Individual Thought Patterns

Chuck Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001)

RIP

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

Possessed - Seven Churches

As the end of another exhausting and wild week draws to a close, I find myself drawn to this seminal album from the legendary Possessed.  Much like Venom's Black Metal record, Seven Churches basically spawned an entire genre of heavy metal, in this case death metal.  Not that it existed in a vacuum, but the degree of ugliness, spite, and heaviness expressed by these high school lads was unprecedented, and a huge influence on the first generation of DM bands, especially Death.  I'm too drained to expound any further, and it shouldn't be necessary anyway - just sit back and feel the hate roll over you.

Holy Hell

Shub-Niggurath Please

Vader - Out of the Deep
Morbus Chron - Red Hook Horror
Necromandus - Nightjar
Arkham Witch - Dagon's Bell
Briton Rites - A Meeting in the Woods
Orchid - Eyes Behind the Wall
Noctum - The Seance
The Wounded Kings - Return of the Sorcerer
Innsmouth - The She-Goat Quandary
Portal - Omnipotent Crawling Chaos
Abgott - Book 3-The Eye of Yog-Sothoth
Vasaeleth - Wrathful Deities
Necronomicon - Dreaming of the Old Ones
Thergothon - The Twilight Fade

Happy Halloween

Stoned

In keeping with the spirit of the season, let's all listen to Acid Witch's superior second LP, Stoned.  This album was easily one of my favorites last year, and still gets frequent rotation in the Swamp, especially this week.  Acid Witch explores the sort of death/doom purveyed by Coffins and Hooded Menace, but in contrast to the dark and cryptic vibe of those bands they explode with technicolor gore, like a Suspiria-inspired marker set by Lisa Frank found in the cheap costume aisle of your local grocery store, the kind that get you high as hell.  With festive seasonal gusto in the lyrics and a warm layer of horror-movie organ to fend off the foul weather, and several trippy digressions into cinematic abstraction belying the knuckle-dragging facade, Stoned glows like a pillar of green flame rising from a distant pile of corpses.

Thundering Hooves

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

Deceased - Supernatural Addiction

Alas, wee ones,  I must away forthwith for a day or two!  Focus your minds together on this, my favorite album by Virginia's unkillable death/thrash misanthropes, Deceased.  Supernatural Addiction is perhaps my favorite among their peerless discography (although one can't go wrong with any of their various albums).  Loosely themed around various notably works of short horror, from the glorious "The Doll With the Hideous Spirit" from Richard Matheson's famous "Prey," and its bloodthirsty Zuni Fetish Doll, to "Dark Chilling Heartbeat" based on Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."  Each song is a gem on its own, but taken as a whole they add up to a Tales From The Crypt-style anthology of horrid tales of revenge an comeuppance. 

The music?  Ah, yes.  This isn't the most brutal Deceased record by a long shot, but the ambitious texture and range are breathtaking, unfolding from the crusher opening of "The Premontion" into a complex mix of not only death and thrash but hints of psych, punk, doom, and weirder territories.  Even the longest songs are perpetually forward-moving and fat-free, anchored by the excellent and instantly recognizable vocals of drummer King Fowley.  Deceased is one of those bands like Slough Feg or Primordial, seemingly content to stake out their own plot of metal soil and crank out album after album of quality music, impervious to trends and inertia.

Will we ever open our minds to greet a world beyond?

Obituary - The End Complete

Greetings, Swamplings! Quickly, you must download this third album of apocalyptic early death metal from one of the pioneers of the genre, good old Obituary. The End Complete tends to be divisive for many fans - some see it as a watering-down of their early sound, while others see it as a bold step forward after the crucial Cause of Death. There are others, like myself, who maintain that it pretty much sounds exactly like the first two albums and those who overthink this kind of thing on the internet ought to get out more, which is exactly what I'm going to do right now.
We're terrified (What terrible fun)

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

The Grotesquery - Tales of the Coffin Born

Featuring Kam Lee of Death and Massacre on vocals, Swedish-death-metal-by-way-of-Florida band The Grotesquery released their solitary full length in 2009, and boy is it a doozy. This is old-fashioned gristly death metal with sharp teeth and zero interest in crossover appeal. Also featuring members of Lovecraftian bands Crypticus and Ribspreader.
That Thing Which Lurks In Shadows

