Metal Riot

This June, Harm’s Way will head back out on the road for their “Posthuman Pacific Northwest Tour”, featuring special guests Soft Kill, before joining the final, full cross country Vans Warped Tour later that month, with Every Time I Die, Hatebreed, and many more. This is an inspired pairing of two very different bands and I would go to it in a hot second.

See below for all dates.

photo by rennie elliot

We have been stans of Insect Ark for awhile now , the Dana Schechter  (M. Gira’s Angels Of Light, Wrekmeister Harmonies, Zeal & Ardor, Gnaw) founded project which expanded to a duo featuring Ashley Spungin (Taurus, Purple Rhinestone Eagle) to enhance a powerful creative drive. If there were animated gifs of them we would retweet them at people to show them we mean business. Anyway, my dorkery aside…the band has an awesome dynamic and their material is killer. Super great news is that Profound Lore will release their newest full length on Feb. 23rd. Entitled Marrow Hymns, it is one of our most anticipated early 2018 must hear records.

Revolver is showcasing the band’s new song “Sea Harps” now right HERE.

Says Schechter, “‘Sea Harps,’ a favorite in our live sets, is loosely based on the Greek myth of the Sirens. Broadcasting an ominous and lonely call into the night, the Sirens’ song was irresistible to all who heard it, luring sailors to an untimely and violent death.”

The latest song has a marvelous dirgy quality and an insanely textural physicality. The atmosphere of the early songs is expanded on this track into an intense whirl of lap steel, bass and repetitive drum patterns, like climbing up a very tall stone staircase in the fog to finally break free and get a wide view for miles and miles of nature surpassing our falling cities ambivalently. The song wins without losing any of the alienation or restless wanderlust that made the old songs so compelling. I can see why it reminds Dana of someone being pulled through a turbulent sea towards the rocks.

Gold are really good. You should listen to them. I classified them in our power metal category only because if Gold played power metal that would actually maybe be the weirdest experimental music ever and very rad. They DO play their own awesome kind of music, which is different than what many bands are doing. Optimist has some sweet jams. “White Noise” has a great intro. Prepare to be melted in a metallic wash of BM, post-rock and plaintive melodic musings.

One of my all time favorites and quite likely yours at this point, SubRosa have a new video out for “Killing Rapture”. The clip is interesting, reminding me of the poetic natural side and camera work of Zhang Yimou’s HERO in the gorgeous and simple opening shot and evolving to a strong juxtaposition of seeming rural rootedness against modern dissociation of self. The rapture in the title in the wee morning hours after Good Friday has just ended and as we may be on the brink of worse bombings in the world, the baby’s face in one moment of the clip…it all has me wondering what the future holds and why pundits are so eager to chase the war ratings and drum up support for unreasonable horrors.

Anyhow, this is an intense and interpretive, well made clip set to the band’s particular and stirring sound. Eternal respect to this group.

Guitarist/warlord of the night Jeff Wilson sometimes hits me up with tour news or to shoot the shit. It’s always good to talk the dude as he is a musician who does a lot of things on his own terms. Jeff, in the future, you don’t have to politely ask me to post stuff. Your music is way better than a lot of crap I’ve written about, so just send me tour dates and say ,”here ya go, fucker” and they will soon appear on this site in slim hope that more people will read them then the uptick in traffic we get when we post about stupid mallcore shit (less often, since I am doing the majority of the writing around here now…hahaha). I have a lot more respect for Jeff’s music and so will post about that instead of Five Finger Death Punch in hopes that when I get to Hell the devil will grant me a flaming key of blackened pitch to my own little burnt gingerbread house as a reward and while other bloggers must listen to Falling In Reverse forever I will thankfully get a sip of the river of forgetfulness and that actual Hell on Earth will be erased from my musical memory banks.

Wolvhammer are better than about 99% of the metal bands in the world right now and the other 1% are their peers. Likewise Atriarch. These are two of the bleaker but more truthful acts out there, bands you can lean on in lean times to get you through ugly shit. This is not jock jam metal, bright day at a festival shove mosh metal or idiotic hard choreography repressed homosexual mook metal. This is hit the bottom and come back stronger than ever, vomiting shadows on fake people, elephant in the room, ugly ass Satan metal that actually matters and can save lives.

Says Jeff: After a bit of a live hiatus this year due to cancellation, migration, inebriation and the lot; I’m really stoked to get back out on the road with Wolvhammer in December. We’ve got big plans for this one, playing songs from the entire discography, some never performed before. With our most crushing live lineup to date and the ever flawless Atriarch in tow, this run of dates on the west coast is not to be missed.

If you haven’t heard Crawling Into Black Sun  yet or An Unending Pathway, you are an asshole.

Wolvhammer / Atriarch Desanctifying North America Pt. 2 dates BELOW.

Cellist Helen Money (aka Alison Chesley) creates music that enrichens the full being, the totality of a soul’s range of emotions often seeming to hang on each bow stroke. Her unorthodox approach to “doom cello”  on her critically acclaimed Arriving Angels record (as well as a tremendous recent collaboration with none other than her royal majesty of awesomeness Jarboe) plus a lengthy career working on dozens of records supplying more texture to the music of artists as wide ranged as Anthrax, Bob Mould, Disturbed, Mono or Russian Circles, has netted her the sole opening slot on black metal/post-rock darlings Agalloch’s upcoming tour as well as a growing body of awestruck fans.

It was a real pleasure to speak with Chesley about the impact and “feeling” of meaningful music, mortality, touring and other subjects.

Enjoy BELOW.

Missing is a new “super group” of sorts of underground metal stalwarts who would probably hate that term. It’s not like they will be headlining Live Aid 9 anytime soon, but the guys in the group have a serious pedigree of bands between them (Batillus, Abigail Williams, Lord Mantis, Nachtmystium, Corrections House, etc.). In the aftermath of the Lord Mantis upheaval, I got an invite from my friend Jeff Wilson of black metal standouts Wolvhammer to check out this new band Missing he started with Charlie Fell and Ken Sorceron to basically pick up and evolve where Lord Mantis’ Death Mask left off. But there is more…JefWhitehead , Fade Kainer AND Sanford Parker are on board as well? Holy crow, metal fans.

Check out the birth of the project BELOW (and thanks Jeff).