Episode 124

 
Keep an eye on Gates Of Doom, that record is year end list material. I end the episode with an interview with someone who was incarcerated for a long time and just in case I didn’t say it enough during the show, fuck the prison system and everything about it. Forgive everyone.
 

Background music: Temple Volant Spirit Ritual (from Daydream Drawings)

00:00:00 Talk break
00:01:50 Gates Of Doom – I, The Eagle, The Strength, The Power (from Aquileia Mater Aeterna)
00:10:26 Collapse Culture – Total Clarity (from Collapse Culture)
00:12:14 Rev. Crenshaw & congregation – I Wonder Will We Meet Again? (from Southern Journey, Volume 1: Voices From The American South)
00:20:02 Tristan Perich – Drift Multiply: Section 9 (from Drift Multiply)
00:20:40 The North Sea – Blood Exchange (from Remembering The Romance)
00:32:31 Talk break
00:35:22 More Eaze & Claire Rousay – Drunk (from If I Don’t Let Myself Be Happy Now Then When?)
00:36:23 Robbie Basho – Harakiri, Kali Style (from Song Of The Avatars: The Lost Master Tapes)
00:52:34 Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn – The Roving Cowboy / Avarguli (阿瓦尔古丽) (from Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn)
01:00:34 Duma – Kill Yourself Before They Kill You (from Duma)
01:04:22 Talk break
01:06:43 Alabama Sacred Harp Singers – Weeping Mary (from Southern Journey, Volume 9: Harp Of A Thousand Strings)
01:09:24 Respire – Lost Virtue (from Black Line)
01:15:49 Mark Fell & WIll Guthrie – Infoldings 2 (from Infoldings)
01:17:25 Robert Turman – Lower World (from Chapter Eleven)
01:18:33 Park Booyong – Shin-Gosahn Taryong (Korea) (from Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World’s Music)
01:22:24 Chimudon, Mashibato, & Togus Ziguradan – The Venerable Genghis Khan (Mongolia) (from Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World’s Music)
01:26:27 Gavino De Lunas – Cantu Pastorale (Sardinia) (from Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World’s Music)
01:30:30 Tom Clough – The Keel Row (Northumberland, United Kingdom) (from Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World’s Music)
01:34:26 Talk break
01:37:40 Laveya – Senility, Pt. Ii: End Cognition (from Thereof One Must Be Silent)
01:48:49 Ed Lewis & Prisoners – I’ll Be So Glad When The Sun Goes Down (from I’ll Be So Glad When The Sun Goes Down: Field Recordings From Alan Lomax’s “Southern Journey” 1959-1960)
01:53:46 Carlos Casas – Avesta (from Pyramid Of Skulls)
01:57:11 James Carr – Life In The Prison System (from The View From The End Of The World: Live Interviews Of Life In Prison With James Carr)
02:09:32 Talk break

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Episode 123

I didn’t intend to make a comeback on inauguration day but here we are. First normal episode in 5 months. And because this isn’t being broadcast on a radio station, I could play all 47 minutes of the Ali Akbar Khan piece without any problems. There’s also some Harry Potter black metal, Fidel Castro alongside Phurpa, a Midwife & Amulets collaboration, and plenty more.

 

Background music: Zania Morgan – Nyx Ambrosia (from Argyropoeia)

00:00:00 Talk break
00:01:36 Mrs. Piss – To Crawl Inside (from Self-Surgery)
00:02:16 Arkheron Thodol – A Glimpse Of Woven Light (from Rituals Of The Sovereign Heart)
00:18:13 Hilary Woods – Isolation Tank 1 (from Isolation Tank)
00:19:18 TALsounds – No Restoring (from Acquiesce)
00:30:11 Kelly Lee Owens – Night (from Inner Song)
00:35:16 Talk break
00:38:17 Ali Akbar Khan – Zila Kafi (from That Which Colors The Mind)
00:41:25 Antonina Nowacka – Part 5 (from Lamunan)
00:41:49 Boron – VII (from VII)
00:52:30 Alix Lambert – Side B (from The African Toy)
01:24:18 Talk break
01:27:41 Slytherin – Forbidden Forest (from When The Darkness Comes)
01:33:42 Midwife & Amulets – Heaven (from In / Heaven)
01:43:22 Phurpa – 01(3) (from Hymns Of Gyer)
01:50:59 Fidel Castro – Part 3 (excerpt) (from The Historic Second Declaration Of Havana: Feb. 4, 1962)
01:52:21 Victoria Keddie – Vates (60.1699° N, 24.9384° E) (from Apsides)
02:05:54 Talk break

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Top 34 Metal Records Of 2020

I listened to a lot of metal this year, probably the most since my teenage nu-metal era. I tried really hard to keep the list short and I tried really hard to keep a lot of big name popular stuff off the list. Clearly, I failed on both counts. One nice thing that happened without trying hard for was the inclusion of a decent amount of trans/queer and POC musicians as well as artists not from America or European countries (and even after that about half of the list is just straight white dudes). One thing I was surprised about was how hard it was for me to find doom or black metal made by Black or Asian folks. I sought out that music this year and didn’t come up with much. So please definitely share with me if you know of anything that fits the bill.

I loved a lot of records released by Sentient Ruin and Amor Fati this year (and every year). I didn’t want the list to be overrun with their releases and was so strict I ended up only including one per label. Gilead Media, on the other hand, I was not paying attention to and ended up with three spots on the list. Oops. Either way, all three of those labels released a fuckton of amazing music this year. Go buy everything they put out.

I hope you find something new on this list that hits you just right. There’s a lot of variety, from righteous & blissful black metal to impenetrably depressive funeral doom. And every record has a link to the Bandcamp page where you can listen (and a lot of them are set to pay what you can). Let me know in the comments what I missed and what some of your favorites of the year were.

As always: Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks for making incredible music.

 

34. Messiah In The Abyss – Genocidal Journey (Red Door / Jems / Consumed By The Flames)
I’m not a huge fan of black metal that sounds (or is) too old school or anything that veers too much into punk territory. This solo Venezuelan black metal dude doesn’t do either of that but he gets close. Luckily, this is raw as fuck, so much that it starts sounding like atmospheric black metal. I know almost nothing about MITA. His first release is from last year and he’s already up to five records with Genocidal Journey and he started another metal project this year called Logia Drakos (which I haven’t heard). So it looks like he has either plenty of time to make music or is just that damn good that he can churn it out the jams whenever he feels like it. Either way, we all win.

 

33. Victory Over The Sun – A Tessitura Of Transfiguration (self released)
You might not have heard of Victory Over The Sun yet but you probably (hopefully) have seen this badass trans lady’s Twitter @bastard__wing where for a while she was posting vids with her all fancied up and just fuckin shredding, super weird microtonal avant garde shit in crazy time signatures. Well if you dug those videos, you’re gonna fuckin love her new record as Victory Over The Sun. This is insane black metal, a bit like a transcendental black metal version of Jute Gyte that’s less discordant (most of the time) and tosses in a bass clarinet and some violins, A Tessitura Of Transfiguration is about “the process of finding my voice as an artist as well as a trans woman,” evident in the lyrics on many tracks, like on “The Enormous Cosmos” where she roars “center of my chest / a cavity opens, bursting / gnashing teeth, nascent tongue / clutching at unpronounceable self / the abyssal ‘I’ / the burning ‘am'” and you fuckin feel it.

