THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #24: Black Sabbath – Paranoid (Vertigo Records, 1970)

On February 13th, 1970, Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut album, inventing heavy metal in the process. But in September of that same year, they unleashed the genre’s bible. While Black Sabbath saw the quartet still working to fully define their musical path, Paranoid was the sound of a band that had tapped into the source from which all metal has flowed for the last fifty-plus years.

Black Sabbath wasn’t the first metal band I heard; that honor falls to Metallica. But I was lucky enough to hear them during my formative years, and while hearing “Black Sabbath” for the first time on a good set of headphones gave me the chills, it was the entirety of Paranoid that made me understand why Sabbath was the one true heavy metal godhead.

That’s because Paranoid is a murderer’s row of incredible songs, starting with “War Pigs.” Catchy without being conventional, progressive without disappearing up its own ass and heavy as hell, “War Pigs” is one of Sabbath’s greatest achievements, a deep, dark and tension-filled rumination on the evils of warfare. When one considers that the world was only a few years removed from the Vietnam War’s bloodiest period, the song takes on even more meaning. According to Wikipedia, bassist Geezer Butler has been quoted as saying that the song is “totally against the Vietnam War, about how these rich politicians and rich people start all the wars for their benefit and get all the poor people to die for them.” The image of corrupt politicians being put to judgment for their corruption remains a powerful one, especially in the post-Trump era.

Kicking off your album with one of the greatest metal tracks of all time would be a ridiculously bold move for just about any other band, but Sabbath’s songwriting throughout Paranoid is so excellent throughout that it doesn’t that album doesn’t feel front-loaded. “War Pigs” is followed by the urgent title track, a short, sharp shock of a song that almost feels like proto-punk and then into the ultra-trippy “Planet Caravan.” “Paranoid” was written in the studio as a filler track, but if there’s one to be learned here it’s that a throwaway Sabbath track from this era of band blows roughly 99.9% of other heavy band’s best songs out of the goddamn water and as such it ended up becoming one of the band’s signature songs. “Planet Caravan” on the other hand is one of the Sabs’ most underrated tracks, a musical trip to the far reaches of space that sounds great when you’re sober but even better with the assistance of a dimly lit room and some primo weed.

“Iron Man” closes out side A of Paranoid and I’m not sure what more can be said about this track other than it is heavy metal personified. From Tony Iommi’s monstrous, world-beating guitar-work, to Ozzy’s maniacal vocals, to the mind-blowing outro that shows why Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are the best metal rhythm section of all time, “Iron Man” is yet another stunning achievement in the Sabbath canon and contains what is quite simply one of the greatest riffs ever written. “Iron Man” is also the track that most folks associate with Black Sabbath and with good reason.

Of course, as amazing as side A of Paranoid is, side B is certainly no slouch, beginning with the devastating duo of “Electric Funeral” and “Hand of Doom.” Taken together, these songs are the songwriting blueprints for pretty much every stoner doom band ever. “Electric Funeral,” begins with a creepy main riff and haunting vocals, becomes frantic around the two-minute mark and then settles back down into a dying man’s crawl before fading back into the abyss from whence it came. “Hand of Doom” on the other, uh, hand, is an atmospheric doom workout that makes excellent use of dynamics and is one my favorite songs from the Sab four. The way the different sections of the song flow into each other is nothing short of masterful, emphasizing yet again the band’s masterful songwriting and musicianship.

Whereas the the first thirty-five minutes and forty-five seconds of Paranoid are serious as a heart attack, the final six minutes and fifteen seconds showcase Black Sabbath at their most playful. “Fairies Wear Boots” is a tale of coming home late at night (presumably after one hell of a bender) to see “a fairy with boots on dancin’ with a dwarf.” The song sees Iommi and Co. returning to their bluesy roots with a shuffling rhythm and a lead-heavy central riff to finish out the album, perfectly capping off eight tracks of absolute metal mastery.

More than any other Black Sabbath album, Paranoid is the one that blew my young mind and in revisiting the album to write this piece, it’s pretty easy to see why. This is the goddamn urtext, nothing more, nothing less, ’nuff said, true believer!

Read other entries in THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums.

