The Batlord's Kitchen Sink Journal of Anything and Everything He Wants to Write About

innerspaceboy · 01-18-2017, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Don't forget to post that **** along with a ridiculously long form post about it in your journal. I wanna hear this. And what do you know about Boris, Sleep, and Sunn O))) anyway?

Will do. He's got an album coming out shortly, so I'll probably attempt a feature on that as well.

Etna from 2006 was my introduction to the scene. Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version was more my style, as well as the blues-based drone of Top Dollar's work with Endless Boogie from NYC. A DJ passed away a few years ago in NY and I was invited to pick through her bins to help raise a few bucks for her fam. In the crates I found Endless Boogie Vol 1 and Vol 2 - ridiculously rare early vinyl-only issues from the band, and I was instantly hooked by Vol 1 (Black) Side A Track 1: "Stanton Karma." (Sorry - too rare for YT). But track that sh*t down because it is infectious.

Anyway by 2006 I had been dabbling in the darkjazz/doomjazz branch of drone and really digging the sparse sonic soundscapes of these jazzy dirges. That's when Boris surfaced on my radar. I mean, you really coudn't get away from Boris + Sunn O))) in 2006 if you had any sort of a pulse. My gutterpunk buddy was massively into them and bought their full catalog on wax.

Sleep just naturally surfaces when you're in the doom/sludge circles, and everyone calls Dopesmoker the pinacle of its genre. And sure, Boris was topping the charts in 2003 with Boris at Last -Feedbacker- but those who dug a little deeper were all about Dopesmoker, enough to chart in the top 25 by year's end.

Of course, my knowledge is merely superficial - I've listened to very little stoner/sludge/doom stuff, but I definitely dig what it's doing. I just tend to hang out in neighboring drone scenes, with albums like The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation's Succubus and Anthropomorphic and the trilogy of LPs they released under the alternate (more ambient) moniker, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.

**Frownland** · 01-18-2017, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

You mean Altar? Yeah that's good ****. Pretty much the best Sunn O))) album you'd ever expect Sunn O))) to make, but they always seem to have been too inbetween ideas to ever make such a straightforward but original and balls out drone metal album, and throw in some Boris oddness to make everything groovy. Or at least that's how I remember it, but it's been a while. Might be totally off.

It's more gorgeous than odd. I think that Flight of the Behemoth is their best so I guess that's better than Boris's Altar, so Sunn O))) is firmly better.

The Batlord · 01-18-2017, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

It's more gorgeous than odd. I think that Flight of the Behemoth is their best so I guess that's better than Boris's Altar, so Sunn O))) is firmly better.

I have that but I'm pretty sure I haven't listened to it. Might listen to it tonight.

**Frownland** · 01-18-2017, 06:22 PM

You know what to do

The Batlord · 01-19-2017, 10:07 AM

Despised Icon - Consumed by Your Poison (2002)

JESUS ****ING CHRIST ON A CRUTCH!!! I'm a moderate Despised Icon fan, but I had never heard their debut until now. And **** me is that vocal performance absurd. I'm used to the death metal vocalist (they have two, one for death metal and the other for hardcore) sounding mostly intelligible, but here he sounds like Frank Mullen of Suffocation on Effigy of the Forgotten: dense, extremely guttural, and you might as well throw out the lyric sheet cause there's no way you'll be able to follow along.

I ****ing love the vocals on that album though, so I'd be all for this if not for the constant, constant, constant bree bree pig squealing. If you don't know what that is, it's basically when a vocalist makes his voice sound like drill. It's shrill, annoying, and since a singer doesn't seem to be able to form even the most basic of words while doing this there is literally no way to do anything but go "Breeeeeee breeeeeee breeeeeeeeee!!!". So not only is it ****, but it's monotonous ****. It does have a certain hilarious charm since it's such a ridiculous sound, but it still doesn't in any way make a song sound better -- bar adding a bit of variety -- and when integrated into a singer's style as much as it is on this album... god damn...

Other than that... moderate complaint, everything else here is pretty nice. The band aren't as accomplished here as they would be with later albums, but as much as I like those releases they're getting kind of stale. So, it's nice to hear a more unpolished Despised Icon channeling Dying Fetus, but even more thuggish and breakdown heavy. This **** has plenty of chugging, but this still rips with deathgrind as much as it slams with ignorant (though genuinely crushing) beatdowns. To any fan of more refined death metal I imagine they would say this lacked originality, versatility, or songwriting skill, but as a vehicle for inciting mosh pits this is ace as ****.

Pig squeals aside, this is probably one of the most satisfyingly raw deathcore albums I've heard and could please any number of death metal fans who don't need a band to be technical or classy in the least. Thank god I've kind of gotten used to that bree bree nonsense though.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 01-19-2017, 12:47 PM

ya, i agree. it's basically what the genre had to the potential to be if it wasn't invaded by scene kids or whatever.

The Batlord · 01-19-2017, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

ya, i agree. it's basically what the genre had to the potential to be if it wasn't invaded by scene kids or whatever.

Atm I just wanna find and kill whoever first did that slick, weak sauce production so many of these bands all have. Even some decent bands have been ruined by sounding way too polished. Even Despised Icon's later albums have a bit of it.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 01-19-2017, 01:16 PM

definitely. i think it just became prominent once these bands realized they could be in with hot topic crowd and make the big $$$ if they did it. there's very few deathcore albums i can even get through because most of them are just so bland and mediocre, interchangeable with the rest of the scene.

The Batlord · 01-19-2017, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

definitely. i think it just became prominent once these bands realized they could be in with hot topic crowd and make the big $$$ if they did it. there's very few deathcore albums i can even get through because most of them are just so bland and mediocre, interchangeable with the rest of the scene.

I imagine it's more to do with the labels and who they hire to produce the albums. Major smaller labels like Nuclear Blast or Century Media are as trend-hopping as any actual major label.

The Batlord · 01-20-2017, 10:35 AM

Deadwater Drowning - Deadwater Drowning EP (2003)

This obscure EP by a band with no other releases is both a simplistic and odd amalgamation of influences that sound both cohesive and randomly flit from one to the other. Being such an early deathcore album this doesn't at all sound like the stereotype, so you have beatdown hardcore, late 90s metalcore, dashes of mathcore, brutal death metal, grindcore, and even a bit of melodeath that I'm guessing they borrowed from Unearth, all fighting to be heard over the others. And yet the band is too Neanderthal for it to be confusing because they don't how to do anything but beat you down with all the subtlety of a sock full of quarters.

In fact, even with all of that going on, what this really is is an absolutely crushing beatdown hardcore/metalcore band ala Disembodied (please tell me you know them) who take their extreme metal flirtations even further. It makes for a bit of a muddled sound, but everything still works for the most part due to Deadwater Drowning's goal of kicking ass and not much else.

I'm on my second listen of this album, and I'm not even judging this as a deathcore album anymore. As far as I'm concerned this is proto-deathcore that is otherwise planted firmly on the metalcore side of the fence. And that is ****ing alright with me.

01-18-2017, 06:22 PM	#134 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	You know what to do __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x