THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #22: Lifelover – Pulver (GoatowaRex, 2006)

For a brief period from 2004 to 2006, it seemed like I was discovering some weird new black metal band every other day. Indeed, bands like Nuit Noire, Circle of Ouroborus, Urfaust and Woods of Infinity were blowing my mind with their uniquely bizarre takes on the genre, but none of them prepared me for Lifelover’s astonishingly twisted debut album, Pulver.

Released in July of 2006 on cult independent label GoatowaRex, Lifelover’s first full-length is a descent into the deepest depths of depression. As someone who has suffered from depression throughout most of my life, the album drew me into its pitch black confines almost immediately. It’s combination of uneasiness, manic energy and overwhelming melancholy spoke to me in a way that very few albums have before or since, even though I didn’t understand the Swedish lyrics.

You see, I didn’t need lyrics to identify with vocalist Kim Carlsson. This is because his work on Pulver is one of the most harrowing performances in black metal this side of Silencer’s Death – Pierce Me. Carlsson’s singing gave a voice to how I often felt inside back then, language barrier be damned; it was and still is a listening experience that’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

Of course, great vocals need great songs and Pulver is jam-packed with them. Owing as much to gothic rock and post punk as it does to black metal, tracks such as “M/S Salmonella” “Vardagsnytt” and “Sondagg” are dark as the dungeon, but they’re also strangely catchy. By taking their depressive black metal foundation and incorporating complimentary outside influences, Lifelover created a sound so utterly singular that to this day it has never been duplicated; I can’t think of a single band that’s even so much as tried.

All of this makes for an album that you don’t just listen to; you experience. Pulver is a record best experienced alone, in a dark room with a good pair of headphones, so as to fully immerse oneself in its infinite layers of despair. The production is lo-fi, which makes for a very interesting listen from a textural standpoint; guitars range from clean/acoustic to a fuzzy distortion that creeps around the edges of the songs, while the vocals take many forms, be they agonized screams, spoken word monologues, or strange, incoherent mutterings, sometimes with reverb or echo effects added. A piano is often incorporated, its sad melodies pulling at the heart strings to the point of agony. All of this is propelled by the simplistic beats of a drum machine; surprisingly, the canned drums do not in any way detract from the listening experience and in fact they more often than not enhance the bleakness Pulver so effortlessly conveys throughout its forty-two minute run-time.

Lifelover would go on to release three more albums before breaking up in 2011 due to multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter Jonas Bergqvist’s (credited on Lifelover releases as B) untimely passing due to an accidental prescription drug overdose that same year; a tragic end to one of the most unique and idiosyncratic bands to ever emerge from the Swedish black metal scene. Lifelover may have ended prematurely, but thanks to Pulver they’ll always have a place in both my head and my heart as one of the bands that got me through some pretty rough times mental health-wise and forever changed the way I thought about black metal in the process.

Read other entries in the THKD Top 100.

See All You Were: Beyond the First Four Danzig Albums

For many metalheads, Danzig’s discography ends with either III: How the Gods Kill or 4p. I on the other hand, celebrate Danzig’s entire catalog. While there’s no doubt that many of his latter-day works signaled a shift away from the bluesy, metallic hard rock that the Evil Elvis made his name on, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad albums, it just means they’re different.  So without further ado, let’s dig beyond the first four Danzig albums; deep, down you go…

Lycia – A Line That Connects (Handmade Birds, 2015)

When darkwave legends Lycia returned from the musical wilderness with Quiet Moments in 2013, it was widely hailed as a stellar comeback for the band.  While I certainly enjoyed the album, I couldn’t help but feel that they were just warming up. Quiet Moments is unquestionably a good record, a great record even, but it also struck me as the work of an artist attempting to fully regain their footing after some fairly lengthy gaps between releases (seven years between Empty Space and the Fifth Sun EP, three years between Fifth Sun and QM).