Boris – W (Sacred Bones Records, 2022)

For even the most dedicated fans, keeping up with Boris can be damn near impossible; it often feels as if every other month the band hits us with a new release to dive into, typically in a completely different style than whatever came before. Regardless of the challenges it often presents, I try to check out as much of their output as I can, and I was excited to hear that they would be releasing their new album W via Sacred Bones Records, the label that brought us John Carpenter’s excellent Lost Themes Trilogy. What would it sound like? What wild new stylistic directions would they take their music in this time around?

As I alluded to above, one of the many wonderful things about Boris is that you never know which version of Boris you’re going to get from album to album, and for W the chameleonic Japanese trio have largely stepped away from the crushing drone/doom and sludgy punk of recent releases such as Dear and No to present us with one of their most ambient and atmospheric collections of songs to date. The album sees guitarist Wata handling the bulk of the vocals and her delicate voice works perfectly with the dreamy minimalism of tracks such as “Icelina” and “Beyond Good and Evil”. Boris blends elements of shoegaze, ambient and noise to create surreal soundscapes more suited for hallucinating than headbanging.

In fact, only traditionally heavy moment comes in the form of “The Fallen,” a four minute and thirty second sludge/slugfest that is perfectly placed at the center of the album; whereas many heavy bands will place a mellow track or interlude in the middle of an album to break up the heaviness, Boris flip the script by placing a heavy track in the middle of W to break up the mellowness. It’s a friendly reminder that Boris can still be ridiculously heavy whenever the hell they feel like it and adds yet another surprising facet to the album; just when you think you have all the answers, Boris changes the questions.

While frequent collaborator/legendary psych rock guitarist Michio Kurihara (Ghost, White Heaven, The Stars) is conspicuously absent from W, it’s still pretty far out; much of this can be attributed to the fact that whether they’re conjuring up Earth-shaking drone/doom, throwing down on some heavy rock, or indulging in noise and ambient sounds, Boris have a knack for creating albums that are beyond immersive. I took the liberty of listening to this shit after indulging in some of my favorite “smoky treats” and I felt like I was swimming in pure sound for a little over forty minutes, which ain’t no bad thing. Listening to W while altered probably won’t melt your brain (that’s what Earthless’ new album is for), but it does make for an extremely pleasant trip.

Boris’ discography is so vast and so diverse that trying to determine where exactly W ranks within it is about as far from an easy task as it gets. I can however say with great certainty that the album grows on me a little more every time I listen to it and it’s very rapidly becoming go-to album to listen to after smoking a fatty in 2022. The direction of W may disappoint fans of Boris’ heavier/doomier material, but those that also appreciate their wildly experimental side will find a great deal to enjoy here.

https://boris.bandcamp.com/

Leaving Las Vegas, or Lost, Found and Salem, OR Bound.

We’ve lived in Las Vegas for a little under a year. Well, technically we live in Henderson, NV, but you have to go into Las Vegas to do anything cool. Living here was always meant to be temporary, but it turned out to be a little more temporary than we anticipated for a number of reasons that I’m not going to go into here, because I like to keep it posi.

While I’m not terribly sad to be leaving, I will say that I’m sad I never got to experience the music scene here thanks to our pal COVID. There have been shows, but I’m just not comfortable going to them yet due to this pandemic we’ve all been dealing with for what seems like forever. When I first moved to Sacramento, CA, I started going to shows and checking out the local venues almost immediately, so it’s been really strange not to be able to do that here.

Although I haven’t been going to shows, I have been spending a lot of time at the local record stores, specifically Zia Records, which has two great locations in Vegas. They remind me a lot of Sacramento’s dearly departed Dimple Records, so I’ve been very happy to have at least one thing that feels familiar during our time here. Another great shop out here in the desert is Primitive Recordings, which is run by Roger Beaujard of Mortician fame. I didn’t get to go there nearly as often I would have liked to, but it was a pleasure meeting Roger and loading up on Mortician merch and other goodies; if you’re a metalhead and you’re ever in Vegas, definitely stop by his store, especially if you’ve got a taste for death metal.

I wish I had more to say about our time in Vegas, but I’m honestly at a loss as I type this. I’m glad I had the experience of living here, because I have gotten to see and do some really cool shit, but I’m also ready to move on.

Our next stop is Salem, OR. From what little research I’ve been able to do, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a metal scene there (I just might have to figure out how to start one). Metal Archives lists thirty-six bands from Salem, but many of them seem to be split up or inactive. There are a few live music venues, but none of them appear to really cater to metal with the exception of some one-off shows here and there. I have noticed some good punk shows rolling through, such as MDC and Agent Orange, and we’ve already got tickets to see Warduna in October, so I’m hopeful that we’ll still be able to get our live music fix, even if it isn’t a constant barrage of metal.

