Emperor - Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise (2001)

Candlelight Records ■ Candle064LP

 

Released October 23, 2001

Produced by Ihsahn

Mixed by Thorbjorn Akkerhaugen and The Emperors
Mastered by Tom Kvalsvoll and The Emperors

Side One:	Side Two:
Eruption Depraved Empty The Prophet	The Tongue of Fire In the Wordless Chamber Grey He Who Sought Fire Thorns on My Grave

I've only touched on black metal here once before, and that was a rather curious and unique example of the genre. Diabolical Masquerade are not at the forefront of most minds when naming bands that fit the bill for the genre--more likely, you will hear Immortal, Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone--and Emperor.

I picked this album up from the sadly defunct store Musik Hut in Fayetteville, source of not only much of my metal from years past (on vinyl or otherwise) but also of my "black X" collection, and even a few other oddities indicative of how odd that store actually was. It was intended as a metal/punk/industrial store, but did carry plenty of other and "normal" stuff.

As with much of metal (other than Morbid Angel and Decapitated, and a handful of others)--such as At the Gates--even the classics (like Emperor here) were introduced to me by a single soul, to whom I tend to give credit for most of my metal awareness. He and I still talk metal now and then, of course, but also the odd other chunk of music, since neither of us is married to it in exclusivity.

Diabolical Masquerade - Death's Design (2001)

Avantgarde Music ■ AV 55 LP

Released August 21, 2001

Produced by Blakkheim and Dan Swanö

Edited, Assembled and Mixed by Dan Swanö, Ryan Taylor, Sean C. Bates

Mastered by Peter In De Betou

Side One:	Side Two:
Movements 1-9	Movements 10-20¹

It's difficult to pinpoint the causes behind my original exposure to this release--it stemmed, no doubt, from a combination of my college friend who introduced me to the wider worlds of metal and the metal-based message board I spent a good deal of college hanging around. Dan Swanö's endless appearances and projects (he has 293 credits on Discogs--more than Nicky Hopkins, for the moment!) surrounded his name with an aura of awe, and the release is just peculiar enough to catch my attention readily--in both sound and construction. 

As I've already noted,¹ the work is split into not just 20 movements but 61 individual parts that are pressed as separate tracks. You may also notice that this is listed as an "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack", which it most definitely isn't. There is no movie (Swedish or otherwise--there's a making-of documentary for one of the Final Destination movies, but that's it) with the title Death's Design, and this isn't really a soundtrack, though it does sound a bit like it could be. Then again, Easy Rider taught us that most any songs could be a soundtrack. But the construction and faux-soundtrack status aren't everything: this is also a wildly eccentric, eclectic, and vaguely erratic disc. An Estonian string quartet (though five string players are credited, so something's not right) is involved, as are both Blakkheim's endless instruments and Swanö's (particularly the keyboards).

Deftones - Deftones (2003)

Maverick ■ 48350-1

Released May 20, 2003

Produced by Terry Date and Deftones

Engineered and Mixed by Terry Date

Additional Engineering by Pete Roberts

Mastered by Tom Baker

Side One:	Side Two:
Hexagram Needles and Pins Minerva Good Morning Beautiful Deathblow When Girls Telephone Boys	Battle-Axe Lucky You Bloody Cape Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event Moana

If you had known me in high school (and at least a person or two who reads here on occasion did), you would find this band's appearance none too surprising. I normally try not to date myself, as it influences opinions about my opinions, but it's difficult to avoid here (as it has been on a few odd other occasions)--in 2000, Deftones' White Pony was released, their prior hit, "My Own Summer" from 1997's Around the Fur having taken them up on the crest of the "nü-metal" wave most typified by Limp Bizkit and Korn,¹ but, as with grunge and various other genres named for reasons of simplification (in the end, often rounding up disparate genres and slapping them under a single umbrella for marketing reasons, though there tends to be something shared), many bands didn't share the overt stylistic leanings of the flag-bearers.

Day Fifty-Four: Decapitated - Winds of Creation

Earache/Wicked World ■ WICK011LP

Released April 11, 2000

Produced by Piotr Wiwczarek (aka "Peter (VADER)")

Side One:	Side Two:
Winds of Creation Blessed The First Damned Way to Salvation	The Eye of Horus Human's Dust Nine Steps Danse Macabre Mandatory Suicide

In discussing metal, I typically refer clearly--at some point, anyway--to my first ever "real" metal band, which was Morbid Angel.¹ Indeed, it was their second album, Blessed Are the Sick that really "clicked" with me finally, once I was able to get used to David Vincent's vocals (and thus, forever after, the "cookie monster" growling that typifies death metal at large). I actually ordered the album direct from their label, Earache, at the time, back when I was still in high school. Coupled with it were a handful of stickers for other bands, like December Wolves and, well, Decapitated. Because I still knew so little about metal, I took those two names as inspiration for further exploration--and, hey, I was an eMusic Unlimited member at the time (when there still was such a thing), which meant their partnership with Earache opened the door for me to try just about anything I felt like that they recommended.

Day Fifty-One: Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return

Victory Records ■ VR495-1

Released June 23, 2009

Produced and Mixed by Brian McTernan

Side One:	Side Two:
Devolution of the Flesh Death Worship The Tides No God Bitter	Blessed Infection Transcendence A Distorted Utopia Black Sun Into the Grey

NOTE:

After a forced hiatus (stemming from borrowed cars and loaner couches), I am in a position again to write here and take up where I left off. It was fortuitous in many ways that this came when it did, as it gives me a chance to try to put into effect some ideas I had for how to go about this process.