Interview: PARADISE LOST

If there’s one thing I hate doing, it’s writing intros to interviews.  Fortunately, Paradise Lost is a band that needs no introduction.  The death/doom/gothic metal pioneers have been releasing great music for nearly three decades now, and that enduring legacy continues with their latest full length, The Plague Within, which is out June 1st via Century Media.  Legendary vocalist Nick Holmes graciously answered my questions about their stunning new album via e-mail.

Weeping Rat – Tar (Handmade Birds, 2015)

Sacramento was positively drenched with rain last weekend.  The meteorologists called it an “atmospheric river;” I called it a great time to wallow in some seriously depressing music to match the shitty weather. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better band in 2015 to accompany overcast skies and sheets of (probably toxic) precipitation than Australia’s Weeping Rat.  The band is set to drop their debut album Tar via the mighty Handmade Birds, and it’s a deliciously dismal listen, to say the very least.

Samhain @ The Warfield, San Francisco, CA 09/20/14

 

Longtime THKD readers will recall that late last year I finally got to see Danzig live after being a fan of the man and his music for twenty years.  Considering the fact that the set included a slew of Danzig classics + a mini-set of Misfits songs featuring Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein on guitar, I was convinced that I could pretty much die happy.

Beastmilk – Climax (Svart Records, 2013)

There are few things that please me more right now than this resurgence we’re currently seeing in the gothic sounds of the 1980s within the realm of heavy music.  It appears that metal musicians have taken a shining to the the stuff of late, or maybe they’re getting bored with metal, or perhaps they always had it and are only now allowing themselves to cut loose and release the bats.  Whatever the case, Helsinki’s Beastmilk are absolutely killing it with their debut album, Climax.

Listen to: Ghost Noise

A man cannot live by metal alone.  The problem is, I don’t keep up with other styles of music as obsessively and consistently as I do metal, so when I want something new to listen to that falls outside the genre, I’m often at a bit of a loss.  Not sure where to turn, I recently started trawling Bandcamp to see if I could find anything of note that didn’t involve screaming, Satan, loud guitars and the like.  Most of the bands I found were total duds, but after much intense searching I stumbled across the Los Angeles trio Ghost Noise, and suddenly all was right with the world.

Atriarch – Ritual of Passing (Profound Lore, 2012)

Rumors of deathrock’s uh, death, are greatly exaggerated. Pinkish Black proved it was still alive and well with their excellent self-titled debut earlier this year, and now Portland, Oregon’s Atriarch have knocked it out of the goddamn park with Ritual of Passing. This isn’t your granddaddy Rozz Williams’ deathrock though. While it might be built on a tortured foundation similar to what bands like Christian Death were putting down back in the day, Atriarch breaths new life into the genre by incorporating the musical vocabularies of doom and black metal into their approach, making their brand of diseased heaviness that much more, well, deathly.

Interview: THE ASH EATERS

I must admit, I was late to the party on Brown Jenkins; I didn’t hear them until the inimitable Nathan T. Birk sent me a copy of Death Obsession while he was doing PR work for the once prominent black metal label Moribund Cult. I fell instantly in love with the band’s spellbinding attack, which blended elements of black metal, doom and gothic rock with an appropriately Lovecraftian sense of dread and crumbling sanity. I gave the album a glowing review for the now-defunct Sonic Frontiers(dot)net and subsequently came into contact with band mastermind Umesh Amtey. That correspondence blossomed into a friendship that I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying for several years now; although Amtey and I have never met in person, I consider him a close comrade and look forward to the day when we can raise our glasses together in the same room.

As a result of our friendship, I’ve had the distinct privilege of watching the next phase of Amtey’s musical journey come into being. The Ash Eaters shares some traits with Brown Jenkins, but is an all together different beast. The guitar-work is more complex, the arrangements are more frantic, attacking the listener from every direction, while at the same time remaining catchy and memorable; Amtey has drawn from a wide range of influences and pushed them forward in every way imaginable.

I’ve been waiting for my chance to interview Mr. Amtey, so when he finally gave Ruining You, the debut Ash Eaters full length, to the world after a string of shorter releases, I knew the time had finally come. While I’ve had many private conversations with him regarding his musical history, motivations, influences, etc, I wanted to afford my readers the same opportunity to learn more about this truly unique individual and the excellent music he’s been releasing over the past several years. I contacted Mr. Amtey via e-mail for the following interrogation.

