Monthly Metal Mixtape: April 2021

So little PSA to start this off this month. I’ve been reading Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal by Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman which is this huge, 700 page guided tour through, more or less, all the subgenres of metal. It’s cool and I’d recommend it if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in. But my main point is that there are lots of neat books like this – memoirs or academic studies or journalistic accounts of music scenes and bands – out there. And your local library might have a couple of them. But they’re probably not very popular and probably don’t get checked out a lot. So, if you think this kind of stuff is worth having around, and if you’re reading this you probably do, head to your local library and check out some of their music books. The less often they are checked out the more likely they are to get thrown out. So help keep them around so some kid can stumble upon them and get their life changed by this new discovery.

Body Void – Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth (2021, Prosthetic Records)

In recent years, the extreme metal branch of queercore has been flourishing. Off the top of my head I can name Vile Creature, Thou, Hirs, Liturgy, and of course – Body Void. Since 2014, the New England-based band have been producing molten, primordial blackened sludge doom. It’s only with the band’s 2019 EP, You Will Know the Fear You Forced Upon Us, did I take notice of the ferocious talents of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Willow Ryan and drummer Edward Holgerson. As a massive fan of Burning Witch’s album Crippled Lucifer and of all shades of the new(er) school of atmospheric blackened sludge doom in Thou, Primitive Man, and Amenra, Body Void give me everything that I love in the genre mesh they so comfortably inhabit. Molasses slow grooves that are played on repeat for at least five minutes at a time? Check. Emotive throat-shredding vocals? A low-end so low, so distorted, and so loose that at times it just sounds like electronic noise? Check. Seemingly endless ringing guitar sustain? Check.

The impressively skilled Willow Ryan plays guitar, bass, and delivers the distinct anguished shrieking on the record. Ryan is non-binary, and Body Void as a band name and project is one that they have said relates directly to their relationship to their body and mental health as a trans person. Lyrically, on Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, the relationship between the living body and our decaying, dying earth is poetically explored. The record closes out with the track “Pale Man,” a lament about living on colonized land stolen by the pale men of yesteryear in and under the white supremacist systems they established. Much like their 2019 EP, the unrelenting anger here remains sharply pointed upward as the band’s antifascist and antiracist themes continue in grief-filled explorations of ecological destruction. While mostly intentionally uniform in its crushing aesthetic, the surprises this album offers come in the form of a perfectly raw and heavy production, moments of near headache inducing bit-crushed distortion in oddball low sound frequencies, and the occasional ephemeral off-kilter tempo shift into hardcore. It’s a perfect album to headbang extremely slowly to. – Mike Tri

Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger (1994, Peaceville Records)

This is easily my favorite album of the unholy trinity; though Blaze is a very close second. Well, I should say, it's usually my favorite (I go back and forth on this all the time). Comparing Hunger and Blaze is incredibly unfair though since they're such radically different albums. Hunger is more of a continuation and refinement of their work on Funeral. Blaze on the other hand is more of a 'perfection' of the style they were working with on Soulside Journey; taking those OSDM riffs, stripping them down, and stripping down the overall production to create something wholly new and incredibly powerful. That being said, I love the unity of tone and sound on Hunger. A lot of people who are critical of this album call it out as monotonous due in large part to the drumming being the same tempo throughout. This album and Panzerfaust were both recorded in the same fashion since the band was on hiatus from 92-96, with Fenriz recording all of the instruments on a 4-track recorder in his bedroom and Nocturno Culto recording vocals after the fact. Recording it on a 4-track definitely helps to thin out the overall sound which adds to that 'cold' atmosphere. The whole album conveys a much more potent sense of melancholy and existential dread. The title track accurately sums up what I like about this album. It's hard to explain but there's this illusion of 'conflicting speed'. Everything fits, everything matches in regard to tempo. But within that melancholic din there's a strange sort of variation that I find hypnotizing. Fenriz's drumming is at the same tempo throughout; railing the entire time. The first riff he's playing matches the drums but at the same time he's changing chords off the rhythm in this repetitive manner that has the feeling of rising and falling; it has a strange movement to it. It's a lot simpler than I explained and it's not a novel concept, I just like how it's used in this song. It's just this subtle variation in the face of what on the surface sounds strictly repetitive. There's so much repetition throughout and at the very end of the song as everything fades out the main riff starts to change; just as it becomes inaudible. It's a funny little tease. Another good song to look into is “Skald Av Satans Sol.” It shifts slightly from the overall melancholic tone of the album with a few chaotic riffs. The strange thing is that the first riff has a quality of chaos initially but thanks to the repetition and the sameness of the drum beat it returns to that sense of melancholy. He's playing the same thing but those subtle variations between the drums and guitar shift the tone of the song in my head. I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know if it's just me overthinking something I like or what. The whole album possesses lots of small moments like that; and instead of feeling monotonous, it strikes me as bleak and hypnotic. It's like a black metal meditation tape. Alright, next month I'm gonna review Panzerfaust. Just kidding. I'm sorry. I just love Darkthrone. – Cry Baby Hank