Darkest Hour is one of those bands I found myself listening to more by chance than almost anything else. In the midst of my earliest experiences with metal--wherein I was leaping from the then-popular "nu-metal" acts straight into extreme metal of the "death" variety--I was left somewhat rudderless, but still quite fully powered. I turned this way and that, able to listen purely for enjoyment's sake and nothing else, as I gathered up the sounds that I liked without regard for community reputations, obeisance to or violations of trends or traditions, and without even internal expectations. It was a nice time in this respect--one soured quickly by my first community of musically-oriented folk in the heavier direction. The scattered voices I heard prior were also similarly isolated, and shared that lack of socially inflicted focus.

Day Forty-Four: Converge - Axe to Fall

 Deathwish Inc. ■ DWI98

Released October 20, 2009

Produced, Engineered, and Mixed by Kurt Ballou

Mastered by Alan Douches

Side One:	Side Two:
Dark Horse Reap What You Sow Axe to Fall Effigy Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast Wishing Well Damages	Losing Battle Dead Beat Cutter Slave Driver Cruel Bloom Wretched World

I've always been wary of the "hardcore" scene, such as it has been described and defined for the last, oh, decade and a half. What once was Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and D.O.A. was now something else entirely--something that was often difficult to relate to the music that first bore the name. Hardcore at this time was also plagued with clichés readily pointed out--the inevitable breakdowns, where the pace slowed and the riffs chugged and boomed to encourage the sense that the bottom had dropped out and all hell had broken loose, which is a difficult thing to do constantly to any real effect. At the same time, I didn't listen to many of those bands in any detail, either. But it meant that when the name Converge was mentioned, I tended to leave them to their fans, stuck a bit in my own metal pseudo-elitism. I would periodically hear of them in a tone of reverence even from those who were more active in their criticism of this new "hardcore", which I filed away in the back of my mind and left be for some time.

Day Seventeen: Baroness - Yellow and Green

 

Relapse Records ■  RR1793

Released July 17, 2012
Produced by Baroness and John Congleton

Engineered and Mixed by John Congleton

Having just addressed an acknowledged classic, I'm getting a few days of brief reprieve before I have to return to more of that kind of pressure. That this album has been calling out to me since it arrived a few weeks back, left unlistened because it's the beginning of the alphabet and I knew it would have its place here, only helps to ease that transition and make it a happy one. Now, I was worried enough about the person I purchased it from that I crossed my fingers and gave them a great rating as a seller, but it appears I was not wrong (it was carefully slit but otherwise still in shrinkwrap, as it was described). Of course, when it did arrive, I fell down the stairs of my apartment running to catch the postal worker who had mistakenly gathered I was not home. That was a bad week in general.

Day Twelve: At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul

Earache Records ■  MOSH 143

Released November 14, 1995

Produced by Fredrik Nordstrom, Co-Produced by At the Gates

"We are blind to the worlds within us, waiting to be born..."

Side One:	Side Two:
Blinded by Fear Slaughter of the Soul Cold Under a Serpent Sun Into the Dead Sky	Suicide Nation World of Lies Unto Others Nausea Need The Flames of the End

This is actually an interesting title to discuss, as it actually also puts me in the awkward place of talking about a classic album, which was something I intended to somewhat avoid by going through my own record collection instead of a set of albums pre-determined by history or anything of the kind. Naturally, I'm not defiant about classics and do own plenty (and far more if we look at my CD collection), but I'm occasionally peculiar about how I purchase vinyl in particular. 

Day Two: Aborym - Kali Yuga Bizarre

Scarlet Records ■ SC005-1

Release April 1, 1999

Produced by Christian Ice and Malfeitor Fabban

Engineered by Christian Ice

Side One:	Side Two:
Wehrmacht Kali Ma Horrenda Peccata Christi Hellraiser Roma Divina Urbs	Darka Mysteria Tantra Bizarre Come Thou Long Expected Jesus Metal Striken Terror Action The First Four Trumpets Tantra Bizarre [C30 Version] - Exclusive to vinyl

I originally debated inclusion of this record in my collection for a few reasons. Some may be surprised to see a photo of a non-standard record in my collection that they have not seen before, but this is for the same essential reasons. Some years ago, I purchased a used copy of Diabolical Masquerade's Death's Design (more on that in a few months, I suppose!) and brought it back to my then-dorm room only to find that, crammed inside, was this picture disc, for no apparent reason. I'd never heard of Aborym, and had no earthly idea what this was, but figured it couldn't hurt to have. The first time I played it, I realized it was absolutely trashed with surface noise--crackles, pops, and constant noise coated an already noisy band. It didn't make for easy listening--not in the sense that I was put off, but that it was literally difficult to hear the music itself. I stuck it in a simple plastic sleeve and left it at that, often forgetting I even owned it. Sadly enough, it's one of 1,000 in existence and remains in pretty terrible condition, as I can't exactly repair a bunch of scratches and dings that were in it long before I ever had it. I am left wondering (not for the first time) why someone would buy a limited record that had no idea how to care for a record, yet would take it out and fiddle with it enough to do this to it. Especially in an age where records are nowhere near the dominant format. Still, onward and upward!