Ghoul’s Night Out: THKD’s Halloween Mixtape

Every year as Halloween approaches, I begin doing things to put myself in the mood to enjoy that most horrific of holidays; decorate the house with all manner of skulls, queue up a slew of horror DVDs, revisit the literary genius of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and most importantly, scare up some appropriately creepy tunes to celebrate the Season of the Witch. Though I typically pick out entire albums rather than individual songs, I thought it might be fun this year to compile a morbid mixtape to share with you, my loyal THKD readers. So, grab a handful of candy corn and gather ’round the jack-o-lantern, not for ghost stories, but for a night of unspeakable audio terror. Although there were many tracks from a variety of genres that could’ve been worthy of inclusion, I decided to keep things as much on the metal side as possible, in the true spirit of THKD. The player is embedded directly below this paragraph, followed by an explanation of each track. Enjoy or die.

Pinkish Black – s/t (Handmade Birds, 2012)

Of all the great heavy music that’s happened in 2012, I find myself being the most interested in the handful of bands that have openly defied the trappings of heavy music both musically and conceptually, while at the same time being embraced by the metal community. I’m thinking of bands such as Wreck and Reference, Menace Ruine and Author & Punisher; bands that have forged unique and innovative identities for themselves without adhering to the guitar/bass/drums format. You can add Fort Worth, TX duo Pinkish Black to that short list; their self-titled debut album is a drums/synth/loops/voice fuelled exercise in gothic/death rock exellence that nods to the past as it creeps towards the future.

Evoken – Atra Mors (Profound Lore, 2012)

For the past several years, I’ve felt very close to death.  No matter what direction life has taken me in, it seems that death is there to meet me at every turn, taking away family, friends and acquaintances with a disturbing frequency.  In the past month alone both my cousin and an old college professor have passed from this mortal coil, both well before their time.  This increasing familiarity with death has indeed bred contempt; contempt for the callousness and randomness with which it has wrenched my loved ones from this already painful existence.  Of course, no one in their right mind is fond of death, but the inordinate number of deaths I’ve had to weather recently has served to make me despise life’s final chapter that much more, if such a thing is possible.

The Ash Eaters release Ibn Ghazi EP

Since 2011, The Ash Eaters have been releasing a steady stream of demo tracks, EPs and cover songs.  The band continuously evolves with each new endeavor; guitarist/vocalist/evil genius Umesh Amtey is seemingly always refining and tweaking his approach, while at the same time expanding upon it in order to explore even darker, more twisted musical vistas.  At this point my friendship with Mr. Amtey is well documented; it has been a joy to share in his excitement as the project has grown from the embryo that was last year’s Cold Hearts demo to the full-grown beasts of The Cruel Side EP and now the mesmerizing Ibn Ghazi EP.

Wreck and Reference – Youth (Flenser, 2012)

I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive about checking out Wreck and Reference when I first heard about them.  As deep an appreciation as I have for forward-thinking heavy music, I still have at least one foot (or maybe just a toe?) stuck in the old school, which means a metal band that doesn’t wield a single guitar of any kind throws up a huge red flag.  I know, I know, it seems silly and more than a tad close minded, but hey, we all have our hang-ups; at the end of the day, I’m a guitar guy, a fucking RIFF guy, so I’m bound to approach a band like Wreck and Reference, who lack the one instrument that is in my opinion the foundation of heavy metal as the Gods (Iommi, Mustaine, Warrior, Quorthon, etc) intended it, with extreme caution.

