Blast Rites
Sumerlands Soundtrack the Moody ‘80s Movie in Your Mind, and More New Metal
There’s a new Ozzy Osbourne album out this month. There’s also a new Striborg album out: two and a half hours of oppressively bleak — and, at its best, downright chilling — “blackwave” courtesy of the Tasmanian loner known as Sin Nanna. I state these facts to demonstrate a simple point: The universe of what we call metal is vast, and more or less impossible to keep tabs on in its entirety. Favor the festival headliners and arena fillers, and you miss the best of the club acts and fledgling bands sweating it out over that soon-to-be-legendary demo; scour the underground obsessively and you might overlook a late-career triumph from a household name. So if this new incarnation of SPIN’s monthly metal roundup — in which I take over from Andy O’Connor, an astute and passionate lifer whose recom...
Come to Grief Pummel Through Lousy Jobs and Depression
Wallowing in hopelessness isn’t always healthy, but as long as there’s labor that’s not properly compensated, sometimes it’s all you can do. In the right light, it can even feel great. Boston’s Grief trafficked in overwhelming negative feelings with their particular strain of sludge metal in the ‘90s, especially downtrodden even amongst their contemporaries like Eyehategod, Buzzov*en, and the punkier but ultra-despondent Dystopia. There’s an attractive quality in going all-in on self-annihilation, and their monolithic riffing is the only thing that could match such despair. Though criminally ignored in their existence – the Northeast didn’t quite take to the sludge’s dirge like the South and Southeast did – it’s fitting that their most celebrated track is “I Hate the Human Race.” Says it a...
The Death Metal Band Unafraid to Have a Good Time
There are two reasons you should be paying attention to Rochester right now. The first is RXK Nephew, the workaholic rapper whose “American Tterroristt” is bar none the most insane song I’ve heard recently. (Yes, I’m late.) The other is death metal quintet Undeath, who do not work at the prolific pace RXK Nephew does but are by no means slouches. They are one of the most exciting newer death metal bands, as they don’t adhere to either to ultra-orthodox simplicity or bonkers technicality. Rather, Undeath pepper their songs with slight twists, little leads and breaks that make you go “huh?” for a split second before you resume headbanging/windmilling/nodding/however you move your head when you listen to death metal. It lends to a macabre joy, and lest you might think they’re aching to s...
Blast Rites: Messa Bring Mediterranean Surroundings and Energy to Doom Metal With Close
Back in 2016, when this column had a different name in a different publication, I stumbled upon Italian doom band Messa and their debut full-length, Belfry. It lit in me a particular fire — a fire signaling that this band could really cross over. While Belfry could go into dimly lit drones and dark jazz excursions, the band never lost sight of doom fundamentals — crushing riffs that leant to a suffocating yet enticing atmosphere, and a captivating vocal performance from Sara Bianchin, who strikes that sweet spot of virtuosity and bluesy warmth. When it hits, it hits. Familiar yet enticing, Messa definitely had everything in line for a wider audience. They recently released Close through Finnish indie label Svart, and they’ve cut through the fog in more ways than one — not only do they soun...
Through Acts of God, Immolation Are Death Metal Masters — and Students
Immolation have one of the most consistently great discographies in death metal. Their 11th album Acts of God, out this Friday (February 18) on Nuclear Blast, meets their benchmark for excellence. It is not just their brand of death metal in its prime, but death metal itself in its prime, when it became more complex and sophisticated in the early ‘90s without losing its base fury and grotesqueness. Guitarist Bob Vigna’s labyrinthine guitar still drives them, going in all sorts of directions that seem incomprehensible when dissected on their own, but taken together are unrivaled in flow. How does “The Age of No Light” go from a dissonant black metal intro to pecking melodicism to charging upstrokes all in one song? Incomprehensibly brilliant. Bassist and vocalist Ross Dolan, the other remai...
At Wit’s End, Mizmor Turns Inner turmoil Outward
Changing your sound rarely feels autobiographical. But for Liam Neighbors, a.k.a. A.L.N., the man behind Portland blackened doom band Mizmor (often written as מזמור, the Hebrew word for “psalm”), it is. Though not a strict, sober play-by-play of his life, Mizmor has largely been a journey of a man losing his faith. Albums like 2016’s Yodh and 2019’s Carin reflect that conflict through weighty black metal rendered through doom’s bigger scopes. They sounded hymnal, but not reverent, quite appropriate for someone struggling to leave God and his former life wrapped up in God behind. His latest EP Wit’s End, which came out last Friday on Gilead Media, does not represent a conclusion to his journey, but a point much different from where he started. For one, his belief, the thing he spent albums ...
