Pig Destroyer Release New Track

Pig Destroyer have released the first full track from their forthcoming album Book Burner. It's everything we've come to expect from a band whose grindcore assaults can only be spoken of in superlatives. Book Burner is due out October 22nd on Relapse Records. You can preorder it here.

Dead Sun Over Black Sands

Sólstafir - Svartir Sandar
Sólstafir is a band who has come a long way in terms of their artistic ability and musical intentions. They began as a Viking metal band, then morphed, as many Viking metal bands tend to, into an arty black metal band. Since then, they've gradually added more post-rock tendencies a la Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and now on their newest album Svartir Sandar, they've reached a new height of artistic mastery.

Sólstafir have been masters of building atmosphere since their excellent first LP Masterpiece of Bitterness, and they've always grafted that atmosphere to pummeling metal textures, making an art rock/black metal blend that sounded like no one else. Svartir Sandar is certainly heavy, but in a much different way than its predecessor albums. This heaviness is built very carefully, with nuance and fantastic attention to detail rather than speed and fury. Paradoxically, it feels like the album's passion comes from its precision, as though each chord and drum hit were carefully placed to perfectly build the drama and emotion necessary to each song, while making it all seem natural and effortless.

When considering arty post-metal, names like Isis, Neurosis, and Pelican immediately spring to mind, but Sólstafir's sound is entirely their own, perhaps owing to both their Scandanavian black metal background and the isolation afforded to them by their native Iceland. It's possible to hear the influences like The Cure, or some of the bleaker 90's rock bands, or perhaps even their countrymen in Sigur Rós, but the overall tone is so sunless and monolithic that it has to be heavily informed by the blackest of metal. The guitars range from gentle to vicious, the thundering rhythm section equals the guitars in their ability to bring the emotional content forward, and singer Aðalbjörn Tryggvason's voice pulls itself from a near whisper to a despairing wail at a moment's notice.

Words largely fail to describe the scope of what transpires over the two discs that make up Svartir Sandar. The sound is immersive, nearly cinematic. It's easier to describe the album as a place that one can go. It's like a continent, huge and dense, but with room to move. Moments that begin as just a wandering guitar line or steady cymbal beat evolve over time into a maelstrom of sound that evokes an atmosphere both unknown and somehow familiar, like a place you may have been in your more monochromatic dreams.

-Review posted by TZARATHUSTRA

Gojira Posts New Track

Gojira has posted the title track from their long-awaited follow up to The Way Of All Flesh, and as a preview it does exactly what it's supposed to: make you want more. It sounds clean and filthy at the same time, laser-precise and satisfying. If this is what the new album will sound like, count me in.

-Posted by TZARATHUSTRA

Check out "L'Enfant Sauvage" here.

If you're not familiar with Gojira (or even if you are), take a listen to "From The Sky" from their excellent second album From Mars To Sirius:

Crushed Beneath A Rainbow

Torche - Harmonicraft
As a serious contender for "World's Happiest Metal Band," Torche had a lot to live up to after their breakout album Meanderthal, and they've finally delivered their follow-up, entitled Harmonicraft. The title fits perfectly, as Torche has clearly crafted some serious harmonies for this effort.

In a way, it seems like Meanderthal was an album Torche had to make before this release was possible. Meanderthal was an exercise in risk-taking. Their self-titled debut had a lot of buzz, but no one had ever packed so much sunshine into an album so crushingly heavy, and metal fans are not the most open-minded group where sunshine is concerned. The band had to answer a lot of interview questions about their harmonized vocals, their jovial attitude, and whether or not they were actually a metal band (the band has used the term 'thunder pop' to describe themselves). Meanderthal had a lot to prove, but the risk paid off, and now on Harmonicraft, Torche sound like they're comfortable in their role. No, not comfortable. Justified. They know exactly what they're doing and they do it well.

Their overall sound remains the driving, bass-heavy monolith it always has been, but refined to a new level. The Songs for Singles EP seems to have given them extra discipline to craft tighter, more urgent songs than on previous releases, and their rhythms have more variation, from all-out, plowing speed, to swaying, hands-in-the-air grooves, to plodding, headbanging grind. Above all these crushing sounds float the sometimes harmonized, nearly celebratory vocals, at times reminiscent of some kind of ecstatic ritual.

In the end, all of the elements that drew people to Meanderthal are present here, and used with great skill to craft an excellent album of blissed-out heaviness. Harmonicraft will no doubt be the soundtrack to the impending summer for many happy listeners.

