Apr 012020
 

 

Man, this video makes me so fucking nostalgic, amped-up by the memory of being in the midst of a packed crowd and in the presence of a band on stage kicking our adrenaline into collective overdrive, and longing for the day when that can happen again.

But beyond the intense nostalgia for happier times that this new video provokes, it’s also a tonic for all the other mental and emotional ailments many of us are experiencing these days, because both this new song by Zan and the way they kick it out in the film of this live performance is exhilarating on a bunch of different levels. That song, “House of Splendor“, is the kind of thing that does indeed transform a shoulder-to-shoulder venue into a house of raucous splendor. It comes from Zan’s new album Behold the Key, which was just released last Friday by Blackhouse Records. Continue reading »

Jul 272015
 

Moro Moro Land-Through

 

(DGR has been pawing through great piles of new and forthcoming releases and has sifted out five of them especially deserving of praise.)

It has been a little bit since we’ve gotten a chance to do one of these — the chance to send me ping-ponging across the internet in a mad quest for new music, doing the equivelant of drunkenly stumbling into a band’s house after-hours, pulling up a chair, kicking my feet up on their table, and going, “So, tell me about yourself,” like I’m the leading authority on all things metal.

Sometimes, these Sifting articles tend to be built organically. At other times they’re built out of sheer desperation — a sense of “Oh god, I need to talk about this to some people now,” as we come across music. This one is a tad bit different, as it was brought on like most fun things in life, out of me opening my idiot mouth and promptly learning another lesson as to why, if I’m ever tempted to say anything, just to let it slide.

I’ve been part of the working world for ten years now, no longer a young’un by any means, but still stupid enough to occasionally slip up. You’d think by now I’d remember the #1 lesson of any workforce, which is to never, ever, EVER inform your boss of how much work you have left, especially when you’re getting to the downslope of your work pile. I made this mistake recently, gleefully informing my superiors that after I had done a certain number of reviews, I’d be in a holding pattern since most of the stuff that was coming out was spoken for — so really, that at the end of a certain week I’d be done for a bit. Continue reading »