 

32. Kaatayra – Só Quem Viu O Relâmpago À Sua Direita Sabe (self released)
Brazilian folk black metal? You fuckin know it. The dude behind Kaayayra, Caio Lemos out of Brasília, fuses atmospheric black metal with traditional Brazilian sounds and in the process creates something that I’m pretty sure is one of a kind and it’s fucking awesome. And with lots of clean understated ethereal vocals and a prominent acoustic guitar, this could be the gateway record you’ve been looking for to get your friend into black metal. There’s another Kaatayra record that came out this year (both of which are pay what you can on Bandcamp). It’s just as good as Só Quem Viu and the only reason Só Quem Viu is on the list instead of Toda História Pela Frente is because I spent more time with this one. But you should definitely listen to everything this guy’s got, because it’s all great.

 

31. Heretical Sect – Rapturous Flesh Consumed (Gilead Media / Redefining Darkness)
“Although the American Southwest is typically represented through the nostalgic and romantic lens of cowboy culture it is home to numerous atrocities… This project is a funerary monolith to the countless, unknown dead who resisted and died, crushed beneath the hooves of conquest, victims to genocide and massacres.” This record is a blackened death doom monstrosity that has no sonic affiliations with psych or any other sounds you might associate with the desert. This is their debut full length, after an EP last year, and it’s just so fucking cool. Never swaying too far into one genre, this is a perfect & disgusting blend of black metal, death metal, and doom. And in case you couldn’t tell from most of the other records on this list, I don’t really like death metal. So know that even if you share my aversion, you should absolutely still listen to this.

 

30. Grayceon – Mothers Weavers Vultures (self released / Translation Loss)
This trio never gets enough love. This is their sixth record and I don’t hear nearly enough people praising them. This new one is fucking excellent and I honestly can’t get enough of their sludgy proggy heaviness, while Max Doyle’s distorted riffage and Zack Farwell’s pummeling act as the backbone of the band, Jackie Gratz’s cello and rich clean vocals are where Grayceon really shines. This is full of some serious head bangers, fist smashers, and guitar solo jammers. In short, it fuckin rocks.

 

29. Empyrean Grace – Bestowment Of The Seraphic Key (Haeresis Noviomagi)
A debut of “mystical ethereal black metal” (read: atmospheric black metal) from one dude out of the Netherlands, released by the same label who put out stuff by Nusquama, Solar Temple, Vilkacis, Fluisteraars, etc, so you should expect to be impressed and then have your expectations matched & exceeded, this is a single piece that clocks in just under 30 minutes and uses that time exquisitely, a wall of tremolo, blast beats, synths, non-stop cymbals, and a lurking growl with a layer of euphoria buried underneath that’s not trying to escape but just soaring in the background, kinda like some old Fell Voices. Is it mystical? I dunno. Probably lyrically (but I don’t have/know lyrics). Ethereal? I usually don’t equate ethereal with anything this goddamn loud and impenetrable but I guess that doesn’t disqualify Bestowment from being ethereal. So yeah, the self-ascribed label fits. But whatever the fuck you want to call this is irrelevant because it’s incredible all the same.

 

28. Vide – Hanging By The Bayou Light (self released)
I didn’t know I needed depressive bayou black metal until Vide came along. One dude making murky miserable jams, he’s got a couple demos and splits in the past couple years but this is his proper debut full length and it’s a fuckin doozy. It’s only about a half hour long, it opens & closes with a couple slow drift dark ambient jaunts, and half of the whole thing is taken up by the 14-minute-long “It Would Be The Last Time,” clearly the centerpiece, feeling a bit like Ash Borer in the early days, a raw & blurry wall of relentless tremolo & blast beats & warbly synth & vocals howling into the void and I love every fucking second of it.

 

27. Lustre – The Ashes Of Light (Nordvis)
I owe Lars Gotrich (@totalvibration, Viking’s Choice, NPR music, etc) a huge thank you for rekindling my interest in Lustre (aka Henrik Sunding). I remember enjoying his first one, Night Spirit, and 2012’s They Awoke To The Scent Of Spring back when they came out but I’d lost track of his many releases since then. Then Lars mentioned The Ashes Of Light in his essential newsletter, Viking’s Choice, saying “black metal, but make it Enya and M83’s Zelda soundtrack” and I was like holy fuck who is Lustre I need this in my life asap. Turns out 1: he’s spot on with his description and 2: I had unknowingly loved & lost Lustre. It seems I’m in a different frame of mind now compared to first hearing Lustre 11 years ago because fucking wow it’s hitting me just right, it’s crazy good and exactly what I need right now. I most certainly will not be forgetting about Lustre anytime soon considering I listened to The Ashes Of Light non-stop for about a month. Needless to say, this is not for everyone, but I guarantee those who are caught by the phrase “Enya black metal” will not be disappointed.

 

26. Eye Of Nix – Ligeia (Prophecy)
This odd quintet’s debut Black Somnia made my list in 2017 which I called a “crazy blackened sludgy doom record that’s as weird as it is heavy.” Enter Ligeia three years later and they didn’t just up the ante, they went all fuckin in. First of all, the album proper is longer but then there’s a special edition with a bonus disc the includes alternate versions and remixes as well as a super sexy hardcover artbook. Aside from the extra content, though, the music is next level, it’s both weirder and metal-er than Black Somnia, operatic vocals and Spektr-esque phenomena and thick bass grooves and bestial blast beats and Badalamenti creep, it’s everything you could possibly ask for.

 

25. HWWAUOCH – Protest Against Sanity (Amor Fati)
HWWAUOCH are one of a small number of bands that are pretty much guaranteed a spot on my list if they put out a record. As part of the Prava Kollektiv, they share members with Arkhtinn, Voidsphere, etc, and everyone in the Kollektiv is awesome, I love all those records but at one point some of them start to blur together and I have a hard time differentiating my Ternary Curses with my Maelstroms. However, it’s impossible to hear HWWAUOCH and think you’re listening to anything else. These guys are fucking crazy. Absolute fucking chaos of suffocating black noise, a wall of distortion raining acid while a maniac shrieks in your face and drums pummel your skull and a Nightmare drags you into the void. Highly highly recommended.

 

24. Botanist – Photosynthesis (Flenser)
Botanist really do it for me. The electric hammered dulcimer at the forefront makes this music soar and it feels so fucking good. I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve released but the full band approach (as opposed to the early solo stuff) brings them to another level of awesome and this one might be my favorite with the full lineup. In case you didn’t already know (or couldn’t guess), Botanist make music about nature (and humans’ destruction of it) and every track on Photosynthesis is about, yep, photosynthesis. Evidence that there’s no rules in black metal and it can be about whatever the fuck you want.

 

23. Olhava – Ladoga (Slowsnow)
This Russian duo knocked it out of the park with last year’s self titled record. I listened to those two side-long pieces a ton. Now they’re already back with this beast clocking in at just over 70 minutes throughout nine songs and they brought in some of that killer ambient that they showed off on the remixed version of their self-titled record, Never Leave Me Alone. They describe themselves as blackgaze, but this isn’t like that Sadness or Clouds Collide emo blackgaze (which is awesome, don’t get me wrong), I mostly hear atmospheric black metal, with non-stop furious riffage and blast beats and buried screams. I especially love the alternating short ambient “Ageless River” pieces with the longer bouts of gorgeous chaos, it’s a welcome change of pace from the structure of their debut.