Also: If you ever have the opportunity to see Torche live, don't miss out. I had the chance to see them a year or so ago in a small club, and they were fantastic. Bright white stage lights illuminated the show, so the whole experience was made up of flashes of the smiling band having a blast, swirling colors behind the eyelids from the lights, and the giant, overwhelming sound of weapons-grade joy that wasn't hard to imagine was the voice of god.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

The Mysteries of the Worm

High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis
Modern heavy metal is nearly as bad as electronic music about creating meaningless microgenres. Thrash-influenced eco-black metal? Depressive funeral doom metal? New Wave of Old School Death Metal? In a sea of ridiculous overclassification, it's nice to know that there are some bands who just play straight-up heavy metal. That's where Oakland, CA's High on Fire come in. They're too fast for doom or sludge metal (see Matt Pike's old band Sleep for his real take on doom), too low and nasty for thrash, and they certainly don't fit the strict standards of death or black metal. They're a bit like Motorhead in that they simply play pummeling, aggressive music and don't seem to care where they fit in best. The Motorhead comparison is actually pretty apt, since High on Fire can sound at times like Lemmy and Co. taken to a whole new level of aggression.

For anyone interested in heavy music, High on Fire should be a household name by now, as they've recently released album number six, De Vermis Mysteriis. Vocalist and guitarist Matt Pike explains the album thusly:

“It’s a concept record, a little bit. I got this idea about Jesus Christ and the Immaculate Conception: What if Jesus had a twin who died at birth to give Jesus his life? And then what if the twin became a time traveler right then? He lives his life only going forward until he finds this scroll from an ancient Chinese alchemist who derived a serum out of the black lotus—which is actually in Robert E. Howard’s ‘Conan’ stories—and then he starts traveling back in time. He can see the past through his ancestors’ eyes, but his enemies can kill him if they kill the ancestor that he’s seeing through at the time. Basically, he keeps waking up in other people’s bodies at bad times. It’s kinda like that old TV show Quantum Leap. Kurt actually pointed that out to me after I told him the idea. But whatever—time travel is a killer concept."

It's pretty safe to assume that the album's themes were somewhat influenced by pharmaceutical assistance.

The Kurt referred to in the above quote is the infamous (at least in metal circles) Kurt Ballou of Converge fame, who produced the new album to great effect, because the sound is absolutely crushing. Matt Pike and High on Fire also deliver something besides simple heaviness in the form of actual, memorable songs. Between the lyrics offered up in Pike's throat-destroying shout and the complex songwriting, Mysteriis is definitely more than just a collection of tracks. They seem to have taken the "concept album" idea to heart, because the whole work is imbued with a more cinematic scope than past releases. The songs can be completely devastating of course, just listen to the track "Spiritual Rites," but there are also thoughtful, dramatic moments like the preceding track, "Samsara," with its twisting, serpentine lead work. Those leads are no doubt aided by Pike's custom 9-string guitar, which is strung as a regular 6-string, only the highest three strings are doubled, so that Pike's solos ring out as if played on a 12-string guitar.

Overall, this is High on Fire's most ambitious work to date, and the bizarre subject matter lends it an even more twisted vibe than their older albums. They've ventured into Lovecraftian territory here, and they've dredged up something both unearthly and well worth a listen to anyone who wants some quality heavy metal with absolutely zero pretension.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Black Sabbath Live 1970

This full set from 1970 is for anyone who forgot (or, perish the thought, doesn't yet know) why Black Sabbath are gods among men. Paranoid had just been released, and Sabbath had only really been a professional band for about two years at the time, yet all the elements were in place. Geezer Butler and Bill Ward performed as one of the best rhythm sections in all of rock and roll at the time and showed that you could be monstrously heavy and still retain a solid groove, and Tony Iommi was plumbing the darkest, scariest depths of guitar sounds the world had ever heard. Over top of all that noise, Ozzy's vocals were powerful and menacing. It was still the blues-based rock and roll that the world was so familiar with at the time, but it was blues-based rock with all the color drained out of it. It was claustrophobic and horrific and well... paranoid.

It's important to retain a sense of historical context to fully grasp why Black Sabbath was so terrifying. This show was recorded in December of 1970, so Woodstock was still fresh in people's minds, and the stabbing at Altamont was only a year before this concert. The hippie movement was flaming out, and people were beginning to suspect that love wasn't going to save us. Then Black Sabbath comes roaring out of England with the most unholy sound anyone had ever heard:

-Posted by TZARATHUSTRA