FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
I normally don’t like live records. Between bad recordings, obvious overdubs and embarrassing stage patter, I find most live albums to be unsatisfying to say the least. Live In Whitby from Ottawa’s Fuck The Facts destroys all of my misgivings in the first few seconds. The sound on this release is amazing! In fact, you can almost believe you’re standing directly in front of the sound guy at the venue, watching the sweat fly.
Installment number six of the Hellbound Handshake Clip Of The Week features video outtakes from a recent WOODS OF YPRES video shoot
After reading the review of their recent Toronto show (I was at High on Fire, BTW) and coming across their Against the Seasons album while digging through my CD collection for this all-CanCon thing I’m doing on Sunday afternoons, it occurred to me that I have no fucking clue what happened to the Woods of Ypres shirt I bought in 2005. I know I didn’t get rid of it, but somehow, the fucking thing seems to have disappeared…
Installment number five of the Hellbound Handshake Clip Of The Week is JUCIFER drum cam footage from Maryland Deathfest 2010
Svarti Loghin revels in fusion of the most banal kind. It does not have a musical vision. It simply blends the visions of others into something that it tries to pass off as art. What it forgets is that hybridization requires a vision if it is to fuse disparate elements into a cohesive artistic statement. The boldness of Svarti Loghin’s borrowing is a sham, for it is not so much a paper tiger as a collage tiger.
The Frozen Tears of Angels is a solid, fun record that need not apologize for being metal.
Suffice to say that this album is a long, difficult slog, even though it only has six tracks.
“However long and difficult the journey, Woods of Ypres give themselves no breaks and indulge in no excuses. Every single member of the band poured all the heart and energy they had into their performance at the Blue Moon, led by the apparently indefatigable David Gold. They are incredibly generous performers in this regard, never giving less than their physical and emotional all on stage. Seeing them live remains, for me, a unique audience experience in this regard: no matter how much I put in, I can never seem to quite keep up with how much I receive from this band.”
In the end, Black Marketeers of World War III is an enjoyable but standard album that doesn’t make a long-lasting impression or distinguish itself from its musical brethren. Wolvhammer’s hearts and minds are obviously in the right places, but this fact plus a few memorable musical moments isn’t enough to make for a record that stand-outs out from the pack.
Eve—the song and the album—sounds like it’s been shaped from molten rock. Ufomammut have dug deep; crafting elusive, unruly elements into something inspired and monumental