Deicide - Legion

Another crucial piece of your narrator's youth - Deicide's Legion is a classic or crazy, evil death metal merging cartoon Satanism, Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and a level of heaviness heretofore unheard.  The track "Dead but Dreaming" is an important piece on the map of Lovecraftian metal, one of the best known and earliest.   Legion clocks in at just under thirty minutes, but packs more brutality and nihilism into that short time than a dozen albums by lesser bands.  It's easy to forget in light of later shenanigans, but at one time Deicide was the evilest, hardest band in the world. 

Revocate the Agitator

Fishing with John

This is the soundtrack to the cult television show "Fishing with John," starring John Lurie.  Taking the loose framework of a PBS nature show and twisting it into a hilarious beatnik riff on culture shock, cryptozoology, manliness, booze, frenetic dancing, and the nature of sport, the six extant episodes stand as one of the weirdest TV experiments ever.  With guests like Tom Waits, Willem Defoe, Dennis Hopper, and Jim Jarmusch, and wild expressionist music by Lurie's many amorphous jazz combos, it's settling nicely right now with the mixture of whiskey and cough syrup fueling your helpless narrator's feverish battle with Mother Nature herself, also nicely reflecting the over-arching theme of the show.  Perhaps tomorrow will find me more lucid, or perhaps floating face down in an icy bog somewhere.

Ahhhhhh.....

Spvcxghsztpvrrp - Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6

Miami's teenage horror rapper Spaceghostpurrp has released what may well be the year's darkest and strangest mixtape,  Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6.  Sounding like it was recorded on a tiny, busted cassette player and liberally slathered in Godzilla and Mortal Kormbat samples, and as murky and uncommercial as any deliberately obscure black metal kvlt, this bloated monstrosity is a purple smear of ugliness, a robotussin stain on the plush carpet of hipster rap.  It's anti-social, unfiltered, and wallowing in sociapathic obscurity.

SVCK V DICK FXR 2011

Immortal - At the Heart of Winter

Just stopping into the Swamp for a brief moment, long enough to leave you my favorite album by the unkillable tyrant kings of the frozen fjords, Immortal.  The songs on this one are a bit longer and more varied than on their earlier material, and yet this is one of the records where Immortal's roots in thrashy first-wave black metal really shine through as well.  Plus, there's the all-time ESL classic "Tragedies Blows at Horizon."  I will attempt to remain among you until Halloween, but duty beckons...

Darkness with darkness you darkened me

Muddy Waters - After the Rain

Muddy Water's Electric Mud was arguably the first example of post-war bluesmen adapting their sound to the burgeoning psych scene, and unlike many of his contemporaries, Muddy fully embraced the style.  After the Rain, the follow up album, gave Muddy a chance to compose in the style and adapt some of his older riffs and motifs.   Consequently the songs are a bit less far-out, but noticeably heavier and grimier.   With sidemen who played for everyone from Earth Wind and Fire to Miles Davis and early flower power group Rotary Connection, he brews up a potent stew of soul, jazz, rock, funk, and weirdness, stretching the limits of the blues and slicing razorlines in it with his slide guitar.

Bottom of the Sea

Vader - The Beast

Poland's unkillable death metal O.G.s  Vader put out a tough-as-nails album this year, Welcome to the Morbid Riech, which I highly recommend.  This record, from 2004, finds the band in a more eldritch mood than usual, with a pronounced Lovecraftian bent to the lyrics and an obsession with the black abyss of the sea.  The music, of course, pretty much just sounds like Vader always does: thrashy first-wave death metal with Piotr Paweł Wiwczarek's hoarse throaty bellows booming over the top.  You can't go wrong with a Vader record, unless you're an asshole.

I Shall Prevail

Bruce Dickinson - Chemical Wedding

Here's an esoteric gem from Bruce Dickinson's uneven solo career, a mixture of prophetic and allegorical material based on the writing and painting of William Blake, and Rosicrurianism's secret rites and alchemical preoccupation.  On top of being a world class fencer, aviator, novelist, and heavy metal singer, Mr. Dickinson is a serious student of the occult, and he explains the album in depth here far better than I could.  Many of the lyrics are cryptic and abstract, though, allowing one to come to one's own understanding and relationship with the album.  Musically, it's pretty straightforward and solid Maidenism (Adrian Smith is the primary guitar player) aside from a few excellent cameos from Swamp veteran Arthur Brown and the occasional modern screamy vocal accent.  The patient disciple will discover multiple layers of meaning and depth, and the casual headbanger will find a bunch of kick-ass heavy metal.  