 

22. Mamaleek – Come & See (Flenser)
I’ve been loving this San Franciscan brother duo since their self titled debut in 2008 thanks to the Aquarius Records mailing list (RIP) and every single record they’ve put out since then has been wildly different than the last. I’ve been fascinated with each of them but none have ever brought me back to that high I got from the debut. Not until now. Come & See is absolutely insane (and the first record with a full band). Yeah, you can call it black metal but just barely. Mamaleek bring in an uncountable amount of other genres like Middle Eastern folk and lounge jazz and surf rock and blues, making a truly unique sound that both boggles and melts the mind, so they’re right at home on Flenser alongside like-minded genre-defiers Wreck & Reference and Bosse-de-Nage. This isn’t the weirdest record they’re put out but it’s definitely one of the heaviest (and catchiest!?). As someone looking at this list who is obviously interested in extreme metal, you owe it to yourself to listen to Come & See because it’s the only experience of its kind.

 

21. Sea – Impermanence (self released)
I feel like I’ve been waiting for forever for this thing to come out. Sea is local to me (Boston area) and I’ve seen them play some of these songs a number of times in the past few years (trivia: the record release show in February was the last concert I attended before the pandemic). After a bunch of splits and an EP from 2015, we finally have their debut full length and it’s a fuckin winner, easily living up to my high expectations. Impermanence bursts with bombastic sludgy doomed post-metal, alternating male & female and clean & grisly vocals, although Stephen LoVerme takes the lead most of the time and I wish it was Liz Walshak because her singing is fucking amazing, evidenced most obviously on the opener “Penumbra.” But everything on here is great and heavy as hell with gigantic crunchy riffs and sick solos, the kind of doom that you can’t help but sing along to. Lyrically, they remind me of the sorely-missed SubRosa and that is most definitely a good thing. Can’t wait to hear their follow up full length in 2050.

 

20. Dragged Into Sunlight – Terminal Aggressor II (Prosthetic)
I fucking love this band. They make truly horrifying metal and no one else sounds like them, with Mories’ various projects coming close (Gnaw Their Tongues, Pyriphlegethon, Cloak Of Altering, etc). On Terminal Aggressor II, DIS take the structure of Widowmaker (one long piece with lots of drone & noise) and include the truly fucked up sounds on their debut Hatred For Mankind, this is one song that’s just about 30 minutes long and it takes its time setting the scene with some dark ambient static and eerie slow melodies before torching your face with caustic black noise and then steamrolling your skull with their trademarked terrifying misanthropic cacophony. I won’t deny that Hatred For Mankind is in a league of its own but TA II is shitting down Hatred‘s throat and attempting a coup to reign in the history books.

 

19. Former Worlds – Iterations Of Time (self released / Init)
Former Worlds is the hugest sludgy doom south of Vile Creature (well not really south because FW is from Minneapolis and VC is from Hamilton, Ontario and yes most of Ontario is north of Minnesota because obviously but Hamilton is actually poking down near Buffalo, New York and I’m sorry this was a horrible intro). So yeah this crew is in line with Vile Creature which makes sense given that the Former Worlds vocalist, Erin Severson, guested on VC’s Cast Of Static And Smoke and narrated the audiobook version of the story that record is based on (which is such an awesome idea and was executed beautifully). But this isn’t just rehashing sounds you probably already enjoy elsewhere. Former Worlds has their own thing going and while I can’t quite put into words where the unique vibes are coming from, I can guarantee you that Iterations Of Time kicks so much ass and you’ll fuckin love it.

 

18. Velnias – Scion Of Aether (Eisenwald)
I was certain this Colorado group had just quietly dissolved years ago. Their last official release was the monumental RuneEater in 2012 and since then it’s been crickets, save for one song that trickled out in 2016. I could not have been more psyched when I saw Scion Of Aether show up this year because Velnias are truly fucking special. Some kind of blackened doom deeply rooted in nature and injecting lots of folk stylings, this is commanding, majestic metal with both throaty growls & rich smooth Viking-style roars and killer riffs, most songs here reaching or exceeding the 10 minute mark, making sure there’s plenty of space for drama and climaxes. A weak comparison would be to Agalloch or Panopticon, but not in sound, more in the atmospheres they conjure. This is super dynamic stuff but it feels unyielding, 50 straight minutes of epic fucking metal.

 

17. Dunwich – Tail-Tied Hearts (Caligari)
This is a stellar debut from Russia’s Dunwich, one I find myself coming back to frequently. They do something unimaginable, which is get me to like music this much that has elements of darkwave and goth rock. And I don’t just like Dunwich in spite of those parts, they actually make Tail-Tied Hearts better because along with the darkwave and goth rock there’s black metal, doom, prog, and a fuckton of other shit going on like organs and lazer electronics and ambient drift, and Margarita Dunwich’s vocals are on par with Michelle Nocon’s (of Bathsheba) in terms of going so seamlessly from butter smooth to demonic growl (and that’s high praise because I fucking love Bathsheba). Tail-Tied Hearts isn’t as in your face or as challenging as a lot of other records on this list, but I mean that in a good way, because this kind of music doesn’t come across my radar very often and when it does, I’m usually not that into it. All of this is to say Tail-Tied Hearts is not an “obvious” record on this list like a lot of the others and for that reason alone it stands out as supremely excellent.

 

16. Svalbard – When I Die, Will I Get Better? (Translation Loss)
This is the “new” band that seems to have blown everyone away this year, including me. “New” only in that When I Die seems to be their breakout, getting tons of (well deserved) attention, because they’ve put out a bunch of stuff before this. This is incredible and most definitely my jam, sounding like Asobi Seksu and Helms Alee made a metal record together. There was a month where I pretty much just listened to this record and nothing else. It was kind of like my safety record. I knew that it fucking rocked and I didn’t need to look for anything else. I could get my head banging and my blissful euphoria at the same time. There’s post-hardcore shouts and dreamy angel vocals, Explosions In The Sky guitars, the occasional blast beat, hooks aplenty, and lyrics that make you want to punch every rape apologist, every misogynist, every fucking scumbag right in the dick. There’s nothing not to love.

 

15. Duma – Duma (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Now here’s a debut that’s been showing up all over the place and if for some reason you haven’t checked it out yet, stop reading, go click the play button on Bandcamp, then come back here. Duma is a Kenyan duo and this is hands down the most insane metal to come out this year. They make some batshit crazy grindcore noise that swims in techno, black metal, breakcore, thrash, power electronics, death industrial, etc. I know this list is full of wholly unique music (Zeal & Ardor, Mamaleek, Folterkammer, Kaatayra) but Duma is the uniquest. It’s unpredictable and impossibly chaotic with vocals that are downright terrifying and have an unimaginable range. Listening to it brings me back to the feeling I had when I first listened to Bile’s SuckPump in middle school, like I am way out of my depth and have no idea what’s going on but can’t stop listening. If you have a vague interest in any of those genres I just rattled off, do yourself a favor and investigate Duma.

