2012 musix

Sigur Ros Valtari and Death Grips The Money Store both just leaked. dksgalghds

Wait Sigur Ros is releasing an album too?

This is a good year for post-rock.

It does seem to be turning out that way.

Goddamnit Gira, just put out The Seer now so I can throw money at you...

Compare. It's just a teaser yet all my hopes are already crushed. Fuck Fear Factory.

You just got me very excited for their new album!

Yeah, I remember you defending Mechanize when I said it sucks on ice. Well, enjoy.

Maybe it has already been posted but I feel like I'm awaking from a long sleep by not finding out about this sooner : Fiona Apple's new album called *deep breath* "The idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw and whipping cords will serve you more than ropes will ever do" is due june 19.

Just discovered about it maybe a week ago. Took out all the other albums for the occasion (it had been ages since I'd listened to them)... There are some songs that have been previewed live, a couple of them are on her official website . Sound quality is pretty bad though (onboard mic of a video camera, apparently), but it feels good to see her back.

[[secret thread necro]] So here's how my favorite albums of 2012 is shaping up.

1. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
2. Curren$y - Muscle Car Chronicles
3. Screaming Females - Ugly
4. Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball
5. Grimes - Visions
6. Lee Ranaldo - Between the Times and Tides
7. Loma Prieta - I.V.
8. Kishi Bashi - 151a
9. mewithoutYou - Ten Stories
10. The Flaming Lips - The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends

[[/secret thread necro actually is it a necro if it's only been a month who cares]]

edited 20th May '12 4:29:49 PM by Trillhouse

''Visions of the Scourge'' by Begrime Exemious is pretty great so far. It's rotten punkish death/black like first album Order From Chaos but with the epic warrior-philosopher atmosphere replaced with degrading filth worship along the lines of Autopsy, Repulsion, Cianide, Blasphemy, and Sarcofago. Really weird thin guitar tone that sounds more fitting for an avant-garde tech-death band and like on the first album, they made the poor decision of putting the long songs a bit too early on and trolling us with a 15 minute ending track where only the first six minutes has any actual music.

''Enthroned is the Night'' by Demoncy showcases this surprisingly influential if unfortunately under noticed black metal band leaning even further towards the death metal side of the equation: "deathened black metal" some might say. Also, "Winds of Plague" might be a great song and all but holy hell could they have chosen a more poorly fitting name for the opener?

Because one deathened black metal band wasn't enough, Morgirion's ''Infinite Retribution Upon Paradise'' offers a less subversive and creeping but more militaristic aggressive approach to the style. With a spacious production that allows eerie melodies to swoop above like some mysterious predatory demon hell-bird... things, the songs are like length anthems of war, unrelenting in their ferocity and mercilessly attacking rhythm.

From Norway, Diskord's ''Dystopics'' shows the band going further down the pathway of weird, wonky, dissonant death metal with more twists and turns than a Game Of Thrones season. They haven't changed too much sound wise compared to the debut but it's still an improvement overall. Aside from being sharper and well, more technical, the songs are simply further fleshed out with weird detours and very strange harmonies along the lines of Cadaver, Immolation, and Timeghoul.

Another Norse band of a far more primitive nature, Faustcoven put out the rather short (six song) ''Hellfire And Funeral Bells'' and they seem to be upping the unearthly occult atmosphere of the debut. The result has a much more murky, echo-heavy reverbrating atmosphere where riffs loom about like massive and unearthly spectres, letting a song mutate slowly over time like some occult ritual caught in bullet time.

As a "new old school" death metal band that sounds neither Incantation/Profanatica/Demoncy nor another bastard child of Sunlight Studios, ''The Chills'' by Horrendous is a fresh breath of stale, crypt-borne air. Okay so there is still a Swedish influence in the melodies but a surprising amount of traditional heavy metal and Pestilence/Massacre/earlier Death/etc. pops up as well. Surprisingly focused on melody as the key force behind their composition, but with the general core of earlier American style death metal.

Nocturnal Torment also do not feel like sounding like either of those two schools of primal metal of death. Dating back to 1989 back when they were known as Termination, it is only now they were able to record and release their debut album They Come At Night. Fortunately, time hasn't made them sloppy. Like the songwriting tendencies of L.A.'s longstanding Sadistic Intent combined with the post-Teutonic ripping aggression of Exmortis, these vicious songs surge through cyclic layers of razor-edged riffage, subtly illuminating a larger and far more insidious idea than the sum of their parts.

