FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
If you’re looking for grind inflected sludge metal, with a love for noise, this is the band for you. Something you will notice right from the beginning however, is that The Great Sabatini are not interested in making their music quite that simple. Unlike many 7” releases, Napoleon Sodomite doesn’t feel like the band threw on a few outtakes just to be able to say they put out a 7”. This is quality beginning to end.
I’m not a big fan of bands with overt drug references in their names. I mean, Weedeater is pure genius, Bongzilla’s not bad, but it’s all downhill from there. That being said, Ironweed somehow works, taking one of the most over-used words in (dorky) metal, and adding weed. You know what they say… Just add weed, right?
While it’s not the coinciding North American tour that was threatened around the time Accept announced its reformation without their former singer, Udo Dirkschneider’s latest “solo” effort hits shelves exactly one month after his former band graced the Mod Club stage in T.O.. To say I’m a little underwhelmed would be an understatement.
Sylvus are a Toronto, ON-based band that have undergone significant transformations. After going on hiatus for a year, they returned to the stage with a completely new aesthetic, songs and bassist. They play black metal with tinges of pagan folk and almost otherworldly hints of psychedelic noise. Their music is by turns thunderous, tender and startling; it also happens to be produced by some lovely human beings.
Natalie Zed in conversation with Toronto blackened pagan metal quartet Sylvus.
Short story even shorter, The Ocean ruled the night, Job For A Cowboy was on the wrong show and BTBAM were technically flawless but the band became a victim of their own songwriting.
I can see how this would’ve blown some minds back in 1990, but it really hasn’t aged all that well. Other bands have since taken the torch and left Winter sputtering behind with this lo-fi, depressing slog of an album that has more in common with the “gothic doom” of My Dying Bride than the true masters of the genre.
I can’t say enough how unique and epic this band is. Sure , they may have lost a lot of their doom but I think this has made them even more of a better band. It gives the music and riffs much more room to breathe and I find there is a lot more varation on the tempos that has helped modernize their sound without falling into any trendy sterotypes.
In Sam Dunn’s debut documentary, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, the anthropologist describes his hometown of Victoria, British Columbia as the land of the “newly wed and nearly dead”, an anecdote that resonates with the city’s primitive black metal practitioners Shibboleth.
“Well, it is really one of those funny stories in life which started as a big coincidence. The short version is that, about a year and a half ago we met Mark Tornillo and loved the way he sang. It wasn’t planned out at all. We were not auditioning for a singer or anything. We just happened to meet during a jam session. Peter (Baltes) and I were spending a day just jamming some old riffs. Somebody suggested we call Mark and have him sing along with some old songs. We realized he has a killer voice which was suited perfectly to our old material. The idea to reform was born in that moment. Within about a minute and I half Peter and I just looked at each other and we knew we had to do something.”
Allan Grusie in conversation with ACCEPT guitarist and founding member Wolf Hoffmann about their reformation and the excellent Blood Of The Nations comeback album.
As a long awaited reissue, the new 2011 version of this album is about as good as it gets.