This is the river of space 

This is the river of time

Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

You may have noticed some gaps in posting happening lately, especially on the weekends. This sort of unexplained gap is not uncommon for your host, but I've decided to shift into quality-over-quantity mode. I am usually able to post throughout the week, and sporadically on weekends, but I'm going to have to try to make the most of my free time and only post when I actually have something to say, at least until the end of summer.

That said, there's no better introduction to this new mode than Primordial, one of my long time favorites and a band that stays in constant rotation in the Swamp, staving off the darkness. Frequently described as Celtic/folk/black metal (a combination of modifiers that would normally cause me to stay far, far away), Ireland's most reliable and perhaps longest running metal act is really an entity unto itself. Beginning with this album, they venture more into Slough Feg-styled epic heaviness unburdened by cheap genre tags or gimmickry. While still venturing on occasion into blast beat/tremolo territory for effect, this is really a study in massive melodic force. Steered by leather-lunged A.A. Nemtheanga (of Blood Revolt) and anchored by a water-tight rhythm section, Primodial's twin guitarists weave Celtic themes and melancholy lyricism into the black metal framework the way Thin Lizzy did for hard rock way back in the day. In fact you can almost sense a sort of spiritual kinship between "The Coffin Ships" or "Cities Carved in Stone" and Lizzy's Irish folk influence.

I chose this album because it's the first one where the mix felt perfectly balanced for me. The earlier albums are crushingly heavy and much closer to standard blackness, and the ones following this continue down this path with increasing focus and steely-eyed warrior spirit. Every single one of them is good, though, especially this year's "Redemption at the Puritan's Hand." Take heart.
Oh god, that bread should be so dear
And human flesh so cheap

The Slow Death

Abiding my love for obscure sub-genres and strange hybrids, let's all get dragged backwards through this haunting death-doom variation from Australia's The Slow Death. Beginning with sodden blankets of earthy guitar similar to Warning, and exchanging Patrick Walker's ghost-ridden anguished vocals for some spooky siren whisperings way up at the high end of the register, and some Skepticism-styled funeral growling on the low end, this self-titled LP is their only release. A widely varying pace and sinister internal logic, not to mention the occasional horror movie keyboard melody, give it the air of an ill omen. Interestingly, some of the members of this band are also in the wildly dissimilar Corpsickle and Murkrat.
Dark Days

Runemagick - On Funeral Wings

I was going to post something entirely different, something quirky and breezy, but as night descends and temperatures drop to an unseasonable chill, it resonates hollowly and I find myself returning to the realms of doom and death. Runemagick is a long-running player in the death/doom game, predating the current boom by two decades, yet they haven't quite received their due in my opinion. Nevertheless, they grimly soldier on, producing album after album of dense, occult misery reeking of Armageddon. This particular example, their eighth LP from 2004, is a sprawling and ambitious epic incorporating many diverse influences without straying too far from its plodding, elephantine gait. Preceded by the more straightforward Darkness Death Doom, and followed by the more funereal Envenom, this full length reflects a murky high-water mark from a band who has yet to produce anything of less than excellent quality.
Black Star Abyss

Wreck of the Hesperus - The Sunken Threshold

Tonight's invocation is a hefty slab of funereal doom courtesy of Ireland's literary-minded Wreck of the Hesperus on their only full length. While not quite the squishy amorphous ooze of Tyranny or Catacombs, this is certainly a far cry from the relatively upbeat stylings of your traditional doom ensemble. It's foul and raspy and stretched nigh to oblivion, and despite the sub-aquatic theme I get a dry dusty bone-rattle ambiance from it, but it still sounds like a live band playing in a room together. There's a distinct death/doom hue in keeping with the style all the wee ones are so in tune with these days as well - not exactly normative songwriting but not a random lump of squirtly noises either. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
A tomb won't be immune

Incantation - Upon the Throne of Apocalypse

Well, this was bound to turn up here eventually. As a young Lovecraftian and budding hessian I had the priveledge of seeing Nile and Incantation in a Mexican restaurant nearly fifteen years ago, and it was a life-shaping experience. For one thing, it made me perpetually skeptical of Nile after their two-hour set up time and misbehaving smoke machine lent their set an air of cheesy desperation. For another, Incantation easily outdid them in every conceivable aspect. They were like a force of nature to my young ears, and they were my gateway from slick cartoonish commercial death metal into darker, murkier occult waters. For those unfamiliar, Incantation plays doomish death metal steeped in forbidden knowledge, covered in layers of muck and grave dirt, and downtuned almost to oblivion. There's a vast subsegment of metal bands playing in this style now, from Swamp favorites Hooded Menace and Vasaeleth to Teitanblood and Impetuous Ritual. Still, nobody does it better than these bastards, and they never did it better than they did it here.
Hang high, Torment in the wind

