Exeunt Albumnes 2017

in a year of cratered expectations, mental isolation, and internalized anxiety fraying patience down to fizzing strands of fucked-raw nerves, here's all the zounds that made it mildly less soul-coring:

VULTURE - The Guillotine

there are fewer genres more pregnant with groaners than "Retro-Thrash", but this German export eases my weaponized cynicism toward that class of bands by jettisoning all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Party bullshit and sharply going for the throat with black-gloved hands. 

THOUGHTS OF IONESCO - Skar Cymbals 

reemerging from the bitter ether of 90s hardcore obscurity, every bit the deadly curio as ever. 

SCATMOTHER - Vaniticism 

remarkably unpleasant / unpleasantly remarkable PE 

PSUDOKU - Deep Space Psudokument 

if this isn't your band, then fucking quit. 

OvO - Creatura

freakish industrial metal horror.

IRON MONKEY - 9-13

most of you won't be with me on this one, but i don't care; this fucking obliterates the last 15 years of Eyehategod's output. 

ENDON - Through the Mirror

this band became a fast favorite late last year, and their newest release only solidified there spot in my current top band list. it's not as weird as previous releases, thus serving as a perfect induction for the shrewd-but-curious metal types. 

COUCH SLUT - Contempt  

and speaking of Fast Favorites, here's the undisputed rulers of NY Noise-Metal (look it up) back with an even more screamingly vicious slab of i'm-nowhere-near-cool-enough-to-like-this extremity. 

CHEPANG - Dadhelo: A Tale of Wildfire

every grindcore band (that isn't from Australia) should copy this record. no nerd-jury would convict you. 

ALVVAYS - Antisocialites 

no year end list would be complete without something pretty that made me feel like an even more unappealing window licker than i already do. 

and the rest:

ABATTOIR & SATORI - Aether, AFTERBIRTH - The Time Traveler's Dilemma, ANNIHILUST/CEASE TO EXIST split, AOSOTH - V: The Inside Scriptures, BLOOD - Inferno, BLOOMING CARRIONS - Sparkling Rotten Dreams,  BROKEN HOPE - Mutilated and Assimilated, BUCKSHOT FACELIFT - Ulcer Island, CASAS - s/t, CEMETERIES - Filth Ritual, CHARLI XCX - Number 1 Angel, COMA CLUSTER VOID - Thoughts from a Stone, COMITY - A Long, Eternal Fall , CONCRETE MASCARA - Lunar Hunger, CRYSTAL FAIRY - s/t, PAN DAIJING - Lack, DALEK - Endangered Philosophies, DEAD CROSS - s/t, DEPHOSPHORUS - Impossible Orbits, FRET - Over Depth,  FRIENDSHIP - Hatred, FUCK YOU PAY ME - Dumbed Down, FULL OF HELL - Trumpeting Ecstasy, CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG - Rest, GAS CHAMBER/D.O.C. split, GNAW - Cutting Pieces, GNAWED/LIGATURE IMPRESSION split, GRAVETEMPLE - Impassable Fears, INTESTINAL DISGORGE - Life Sucks and I Blame You, INTENSIVE CARE - Voyeurism, KEVORKIANESQUE - Future Suicides, LINGUA IGNOTA - All Bitches Die, LOCK UP - Demonization, LOCUS MORTIS - Funeral Hymn, LONGPIG - Shrine of the Longpig, LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER - Dios Carne, OBSCENE - Sermon to the Snake, OOZEPUS - Your Limit, OPENING BELL/NYCTERENT - split, OXBOW - The Thin Black Duke, PERVERTED CEREMONY - Sabbat of Behezael,  PINK MASS - Necrosexual, POISON BLOOD - s/t, PRIMITIVE MAN - Caustic, PYRRHON - What Passes For Survival, RUDE - Remnants, RUSTEATER - Demo III: Plastic Shopping Bag Full Of Human Ashes, SEA OF SHIT/RADIATION BLACKBODY - split, SHIFT - Abandon, SHROUD OF VULTURE - Valium 1, SIRE - Evocation of the Serpent, SKINCAGE - Unimagined Space, SPITEFUL WOMB - Final Pageant, STIMULANT - s/t, TETRAGRAMMACIDE - Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix, THAETAS/HAAGENTI split, THEOLOGIAN - Forced Utopia, TREPANERINGSRITUALEN - Kainskult, UNDERGANG - Misantropologi, UNEARTHLY TRANCE - Stalking the Ghost, UNIFORM - Wake In Fright, WET NURSE./TEN THOUSAND MILES OF ARTERIES split, CHELSEA WOLFE - Hiss Spun, WORM - Evocation of the Black Marsh, YELLOW EYES - Immersion Trench Reverie, ZOLA JESUS - Okovi, 

These days, trying to have civil discourse—especially in the realm of metal—is like attempting to force feed a newborn an entire watermelon. I’m sure it can be done, if cartoons taught me anything, but the baby will just bitch that it wasn’t in season. You have one side that takes things incredibly seriously and another that’s so laid back about things they might as well be asleep. Neither one wants to listen to the other unless it means they have a few seconds to gather their next witty slap. It’s just a gathering of people talking at each other and our united ability to actually listen to what the other person is saying is no longer considered a virtue but a liability. Trying to understand where someone is coming from almost seems to be discouraged, especially in today’s climate where you’re just able to label someone a “communist” or “fascist” without even realizing why you’re saying it, only that you know it ends arguments (and starts new ones).

The same kind of people who will look down on you for thinking something like this is a bad mockery of something you find special are the same ones who lose their shit when their own tastes are called into question. Tell someone you don’t like Myrkur because you think the music is boring and you’ll be persecuted for crimes against humanity. But say you think someone’s vacation photo record cover sucks and you’re the asshole. It’s the devaluation of opinion. It’s an endless race to last place.