Of course, the great news is we’re only about forty-five minutes from Portland and unsurprisingly it appears that’s where all the action is when it comes to metal in Oregon. From what I’ve seen, it looks like tons of great tours roll through there, and to be completely honest, I’m fine with having to drive a little ways to go to a show, because it means I live away from all the hustle and bustle of the “big city.” At this stage of my life I think I might finally be ready for a little peace and quiet.

So, in the last few years I’ll have gone from being pretty well immersed in Sacramento’s metal scene, to not being able to immerse myself in Las Vegas’ metal scene, to being just a short drive away from Portland’s metal scene. It’s going to be an interesting transition and I’m curious to see how it affects my writing, if at all. Only time will tell, but I’m excited for what the future may hold.

Blitzkrieg #13: Return Trip

Goddamn y’all, I haven’t written one of these since 2013! But, I figured THKD’s return to active duty after a pretty meager 2021, in which I only published three reviews and zero interviews, was as good a reason as any to bring back da’ blitz.

So why the absence last year? I’ve often complained of being burned out on writing, but last year it really hit me. I worked on my YouTube channel for a bit, as well as a podcast that only lasted for two episodes in an effort to stay at least somewhat creative, but for the most part I found myself in a pandemic-induced malaise that I couldn’t seem to dig myself out of no matter what I tried.

But towards the end of 2021 I started to get reflective and remembered that I love writing and I also love metal too goddamn much to ever give up on either one. They’ve always been there for me and so I feel like I need to be there for them. I might not be the best writer out there and I definitely might not be as good as I once was, but I’m either too stubborn or too stupid for surrender to ever be an option, so it looks like you guys are stuck with me for the duration. Sorry about your damn luck.

Anyway, I’ve got some goals I wanna work on this year. First I want to post more regularly, I’m thinking I’ll start with at least two posts a month and increase from there. Secondly, I need to finish THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums before I’m too old and decrepit to type, so I wanna focus on getting more entries under my belt; I’ve already got a few in mind that I think folks will dig. I also wanna bring back some of the old semi-regular features, such as the Blitzkrieg, Bandcamp Band Crap and of course Oodles of Brutals.

One thing I don’t intend to focus on is interviews; the last four or five interviews I sent out to bands got totally flaked on, which sure as shit didn’t help with my lack of desire to do much with THKD last year. It’s a pretty crummy feeling to work hard on coming up with good questions, only for the band to not have the respect or common courtesy to hold up their end of the bargain. Honestly, they could just tell me from the get-go to “fuck off” and I’d respect that way more than agreeing to do an interview and then flaking, because at least I’d know where I stood and wouldn’t have wasted my time writing a bunch of questions.

But enough complaining about flaky metal musicians. Now that I’m back, I’d much rather focus on the positives and make up for lost time. A big thanks to everyone that continues to stick with me on this wild ride throughout all the hiatuses, identity crises and assorted other nonsense I’ve put this blog through over the last dozen or so years. I ain’t done yet, so whether ya like it or not, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing goin’ today! WOOO!

Green Lung – Black Harvest (Svart Records, 2021)

Ever find yourself feeling extremely foolish for ignoring a band based on a pre-conceived notion that turns out to be woefully inaccurate? Well my friends, that’s exactly what’s happened to me in the case of London’s Green Lung. Without ever hearing a note of the UK quintet’s music, I assumed they were nothing more than another Electric Wizard clone, and while I love me some Wizard, the last thing I felt I needed in my life was yet another fuzzy/scuzzy stoner doom band.

But then I started to see Green Lung’s sophomore album Black Harvest popping up on numerous year end lists and decided to see what the fuss was all about. It turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong about Green Lung’s sound. Sure, there is a stoner doom element to what they do, but there’s so much more to it than that. On Black Harvest, the band conjure up a sound that takes ’80s trad doom ala Candlemass and Pentagram, and fuses it with the ’70s metal/hard rock stylings of the likes of Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath (of course), then adds in a folk horror element, like if The Wicker Man had a hard rockin’ soundtrack as opposed to “Corn Rigs” or whatever.