Leviathan – True Traitor, True Whore (Profound Lore, 2011)

Utterly embarrassed as I am to admit it, I’m no stranger to bouts of misogyny.  Prior to meeting my phenomenal wife, my romantic dealings with the opposite sex were, to put it mildly, less than stellar (I’m sure this surprises no one).  From my first “real” girlfriend breaking my heart over a decade ago, to the woman I let repeatedly grind my soul to dust my senior year of college, to countless instances of rejection and other assorted shittiness that would take ages to properly recount, I had been left with a bad taste in my mouth and a fuckload of bitterness before a raven-haired goddess rescued me from the rut I was in.  As a result, I treated the few women that dared to try to get close to me like complete shit (this was totally undeserved and my petty way of getting back at the fairer sex as a whole, I reckon) and was generally distrustful and disrespectful towards any woman who wasn’t a blood relative or counted among my inner circle.

New music from The Ash Eaters.

The Ash Eaters have released a new two track digital EP, The Cruel Side via their bandcamp page.  For those not familiar, the band is the new project of former Brown Jenkins mastermind, Umesh Amtey.  Amtey is probably one of the most underrated guitarists in metal, his playing a schizophrenic locust swarm that attacks from all sides and encompasses elements of black metal, doom, gothic rock and beyond.  But as abrasive as this material may appear on the surface, it is also strangely catchy, the sheets of insectoid distortion burrowing deep into the inner recesses of your mind.  I’m listening to the EP for the first time as I type this; I’m already eager to listen further.  Amtey doesn’t just write songs, he creates musical labyrinths for the ears to explore.

Those of you familiar with The Ash Eaters’ Cold Hearts demo (also available via bandcamp), will instantly notice a distinct progression in playing and composition (as well as the return of Amtey’s Cthulu-esque vocal assault); indeed, the beautiful thing about this music is that it is constantly progressing, changing, morphing into something beyond the confines of extreme music.

I could say a lot more, but I’d rather let the music do the talking.  Go grab this now!

http://theasheaters.bandcamp.com/album/the-cruel-side-ep

I’d also highly recommend stopping by The Ash Eaters’ blog to download their cover versions of the Misfits’s “Angelfuck” and “Death Comes Ripping.”

http://theasheaters.blogspot.com

THKD’s Top 100 Metal Albums #2: Type O Negative – October Rust (Roadrunner, 1996)

Autumn in the Midwest is typically dark and chilly, a time of introspection.  The sweltering heat and humidity of Summer dissipates, September’s cool, wet mornings and brown leaf vertigo eventually ushering in October, and with it Halloween, all cardboard skeletons and freshly carved jack-o-lanterns.  Over the years, Type O Negative’s October Rust has more often than not served as my soundtrack to this drearily beautiful, eerily haunting season, and what a soundtrack it is.

I seem to remember reading interviews with dearly departed Type O frontman Peter Steele in which he proclaimed October Rust as his masterpiece, and it’s damn hard to argue with him.  This is a truly excellent album, conceived by a musician who wrote as if he held The Beatles and Black Sabbath (and possibly Bauhaus) in equal regard.  In actuality, the lushly layered pop sensibilities of October Rust recall the work of Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson moreso than The Beatles.  If Wilson had been obsessed with death, lost love, substance abuse and folklore, this might have been the album he made instead of Pet Sounds.  Indeed, there is an atmosphere of dark psychedelia lurking below October Rust‘s surface, adding yet another shade of grey haze to its funereal gloom.

From a song standpoint, the album’s highlights are many.  Opening epic dirge “Love You to Death” and electro/pop/goth/metal lead-off single “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” are probably the two most well known tracks here, and while they’re certainly worthy of their infamy, October Rust is a veritable treasure trove of deep cuts. “Green Man” is an otherworldly ode to nature, touching upon pagan and Wiccan themes.  “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” is a drunken carol of lost loved ones that even manages to quote “Carol of the Bells”.  “Wolf Moon” is my favorite track on October Rust, the very definition of a perfect song; it’s heavy, catchy, melodic and totally original in both concept and execution.  I’m pretty sure it’s about a werewolf (or perhaps a man who thinks he’s a werewolf) performing cunnilingus on a menstruating woman (“Don’t spill a drop, dear / let me kiss the curse away / yourself in my mouth / will you leave me with your taste?”); it serves as the culmination of the morose, surreal sexuality that permeates the album.  On an earlier track, the lusty “Be My Druidess”, Steele declares “I’ll do anything / to make you come” and I’ve often wondered if the two songs are related, with the “anything” in question being the bloody, lupine muff diving session detailed on “Wolf Moon”.  Then again, maybe I’m just a weird pervert.

