And I’m realizing how much I miss you guys. I thought I’d got it out of my system, I thought I was through with you, but looks like I’m not, otherwise why would in the world would I be here at 2am.
(this isn’t a music post, more of a personal note)
I’ve done a lot of thinking since I was kicked from the guild and left Gaia, and most of my thinking has lead me to the conclusion that I was I was an insufferable idiot. I chased Paul, bothered Miles and many more and alienated all of you guys just to get my kicks.
I can assure you I’m not like that anymore, I’m on the proper medication and have my head on straight and if you’ll give me a second chance, which is more the I deserve, I will honestly try my best to contribute.
-Amy
For about four years now I’ve been consistently listening to noise. Noise, as many are aware, is not a genre for the uninitiated. It is not something that you can just pick up out of the blue and start listening to without having a background in some extreme form of music. For me, I was introduced to noise via industrial.
But how does one explain such a genre as noise to a noise (or extreme music, for that matter) virgin? All noisefags have their stories. Parents coming into rooms while Merzbow is blasting, looking both confused and slightly ashamed. Friends raising eyebrows in confusion. It goes on an on.
So, I guess this post isn’t a solution to the problem, so much as it is just a personel expression of my frustration on the matter of explaining noise. How can anyone explain that feedback and breaking objects is “good”? It’s a mindfuck of a task, that’s for sure.
- Mike (dirt piled upon dirt)
A few years ago, I would have considered myself a pretty dedicated fan of the band Norma Jean; after hearing one of my scenester friends wanking to them for a while, I decided to pick up what was, at that time, their new album Redeemer. I thoroughly enjoyed the album’s Botch-esque, noisy mathcore for about a year, but after a while, my interest in the band waned. When their most recent album, 2008’s The Anti-Mother was released, I picked it up mostly on a whim, and gave the first few tracks a half-hearted listen, before putting on the shelf for nearly a year. But recently, feeling in the mood for some of Norma Jean’s more abstract sounding 2004 release O God, the Aftermath, I for whatever reason felt compelled to give The Anti-Mother another listen. As the first track, Vipers, Snakes, and Actors unfolded, I began to notice something peculiar that had escaped my attention when I first bought the album: rather than sounding like the noisy, abstracted mathcore that the band’s previous two albums had been, it bore a more striking resemblance to the slowed-down, chugging-yet-melodic genre of sludge metal. Not necessarily in the vein of sludge pioneers such as Eyehategod, but a cleaner, yet still decidedly dirty version of the subgenre that hovered somewhere between the hardline, crusty sludge, and the atmospheric, experimental post-metal. While I didn’t think much of this album when I first heard it, after re-listening multiple times over the past few days, it’s stark, yet melodic sounds have grown on me. While it may seem almost heretical from the standpoint of the metal purist, I am not ashamed to admit that I found this to be a pretty great album overall, and that my interest in this band has been re-awakened.
Vipers, Snakes and Actors
4.1 out of 5
- Post-Industrial Waste
A hushed wind instrument blows through your ears, making way for a high moan from the lips of Sainkho Namtchylak. Upon listening to the opening track of Stepmother City, you feel as if you’ve come upon a steep mountain, covered in snow and blown by wind. This is fitting, since Natchylak comes from Tuva, a tiny republic of Russia, bordering Mongolia.
The song ends, and we are suddenly met by an unexpected yes smooth beat that could work in a hip dance club. Natchylak begins singing in her native language. Her throat singing is both lovely and strange at the same time.
The rest of the album features songs that combine traditional Asian instruments (flutes, violins, drums, chimes), jazz, and danceable Western beats, fitting together perfectly to form something that is both catchy and breathtaking at the same time. Fans of Shiina Ringo may be able to understand this perfect mix of pop and classic instrumentation.
It’s hard to put Namtchylak into a genre, so I won’t even try that.
When finished with the album, you will (assuming you have a working human soul) feel refreshed, like you’ve spent the hour in a Buddhist temple high in the mountains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbAE8hGByNY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyoIYcH7oaU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXI0HcC1VRk
- Mike (Dirt Piled Upon Dirt)
They’re quite alien. Almost too minimal, too clinical. They sound like loads of white cubes on a white backdrop reconfiguring themselves all the time. It’s more about the lines and the spaces between, kind of architectural. When they do something that’s familiar in style to something else, it’s shorn of any kind of identity it might have had. Just like looking at binary data of an image of a Rothko painting or something. Get Atavism.
Post by: LondonEyes
Quirky, Phoenix-based folk-punk group Andrew Jackson Jihad have, in the five years since they formed, released a considerable volume of material, as well as become one of the more talked-about bands of the indie-folk scene. The duo (well, duo for the most part) turned-out several EPs and splits before finally releasing their official debut album People That Can Eat People are the Luckiest People in the World, followed by the equally superb 10” Only God Can Judge Me.
Their latest effort, Can’t Maintain, sees the band taking a more “electric” approach, incorporating distorted guitars, full drum sets, and even the occasional fuzzed-out bass. This is a marked departure from their previous release, which, with the exception of a short drum-roll in the introduction to the first track, was entirely acoustic-duo, featuring just guitar and upright bass. The lyrics are just as passionate, honest, and bizarrely tongue-in-cheek, but the music is quite the interesting twist here.
Many people have made comparisons between AJJ and Neutral Milk Hotel, but with this album those parallels are more fully realized than ever before. However, they still cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a mere Jeff Magnum-ripoff. There is something furiously original about this band, and ‘Can’t Maintain’ only goes to further demonstrate that fact.
Download here (but then you have to buy it, deal?)