Andrew Lee Finds New Life in Classic Shred
It’s list season, the only season that matters. That said, let’s talk about a list from nine years ago. Specifically, SPIN’s 100 Greatest Guitarists list, which highlighted a lot of names that don’t usually get brought up, including Arto Lindsay and Sonny Sharrock. It also didn’t take half-measures going left-field, like putting Jam Master Jay in the top 10. It was as notable for who it didn’t include: the whole point was that the usual suspects like Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen weren’t on there. In fact, playing fast in the traditional metal sense was a guarantee for exclusion. That’s not to say shred wasn’t represented, but it was more unorthodox speed demons like Ben Weinman, Trey Azagthoth and Mick Barr that made the cut. The list was bold, to say the least, and it was a much-n...
Dream Unending Build Their Own Worlds Through Gorgeous Doom Metal
When I first heard about Dream Unending, I did the Vince McMahon meme in real time, excitement scaling too far past healthy or sustainable. Tomb Mold’s Derrick Vela teaming up with prolific bruiser Justin DeTore (of Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands, Magic Circle, Mind Eraser, numerous other killer bands) to take on the Peaceville Three sound? The audacity and the ecstasy! The Peaceville Three – My Dying Bride, Anathema, and Paradise Lost – were goth metal innovators in the early and mid-’90s, shrouding doom metal in funereal violins, maudlin synths fallen from new age’s unblemished heavens, and many Rimbaud and Bryon marathons at 3 AM. Their beauty is like a pristine object cracked by time and misery, where godliness shows mortality. Even as goth metal became its own flourishing subgenre, no ...
Texas Put on Creeping Death, and Creeping Death Puts on Texas
You can pin a lot of influences on Dallas death metal band Creeping Death, and most of them wouldn’t be far off the mark. Like a lot of modern death metal bands who came up through hardcore, you hear a lot of Bolt Thrower’s pointed riffing and slamming breakdowns. Some of those breakdowns hit with a force where one might think they were directly plucked from Suffocation. Their new EP, The Edge of Existence, out now through MNRK Heavy, gives even more points of comparison: some of the groovy riffs take on a more Obituary character, and the lead guitar work straddles the line between mid-period Death and early Gorguts, jumping outside the lines a bit. A track like “Humanity Transcends” has a cosmic eye that hasn’t been seen in their work before. It’s still quite lean and mean – Creeping Deat...
Blast Rites: Unto Others’ Enormous Goth-Metal Gives Them Strength to Carry On
September saw two high-profile metal releases from Iron Maiden and Carcass, plus a reissue of Metallica’s “Black Album,” one of the best-selling metal records in history, complete with a tribute so ill-conceived it’ll make you want to invest in oil companies to hasten our demise. But Blast Rites is more about legends in the making, the groups should have their own dubious tribute albums in about 30 years’ time. (That is, if metal still exists 30 years from now.) Portland’s Unto Others already had a sound poised to elevate them from the underground, a melodic machine driven by both NWOBHM’s raw-hewn leads and Sisters of Mercy’s more rocking edges. Vocalist Gabriel Franco practically slips into Andrew Eldritch’s slithering charisma when he dons shades, and guitarist Sebastian Silva wou...
Spirit Adrift Reveres Metal’s Motivational Vitality
It’s not often that you get one of America’s finest contemporary heavy metal composers in your proverbial backyard, but for the Austin area, having Nate Garrett around is a game-changing acquisition. Spirit Adrift, his main concern, distills his love of Dio-era Black Sabbath’s huge melodies, chunky palm-muted thrash riffing, Maryland doom’s weariness, a touch of ZZ Top boogie into his own blend that’s triumphant as it is soul-searing. Not only does he bring the heat on guitar, he wails like the angel who must’ve brought Dusty Hill himself up to the pearly gates. Metal bands love to wear their influences on their sleeve (sometimes quite literally), but Garrett is more driven by his sheer love for metal’s eternal vitality. If there was ever a modern band that was the complete package, Spirit...
Blast Rites: Midwife’s ‘Heaven Metal’ Is the Emotional Apocalypse You Need
We’re gonna play fast and loose with the term “metal” here this month. Midwife, the solo project of Madeline Johnston — now based in New Mexico after relocating from Denver during the pandemic — plays what she calls “heaven metal,” a self-coined term that’s a hazy yet quite charged take on solo downer pop. It’s a term where the contrast between lightness and crushing weight, between the unreachable and the all too real, might seem cheeky at first. How sonically metal it is? Up for debate. And frankly, the last thing we need is another debate on what is or isn’t metal. How heavy on the spirit it is? Zero question. Ungodly heavy. It’s an emotional apocalypse. Last year, Johnston released Forever, a gripping look at how grief manifests, built on glimmering ambient and fuzzy guitar outbursts. ...
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