Written by: The Administrator
Welcome, dear read/traveler, to INTO THE DUNGEON, a new (and likely infrequent, if I'm being real) column dedicated to dungeon-dwelling music of the synth-y persuasion. While admittedly less than well-steeped in the genre and its conventions, I've found myself listening to more and more dungeon synth over the past few years. There's a lot of incredible talent and innovation in the space, but said talent all too oft flies under the radar, particularly when it comes to metal-centric sites/medieval townships such as ours. 'Bout time to extend the reach of the limelight, methinks. Anyways, preliminary chatter out of the way: the topic of today's discussion is Sword of Hailstone, the excellent debut album by Minneapolis, Minnesota's own Desolation Plains. A notable aspect of this release is the companion RPG, which features some swell point 'n' click gameplay, plus some of the coolest fuckin' bandcamp code integration we slumbering scribes have ever seen. The music itself--the real focus here--is simply top-notch: everything I crave in a synth-laden experience is inordinately well represented. If you're questing for a soundtrack to adventure, Desolation Plains delivers in spades.
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Written by: Izzy
As a genre like metal ages, it is natural that there will be waves of innovation and experimentation. However, after decades, you sometimes may worry that we’re running out of ideas and closer to the end than the beginning. Like, at some point it feels like so much ground has been covered that anything new would come in the form of a ridiculous gimmick idea you’d think of while stoned, like jazz fusion nu metal or death metal played by a classical chamber ensemble (both of which already exist). It’s an exercise in both patience and persistence to continue the search for something that truly sounds like the next step. But of course, it always comes. If you don’t let yourself get stuck in the mindset that music stopped being good at one point or another, you will always find new artists doing new things and creating new sounds, and listening to the new Victory Over the Sun album reminded me exactly why it’s worth waiting and searching for those visionaries that challenge our common conceptions and assumptions about music as an art form. Written by: Blackie Skulless Back in 2013, I was pretty new to metal and the vast pool of bands and subgenres that it held. UK thrashers Evile, however, was one name that I was familiar with, and recall being blown away by Skull. Seeing how I still love it to this day, you can imagine my excitement upon hearing that, after eight years, we’re getting a new album. Take longtime lead guitarist Ol Drake and hand him the vocal duties in place of Matt Drake, enter Adam Smith, and you’ve now got another angle to look at this from. The end product is Hell Unleashed. So how different does the band sound with such a significant time gap and lineup change? Well, the musical direction is more or less the same. Speed remains the biggest selling factor, cranking out lightning fast riffs under crackling drums, all finished with some tight clear-coating. I’ve admittedly grown to dislike that kind of production in thrash, but it can be overlooked when the songwriting is extra stellar. The issue is, I don’t particularly think that’s the case here.
Written by: Lunar Fanatic
Dissonant black death metal is nothing new, in fact the subgenre feels a bit trite by this point. That being said Labored Breath’s debut album, Dyspnea, is a fresh, bludgeoning entry into what I’d consider one of metal’s darkest styles. This album from the one-man project from Oakland, CA wastes no time in setting the album’s tone. Cavernous (and that description is truly earned here), bleeding dissonant notes erupt into pure auditory violence on opening track "Hypothesia." The drumming is explosive, and the guitar work swirls around it, made even more prominent by the excellent use of panning. Both ears are under constant yet varied assault throughout the album, and the beautifully raw production obscures enough detail from the surface to make diving deeper into the ocean of the winding song structures featured throughout Dyspnea.
Written by: The Administrator
The term “post-apocalyptic,” as a descriptor, has always felt somewhat universal--a quality that is most likely a direct result of the extensive post-apocalyptic media that I grew up with. While the narratives and backdrops differ, there’s a commonality in depictions of the world after the end of the world. Barren, expansive, utilitarian, hodge-podge, cruel, mysterious, no-nonsense. Antiquated in a vaguely otherworldly sense. On Book 1: Medusa’s Revenge, blackened sludge duo Nehushtan have managed to apply that distinct aesthetic to the aural form in a wholly engrossing fashion. As such, much like the world their extensive narrative exists within, this album feels both intrinsically tough and enticingly uncharted.
