading »

Nov 192010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we have yet another guest post by ElvisShotJFK — this one being the second installment in a series he created in his last post.]

Don’t you hate it when you hear a good song but don’t know who’s it’s by? Sometimes it’s more frustrating when the song is a cover and you can’t figure out who’s actually playing it. The more obscure the song or band, the harder it is to figure out where to look. Even with the wealth of knowledge to be found online these days, Napster Syndrome is alive and well, making some songs difficult to accurately track down. People still get it wrong, no matter how many times someone who knows what they’re talking about says something.

Like Cradle Of Filth (who I mentioned earlier in Volume 1), Children Of Bodom have recorded several covers over their career, going so far as to release an album’s worth of covers, some of them recorded specifically for the album. Not only that, but they used midgets to help promote the album.


Heavy metal midgets. Awesome.

Where was I? Oh yeah . . . even though they’ve done a fair amount of covers, there are songs that have been credited to them that were actually done by other bands.

Let’s get Blooddrunk and dive right in . . . Continue reading »