- Neil Jameson 

The Devaluation of Opinion in Metal

everything i was on in 2016

CRISIS ACTOR


  MOUTH OF MAGGOTS BASTARD NOISE / THE COMMUNION - SPLIT 7" $6.00 TUNNEL NUN as part of the Male Choir for the Buttress's clip "Brutus"

Bandcamps of 2016

CONVICTIONS - Demo

vicious punk rock with sneering UK Power Electronics vocals.

CUTWORM - Spoil

"darkwave" that's actually dark.

DEATHKIN - Kohti Kotiani Kaaosta

murderously melodic black/death with Sakevi-esque vocals.

FETTERS - s/t

a must for fans of Cold Meat Industry and Cold Spring style industrial death.

INTENSIVE CARE - This Is Exactly Who You Are

starting at Endless Blockade ----> Column of Heaven---- now here.

REEKING CROSS - all the splits

deconstructionist filth from the gents in Triac.

SCUM COUCH - Weak Existence 

if Self Defense Family decided they were going to be Brainbombs now.

SLEEPWALKERS - 5772

FFO Starkweather, Enhare, Endon

THAETAS - Demo

mid-period Broken Hope style tech-slam-death. part of the new wave of Long Island Metal (see also Locus Mortis, Forced)

THOSE DARN GNOMES - The Zodiac

another heaping helping of broken-brain.

Exeunt Albumnes 2016

ANTAEUS - Condemnation

the sharpened minimalist counterpoint to the sprawling progressions of their BM countrymen Deathspell Omega.

ANTICHILDLEAGUE - Holy Ghost

if Pharmakon is the rage of the cornered, and Puce Mary is the poison of the seducer, then Antichildleague is the mania that transcends them all.

BLOOD INCANTATION - Starspawn

each song feels like it's own mini-LP. so much imagination while never becoming overwrought.

CONCRETE MASCARA - Perennial Disappointment  

goes where most pretend they've been.

HELMS ALEE - Stillicide 

a leaner piece than their previous record (one of my favorites of 2014), but still loaded up with that 90s AmRep charm while not sounding like a callow throwback.

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT - Inceste

truly ones after my heel-chewed heart.

MODORRA/BODYBAG - Split 12"

delicious trash.

NOISEAR - Utopian Armageddon Omega Aftermath 

not mediocre poser violence with a phony tough false-pessimist stance like that other "record of the year" you'll be seeing on every kindergrinder's list. could watch them play for days.

RECLUSE - Stillbirth in Bethlehem

hypnotically ugly. ruthlessly impenetrable. callously unconscionable. charbroiled and phlegm marinated. oh yeah... pornographically problematic.

TEN THOUSAND MILES OF ARTERIES - Even Spilled Seed Crawls Toward The Womb

equal parts Gnaw / Gnaw Their Tongues / Gnawed.

......

"Some of the few conservatives i associate with told me this was going to happen. "You don't realize how many people who want what trump wants are out there," they said, "not saying anything now, and waiting to show up at the ballot." And i laughed in their faces. I ridiculed them. Right up until the tide swung last night sometime around 830 pm, where as my fiancé and i sat on the sofa watching in increasing horror, i believed it couldn't actually be like that, not to that extent, not like they were saying; how a country masquerading christian values (lol) upholds the opposite, a self-driven, me-first mentality, afraid of its own shadow, at the cost of all who don't harbor their true feelings only behind closed doors. I honestly can't imagine how people who feel like that live through day in day out. It seems like a kind of sadness i can't imagine wanting to have to live to carry around, and in seeing it plainer even than i'd ever now, i am thankful i don't feel it in me. There's that at least. That's not my blood. And there are plenty of others who don't have that blood either. A different love. But so now, yes, the real face of what america is has been revealed. The skin is off now. The meat is ripe and nasty and ready to fester right in all of our fool faces. It's not like living amidst open rot is anything new. I'm just not sure i can ever look certain people in the eye again. It's going to take a different kind of effort to remember how to smile and carry on. It's going to take a kind of person perhaps almost like who jesus is purported to have been." - Blake Butler

Untitled Revenge Motivated Costumed Vigilantes Soundtrack

image is from Dark Horse Comics' X #1 (volume 2) by Duane Swierczynski and Eric Nguyen.

Untitled Revenge Motivated Costumed Vigilantes Soundtrack

inspired by the less-than-inspired "mix tape" soundtracks of Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool, and Suicide Squad. 

as a huge fucking comic nerd, i found a lot to like about those films. as a huge fucking mix-tape soundtrack nerd, i found little to like about those films.

utilized properly, Mix Tape Soundtracks can add to the atmosphere of a film, as well as compliment the characters and the situations. John Waters, Martin Scorsese, Greg Araki, Quentin Tarrantino, David Lynch, Abel Ferrara, Seijun Suzuki, Sion Sono, and many others use pop songs (and not-so pop songs) in such a way that you can't imagine the scenes without them. the current crop of superhero films though seem to rely on the most obvious of A-Sides that have little-to-nothing to do with the events they are scoring.

initially, this playlist started as an alternate Suicide Squad playlist (hence tracks like "Ha Ha Ha" by Flipper, "I Started a Joke" by FNM, "Targets" by Rotten Sound, and others you could probably guess), but it quickly spun out into songs that could fit into any superhero narrative. a lot of these artists are on the more mainstream side, but i snuck in some underground metal/grind favorites (Meatwound, Triac, Dendritic Arbor, 9 Shocks Terror) cause another thing that's cool about mix-tape soundtracks is throwing a few curveballs and shedding light on some bands and artists that otherwise may go unnoticed.

mostly though, i just don't need to hear "Fooled Around And Fell In Love" or "Fortunate Son" ever again.