 

14. Folterkammer – Die Lederpredigt (Gilead Media)
Holy shit what a debut. All four of these folks have been involved in Imperial Triumphant in some way or another, so Folterkammer’s black metal weirdness isn’t surprising but it’s nothing like IT’s black metal weirdness. Folterkammer (“torture chamber” in German) sings in German which is kind of strange because I’m pretty sure none of the members are German. However, the singer, Andromeda Anarchia, is Swiss and from what I can tell she does a damn good job at singing in German. Here’s the thing though, about half of the vocals are operatic and the other half are wretched screams & growls and the songs are from the perspective of “a monstrous, seductive goddess looking to inflict pain on her submissive creations.” So obviously Andromeda is the highlight here, her singing is out of this goddamn world, but the music is top fucking notch black metal, super dramatic & furious. Black metal purists can see themselves out because this weird shit is where it’s at.

 

13. Plague Organ – Orphan (Sentient Ruin)
If you liked Dead Neanderthals but for whatever reason the saxophone turned you off or if Sunn O))) sounded good on paper but was just too slow for you, then Plague Organ here is your answer. PO is Rene Aquarius (Dead Neanderthals drummer) and mastering engineer Marlon Wolterink with a single 40-minute piece of mind altering heavy minimalism, infinite zoned out precision drumming like one of Jon Mueller’s darkest hallucinations, unearthly chants, ethereal moans, demonic growls, and some sourceless black drone. If you finish listening to Orphan and don’t look like that face on the cover art, I would question if we listened to the same record.

 

12. Zeal & Ardor – Wake Of A Nation (MVKA)
This record fuckin hurts. I mean look at that album title, that artwork, and the song titles (e.g. “I Can’t Breathe”). It’s very much about black lives, white supremacy, the Black Lives Matter movement, and everything about why that movement has to exist in the first place. And in case you’ve somehow missed the brilliant black metal spirituals Zeal & Ardor have released in the past, let me tell you you’re in for a fucking treat. Zeal & Ardor (aka Manuel Gagneux with Marco Von Allmen on drums here) make music unlike any you’ve heard before, mixing black metal with black spiritual music (hymns, work songs, etc) and it’s done so fucking well. This isn’t novelty. It’s fucking important. And Wake Of A Nation might be my favorite Z&A release yet. 2018’s Stranger Fruit didn’t hit me quite like the previous year’s Devil Is Fine debut. This one, though, is so dynamic, bursting with fury and mourning, explosive blast beats and shrieking saddled up next to lilting elegiac piano and a soft smooth voice crooning “‘I know how you’re going to die’ / whispers weeping mother to child.” Just listen to the first two seconds of the closing track and hear how that hand clap rhythm joins the electronic bass thump. It’s fucking fantastic.

 

11. Paysage D’Hiver – Im Wald (Kunsthall Produktionen)
Raise your and if you also thought you’d never hear a new Paysage D’Hiver record again. I was pretty sure the untouchable Das Tor was his “final record.” Even though we’ve gotten a couple splits since then, I still thought Wintherr was pretty much done with the Paysage D’Hiver moniker. Then out of nowhere we get walloped with this 2 hour monstrosity of perfectly bleak atmospheric black metal (and a 25 minute companion EP to boot). 145 minutes of new music is extreme even for this dude who’s known for having long records. And Im Wald is fucking beautiful, continuing with the frigid polarscape soundtracks he’s famous for, 13 tracks of impenetrable blizzard walls and ambient permafrost drift, this is a master at the top of his game. Essential listening for anyone who likes any kind of black metal.

 

10. Hellish Form – MMXX (self released / Transylvanian Tapes)
The unstoppable Hellish Form is what happens when you let two dudes from two incredible doom bands make something even doomier, this is Willow Ryan from Body Void and Jacob Lee from Keeper (who actually released an insanely good split together this year and clued me into this record because I didn’t know about Keeper beforehand), this debut is 40 minutes long and a fucking beast from start to finish, even when it (rarely) lets up the towering distorted feedback with some thin high end drone and slow drum bombs, it’s still beckoning you forth to the guillotine, waiting to sever soul from body, the tortured Alan Dubin-esque vocals just barely visible under the noise void, this is loud and fucking H-E-A-V-Y, the perfect combination to rend you in two.

 

9. Dead Neanderthals – Blood Rite (Utech)
This one almost didn’t make the list. By which I mean, I couldn’t decide if it should be on this metal list or the drone list (last year’s Ghosts was on the drone list). But lets not split hairs about metal drone vs drone metal, Dead Neanderthals always fucking bring it. Even though they’re typically a sax/drum duo, Blood Rite replaces the sax for a synth. Not that it matters too much. The instruments are usually unidentifiable anyway, Blood Rite included. This is some humongous metal, a single 27 minute track featuring Otto Kokke’s totally blown out black synth drone cranked to 11 with René Aquarius’ drums destroying cities in the background while he screams and growls and howls underneath the endless cacophony. This is blackened doom minimalism that somehow sounds nothing like Sunn O))). About a third of the way through it drops the drums and tones down the distortion on the synth for a short stint of some pure drone zoning, then jumps back into the abyss, ending the way it started, albeit on a much darker note (but how??). These two are awesome to begin with but they just keep getting better with every record they put out.

 

8. Cavern – Powdered (CAV)
Ok so this one is arguably “not metal” but I couldn’t care less. Apparently Cavern have been around for quite a while (debut record is from 2013) and up until now they’ve stuck to instrumental post-rock jams (supposedly, I haven’t listened to anything besides this one). But on Powdered they’ve added Rose Heater’s vocals & bass to the lineup and holy fuck that turns Cavern into a band that, in a just world, will rocket to the prime spot in people’s regular rotations. The music is awesome and catchy in a Russian Circles kinda way with some true highlights like the guitar solo on “Red Moon” or the stupidly fun breakdown on at the end of the title track but Heater’s vocals are really where it’s at, they just fucking destroy me. I mean just listen to “Grey” with the blast beat chorus where she belts it out and tell me that’s not the best goddamn song you’ve ever heard.

 

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Top 25 Drone Records Of 2020

It’s time for the annual list of my favorite drone records. There are a few differences this time around. First, I didn’t care too much about the “too big to be on this list” thing as I’ve done in the past. I still excluded names like Basinski and Skelton as well as big names not usually in the drone field who put out excellent drone records like Yo La Tengo and Six Organs Of Admittance. The other thing is I was a bit stricter with my definition of drone, which has been pretty loose in the past. So no Midwife, no Andrew Weathers Ensemble, no Claire Rousay, etc.

This year there were a ton of artists who released way more music than usual. It was tough, but I kept it to just one release per artist. I frequently mention other records the artist put out though, just so you know there’s more good tunes to go around.

Last year, I excluded Longform Editions releases from the list because I intended to make a list just for Longform releases but I never got around to it. This year I knew my limitations and didn’t bother keeping that exclusion. There’s only two Longform releases on this list but they could have easily taken up half of the list on their own. Seriously.

Also, Editions Mego and sub-labels had a fuckin stellar year. Again, I didn’t want to overwhelm the list with EMego releases, but you definitely need to hear more from their 2020 catalog.

Let me know in the comments what I missed and what some of your favorites of the year were.

As always: Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks for making incredible music.

 

25. Emily A. Sprague – Hill, Flower, Fog (self released, Plancha, RVNG Intl.)
An absolutely delightful modular synth dream, super chill New Agey journeys that “channel the here and now and fosters a far-reaching connectedness, or lifeline, from the everyday to the cosmos.” I don’t usually enjoy modular synth records too much, but this one is a bit more dynamic than most with the bloops and the drones and it just makes me feel good.

