At this point in my life, very few records really leave a lasting impression on me. I listen to so much new music it all blends together. What I value the most are well-written songs and not so much a band's sonic aesthetic. Occasionally, though, a band will do something innovative and catch my ear for longer than it takes to spin their record. Interesting bands are who I want to hear the most.
I had the chance to see Florida's Dark Castle live last year when they came through St. Louis with Nachtmystium and Eyehategod. They opened the show. Before they took the stage, I thought they were a local band, especially considering I misread their name as either A Dark Wood or Darkened Forest. I was blown away by the raw power and sheer amount of sound guitarist/vocalist Stevie Floyd and drummer/backup growler Rob Shaffer amplified from on stage.
This heft of audio weight translated perfectly to Dark Castle's first album, 2009's Spirited Migration. When it was announced that Profound Lore would release the follow up on May 31, I was still riding high on the euphoria of last year's show and I was ready for more. Surrender To All Life Beyond Form, in a lot of ways, is very similar in sound and spirit to Spirited Migration: huge, slinking riffs hammered home in odd rhythmic meters; delay-drenched guitar runs split into what sounds like three separate amps for a layered and crushing tone; beastly vocals from Floyd and Shaffer (and guests including Blake Judd, of Nachtmystium, Nate Hall, of U.S. Christmas, and YOB's Mike Scheidt); and the same lyrical theme of being religiously present to oneself and the surrounding world.
However, the more I listened, the more I noticed something: a lot of Surrender sounds like grunge rock and even like Soundgarden. It's mostly with the guitar. The opening riff in "Surrender To All Life Beyond Form," "Stare Into Absence" and the middle riff in "I Hear Wind" reminded me so much of the intro to "Black Hole Sun" in its flange-soaked, shaky state, where the note is undefined. A lot of Floyd's riffs feel like she's channeling Kim Thayil through a period of meditation atop a mountain: the eastern scales, the unexpected minor chord shifts, the combination of lead and rhythm guitar all seem contradictory to doom metal's obsession with low, plodding chords. But the result is much more compelling and memorable.
The Dark Castle/Soundgarden comparison became completely obvious after listening to a totally different record by a completely different band from another country entirely. Palehorse's Soft As Butter, Hard As Ice (2011, Eyesofsound) starts like so many other typical doom records out there: big riffs; elongated, guttural screams; screechy feedback and songs that regularly stretch beyond the 5-minute mark (with two of the first four cuts exceeding 9 minutes). But a few tracks in, the Londoners stop on a dime and these understated, medium-tempo grooves start flowing out. All of a sudden, I'm hearing "Good Morning, Captain," by Slint, between bits of Indian, Samothrace and a Geert van der Velde fronted haarp.
The mashing of '90s post-rock makes total sense in a doom context. Doom tends to be defined by minimalism in all aspects: tempo, musical complexity and vocal range. Simple riffs played slowly but with massive weight. This is exactly what post-rock bands like Slint were doing in the '90 by stretching out the "quiet/loud" dynamic to unreal lengths. They gradually built songs with repetitive, droning riffs. Which is much like what doom metal is to death metal.
Palehorse's Slint-ness rears its head most noticeably on "I Wish We Could Go Back And Do This All Again" and "Fill Your Ears With Wax." Around the 5-minute mark until the end, a simple 4/4 beat; a repeated, three-chord bass riff and spoken word vocals reduced to less than one-quarter the previous amplitude. The lowered dynamic is a deep breath; a moment of respite from the consistent crushing. Musical peaks must have their accompanying valleys for their height to be perceived because if the volume is always maxed to 10 it all actually sounds like 1.
Palehorse continue to shift dynamically throughout Soft As Butter sometimes sounding like another '90s rock band and that's punk royals Fugazi. "Challenge Hanukkah" has a bass riff that sounds like it could've been on End Hits or A Steady Diet of Nothing. Some dismiss the song -- and the band as a whole -- for the use of hand claps and melodic singing they employ on the track. "It's too emo," they complain. I dismiss those listeners as too dogmatic. Pancakes with maple syrup are a delicious breakfast but it is more interesting to the palate to add peanut butter or bacon.
And that is what I seek most these days: I want to hear something interesting. Too often do I hear new records that occupy familiar territory. When a band tries something new very few of us give the record a fair enough shot before shooting it down for not being "heavy" or "brutal" enough.
Hopefully, that metal fan isn't you and you're as wild about these two records by Dark Castle and Palehorse as I am, because they are two of the most interesting records I've heard all year. They are a breath of fresh air.
June 22, 2011
DARK CASTLE VS. PALEHORSE: '90S ROCK MEETS MODERN DOOM
June 17, 2011
LISTEN TO VOID MEDITATION CULT...NOW!
Attention death metal fetishists worldwide -- you've got new favorite band. They are Void Meditation Cult.
At present time, little is known of the group. No information about the members, where the group hails from, when they formed - none of that is available. In place of trivia, there is a song -- "All of the Devil's Temple," which can be heard at Hells Headbangers' page for the band. The cult metal label will release the group's debut demo tape later this summer.
If the rest of the tape rules as hard as this song, your head is going to experience the Vancouver riots a thousand times over. The whispered vocals provide an eerie, slithering menace to the guitars pulled from the deepest, foulest crypts. In fact, if you got hip to the Sperm of Antichrist tape Hells Headbangers released last year, that description sounds familiar. While that tape was dandy, Void Meditation Cult are much more potent, focused, and FUCKING EVIL. The "Meditation" part of their name plays a large part in the band's sound -- the way the music moves, you feel as though you're preparing and waiting for a specter to take control of your functions. Those ghosts float in the music too, as otherworldly sounds take hold when the vocals stop. Void Meditation Cult make some of the most ominous death metal we've heard in some time.