Ophidian - Lost in the Halls of a Dream

Well, Swamplings, I'm not sure what to make of this one at all. Blackened Power Metal? Symphonic Italian Melodeath? There's all kinds of things going on here. The opening track, "Drowned In The Stygian Sea/Set In The Enigma Blaze" alternates between pretty orchestrated parts with operatic female vocals and grindy parts with screechy vocals, only to weave the two together with some emo-ish clean singing and death grunts in the background. Next we have the bafflingly titled "The Sarnath's Night," which is mostly slabs of Suffocation/At the Gates streamlined sound but with the female singer wailing away simultaneously with the death vocals, followed by some whispered narration. The other two songs here are equally schizophrenic and overstuffed. I can't find any information about this band at all, save that they share a name with some DJ douchebag and that this is their only release. Ah well, it certainly is strange and charming enough to stand on its own, but I'd love a lyric sheet.
Here come my revengeful desire!
Reply me! Reply Me!

It's Casual - Stop Listening To Bad Music

Self-explanatory.

Buried at Sea - Ghost

Here's another fine example of the fact that "EPs" by doom metal bands are longer than many people's albums. In fact, what we have here, despite its thirty minute running time, is one song stretched to span an ocean. I have no idea what the lyrical subject matter may be, but as the vocals only bob to the surface around halfway and mostly vanish thereafter, we're obviously more concerned here with atmosphere and menace. While quite heavy in parts, there are stretches of grainy static punctuated by clanging bells, chirping noise, and distant footsteps in the sand. To me this is evocative of later Blind Dead films Ghost Galleon and Night of the Seagulls, both of which are sluggishly paced but punctuated by genuine moments of repulsive horror. Plus, we have this beautiful cover art to hint at what is entombed herein.

Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet

Busy, busy days here in the Swamp, lately, but I must set aside some time to care for my little Swamplings, oh yes. Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet is debatably the first "funeral doom" album ever. Doubling the minimalism and measure slowness of their forbears, from Black Sabbath to Candlemass, Skepticism added heavy organ, mallet-played marching drums, and mystical chanting, effectively creating their own sub-genre and pushing the outer fringes of heavy metal into strange, ominous territory. Resonating at once blasphemous and pious, timber-rattlingly loud and subtly beautiful, Stormcrowfleet is a must for fans of Thergothon, Moss, Catacombs, and the like, even though none of those bands sound quite like this one.
At the swamps
Mist is rising

Angantyr - Hævn

Angantyr of Denmark play a furious, haughty and regal form of black metal seemingly descended directly from Bathory but mixed with some unique atmospheric touches such a a cello whirling crazily to keep up with the guitars on the first song, "Et Varsel Om Død." Lyrically the seem (judging from unreliable old Google translate) to be focused on Danish history: named after the first Danish king and foe of Chrisitanity, they long for a return to supposedly simpler pagan times. Nothing too earth shattering there, many black metal bands concern themselves with identical themes, but the particular nautical bent to this album has charmed your host, what with my soft spot for sea monsters.
Re-released (with a cooler cover than this) by Northern Silence earlier this year. Buy one here.
Blod For Blod, Liv For Liv

Vault Dweller - Messenger of Doom

Salem, Oregon's crusty dread-mulleted doomsayers Vault Dweller unleash this sludgy behemoth of an album out into the arid wastes, radiating deadly hate and face-melting tongue-in-cheek humor. The music is a hybrid of stoner mid-temp swagger and chaotic blastbeat hardcore, with lyrical subjects such as mutation, human extinction, and the hilariouly to-the-point "Thunderdome." Not the most distinctive or memorable album, as most of the songs sound interchangeable, but there's a good bit of wit and panache on display for those willing to listen.
Two men enter. One man leaves.

Angel'in Heavy Syrup - II

Named after a can of tinned peaches, Japanese all-girl psych outfit Angel'in Heavy Syrup pull back the tab on some sugary sweet psych pop that leaves a strange metallic aftertaste, as the dark undercurrents and desperate wailing sink deep into the psyche. This, obviously, is their second LP, a scaling back of the full-on fuzz spasm of their first and less featherweight than their future work. It twinkles and sparkles in my headphones, lulling me siren-like into Stygian resinous repose.
Naked Sky High

Angel Rot - Unlistenable Hymns of Indulgent Damnage

Any album with two multi-syllabic adjectives in the title automatically peaks my interest, but few are as truly malevolent and purposefully ugly as this beast. Recorded in 1993 but unreleased until years later, this forward thinking monstrosity predated the wave of strange, angsty, nihilistic heavy metal that gained some momentum in the nineties before splintering into horrid rap hybrids, numerous forms of "industial music," slack-jawed crossover fodder, et cetera. In all honesty I cannot say that I love this record in the way that I do my other children but I certainly do listen to it often at the end of a long black day.
Perhaps today.