The component parts of the songs on October Rust are just as interesting as the songs themselves.  The down-tuned, electric ultra-fuzz of Kenny Hickey’s guitar tone is total Tony Iommi worship, but the myriad influences at work within October Rust‘s aural confines keep it from being a mere Sabbath rip-off; it’s more like Hickey studied Iommi closely and then applied what he learned in support of Steele’s eclectic writing style, creating something totally unique in the process.  Steele’s affinity for crafting great songs peaked with October Rust, and his vampiric baritone vocals are also at the height of their powers throughout the recording, securing the late frontman an eternal place among metal’s greatest and most recognizable singers and songwriters. Josh Silver’s nuanced keyboards and production work completes the album’s rich sonic tapestry, which seamlessly encompasses doom metal, gothic and psychedelic rock.  If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention the drums, well… according to an interview Silver gave in 2007, the drums on October Rust are canned.

October Rust is many things.  It’s Summer dying fast.  It’s November coming fire. It’s the Green Man, the Wolfman and Bacchus. It’s love, death and depression.  It’s booze and drugs and cigarettes and fucking.  In case it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, I’ll just come right out and say it: October Rust is a perfect metal album.

I bet you’re gonna like it in A.D. (or the first trve black metal album).

“When you feel like you’re going too slow / I bet you’re gonna like it in / A.D. A.D / People gonna talk about / A.D. A.D. / Bloody hell and sacrifice”
-“Earth A.D.”

I’ve been listening to the Misfit’s Earth A.D. for over a decade now.  Every time I listen to it, I hear something different.  Sometimes I hear a bruising hardcore album.  Sometimes I hear proto-thrash.  I most often hear the roots of black metal.  Is it a mere coincidence that Quorthon started Bathory the same year or that Slayer’s Show No Mercy was released the same month?  Sure, Venom’s Welcome to Hell and Black Metal albums had already been released by the time Earth A.D. hit record store shelves.  But the Misfits of Earth A.D. possessed several things that Cronos and his cohorts, or just about any of the proto-black metal bands for that matter, severely lacked.

The first of these key components is speed.  I recently read in Steven Blush’s book American Hardcore  that Glenn Danzig had tried to get the rest of the Misfits to play slower during the sessions.  Thank goodness he wasn’t successful.  To my knowledge, the blast beat hadn’t been invented yet in 1983 (Mick Harris didn’t join Napalm Death until 1985), but the blistering speed of Earth A.D. often comes close.  A huge part of the album’s power comes from the reckless abandon with which the band plows through songs like “Earth A.D.” and “Demonomania”.  It’s a ragged, violent speed, the kind of speed that sounds like the band is going to fly apart at the seams at any given moment.  Somehow, the Misfits keep it together for the original album’s fourteen-odd minutes (reissues would include the tracks from the posthumous “Die, Die My Darling” single), but the approach lends a sense of real danger, menace and foreboding to the proceedings that would also be present on second wave Scandinavian black metal albums such as Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas or Burzum’s self titled debut.

The second element that pushes Earth A.D. over the edge is brutality.  Unfortunately the word “brutal” (and every permutation thereof) has been thrown around in the heavy music world so often that it has lost nearly all of its meaning as of 2011.  This is a brutal album.  Primitive, barbaric, nasty.  Black and death metal bands surely took a great deal of inspiration from the positively corrosive assault of songs like “Death Comes Ripping” and “Hellhound”.  Danzig himself sounds like a snarling hellhound throughout Earth A.D., ready to claw his way through your speakers and “rip your face off” while the rest of the band violates their instruments in a manner that’s probably legally questionable in more than a few countries.  Earth A.D. was the first Misfits recording where the aggression of the playing and production scheme matched the violence of Danzig’s lyrics.  It’s a level of rubbed-raw vitriol that makes early Venom, Slayer, Celtic Frost et al sound quaint by comparison.