 

24. Elsa Hewitt – Ghostcats (self released)
Definitely one of the more unique records on this list. Short poppy songs that kinda sound like Julianna Barwick’s version of vaporwave. Ethereal dreams with tons of vocal harmonies, glitchy blurred synth rhythms, and enough sunshine to last all winter.

 

23. Penelope Trappes – Gnostic State (Longform Editions)
I knew nothing of Trappes prior to her release on Longform (which is one of the best things about Longform, their batches are usually half obscure names, half well known) but she put out a remix record last year with versions by Mogwai, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Félicia Atkinson, so I assume I’m in the minority with my ignorance. Regardless, Gnostic State is some spectacular drone, super fuckin minimal, barely there tonal drifts being whisked away with nothing but a breath, machine hum in the background with almost nothing in the foreground save for an occasional exhalation of energy.

 

22. Uttered In Tongues – Volume In Ritual (self released)
Now this is a fucking debut. A. Arthur Tuttle’s Uttered In Tongues project started up this year with Volume In Ritual in support of his live Heavy Meditation Group, so yup this is some heavy fucking drone that’s super textured, a bubbling bog of long-form static buzz, two 30-minute songs slowly destroying the external world until only you and the black sound exist as a single entity, the songs end as they begin, a monolithic slab of deep immutable rumble, waiting patiently, perpetually, for the mind meld.

 

21. Moralix – Environmental Research Facility (Fireflower Foundation)
Moralix is one of the names Jocelyn Shazzaiya records under (another more prolific one is Seffi Starshine), and she also runs Fireflower Foundation. I don’t remember how this one caught my attention but I’m glad it did. It’s one 78-minute piece “recorded outside the Environmental Research Center at Jægersborg Hegn” on April 6th, 2020, then released on April 7th. This is relevant because I have no fucking clue what these sounds are made of and knowing it was essentially a field recording processed in less than a day just adds to the mystery, it walks the line of harsh noise wall which means this is loud as hell, enormous, and super fuckin dense, like listening to a rocket engine combusting while in a silo, and that’s only part metaphor, this actually sounds like the constant roar of fire exploding out of a small opening for over an hour, so yeah, this is pretty fucking cool.

 

20. Vanessa Skantze – Writhing Treasure Feast (self released)
Ok so this one is a bit complicated. Skantze is a multi-disciplinary artist who focuses on Butoh dancing. Writhing Treasure Feast was a dance performance with lots of music created by Masaaki Masao (from Eye Of Nix), Erymanthe (duo with Joy Von Spain from Eye Of Nix) collaborating with Masaaki Masao, Pink Void, Greg Campbell & Sioux City Pete, Morher, and Noisepoetnobody collaborating once with Uneasy Chairs and once with Cailleach. That performance turned into a physical release with two CDs of music and an art book with photography by Anima Nocturna, paintings by Ambrosia Bardos, and writing by Skantze. So, in summary, Skantze designed the whole thing: she produced it, directed it, choreographed & performed the dance, and commissioned the music, photography, and paintings. Credit where credit’s due and all. Now that that’s out of the way… holy shit this music is incredible. It’s kind of hard to talk about it cohesively because it’s kind of a compilation (which I traditionally don’t include on these lists). There are seven songs, all but one of which are 15+ minutes, and they range from penetrating dark ambient rumbling to chaotic free form percussion, from unsettling layered vocal meditations to concrete industrial. It’s not an easy listen, that’s for damn sure, but there’s so much incredible stuff going on here that when you sit down for the nearly two hours this asks of you, you’ll see what makes it so fucking special.

 

19. Mizmor & Andrew Black – Dialetheia (Gilead Media)
Mizmor (aka ALN) and Gilead Media might be unfamiliar names to drone folks who aren’t clued into the metal arena but suffice it to say that both have released some of my all time favorite records, so you know you’re dealing with top tier shit. Mizmor’s journey has been a tumultuous one and thus far it’s been steeped in “wholly doomed black metal.” Andrew Black is a new name to me, but apparently he’s been effortlessly churning out sick ambient jams for the past couple years. He and ALN go way back but this is the first time in over a decade they’ve worked together and Dialetheia is their first earnest collaboration. It’s two side-long pieces of truly hard to peg drone, with moments of muddy sludge alongside moments of brilliant sunshine, silk smooth synth prefacing crusted sandpaper guitar, ethereal smoke fading right before your eyes and monstrous thick gloom that soars with screaming feedback in the background. This is premium shit and you don’t need to give a single fuck about metal to enjoy it.

 

18. KMRU – Opaquer (Dagoretti)
I’m pretty confident there’s no one else besides KMRU (Joseph Kamaru) who knows exactly how many records he released this year. My best guess is seven but I’m probably missing some. He really hit it big this year with releases on Editions Mego and Seil, a Resident Advisor DJ mix, and generally just tons of exposure, all of which is highly deserved. This dude is crazy good. He works primarily with field recordings and electronics and Opaquer is where it’s at for me. It’s one of his longer releases this year and one that found a home on Dagoretti (as opposed to his numerous self-released jams), a slow burner if there ever was one, real deep churning vibes that includes everything from tin can rattling to people crying, but shimmering over the surface is a very poignant vision of beauty, showing up wherever you decide to cast your gaze, truly magical work, this dude has all the chops to go down in this history books alongside names like Eno and Oliveros.

 

17. Sally Decker & Brendan Glasson – An Opening (Full Spectrum)
Both of these names are new to me, and it looks like they don’t have much recorded work under their belt, but that clearly has no relation to their talents because this is a true joy to listen to. The A side is one piece that developed over several in-person collaborations, and it’s a crazy mixed bag of electronics and who knows what else that fuses squelchy feedback with slow melodies growing and shrinking with each other, then it goes for the jugular about three quarters of the way through. The B side was created after the pandemic outbreak, so they collaborated remotely, resulting in six shorter tracks that have a much wider and more dynamic range of controlled chaos and tempered tones. The whole thing is fucking fascinating and the “deeper listens reveal more details” trope is absolutely true with An Opening.

 

16. Laura Luna Castillo – Tuberose (Whited Sepulchre)
I heard both Castillo’s 2018 release on Genot Centre and her EP on Longform Editions last year but for whatever reason, neither stuck with me. I only say that in case you might pass over Tuberose thinking “eh, I’ve already given her a chance with those other two.” Don’t do that. Tuberose is pretty fucking special. I mean, just the intention behind its creation is awesome. Castillo became fascinated with the time-travelling essence of fragrances and transformed that into music. “Each track is made as if constructing a perfume or a smell, with their titles referencing ingredients and processes used in the extraction and entrapment of essences, sometimes paradoxically violent and beautiful.” But even beyond the theme, Tuberose excels in originality with intriguing loops and subtle melodies & rhythms and delicate tones and hidden treasures, it’s just too goddamn good.

 

15. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Phosphenes (self released)
RAAL, who no longer needs to be associated with his long-shed moniker Lichens (but there you have it, just in case), was a fuckin beast this year with something like 9 or 10 releases. Yeah a lot of them were “archival” or whatever but for the Lowe heads, it doesn’t matter. It just means we had a lot of digging to do. Phosphenes is one of those archival releases, recorded on April 18, 2015 and released almost 5 years to the day, tagged on Bandcamp, like all his releases, both as “devotional” and “not devotional” which is perfect because that’s exactly how I feel about his sounds. Phosphenes is one 40-minute long piece that follows one of his common structures of starting out slow, low, & quiet with transcendent falsettos soaring over minimal synth drone, then a subtle rhythm is conjured and we’re treated to a hypnotic introspection, bringing you places you never knew existed. I’m not really sure why Phosphenes stands out above the rest for me, but it does, and it should at least help you decide on an entry point for Lowe’s 2020 discography.

