Yeah, it's one of those styles that I don't even try to convert people to anymore, because it's barely even music by most reasonable standards. But if you can crack the code and learn to appreciate it, it's genuinely a source of endless joy and entertainment. I've listened to this album like 20 times since picking it up a few weeks ago, haha.
We're watching this process play out in real time with nu-metal, to a degree. Obviously the style still has plenty of detractors all over the pop culture spectrum, but within the metal community, a lot of highly-credentialed musicians in "extreme" bands — especially in death metal — are finally saying: "You know what? I got the first Korn album when I was 13, and I thought it fucking ripped, and I /still/ think it rips." That would've gotten you run off the Relapse Records forum back in '03, but these days, a lot of metal people will just agree to that sentiment.
I don't get to run this column into the ground with my terrible taste anymore, but if I did, this slamfest would definitely have landed in the list within the last month or so. Have you ever thought, "man, I like Malignancy, but I wish they were 500% more gooey?" Obviously the answer is no, but this record rules anyway:
https://abolishingmusic.bandcamp.com/
I can hear everything that's going on on the new Morbid Angel album fine, personally. Trey uses a sludgier guitar tone than most death metal players do but clarity isn't an issue for me.
The cover art for Blessed is some public domain shit from the 19th century, and honestly looks pretty crummy IMO. In a charming way! But still, crummy.
"The Morbid Angel album cover is bad" is accurate for every one of their albums other than Altars, and "the Morbid Angel album has a weird production" describes every one of them, period.
It's worth taking the fact that I'm a snotty asshole into account before you discard your talking point! Love Converge, grew up on'em, just not feeling the softer touch as much as the full-bore insanity of yore.
Thanks man! And no worries on the explanation; honestly, I probably should've gotten a little more in depth on that score in the intro. The degree of independence from "real" Stereogum that the Black Market crew enjoys can definitely be a little confusing to readers who don't know the inner workings of the arrangement, so I totally get why some people are like "uh where the fuck is (release that got tons of love on this here website)?!?!?"
Scott, genuine thanks for letting me go wild up in here. Can't think of another publication that would've given me such a free hand, and that truly made the whole experience for me.
Oh, and now that I'm a civilian who can reveal his true feelings:
–Bell Witch is boring.
–New Converge is decent, but doesn't quite live up to their classics.
–Code Orange has rebranded as a nu-metal band.
Yo, just to reiterate: THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH for reading this column over the years. I have written for many different publications, and in all but maybe one, the comments were just absolute dumpster fires. The fact that you guys were willing to slog through so many of these 10-billion-word outings and still come back with thoughtful, (usually) friendly commentary at the end is really something unusual and special in these late times. I'll miss it, but you guys probably won't miss me, because I'll probably be chiming in on future editions of TBM in the very same threads.
There was basically no overlap between our process for putting this list together and the regular SG staff's process for the other lists, or even communication about the ranking metrics. (We're all freelancers.) I basically came to Michael with the list and said, "this is our list." And he said, "okay." So if it's inconsistent procedurally, it's because we're basically a satellite entity within the larger SG planetary system. Feel free to blame us for breaking the site's internal logic.
As an aside, two of the three aforementioned Krallice albums came out in November, and (in my opinion) would've been more than enough to merit the #1 spot for them. Prelapsarian is awesome, but the least of the three, by my accounting.
In fairness, the whole "we see through the bullshit!" thing with metal has always been more aspirational than anything else. As Michael's 2014 column on catfishing noted, that kind of PR tactic has been around (and effective) in metal since long before jabronis like Ghost Bath showed up.
As for Myrkur, I don't mean to say that public interest in her can be explained entirely by the schtick, despite my own feelings about her music — a lot of people genuinely like the stuff. But is she actually as popular as the nearly 300k FB likes would suggest? I doubt it.
Honestly, I think part of the problem with later Converge is just that they've become kind of predictable. A lot of their recent tunes sound like reconstitutions of past successes, which is a problem for a band whose appeal hinges in part on being unpredictable. I got really psyched on "Eve" off the new EP (which appeared a little too late for us to work into the column this month) because it doesn't suffer from that issue.
If you haven't yet, make sure to read Cosmo Lee's definitive take on this subject:
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/taking-non-metalheads-to-metal-shows/
Yeah, I'm in the same boat, which is part of why I was so surprised by how much I dug that Attic tune. Obviously not as inventive as the original, but the craftsmanship is there.
One of my top 3 or 4 sets at the festival. I was worried they'd be a disaster live, especially with fest sound, but they were actually better than on record.
Gotta admit, "graphic design is hard so sometimes you just end up stealing" doesn't seem like a great defense of this practice. And if anyone has the time and money to ensure that this kind of thing is done correctly, you'd think it'd be a high-profile and comparatively professional label like Relapse.
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