Gatecreeper – An Unexpected Reality (2021, Closed Casket Activities)

Gatecreeper is one of those new wave of death metal bands, like Blood Incantation, Outer Heaven or Tomb Mold; they take the formula from the genre progenitors but then mix that up into their own thing. Until this year that foot was firmly planted in the death metal graveyard. Which makes a detour EP like An Unexpected Reality such a fascinating entry into their catalog. Yeah, the title is absolutely perfect and encapsulates both the music contained within and the year-plus we’ve all just gone through. There’s no way a song like “Superspreader” comes into existence without a pandemic. Musically, the first seven tracks here are like death metal/hardcore/grindcore, ranging between thirty seconds to just over a minute. “Sick of Being Sober” sums up what life in isolation has felt like – “Nothing to live for / Lonely and bored / Banging my head on the wall” – while feeling like a hardcore blaster filtered through a death metal lens. Which is really what this is. Some tracks, like “Rusted Gold” have a more death metal feel – the deeper growls, the riffs don’t have that hardcore jolt to them – but this like a death metal band deciding to play hardcore and each song comes out grimy and dirty and kinda veering into grindcore feels.

Seven tracks of this bring us to the closer “Emptiness.” An Unexpected Reality is eighteen minutes and “Emptiness” takes up eleven of those. Gatecreeper changes direction completely and we get a death-doom dirge to end things. It’s slow and sludgey and the dichotomy from the first half of the record really adds to that weight. Instead of a deathlike growl or hardcore bark, the vocals come closer to a funeral doom death rasp. Frontman Chase Mason compared the record to Black Flag’s My War, being able to show off two sides of the band. And in the process Gatecreeper illustrate just how dexterous they are in crafting one of the most unexpected releases of the year, but also one of the most creative. – SteveO

Unverkalt - L’Origine du Monde (2020, Self-released)

Well, not-metal guy is back with another album found while blindly stumbling around a cavern. Greece’s Unverkalt match winding guitar riffs with foreboding vocals, all delivered at a relentlessly deliberate pace. Slowly churning toward the next part of the abyss. Imagine floating on a rock through space. Are you going fast? Slow? Where are you going? Somewhere. When will you get there? Who knows. How many pieces will you be in by the time you reach your destination? Anybody’s guess. Your wails will be drawn out but you know what they say. In space, no one can hear you scream. That’s where this analogy falls apart, because the vocals on this record are cleanly sung. They do seem to spell imminent doom, but both the vocals and music are pretty clean here. It’s as much an alternative post-rock sound as it is metal. It’s a cinematic sound, big and enveloping. This is the band’s debut album although it sounds like this is not the members’ first rodeo. L’Origine du Monde was released digitally last November and the vinyl is coming out in a couple weeks. Listen to the album below. – Phil Collins