 

14. Sunken Cathedral – Steam Turned To Ash (Full Spectrum)
When a new Sunken Cathedral (aka Ryan Jobes) showed up in my inbox, I was fuckin psyched. The last thing he did in 2016 ended up on my year end list and his 2013 debut rocked my fuckin world. Both of those records had a heavy dose of organ along with other cool people playing other cool shit (harmoniums, trombones, cellos, etc). So I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty bummed when I saw Steam Turned To Ash was “just” some synth drone. Turns out it doesn’t matter what this dude uses to make music because clearly he just fuckin owns it, trombone quartet or not. He pumped out two side-long pieces of dark minimalism, a haunted church atmosphere that lays low in its ebbs and flows for 75% of the time until it wallops you with some majestic volume and you can’t help but fall to your knees and worship.

 

13. Phurpa – Hymns Of Gyer (Ideologic Organ)
You can pretty much guarantee if there’s a new Phurpa record, it’ll be on this list. This is one of two Phurpa releases this year (the other being Ritual Chod on Zazen Sounds) but this one has the Russian mystics focusing on their voices even more than usual. Yeah they always make crazy inhuman bass rumbles with their vocal chords but Hymns Of Gyer is only that (well, that and two singing bowls but to be perfectly honest they’re hardly present). Their brand of tantric overtone singing is haunting, hypnotic, and deeply transcendent and without their bone rattles and chime rituals routinely pinging you back to consciousness, Hymns Of Gyer lets you fall deeper into their holy abyss than ever before.

 

12. Wind Tide – Plays Wind Tide (Llano Discs)
Llano Discs is the A+ new sub-label of Full Spectrum where they make hyper-limited CD-Rs with hand-crafted packaging featuring music made on the Llano Estacado in Texas. This debut collaboration is the duo of two folks who run Full Spectrum, Gretchen Korsmo & Andrew Weathers, and they smashed it out the fuckin park with this one, a single 75 minute piece of mega ur-drone, dual e-bowed guitars reverberating through every room of Wind Tide (the building, hence the album title), feeding back into an impenetrable sheet of buzz & thrum, trepanning your skull to conjure a third eye, and that’s just the first 20 minutes. The remainder of the record ebbs and flows about every 20 minutes and with each successive cycle, you float further into subconscious dreams. I also would feel remiss if I didn’t mention that one of my favorite Weathers projects, the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, closed up shop this year with two final releases (a full length on Full Spectrum and a two-songer on Timesuck). Not quite droney enough to make it onto the list but still fantastic work you should seek out.

 

11. France Jobin – Death Is Perfection, Everything Else Is Relative (Editions Mego)
Jobin is one of those who self released quite a bit this year (presumably due to the pandemic) but this EMego LP was the highlight for me, where she meditates on the similarities between shadow photons and the “unknown universe which is death,” so clearly this is in my wheelhouse, Jobin’s brand of barely-there minimalism pairs beautifully with ruminating on death’s effects and the two side-long pieces here are perfect (not to mention the third digital-only track where she collaborates with Klara Lewis), full of breathless intangible whisps that shimmer and dance like sunlight on wavetops.

 

10. Alison Cotton – Only Darkness Now (Bloxham Tapes / Cardinal Fuzz / Feeding Tube)
Starting a record off with a 20-minute track of elegiac string drone when you still have four more songs filling the second half of the record is a subtly bold move and I wholly appreciate it. While I would have been immediately swooned by the second 2-minute track with Cotton’s deluxe vocals or the third track that’s harmonium heaven, jumping straight for the long-form minimalism is a surefire way to win me over. Then to close everything out, there’s a lengthy hymn that just cries all over you.

 

9. René Aquarius – Universe (self released)
When Aquarius’ name pops up, it’s usually associated with another name, either the genre-fuckers Dead Neanderthals with Otto Kokke, the death metal duo Cryptae with Kees Peerdeman, the black metal duo Celestial Bodies with Vincent Koreman, or any of the various spontaneous collaborations (like this year’s awesome reimagining of The Exorcist score with Celer). That is to say, a solo Aquarius record, while not necessarily rare, is definitely something to pay attention to. The title of this one gives you an idea of what’s coming up, this is fucking huge, two pieces roughly 40 minutes each, smooth minimalism on the universal time scale, stretching out beyond infinity and taking an eternity to get there, it’s just outside the realm of human understanding, a bit too far to grasp its truth but close enough that you can feel its boundless depth.

 

8. Jasmine Guffond – Current Harmonics (Longform Editions)
A couple years back, Guffond blew my mind with Degradation Loops and now she’s got two this year, one on Editions Mego, which is awesome, but this one here on Longform Editions is where it’s fuckin at. Not even 16 minutes long and it’ll turn your soul inside out, humungous numbing THX-intro wall of buzz, the kind of drone that gives you auditory hallucinations long after you’re done listening to it, you can play this at a most moderate volume and still feel like the Maxell guy. I fuckin love it.

 

7. John Kolodij – First Fire • At Dawn (Astral Editions)
You might not recognize the name John Kolodij if you’re new here but hopefully you’re familiar with his long-standing moniker High Aura’d, in which case you might know that whenever a High Aura’d record comes out, it’s always ended up on my drone list (see: every year since 2011, except 2013 when the only release was a 7” and 2016 when he didn’t release anything). I’m not biased (ok maybe I’m a little biased, he named a song in honor of my bunny after he died), it’s just that he’s that fucking awesome and his jam is most definitely also my jam. This here is the first release where he’s shed the alias (read into that however you want) and yeah, it’s fucking phenomenal, the A side brings me back to some old school Polmo Polpo Big Drone (a stretch of a comparison I know but feelings don’t always make sense) and then on the B side he busts out the slow burning banjo, and I’ve got a major soft spot for banjos, so hearing that dusty twang seamlessly melt into a traditional 6-string guitar is like actual magic, and then the field recordings bring me right to that clear lakeside sunrise with the delightful surprise of Anna RG’s violin and Sarah Hennies’ understated percussion, it doesn’t get much better than this. Also, check out his split with Ezra Feinberg on Whited Sepulchre, highly recommended.

 

6. Clarice Jensen – The Experience Of Repetition As Death (130701)
Jensen had a cool one called Drone Studies on Geographic North last year (which was the first I’d heard from her) but holy hell this new one is a fucking stunner. It’s just Jensen, her cello, and some loop pedals, but she does the unimaginable with them, creating not just the expected cello elegies but also deeply moving epics, floating above the clouds where there’s nothing but sun & sky as well as diving into cyclical low-end whirring that belongs to the dark ambient world. It’s painfully obvious this was written “towards the end of her mother’s fight with leukemia and shortly after she passed away” because this is brimming with bittersweet love fraught with mourning. The 11-minute piece “Holy Mother” by itself embodies the fear, anxiety, ardor, and rapture found throughout the whole record. Truly amazing work.