4.4 out of 5
- Post-Industrial Waste
Being that I was never into the whole Harry Potter deal, going to a movie is supposed to be fun because I don’t have to take myself seriously. I’ve only seen two of the movies, and they’re just fun to watch. I see the adventures of aspiring wizards in an unsually cloudy whacked-out world full of mystery, etc
I just sat through two-and-a-half hours of filler. It was cool and all, but so few interesting things actually happened. It was an unnecessarily long transition between one book/movie to the next.
-Jesse
So this happened about 4 years ago, right around the the height of the shitty christian metalcore scene. Some of my high school friends decided to start a very shitty little metalcore band. Since no one else could drive, I was paid to haul equipment and just act like a dick to everyone else. They were my friends so, hey, they where used to me being a prick. So after a few concerts and being banned from playing a church due to being satanic, we found ourselves bored and broke. Of course me being of my usual sunny disposition decided to take a few days off from listening to them play gawd awful music. I left the strictest instructions not to do anything gay or lame, and drove off blasting rap music. I returned to home base a few days later after they called me talking of an emergency.
Apparently those faggots had been talking with Victory Records and handing out their shitacular demo.
Now even then, still some what a naive 19 year old guy, I was wary of having my name anything near that shit hole of a recording company. Yet still, these were my friends. Good guys who would show up to my house with alcohol and cloves. So I turned a blind eye to my morals, and said what the hell. A few days later we where handed free tickets to see a new band that no one had ever heard of.
If I knew what I know now, I would have spit on those tickets and let myself enter a drunken haze of bad phone calls and indignant threats. So we arrive at the local venue, and we hear that this band called Aiden is playing. After a few songs we manage to work ourselves back stage and meet with these mall goths.
I could talk about how lame they where, but thats a fucking given. wiL is horribly gay, and etc etc. The only guy who seemed somewhat on the level was the fat ass bass player. But even then we just sorta brushed it aside. Also IRCC some of the members of Hawthonre Heights where backstage as well, but I believe I avoided them like the plague they are. We talked with those fags and they offered to let some people talk about having us open for 30 seconds to Mars, I of course, not listening to shitty music, had no clue who this band was. Well thanks to the magic of Wikipedia i found out about Jared Leto. At first I was like hey, I liked requiem. And fight club didn’t suck too badly. But then again he also did My So Called Life. Which makes him gay. Horribly Horribly Gay.
A few weeks pass, a few more gigs are done and we eventually get the call that says we will be opening for this at the big local venue. They are over the moon, and I merely shrug and say sure whatever. They practice hard, I drink more, and we all some how remain happy.
The day finally comes to the big show, and bam we are off to Norfolk. We manage to get there on time only to be rushed in hauling gear to the stage. After being hassled over my ass getting back stage we finally managed to get all of our equipment and gear in place. We played the set, and for the most part they had a bunch a scene kids rocking out. I was a bit happy, because I do find scene girls to be hot, and the idea of using I’m With The Bad to get some underage scene ass seemed like a good idea.
We all seem to move backstage and begin moving sound shit once again. Suddenly I hear this huge yelling and I see Jared Leto himself yelling at our poor mexican drummer. The pasty goth lead singer of the band I was with decided to be the knight in shining armor and joined the fray. Words were tossed around, and the argument was about some stolen guitar case or something. All I knew was that I hadn’t stolen shit, and all of my friends were to slow to have any chance of stealing as well.
Jared Leto being all super star starts getting in everyone’s face. I told the mother fucker to call down and I’ll sort this shit out. I don’t know exactly what happened first, but our drummer threw a horrible punch and completely missed that bitches face. I have never been so ashamed. He missed hitting Jared Leto by yards. That mexican still needs to learn to fight still.
Well as you can imagine security was called in, and we where unceremoniously told to get the fuck out.
Victory Records never called us back.
Thank god.
-ChrisIs…
Amongst the most promising of the post-metal acts that have appreared since the turn of the new century, Mouth of the Architect may well be leading the pack. While many of their contemporaries can, with all right, be considered just more artistic twists on sludge metal, Mouth of the Architect are one of the stand-out acts who, rather than merely incorporating elements of other genres, truly enfuse those influences into their sound, including shoegaze, prog-rock, and ambient, among others. They, as well as similar artists such as Isis, Agalloch, and Cult of Luna, have truly created a legitimate case for viewing post-metal as it’s own genre, rather than just an “artsier sludge”.
Mouth of the Architect’s album Ties that Bind (listed incorrectly on site).
- Post-Industrial Waste
You know what really angers me, ticks me off, grinds my gears, is a personal pet peev, etc etc etc?
When people open their motherfucking mouths and voice their fucking useless opinion but can’t stand to have that opinion challeneged. People that say things and get into an argument but don’t provide and support to their side, they don’t argue back, they don’t fucking show any value in their own fucking opinion.
And when people voice these stupid opinions and they get into an argument and someone else challenges them they usually just say something like
“Oh I didn’t listen to you / I didn’t read that, because I was too busy sticking dicks in my ears / in my eyes.”
And that is the worst, when someone puts all they’ve got into an argument, and then the other person just brushes it off because they’re too busy being a fucking moronic self centered ass hole. When this happens to me I wonder things like
“Did this son of a gun just hear me? Did I leave an impression on them?”
Which is usually followed by
“Did that fucker hear me? Did they really just blow me off like that?! Did they really not hear/read a word I just said/wrote?!”
And that’s when the RAGE sets in. I’m willing to bet this WHOLE FUCKING ENTRY WILL BE SKIPPED OVER BY EVERYONE.
WHICH IS GODDAMN AWFUL.
(Silverfish Sam)