While it's only four songs long, Imprecation's ''Jehovah Denied'' is a promising preview of whatever else this longstanding Texas deathcult has to offer. In comparison to earlier material, it's not quite as raw or NYDM-blocky-rhythmic but very rigid and more controlled in its YHWH-desecrating aggression. Heavily cadenced material that progresses like some shuddering demonic march, slowly dragging the listener through a twisting, mutating vision made of what are simple riffs twisted into eerie shapes they probably shouldn't be in.

edited 20th May '12 5:09:07 PM by StillbirthMachine

Can's The Lost Tapes coming out in about 2 months, ought to be pretty amazing, based on the cuts that have already been made public.

BBNG 2 from BADBADNOTGOOD is the album of the year.

edited 21st May '12 8:41:12 AM by Erock

If anyone is interested Swans' new album The Seer has leaked. It's really, really good.

Italian cult death metallers Electrocution were fortunate enough to get the reissue and remaster treatment for their little known 1993 album (also their only one) ''Inside the Unreal'', which is finally a lot more listenable due to the immensely improved sound quality and no master volume drops on any of the tracks. Unfortunately none of their other work was included as bonus tracks.

Hour Of 13 have been a steadily improving trad/doom metal band and their latest album, 333 shows them finally bringing the ideas of their last two to full fruition. The end result is actually less doomy than their usual Sin After Sin-meets-Pagan Altar approach (albeit less folksy and more classic horror themed) but shows more fluidity and flexibility in songwriting arrangements and one of their most unusual tracks yet, perhaps a predecessor to future experimentation with psychedelic oddities.

Although they were originally playing straight up Swedish death metal, Necrovation has turned into something rather unexpected. While the feral violence of death metal is still there, it's conveyed in a more technical fashion with much more bizarre chord shapes and dissonances, along with a very weird guitar tone a la last album Begrime Exemious used to play riffs perhaps inspired by Voivod's first few prog offerings.

Meanwhile in Greece, yet another classic styled band rises to keep the ancient fire burning. While they have an uplifting attitude associated with many modern day power metal bands and perhaps a bit of enthusiastic amateur-ness that gives various older bands their charm, the end product carries the grand sweeping feel and soaring melodies that have let this style persevere over the years.

Going strong since 1982, Steel Assassin strike back and this time with the World War II themed album Sabaton wished they released. While War Of The Eight Saints was more of a stampeding heavy metal hammer to the face and this one still hits like an avalanche, they widen their songwriting palette for a wider degree of tempos and compositions rather than relying on mere intensity to carry them through. There's a cover of Rush's "Red Sector A" at the end.

I was somewhat disappointed with Angel Witch's comeback album this year. It wasn't say, utterly vomit-inducing atrocious but it felt ironically enough more like the last In Solitude album, just not as good. So Trial have essentially come to release the album the old British band should have. Like them, they're not quite as heavy on bulk rhythm punch, preferring leads and riffs that float about almost ghost-like which serves their mystical occult tone of weird subversion fairly well.

Antediluvian plays otherworldy esotericism-themed buzzy death metal, like Portal albeit with a much stronger sense of song direction. Adversarial on the other hand have a far more vicious approach akin to a more technical Angelcorpse with elements of later Immolation added in. Both show strong signs of improvement on the split album Initiated in Impiety as Mysteries. Antediluvian try more unusual approaches to riffcraft and contrast while Adversarial begin adding more jarring weird dissonance to their already highly hostile form of death/black music.

After disappointing releases by Dandy Warhols, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Garbage, I was pleased to find that the new Metric album is solid.

Streaming the new Woven Hand album Laughing Stalk right now. Sounds a lot like Ten Stones, which is a very good thing 'cause that's my previous fave by them.

• New Therion album, Les Fleurs du Mal, out this month. Initially it'll be self-released and sold at shows, then they plan to give it a wider release through a label sometime in the future.
• New Pig Destroyer album, Book Burner, out in October.

Oh man, there's a new Therion? I haven't listened to them in like a year but they were my favourite band once upon a time. I should probably check it out.

edited 15th Sep '12 11:41:19 AM by Nyktos

Sounds very interesting.

New Death Grips dropped. It's great.

Way back in January, I expressed a desire to get my grubby mitts on Queen of the Wave by Pepe Deluxe. I finally did, and I gotta say the album is even better than I thought it would be.

New Godspeed You! Black Emperor is set to be released October 19, and is being sold on tour right now.

I'm pumped.

Said album has leaked, and it's really good.

Coffin Texts' ''The Tomb of Infinite Ritual'' ended up surprising me this year. Along with Nocturnal Torment, it's good to see that the classic American sound (that isn't Incantation) is getting some representation again. Definitely seemed to be a big improvement over ''Gods of Creation, Death, and Afterlife'' and a movement to a more Sadistic Intent-ish sound, albeit more "epic" and winding.

New Converge leaked FYI