 

5. Golem Mecanique – Nona, Decima Et Morta (Ideologic Organ)
I’m kind of surprised/ashamed that Golem Mecanique (aka Karen Jebane) has flown under my radar for so long and it took this record on Ideologic Organ to catch my attention. She’s been active for 10+ years with releases on Drone Sweet Drone, Nowaki, and others, none of which I’ve heard. But Nona here is fucking phenomenal and guarantees I’ll be following her work from here on out. Two side-long pieces of mind melting minimalism with ghostly moaning, this is asphyxiating drone, like being stuck 6 feet under the snow after an avalanche, the heat of your body failing miserably against the smothering cold, horrific hallucinations fading in and out while you slowly lose consciousness. It doesn’t climb to any heights, no climaxes or epiphanies, just the slow but relentless approach of Death.

 

4. Anna Von Hausswolff – All Thoughts Fly (Southern Lord / Ash International)
Von Hausswolff has been churning out insanely awesome dark records full of organ gloom for about a decade. Her last couple have been full-band style with drums and guitars and shit so while I’ve loved them, I couldn’t include them on a drone list. All Thoughts Fly has her going back to the organ, though, and that’s the only thing you’ll hear. Yes, I have a soft spot for organs & reeds, but this is stellar regardless. It’s easily the most dynamic solo organ record I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard quite a few) which I assume has a lot to do with the particular organ she used (more on the recording process here). There are a ton of sounds on here that I’m truly surprised are sourced from an organ. So yeah it’s technically astounding but it’s also full of bittersweet tenderness, expansive melancholy, and spellbinding triumph. Fucking incredible music.

 

3. Klara Lewis – Ingrid (Editions Mego)
This might be the best 20 minutes of 2020. Lewis’ solo mourning cello starts off innocently enough, a smooth low drone that hits all the right spots, but it slowly ratchets up to a looped cacophony of distortion like Basinski on a blackened doom binge. It’s absolute fucking bliss and it feels like it lasts forever. For some strange reason, I feel like I shouldn’t say too much more about this though. Not like there’s anything to spoil but it very much speaks for itself and for real it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in a long time.

 

2. Sarah Davachi – Cantus, Descant (Late Music)
It wasn’t too hard to pick a favorite out of the five Davachi records this year. No it’s not the longest (that would be Figures In Open Air, also on her label Late Music, clocking in at over two goddamn hours) and every piece is pretty short, all less than 10 minutes long. But it does feature a lot of organs and sometimes that’s all it takes. And I don’t just mean she plays the organ on every track, I mean she played at least six different organs, including a pipe organ built in 1479. Unlike one of the other organ-heavy records on this list (#4, #1), Davachi’s is a bit of a lighter affair and isn’t just a solo organ the whole time. This is soft music, played with tenderness and earnestness, and in each of the 17 short songs, there is a new sound, a new feeling, a new window looking onto another wondrous open cloud-dappled field, inviting you to climb through and explore with her. And this is (might be?) the first time in Davachi’s discography that her voice appears in a discernible way, about halfway through the record, and while you might think I’ve just spoiled that surprise, I assure you that you’ll be so engrossed with Cantus, Descant that by the time her vocals show up, it will be the most unexpectedly glorious sound you’ve ever heard, and now that I think of it you should probably be sitting down when you reach that moment for when you get weak in the knees.

 

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Episode 122 – Halloween Special

 
Even though this show hasn’t been very active since the pandemic, I couldn’t let Halloween go by without doing a special episode. I have so much fun putting these together.

This one has field recordings of an autopsy, a rotting corpse, and an electric chair execution, as well as cult leader monologs, trance babblings, lots of deep dark ambient, and a truly memorable ending.
 

00:00:00 Stan Gilliam – Lullabies (excerpt) (from Art Of Field Recording: Volume 2)
00:00:15 Alexandros Drymonitis – Larynx 1 (from In Tongues)
00:01:27 Vincent Gallo – Was (from When)
00:03:44 Walter Ruttman – Wochende (1930) (from An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music / First A-Chronology 1921-2001)
00:08:27 Unknown artists – Okeh Crying Record (from A Better Cure: A Brief History Of The Okeh Laughing Record & Its Progeny, 1906-1946)
00:12:04 Unknown artists – “Banta” Trance Speech (1948) (from Okkulte Stimmen – Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007)
00:12:57 No artist – Walking On Ice (from …I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces)
00:16:16 No artist – John Eldon Smith (from The Georgia Execution Tapes)
00:16:54 Unknown artists – Slit-Log Talking Drum (from African And Afro-American Drums)
00:18:12 Unknown artists – Fragment 1 (from Blind c/w Fragment)
00:22:59 Bleaching Agent – Yellow Corduroy Wall (from Feral Grind)
00:24:06 Xerophonics – Panasonic FP-7742 (ID# 7895) (from Copying Machine Music)
00:30:14 No artist – Canadian Geese (from …I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces)
00:32:48 Xela – Black Scripture (from The Illuminated)
00:33:15 Rahmi Oruc Güvenc And His Group “Tümata” – Zikir From The Rufai Tradition (1980) – (from Okkulte Stimmen – Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007)
00:39:24 ᚾᛟᚢ II & ᚦᛟᚦ ᚷᛁᚷ – Besvärjelse II: Dekokt A Naglar, Blod Och Galla (from Alpha Ænigma)
00:52:08 Sarah Gunning – Dreadful Memories (from Come All You Coal Miners)
00:54:00 Jacob Kirkegaard – Opus Autopsia – Side C / Opus Putesco – Side H (from Opus Mors)
01:10:41 The Icarus Descent – The Melting Pot Of Raw Human Emotion (from In Tongues)
01:11:47 White/Lichens – Bael (from White/Lichens)
01:17:48 The Vomit Arsonist – Homewrecker (from Psychological Abortions)
01:26:42 Zbigniew Karkowski & Brian O’Reilly – The Difficulty Of Being (from The Difficulty Of Being)
01:27:41 Marshall Applewhite – Heaven’s Gate Initiation Tape (excerpt)
01:28:00 Pumice – Starts (from I Don’t Think The Dirt Belongs To The Grass)
01:29:20 Tucker Martine – Particle Swarm Intelligence (from Broken Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia)
01:42:12 Wrekmeister Harmonies – A 300 Year Old Slit Throat (from The Alone Rush)
01:52:02 Gulaggh – CNN (excerpt) (from Vorkuta)
01:58:46 Wraiths – Oriflamme II (excerpt) (from Oriflamme)

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Episode 121

 
Not much metal in this one. I highly recommend checking out Cinder Well’s album in full. Ends with 30+ minutes of absolute mayhem while Paul Giamatti reads A Scanner Darkly.
 

00:00:00 Cinder Well – Our Lady’s (from No Summer)
00:09:15 Sarah Hennies – Habitat (from Habitat)
00:13:40 Unknown musicians – トラック諸島 (from The Music Of Micronesia, The Kao-shan Tribes Of Taiwan, And Sakhalin)
00:21:27 Sunn O))) – 606Day1_LM Song6 (from 606_LM preproduction 270618)
00:27:17 Kamila Govorčin – Introversion (from Anima)
00:30:14 The Monks Of The Eiheiji – 夜坐 (from 禅)
00:50:25 Tolerance – Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit (from Anonym)
00:52:45 Penelope Trappes – Gnostic State (from Gnostic State)
01:01:36 Konstantin Raudive – Side A (from Breakthrough (An Amazing Experiment In Electronic Communication With The Dead))
01:11:46 Windy & Carl – Song In A (Instrumental Demo, May 1995) (from Unreleased Home Recordings 1992-1995)
01:16:38 Emily A. Sprague – Mirror (from Hill, Flower, Fog)
01:25:55 Primitive Man – Menacing (from Immersion)
01:33:55 Garbage Pail Kids – Bjerg Bichaels (from Garbage Pail Kids)
01:34:38 Philip K. Dick read by Paul Giamatti – Chapter 14 (excerpt) (from A Scanner Darkly)

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Episode 120

 
This is a pretty heavy & dark episode with tons of collaging (there’s 4 songs going at once for part of “Blood Rite”) but ends on a light note with some simultaneous Jobin/Atkinson action and a couple 80s New Age dreams.
 