We eagerly await more from this group.
June 16, 2011
SO, ABOUT THAT METALLICA/LOU REED JOINT...
We'll judge it when it comes out. After that Morbid Angel, we're gonna back away from making bold predictions.
But, what we will say is that the news should make you revisit the greatest piece of music journalism of all time: Lester Bangs' essay on Reed's 1975's groundbreaking noise record Metal Machine Music. Read the full thing here, but here's an except if you're skeptical:
I have heard this record characterized as "anti-human" and "anti-emotional." That it is, in a sense, since it is music made more by tape recorders, amps, speakers, microphones and ring modulators than any set of human hands and emotions. But so what? Almost all music today is anti-emotional and made by machines too. From Elton John to disco to Sally Can't Dance (which Lou doesn't realize is one of his best albums, precisely because it's so cold) it's computerized formula production line shit into which the human heart enters very rarely if at all. At least Lou is upfront about it, which makes him more human than the rest of those MOR dicknoses. Besides which, any record that sends listeners fleeing the room screaming for surcease of aural flagellation or, alternately, getting physical and disturbing your medications to the point of breaking the damn thing, can hardly be accused, at least in results if not original creative man-hours, of lacking emotional content. Why do people got to see movies like Jaws, The Exorcist, or Iisa, She Wolf of the SS? So they can get beat over the head with baseball bats, have their nerves wrenched while electrodes are being stapled to their spines, and generally brutalized at least every once ever fifteen minutes or so (the time between the face falling out of the bottom of the sunk boat and they guy's bit-off leg hitting the bottom of the ocean). This is what, today, is commonly understood as entertainment, as fun, as art even! So they've got a lot of nerve landing on Lou for MMM. At least here there's no fifteen minutes of bullshit padding between brutalizations. Anybody who got off on The Exorcist should like this record. It's certainly far more moral a product.
Lou Reed - Excerpt from Metal Machine Music
Continue Reading...
June 10, 2011
CRUSTCAKE STREAMS: LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER - ETERNO TREBLINKA
Looking For An Answer hail from Madrid. They recently released a split with Italy's Cripple Bastards and their vocalist is the bass player in Dishammer(!!). Without even hearing Eterno Treblinka, their third album and debut for Relapse Records, I knew we wanted the chance to share this record with y'all.
Luckily, Eterno Treblinka rules. A dirty, no frills death-grind record built upon a foundation of hardcore. It's like Kill the Client have a set of identical twins across the pond. Treblinka came out this week on Relapse and can be purchased here. We've got the full album streaming after the jump, so read more to take a listen, and get a lesson in animal rights and human massacre.
Looking for Answer - Eterno Treblinka by crustcake 
So, the album art rules. And it links into the album title (and presumably the lyrics as well, but I don't speak Spanish...or gutteral sounds for that matter). "Eterno Treblinka" translates into 'eternal Treblinka' (surprise), Treblinka being a Nazi extermination camp. The phrase seems to come from the author Charles Patterson in his book "Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust." Having not read the book, I can't give too many details, but the rough idea I have gotten is that Patterson argues that the Holocaust's grizly actions are rooted in human's history of mistreatment of animals. The promo shot below seems to link into these ideas as well. Full disclosure: I am not 100% sure about this, nor do I intend to put words or ideas into Looking For An Answer's music, but this is what my Google research has given me. 
June 9, 2011
CRUSTCAKE PICKS - NEW CAKE IN THE OVEN: ROTTEN SOUND - CURSED
by Chase Macabre
Is it just me or is grindcore seeing a serious comeback? Similar to what happened to death metal several years ago, grind is back. Magrudergrind and Nails both released great records last year and the new Wormrot songs matched my high hopes for Dirge. On March 15, another great grind act, Finland's Rotten Sound, unveiled their latest collection of jackhammering ultraviolence, Cursed.
Rotten Sound introduce the album with a spastic kick in the face. They perform the blast-beaten, double-picked, speed-driven parts with extreme precision and clarity, but there is still a heaping pile of dirt and fuzz over the whole production that reminds me of the movie The Dentist. It's like a crazed Corbin Bersen covered in blood and gore using tiny, precision instrumentation to inflect as much pain as possible.
Rotten Sound aren't just a techincally precise grind band, though. They change up the pace with D-beat, crust and death metal elements. Songs like "Hollow" and "Terrified" plod along methodically at midtempo, "Delcare" slow things down to a tempo as close to doom as any grind band gets. The band also drops a few tasty beats. "Choose" and "Power" both make me want to do the Dougie they groove so hard.
The only drawbacks to the record is not every song is a winner. Over 16 tracks, there are 10 I think are killer, a couple that are good, a few that should've been left off entirely. I would have loved if the last riff of "Ritual" had went a few more measures, and I could say the same for two other songs on this record, too. Despite those knit-picks, Cursed is a strong record start to finish that has racked up serious plays on my iPod lately. Maybe the constant listening explains why my mouth has been so sore?
June 1, 2011
NEW OPETH ALBUM ARTWORK RELEASED FOR HERITAGE
Get excited.
....but what's up with those heads in the tree and the skulls on the ground?