Influences aside, what really stands out about Black Harvest is the attention to songcraft. The album is front-to-back bangers, from the catchier-than-herpes “Old Gods” to the mid-album epic “Graveyard Sun” to the hard ‘n’ heavy groove of “Upon the Altar,” Green Lung prove themselves to be young masters of doom metal/occult rock stylings. Each song has its own unique character and the album as a whole is jam-packed with hooks designed for maximum memorability; whether it be a guitar line or solo, a chorus or even a drum beat, there’s always something present to draw you deeper into the mesmerizing world of Black Harvest.

The band is in top form throughout the album, with vocalist Tom Templar coming off a bit like a cross between Ozzy and Robert Lowe, with maybe just a pinch of Mark “The Shark” Shelton thrown in for good measure. While Templar’s impressive vocals are an immediate highlight of the album, the band’s secret weapon is undoubtedly organist John Wright. Wright’s keys fill out Green Lung’s sound exquisitely, adding a powerful psychedelic rock undercurrent to each track on Black Harvest. The album as a whole sounds fantastic courtesy producer Wayne Adams who also worked on the band’s two previous recordings (Free the Witch and Woodland Rites); it’s clear that he understands exactly what the band is aiming for on Black Harvest and brings out the best in Green Lung both sonically and performance-wise.

I’ve recently been lamenting the fact that I didn’t hear much good doom metal in 2021; that certainly wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had the good sense to check out Black Harvest when it was originally released back in October. I guess I’ll just invoke the old “better late than never” cliche and implore anyone reading this not to make the same mistake I did, because Black Harvest is a damn near perfect classic doom metal album that won’t be going out of rotation anytime soon here at the THKD fortified bunker. With their powerful sound and meticulous approach to songwriting it’d be a goddamn shame if Green Lung weren’t destined for even bigger and better things, and now that I’m officially on the bandwagon I look forward to their continued ascent.

https://greenlung.bandcamp.com/album/black-harvest

THKD’S TOP 5 METAL ALBUMS OF 2021: BEST OF THE REST EDITION

Calling this list “best of the rest” isn’t intended to indicate that these albums are somehow of a lesser quality than what came before. Rather, it is simply meant as sort of a catchall, since these albums didn’t quite fit into any of the other categories. So, without further ado and in alphabetical order, here’s the final round of albums that grabbed a hold of my crank and kept on yankin’ in 2021…

Amenra – De Doorn (Relapse Records) I have to admit, I never bothered to check out Amenra until I witnessed one of my favorite professional wrestlers, AEW’s Malakai Black, walk out to “Ogentroost” off of their latest album, De Doorn. The ominous, agonizing, ridiculously heavy track made for one hell of an entrance and upon listening to the rest of the album, I found myself utterly mesmerized by the Belgian quintet’s heady brew of doom, sludge and post metal. Sure, the band probably owes some of its inspiration to the likes of Neurosis and Cult of Luna, but one can also hear elements of heavy post-hardcore bands such a Breach and Minus, making for a unique take on the genre that alternates between unsettling and utterly terrifying. While I’m looking forward to exploring Amenra’s back catalog, I find myself still so stuck on De Doorn that I haven’t yet had a chance to venture further.

Cathexis – Untethered Abyss (Willowtip Records) Austin, TX quintet Cathexis creates just the kind of technical death metal that I absolutely love; dexterous and dissonant, but also memorable and organic-sounding. Indeed, Untethered Abyss isn’t your typical million-mile-an-hour, “Hey! Look what we can do!” style of tech death that’s become all too common; Cathexis know when to slow things down and they know how to play with feeling, as opposed to mindlessly shredding for six minutes at a time. The band also understands the value of knowing when to self-edit; the majority of the tracks on the album are under four minutes in length, making for an album that’s both compact and compelling. All in all, Untethered Abyss might be my favorite death metal album of 2021; a mesmerizing example of what technical death metal can be when it isn’t woefully overplayed and overproduced.