What about atmosphere?  Earth A.D.‘s got it in spades.  Granted, this probably speaks more to Spot’s ineptitude as a producer/engineer (see also: Black Flag’s Damaged) or the lack of a recording budget (probably both), than it does to any grand design by Danzig and Co.  Still, the vibe of the album is pitch black and claustrophobic, it reeks of rage, hate and desperation.  It’s a document of a band ready to explode and doing their damnedest to take all of us down with them.  The fact that the Misfits broke up only a few months after the album was recorded (on Halloween, 1983) leads me to believe that the palpable fury bursting out of every part of Earth A.D. is much more than just for entertainment value (“and that blood’s so real / ’cause I just can’t fake it”).

If all of this doesn’t make for proto-black metal, then I don’t know what does.  Add the grotesque, lovably amateurish artwork and black and white band photos, and you’ve got the blueprints for the sound, style and overall aesthetic that Darkthrone would take to the next level almost a decade later with A Blaze in the Northern Sky.  Some call Earth A.D. “the speed metal bible”.  I’m more inclined to think it’s the goddamn Necronomicon.

Fiends at Feast, The Ash Eaters and a bunch of other cool bands have Bandcamp pages… your band should too.

Invisible Oranges main man and fellow metalhead Cosmo Lee has extensively championed the use of Bandcamp (here and here).  He probably did it a hell of a lot better than I ever could, but considering that Fiends at Feast and The Ash Eaters, two bands I’ve been doing a little championing of my own for of late (I reviewed Fiends at Feast here and dished on The Ash Eaters demo here), have Bandcamp pages, I thought it was about time I weighed in.

Bandcamp blows Myspace out of the friggin’ water.  Bandcamp is simple, clean and uncluttered.  It takes the concept of bands using social networking as a promotional tool and strips it of all the nonsense that goes with it.  No friends, no spam, no frills, no bullshit.  Bandcamp is all about the music.  It gives fans easy access to high quality downloads without a bunch of bric-a-brac getting in the way of their enjoyment.  Just look at the screenshots included in this post.  Could it get anymore straightforward than that?  Highly doubtful.

Part of the reason for Myspace’s downfall is the high level of customizability.  Once bands realized they could slap oversized logos, a dozen videos, five million and one flyers, photo slideshows, etc on their pages, it was all over.  Chances are, if you’re an unsigned metal band from Oklahoma, someone from Japan listening to your music online doesn’t give a shit about the flyer from the hometown show you played five years ago or endless slideshows of you drinking beer with the local metal tarts.  In other words, Bandcamp forces bands to “keep it simple, stupid” and makes them look that much more professional in the process.  Trust me, if you want potential fans to take you seriously (not to mention potential labels), you’re better off leaving the drunken slideshows and fancy backgrounds to the teenage girls.

To make matters worse for Myspace (and the bands who try to use it), the one-time social-networking king recently went through a re-design that has rendered the site about as user-friendly as a Sasha Grey film with the sex scenes edited out.  I’m not sure what the hell they were thinking, but the end result has made Bandcamp’s spotless presentation, and easy to use media player even more appealing.  It amazes me that anyone even bothers to go on Myspace anymore and I’ve for the most part vowed not to post links to bands’ pages on the site unless it is the only option available for THKD readers to hear their music.

The Ash Eaters and Fiends at Feast couldn’t be more different musically, but both bands share a common goal.  They want as many folks as possible to get the chance to check out their music.  Bandcamp offers them the opportunity to do so in a way that is completely free of distractions, allowing the music to once again take precedence, something that had been lost amongst the dilapidated bells and whistles of Myspace.  It draws a straight line from listener to band, which is exactly how it should be.

Below are some more excellent bands that have pages on Bandcamp.

Sepulchre – blackened Canadian death-crust

Vastum – gnarly Cali death metal featuring ex members of Saros

Imperial Triumphant – East Coast baroque black metal

Murmuure – French ambient black/noise/drone/clusterfuck

The Sun Through a Telescope – Canadian feedback-worshipping power drone