Monthly Metal Mixtape vol. 1

So we don’t cover metal much at all over here at Change the Rotation. A Random Record here or there, sliding bands like Iron Reagan into the bracket, and recently with Don’t Panic’s top black metal records of the year. Perhaps with no surprise, all of these are my fault. So, in an attempt to bring metal to the site a bit more regularly, I bring you the Monthly Metal Mixtape. At the end of each month, I give a short overview of some of the metal records I’ve been listening to lately. Black metal, death metal, doom, grindcore, thrash, just straight-up classic metal, whatever. It’s all here, so hopefully you’ll find something you’ll enjoy.

Abbath
Abbath
Season of Mist, 2016

So in case you haven’t been paying attention to the black metal gossips, Immortal is not… well, immortal. Abbath lost the rights to the name, even though he was essentially everything in Immortal, and differences with Demonaz and Horgh led him to creating his own, self-titled band. And right from the opener, “To War!” you can tell that’s what is going to happen. It shouldn’t surprise you to notice that Abbath sounds like Immortal. It has that same grimness, the same raspy vocals, the same breakneck pace that was common on Immortal records. Hell, it even has “Nebular Ravens Winter,” off Immortal’s Blizzard Beasts as a bonus track, (along with an awesome cover of Judas Priest’s “Riding on the Wind”). The best time to listen to this is while it’s still winter, so a January release was absolutely perfect. Get grim and frostbitten.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Arc
Relapse Records, 2016

Your Altered States of America Agoraphobic Nosebleed, this is not. While that record contained a ridiculous 99 songs in a bombastic 19 minutes, (yeah, you read that right), Arc is a slower, different beast. Like three songs in 27 minutes. Arc is the first in a series of which each member crafts an Agoraphobic Nosebleed record to their own unique feel, and this is definitely Kat Katz’s show. If you’re familiar with her previous band, Salome, this will sound immediately familiar. It has that same slow, sludgy feel with her harrowing shrieks. It’s plodding and pummeling, uncomfortable and doomy, and unlike anything Agoraphobic Nosebleed has done before. Definitely give it a listen.

Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Vertigo, 1970

So if this year is to be the end of Black Sabbath, it’s a good time to take a look back to the origins. Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut came out seven months before the more well-known Paranoid. But Black Sabbath laid both the band’s, and the metal genre’s, groundwork for the next five decades. From the solemn, doomy feel of album opener “Black Sabbath,” the upbeat, bluesy feel of “The Wizard,” to the catchy riffs of “N.I.B.” (whether it stands for Nativity in Black or not), this was the origin of heavy metal. Tony Iommi’s riffs influenced a whole new generation of guitarists and Ozzy Osbourne’s haunting vocals crafted a dark new world, that has expanded to styles that sound nothing like Black Sabbath, but owe their existence to this record. You all know it, or should, so indulge yourselves in the origins once again.

Iron Maiden
The Book of Souls
Parlophone, 2015

It must be something about the number sixteen. Album number sixteen was a double album for Judas Priest, 2008’s just-okay Nostradamus, and Iron Maiden have followed suit with their sixteenth record, The Book of Souls. The Books of Souls, though, is much more than just okay. It’s a great record, and probably the best in Maiden’s catalog since 2000’s Brave New World. Starting calm with Bruce Dickinson and some creepy keyboards, it doesn’t take long before the familiar gallop of Iron Maiden kicks things off in “If Eternity Should Fail.” At eight and half minutes, the opener isn’t the longest song here. It isn’t even close. “The Red and the Black,” which sounds like it wouldn’t be too out of place on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son clocks in over thirteen minutes, while “Empire of the Clouds” is the epic closer, clocking in at a magnificent eighteen minutes, becoming Maiden’s longest song in the process. Starting with some classical sounding piano and strings, “Empire of the Clouds” is based on the true story of the R101 airship crash, a more devastating disaster than the more famous Hindenburg. It’s a grandiose song, eventually picking up to a familiar Maiden pace with their patented guitar attack. Elsewhere, songs like “The Speed of Light” and “When the River Runs Deep” feature Maiden’s trademark gallop, Dickinson’s gallant vocals, and the solos we associate with the band. 35 years since the release of Iron Maiden and they’ve still got it. Experience the magnitude of an hour and a half of Maiden.

Persuader
Evolution Purgatory
Noise Records, 2004

Imagine if Blind Guardian was really pissed off and decided to write songs about atheism and destruction instead of wizards and elves and all things Tolkien. That’s what Persuader sounds like. They can be placed in the power metal bin, but this is magnitudes heavier than most power metal. There are the skillful solos we see in power metal, but the music takes on a thrash vibe at times. And vocalist Jens Carlsson is a dead ringer for Blind Guardian’s Hansi Kürsch, with a rage and venom in his voice Hansi never shows. Just listen to Carlsson’s growls in “Sanity Soiled.” He’s fucking pissed. That animosity is aimed at religion: “Your God is absent / And heaven abandoned” from “Strike Down,” or at fantasizing an Armageddon. “Our end closing in / Our time on earth expired / Like fools we celebrate / This downward spiral / We’ll find salvation through destruction / Bright, pure holocaust” from “Wipe Out.” Evolution Purgatory paints no pretty pictures. If you always thought power metal was too wimpy, you haven’t heard Pesuader yet.

Radagast
An Earthly Sacrament
Self-Released, 2012

So the wider world has been introduced to Radagast through the new series of Hobbit movies, where Radagast is portrayed as this weird, nature-obsessed, tripping wizard who’s friends with the forest creatures. Like if Thoreau was planted into Tolkien’s world. Metal bands have been borrowing inspiration of the realm of Tolkien’s writings forever, and given the Radagast character it shouldn’t surprise you that Radagast the band is an atmospheric black metal band of the Cascadian variety. An Earthly Sacrament is one, twenty-two minute long song extolling the beauty and sacredness of nature. “The wilds, triumphant in the void / Nature transcends the blackened vastness / Timeless titans, their wisdom knows no end / Fur and feather thrive, purity.” Starting with the sound of rain, before blasting into Wolves in the Throne Room-esque black metal, An Earthly Sacrament is full of blast beats, tremolo riffs, and haunting shrieks. And then, about halfway through, it all falls out in favor of acoustics around a campfire in the Redwoods. We chill out for a bit under the shade and the stars, and then it’s time to blast away again. It’s like walking away from a church burning through a field full of flowers on your way to a dark basement where you put on corpsepaint and spikes for exaggerated band photos. If that imagery doesn’t scare you away, or if you like Cascadian black metal, devote twenty-two minutes of your time to An Earthly Sacrament.

Rotten Sound
Murderworks
Deathvomit, 2002

Finland’s Rotten Sound are one of the preeminent grindcore bands active today. They are everything grind should be: unrelentingly fast and in your face, blazing, brutally heavy guitars, the constantly blasting drumbeats, with a sense of spastic, yet organized, chaos. Murderworks wasn’t their first record, but they’ve fully shed any trace of sloppiness, turning into a crusty, technical, grisly, grindcore beast. Keijo Niinimaa’s vocals are crisp and violent; he sounds pissed and holds nothing back as Rotten Sound blast through these 14 songs at a ferocious pace. The album was produced masterfully by the late Mieszko Talarczyk, of Nasum fame, and everything sounds precise, even for such an anarchic genre. If you still miss Nasum, like I do, you’ll find Rotten Sound will help fill some of that void.