The Crown – Royal Destroyer (Metal Blade Records) Goddamn, I love The Crown! It’s been a bit of a rocky road for the Swedish quintet ever since 2003’s fun but uneven Possessed 13; the band reunited with OG vocalist Johan Lindstand, then he left again, then he came back again and they released a couple duds along the way (Doomsday King and Death is Not Dead). But the band regained their footing on 2018’s Cobra Speed Venom and with Royal Destroyer they’ve somehow upped the ante with an album that’s fast, violent, mean and hungry-sounding; it’s great to hear a thirty year old band still sounding like they have something to prove and putting the rest of the scene on notice with absolute bulldozers such as “Motordeath” “Scandinavian Satan” and “Beyond the Frail.” Indeed, after all these years The Crown remain the the kings of death thrash ultraviolence; long may they reign.

Crypta – Echoes of the Soul (Napalm Records) It’s always a bummer when longtime members leave a beloved band, but sometimes you end up getting two killer bands out of such a split, and that’s exactly what happened when former Nervosa members Fernanda Lira (bass, vocals) and Luana Dametto (drums) left to form international death metal powerhouse Crypta. Folks will of course be tempted to compare Crypta to Nervosa, but the two couldn’t be more different; whereas Nervosa play thrash with some death metal tendencies, Crypta’s debut is a pure death metal album and a ferocious one at that. Guitarists Sonia Anubis and Taina Bergamaschi peel off riff after scathing riff on tracks such as “Possessed” “Death Arcana” and “Under the Black Wings,” while Lira howls like she’s possessed by multiple demons and Dametto pulverizes her drums with both power and precision. Echoes of the Soul is one of the best death metal debuts not just of 2021 but of at least the last five years.

Horndal – Lake Drinker (Prosthetic Records) My hometown has never meant much to me, but the same can’t be said for Sweden’s Horndal. The band’s hometown holds such importance to its members that they named said band after it, and over the course of two albums they’ve crafted a soundtrack to the small Swedish village’s tragic history. Although they’ve only been playing together since 2016, the quartet attack songs such as “The Uprising” and “Growing Graves” with such precision and ferocity it’s as if they’ve been honing their craft for much longer; perhaps the shared experience of growing up together in a near-ghost town has put them on the same wavelength. Whatever the case, Horndal are the very definition of a well-oiled machine on Lake Drinker; that may sound like a total cliche, but this is one of the rare cases where the cliche actually holds true.

Honorable Mentions:

• Aborted – Mania Cult (Century Media)
• Blood Red Throne – Imperial Congregation (Nuclear Blast)
• Carnal Savagery – Fiendish (Moribund Cult)
• Desaster – Churches Without Saints (Metal Blade Records)
• Frozen Soul – Crypt of Ice (Century Media)
• Go Ahead and Die – s/t (Nuclear Blast)
• Ingested – The Surreption II (Unique Leader Records)
• Monster Magnet – A Better Dystopia (Napalm Records)
• Nervosa – Perpetual Chaos (Napalm Records)
• Pestilence – Exitivm (Agonia Records)
• Traumatomy – Extirpation Paradigms (Gore House Productions)
• Yautja – The Lurch (Relapse Records)

THKD’s TOP 5 METAL ALBUMS OF 2021: LIVE ALBUM EDITION

I haven’t been to a live show since November of 2020 and to be honest, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.  Call me paranoid, call me a wimp, call me whatever you want, but every time I see photos from a recent live show, it’s always a shitload of people clumped together with no masks on, packed into whatever venue like sardines, and in the midst of the pandemic we’re still in, that freaks me out more than a little.

But the lack of shows over the past year, followed by extreme hesitance toward going to shows now that they’ve returned, has given me a newfound appreciation for live albums.  I mean, if I can’t/won’t see bands live for the time being, surely a good live album is the next best thing.  Fortunately, there was no shortage of quality live material released in 2021, but I’ve managed to narrow it down to five live albums that really stood out in a time where I’m still not comfortable being crammed into a venue with a bunch of other people in spite of being masked and triple-vaxed.

Ghoul – Live in the Flesh (Tankcrimes) Given that Ghoul’s stage show involves blood, gore, monsters and killer robots, they’re a band that’s best seen as well as heard. But since that’s not an option for the me at the moment, I’m more than happy to blast this hour long set taken from a 2018 show at Oakland’s Metro Operahouse. The sound quality is appropriately filthy, but you can still hear everything that’s happening musically, and songs such as “Ghoulunatics” “Metallicus Ex Mortis” and “As Your Casket Closes” are that much gnarlier in the live setting, which in turn makes them that much more fun to listen to. Indeed, Live in the Flesh is a total blood orgy of chainsaw guitars, gut pummeling drums and torturous toilet vocals, made all the more entertaining by the band’s hilarious between-song banter.