Cenotaph - The Lurking Fear on Desecrated Ground

There are at least a dozen bands named Cenotaph - this one is the Italian death metal band who eventually wised up and changed their moniker to Necrosphere, which is only marginally better. Anyway, this brief demo contains three songs and the seemingly obligatory intro noodling, in just under twelve minutes. This is 1991, so death metal is still in its embryonic stage as a thrash metal offshoot, and this tape accordingly reflects that. Keening high-pitched thrash shouting alternates with death growl, tempos remain at full gallop throughout, and no song is longer than four and a half minutes. Still, we get some excellent Lovecraftian themes and atmosphere and a raw, bullshit-free bite-size lump of madness.
Perpetual Wars on Cerebral Shores

Winds of Genocide

I have returned from beyond! Apologies for the unexpected interruption, but it wouldn't be properly Lovecraftian without a few mysterious vanishings from time to time, now would it? Anyway, I come bearing strange fruit: some brutal death/crust from the UK, exclusively themed around the collapse of civilization. There's a good bit of Discharge-styled d-beat and some Autopsy-like primitive gurgling, but I also get a nice Aura Noir/Midnight black'n'roll vibe as well - all in all a swirling black cloud of nihilism shot through with lightning bolts of doom.
In The Shadow Of The Scythe Of Death

Wolves and Jackals - Demo

Taking the worst parts of black, thrash, and death metal and titty-twisting them into an unholy braid of ugliness, Atlanta's Wolves and Jackals were one of the best metal bands I saw live last year and remain on rotation to this very day. You can buy their album (and probably this demo as well) here. These three songs represent a mere sampling, but they are indeed most brutal and grim, yes indeedy.
Exhumed

Throng of Shoggoths - Nauseated and Terrified for the Future

Well, this is certainly destined to end up here sooner or later, so let's just go ahead and get it on! Throng of Shoggoths is a sludgy doom monster from Alabama, dedicated to the Lovecraftian and the foul. Leaning heavily towards the obscenely slow but occasionally erupting into fierce and nasty hardcore, this unpredictable beast of a demo splits the difference between Buzzov*en-styled drug sludge, Swedish death/doom, and crusty crossover metal. Truly impressive; I have high hopes for these gentlemen in the future.
Buy here.
Ftagn here.

Rapture

Disappointed?

Don't Be!

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

Wooden Stake - Vampire Plague Exorcism

Wooden Stake plays a hybrid death-doom style that should please fans of Hooded Menace and Acid Witch and also fans of the recent crop of female-fronted spooky doom such as Jex Thoth and The Devil's Blood. Hailing from Texas by way of New York, this duo grinds out some alternately beautiful and horrifying music, equally derived from Black Sabbath, Mythic, and sixties occult rock like Coven or Black Widow, all sheathed in the somewhat goofy vampire shtick. This is their first EP, which, while not quite up to par with the startling LP Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades which was recently released, still contains some chilling, primitive ritual doom for a dark and stormy night such as this.
Stalking in the Shadowlands

Corpsickle - Zombie

After an unexplained absence of three days I return to you with only this disgusting zombie metal record as commiseration. Really quite foul and perverted, this one, full of splattery sounds and lapses in taste. What a weekend...
Undead Transvestite Rising

Dark Tranquillity - Skydancer

I don't have much time tonight and, not coincidentally, little to say about this excellent album except that it may be the first true example of the "Gothenburg sound" made famous by At the Gates and In Flames. Dark Tranquility didn't quite reach the level of fame as those bands, but this classic clearly places them at the forefront of the genre they helped to create. The slightly goofy lyrics add a touch of humor and absurdity to a formula usually dominated by angst and self-seriousness, helping this album maintain distinction among Dark Tranquility's otherwise more stoic catalog.
A bolt of blazing gold

Yyrkoon - Occult Medicine

There's always a little something special about French metal, especially of the black and death varieties. Yyrkoon is no exception: they weild a hybrid style somewhat akin to, say, Anaal Nathrakh, but with an added twist of 90's-style death-n-roll à la Entombed and some nutso ESL lyrics. Lazy comparisons and genre-milking aside, my main attraction is of course to their Lovecraftian mindset and commitment to madness. Occult Medicine is a set of songs based around Herbert West, Re-Animator - both the short novel and the series of films. My only minor gripes with this album are the too-clean production and lack of dynamics, but this is more than made up for by the ferocity of the playing and the whirling chaos of the songwriting. Their next album, Unhealthy Opera, is a full descent into Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but tonight the splattery spray of fluids and concrete-muffled night terrors of this one just felt right.
Their heavy steps
And their twisted steps
Awakening a vision of terror
Freezing each human’s brains