Written by: The Administrator
Speaking exclusively from an admittedly shallow well of experience, there are few genres as situational as deathcore. Am I actively engaged in an a high-intensity workout? If so, deathcore is an appropriate soundtrack. Am I doing anything other than slangin' iron and sweating bullets? Deathcore is more than likely buried underneath a veritable mountain of genres I would rather spend my time with. Given this implicit bias, I have spent a lot of time listening to Osiah's latest while strutting around in the cobwebb'd cellar confines of my home gym. To their credit, however, this album has slowly started to escape the typical listening environments. The ability to hold interest outside of the usual arena is a pretty notable quality.
Written by: The Administrator
The Red Beard Wall experience has been--and always will be, I suspect--a deliberately jarring one, even for those who know to expect the immeasurable enthusiasm and bombast on display. This project's modus operandi is one of gloriously violent dynamics: every track is a sonic gladiatorial extravaganza. Unhinged screams, post-hardcore cleans, bouncy percussion, 90's-style alternative aggression, and thicc-ass sludgy stoner riffs meet head-on in the arena. However, rather than unleashing their pugilistic wrath upon each other, they somehow harness their unharness-able collective power, subsequently raining blood and thunder on the audience. Frankly, it's quite the sight to behold. On the appropriately entitled 3, I am happy to report that human wrecking ball (and nicest man alive) Aaron Wall delivers his best performance yet--which says something, if you happen to recall my praise of 2019's The Fight Needs Us All. Much like his prior work, this album succeeds because it capitalizes so well on Aaron's bright and earnest personality.
Every Friday, a wagon arrives at the Sleeping Village’s crumbling gates, stuffed to the brim with our sustenance for the following week. Today is the day we must offload all this week's new and noteworthy music, and so, in the process, we thought it would be worthwhile to share some of our choice picks from this veritable mass of fresh meat. This is what we’ll be--and have been--listening to this week at the Village HQ. We hope you join us in doing so!
As today is Bandcamp Friday, alongside our standard mini-reviews, we've added a bunch o' releases at the bottom that you should check out (and purchase, if yer so inclined.) If ye missed it, check out our merch roundup here! On the docket for today, May 7th, 2021: Dread Maw, Herzschlager, Kataan, Book of Wyrms, Empty Throne, Osiah, Chronic Lethargy, Cainhurst, Eliot Vernon, Desolation Plains, and Nehushtan Every Friday, a wagon arrives at the Sleeping Village’s rusted palisade, stuffed to the brim with musical sustenance. Typically, today is the day we must offload this week's new and noteworthy music, but this morning, we're shaking it up a bit by turning our focus on the merch. Fear not: a music portion cometh.
As today is Bandcamp Friday, instead of our typical four mini-reviews, here's some cool merch released today that we recommend you check out (and purchase, if yer so inclined!) Music reviews to follow! On the docket for today, May 7th, 2021: Body Void, Almost Honest, Order of the Wolf, Hidden Mothers, and Fuzznaut To assess Gojira's latest offering, two Village-dwellers took up the pen, making for a rare double review 'round these parts. Enjoy! - Ed. Written by: Izzy I think for many metalheads, Gojira is a very nostalgic name. I personally got into them very early on in my exploration of extreme metal and they have remained a band I look to very fondly, even if in recent years they’ve departed from their death metal roots and taken a more accessible, straightforward prog/groove/alt metal sound. I still think the material put forth on their previous two excursions, L’Enfant Sauvage and Magma, while not their best, still had their own appeal that kept me returning to them. But there was a palpable feeling that as they stripped away their extreme metal leanings and got softer and included more clean(ish) singing, they’d eventually morph into just another mediocre alt metal band, and I feel this concept has reached its logical conclusion with Fortitude, having scrubbed away almost any remnants of death metal in their sound and leaning harder and harder on creating hooks and choruses rather than the vast odysseys of From Mars to Sirius and The Way of All Flesh. I think we’ve reached a point where I truly can’t find a reason to look forward to a new Gojira album after this. |
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We provide thoughtful reviews of music that is heavy, gloomy...and loud enough to wake us from slumber. Written by a highfalutin peasantry!
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