Mr. Bungle – The Night They Came Home (Ipecac)  After twenty-one years of silence, avant-garde metal oddballs Mr. Bungle came roaring back with The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo, a vicious re-recording of their original 1986 demo tape with a few new tracks and some covers thrown in for good measure.  It was one of the year’s best thrash albums, but Mike Patton, Trey Spruance and the rest of the Bunglers weren’t allowed much opportunity to capitalize on their successful comeback due to the pandemic.  Like many bands, they chose to perform a livestream show, which was recorded for posterity and released on CD/blu-ray as The Night They Came Home. Wild, weird and heavy AF, this blistering set recorded live at a library in Eureka, CA on Halloween is everything you’ve come to expect from Mr. Bungle, even if the music isn’t as out there as Disco Volante or California.

Suffocation – Live in North America (Nuclear Blast) Recorded during founding vocalist Frank Mullen’s final tour with the band, Live in North America marks the end of an era for long-running brutal death metallers Suffocation. Fortunately, the band chose to end Mullen’s tenure with a bang if this set recorded in front of a horde of rabid fans in Cambridge, MA is anything to go by. The setlist is comprised mostly of material from the band’s classic ’90s output and they tear into it with a ferocity that bands half the age of Mullen and guitarist Terrence Hobbs wish they could muster. This is probably going to sound like blasphemy to some, but the sound here might actually be better here than on the band’s early studio recordings and it is a pleasure to hear the songs such as “Liege of Inveracity” “Jesus Wept” and “Thrones of Blood” with such punch and clarity.

Sunn O))) – Metta, Benevolence BBC6 Music: Live on the invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs (Southern Lord)  Goddamn, that album title is a mouthful, isn’t it?  Thanks to pioneers like John Peel, the BBC has a long tradition of bringing extreme music to the masses.  It should come as no surprise then that drone/doom metal masters Sunn O))) were invited to perform a session following their 2019 UK tour; here the band play two selections from Pyroclasts and one from Life Metal accompanied by vocalist Anna Von Hausswolf and trombonist Stephen Moore.  I’ve seen Sunn O))) live on several occasions, so it’s more than a little odd to listen to them in that setting without feeling the music with your entire body, but it’s still a very pleasant experience to get utterly lost in the singularly rumbling, crumbling, crushing drone/doom the band has perfected over the past twenty-plus years.  So find a comfy chair, some good speakers and your mind-altering substance of choice and prepare to take a trip across the multiverse.

Ufomammut – Live at Roadburn Festival 2011 (Roadburn)  Speaking of trips, few shows I’ve attended have been as trippy as Ufomammut.  The Italian trio’s music is so gloriously, hypnotically psychedelic on its own that one doesn’t even need drugs to be transported to an alternate dimension while witnessing them live.  Ever since seeing the band back in 2015, I’ve longed to recapture even the tiniest morsel of that mind-blowing musical experience, so running across this album by surprise at my local record store was truly a case of psychotropic serendipity.  Here, the band plays the Eve album in its entirety along with a few cuts from classics such as Snailking and Godlike Snake, making for about an hour and fifteen minutes of totally smoked out/spaced out doom and sludge.  This is some seriously brain-melting stuff and easily one of the most far-out live releases of 2021.

Ceremonial Culling: THKD’s Top 5 Metal Albums of 2019

In terms of new releases, 2019 was pretty damn dire.  But in spite of the rampant mediocrity, I did manage to find a small handful of releases that were truly outstanding and can more than hold their own against the best this dying decade has to offer.  So without further ado and in no particular order, here are the five albums that stuck with me throughout the year…

Prelude to Year End Madness: 5 Honorable Mentions

THKD’s year end extravaganza will be published on Monday, December 17th at midnight both here and over at the THKD YouTube channel.  But as a prelude to the madness that’s about to be unleashed, I’ve decided to list out five noteworthy albums that were just a hair shy of making the cut.  So without further ado and in no particular order…

THKD 2018 playlist on Spotify

With 2018 beginning to wind down, I’ve started to reflect upon all the great releases I’ve enjoyed throughout the year.  This in turn lead me to compiling a massive playlist on Spotify; it’s about 99% metal, but there are also a few non-metal surprises lurking around in there.

Witchsorrow – Hexenhammer (Candlelight Records, 2018)

2018 has already been a pretty stellar year for doom.  So far we’ve been smacked upside the head with killer releases from the old masters Sleep, as well as a host of young whippersnappers such as Green Druid and Chrch , making it a damn fine time to be a fan of all things sluggish and Sabbathy.

Green Druid – Ashen Blood (Earache, 2018)

It seems that not enough people are talking about Green Druid, but they damn well oughta be, because the quartet has released what should rightfully be considered as one of the stickiest of the icky doom metal releases of 2018 in the form of Ashen Blood, out now on Earache Records.

Morbid Philosophy: A Nuclear War Now! Productions Roundup

It’s only February, which means most labels are just starting to trickle out what will eventually become an unstoppable avalanche of new releases.  Not so for Nuclear War Now! Productions; the California-based label is in the process of unleashing a fifty megaton payload of heavy hitters that are poised to set the bar for underground black and death metal for the remainder of 2018.  Read on for THKD’s breakdown of this quartet of poser-slaughtering platters…

THKD’s Top 10 Metal Albums of 2016

Long-winded intros are for jabronis, so without further ado and in no particular order, THKD nails the lid shut on 2016 with a list of ten metal albums that grabbed a hold of my crank and kept on yankin.’

A few words on Dragged Into Sunlight and going to shows when you’re old.

It’s weird how going to shows changes as you advance in age.  In my late teens, I would walk two miles each way to Hairy Mary’s (RIP) for all ages matinee shows, so excited that bands like Vader, Spirit Caravan and Today is the Day were playing anywhere near me.  My lame broke ass didn’t have a car or any friends that were into underground metal (being shy and awkward and going to Catholic school for the entirety of your pre-college education will do that to you) so I hoofed it, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.  I would watch every single band, no matter how many were on the bill and my enthusiasm never wavered for the shows, even when the bands didn’t start on time, or when the bands sounded like complete shit, or when the bands didn’t show up.

RIP 2009 – 2016

It’s hard to believe I’ve been running this blog for almost seven years.  That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with any of my creative projects.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing lasts forever.  And so it is that effective today, I’m shutting down IG for good.

Caligari Records Round-up: Gloam, Hadit and Taphos Nomos

Are you guys getting tired of me gushing about Caligari Records yet?  Well if you are, too bad!  The Florida-based label continues to put out some of the finest underground metal you’re likely to come across while leaving no genre stone un-turned.  The label’s latest batch of releases speaks to the impressive diversity of the roster.

Church – Unanswered Hymns (Transylvanian Tapes, 2015)

My first exposure to Sacramento’s Church came back in September of last year, when I witnessed them nearly level the Starlite Lounge while opening for the mighty Dispirit.  Like a complete idiot, I didn’t write about them at the time in spite of being thoroughly impressed with their set, largely due to the fact that they didn’t have much of a web presence or any recordings to point IG readers in the direction of (I did however post some footage to my YouTube channel).  But much has changed since that early show; Church have finally released their debut album in the form of Unanswered Hymns and rest assured friends, this three track, forty-five minute long beast is every bit worth the wait.

Abjvration – The Unquenchable Pyre (Caligari Records, 2015)

Caligari Records has proven itself capable of releasing excellent recordings from just about any metallic subgenre they see fit, but some of their very best stuff of late has come from the realm of slow ‘n’ low. Whether it be the Pentagram-esque trad of Denmark’s Demon Head, or the uh, heavy death of Sweden’s Heavydeath, this is a label that knows its doom.  But The Unquenchable Pyre, the debut recording from Abjvration, just might be Caligari’s most debilitatingly heavy offering to date.

Church @ The Press Club, Sacramento, CA 06/04/2015

At this point it’s well documented that shows during the week are typically a no-go for me; I’m a corporate lackey that’s typically in bed by 9:00 pm.  That said, there was no way in hell I was going to miss Church’s tape release / tour kickoff show with Lycus, Usnea and Ufomammut in spite of it taking place late on a Thursday night (shout out to my boss for letting me take off the Friday before a week-long business trip).  The Sacramento doom quintet recently unleashed their absolutely stellar debut album Unanswered Hymns in digital form, but being a physical format guy, I was dying to pick up this three song behemoth in glorious analog and hold it my hands, not to mention the fact that Church are an excellent live unit and I’ll find just about any excuse I can to see them play.