00:00:00 Vulgarite – They Will Fall (from Fear Not The Dark Nor The Sun’s Return)
00:06:30 Ellen Fullman & Theresa Wong – Blue Tunnel Fields (from The Harmonic Series)
00:06:53 Mai 12 – Turquoise, Grey, White, Black (from Relatives Schoensein)
00:07:01 Ursula K. Le Guin – The Escape (excerpt) (from The Left Hand Of Darkness)
00:18:47 Terminal Nation – Expired Utopia (from Holocene Extinction)
00:19:38 Dead Neanderthals – Blood Rite (from Blood Rite)
00:23:11 Old Tower – The Fallen One (from The Last Eidolon)
00:25:40 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project – Caatfin (from Scaath Catfish)
00:28:19 Kassel Jaeger & Jim O’Rourke – In Cobalt Aura Sleeps 2 (from In Cobalt Aura Sleeps)
00:49:32 Vile Creature – Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm! (from Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm!)
01:03:27 Enya – Water Shows The Hidden Heart (from Amarantine)
01:08:01 Hilary Woods – Through The Dark, Love (from Birthmarks)
01:13:04 Phurpa – 01(3) (from Hymns Of Gyer)
01:13:43 Various – tracks 14, 8, 4, 5, 19, 7 (from Spectra Ex Machina: A Sound Anthology Of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol.1)
01:30:46 France Jobin – Inertia (from Death Is Perfection, Everything Else Is Relative)
01:30:46 Félicia Atkinson – I Can’t Stop Thinking About It (from Everything Evaporate)
01:45:51 Mimi Izumi Kobayashi – Meditation In The Water (from Seaside Memories – Poesy Of The Island)
01:52:02 Pete Bardens – The Stargate (from Seen One Earth)

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Episode 119

 
Got some excellent new metal, some excellent new weird shit, new Shirley Collins (!!!), Korean religious rituals, a poem about Harriet Tubman, strange 70s spoken word stuff, an excerpt from Annie Jacobsen’s book Surprise, Kill, Vanish (which sounds especially good paired with both Christopher Elmore & Sunrot), and plenty more.
 

00:00:00 Soyuz – The Sacred War (Towards Victory) (from Red Blood, White Frost)
00:13:11 Phew – Can You Keep It Down, Please? (from Can You Keep It Down, Please?)
00:15:51 Margaret Walker – Harriet Tubman (from The Poetry of Margaret Walker)
00:23:41 Musikautomatika – Untitled 2 (from Musikautomatika)
00:31:57 Annie Jacobsen – An Assassination Capability (excerpt) (from Surprise, Kill, Vanish)
00:35:44 Christopher Elmore – James River Running Beneath Boulevard Bridge (from Two Studies For A Self-Portrait)
00:41:00 Sunrot – Aether (from Sunnata)
00:50:19 Undirheimar – Heljarrúnar (from Heljarrúnar)
00:54:24 David First – Scene 7 (from The Consummation Of Right And Wrong)
00:56:11 Shirley Collins – Sweet Greens and Blues (from Heart’s Ease)
01:07:57 Lamp Of Murmuur – A Burning Spear To The Heart Of Dawn (Part II) (from The Burning Spears Of Crimson Agony)
01:18:18 Marr’del – Maria (from Mystery Of Love)
01:30:35 Marina Rosenfeld – Two (Joy Of Fear) (from Joy Of Fear)
01:40:47 Group lead by Kim Dae Re – Che-Sok Kut (excerpt) (from Shamanistic Ceremonies Of Chindo)
01:41:43 Clarice Jensen – Day Tonight (from The Experience Of Repetition As Death)
01:53:35 Horace Sprott – Early One Morning, The Blues Come Falling Down (from Music From The South, Vol. 02: Horace Sprott, 1)

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Episode 118

 
UPDATE 2: The episode is back with the Atramentus song removed. I didn’t update the timestamps in this post so if you need to, just subtract about 23 minutes from whatever timestamp you see after Atramentus to get an approximate time.

UPDATE: I removed the whole audio file as the quickest way to remedy a takedown situation (my sincerest apologies to the band). I’ll figure something out so you can listen to the episode again soon. Sorry for the fuckup.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been as obsessed with a record as I am with Lankum’s The Livelong Day from last year. I just found out about it thanks to this Shirley Collins interview (they’re her new favorite band too). I’ve listened to nothing but that record all day every day for the past week. There’s lots of other great stuff here too but there’s a reason I bookended the episode with two tracks from The Livelong Day.
 

00:00:00 Lankum – The Dark Eyed Gypsy (from The Livelong Day)
00:07:36 Atramentus – Stygian III – Perennial Voyage (Across The Perpetual Planes Of Crying Frost & Steel-Eroding Blizzards) (from Stygian)
00:30:47 Terry Riley live in Japan, July 23, 1977 (excerpt)
00:34:18 Ruth White – The Litanies Of Satan (from Flowers Of Evil)
00:44:00 Side D (excerpt) (from WARM Radio – River On A Rampage)
00:47:20 Joanna Bruzdowicz – Homo Faber: La Solitude (from Bruzdowicz – Bogaert)
00:59:16 You Have Chocolate, No Money (Jaipur, Varanasi, Darjeeling, Arambol) (from Indian Soundscapes)
01:03:20 Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – The Well-tempered City (from The Well-tempered City – Book I)
01:20:40 Charles Kellogg – Sounds Of The Forest Pt. 2 (from The Nature Singer: His Complete Issued Recordings – February 1915 to January 1919)
01:25:20 Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin – Prelude / The Unbodied Air (from Stygian Bough Vol. 1)
01:48:53 Evicshen – Under The Stall Door (from Hair Birth)
01:56:44 Lankum – Hunting The Wren (from The Livelong Day)

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Episode 117

 
Definitely grab that Overgrow To Overthrow benefit compilation from Bindrune. All proceeds go to Black Lives Matter and Life After Hate. It has 31 tracks including Thou, Inexorum, Vukari, Obsequiae, Falls Of Rauros, Cloud Rat, Aerial Ruin, Woe, Krieg, Dawn Ray’d, Krallice, and so many more incredible artists.
 

00:00:00 Panopticon – Flag Burner Torch Bearer (from Overgrow To Overthrow)
00:10:04 Unknown artist – I Want Some Food (from Street And Gangland Rhythms, Beats And Improvisations By Six Boys In Trouble)
00:15:04 Julianna Barwick – Safe (from Healing Is A Miracle)
00:19:57 Thai Elephant Orchestra – Floating Down The Pin River (from Elephonic Rhapsodies)
00:24:41 Marcin Barski – Conversation With Father (from Wanda’s Dream)
00:26:56 Ann McMillan – Gateway Summer Sound (from Gateway Summer Sound)
00:37:58 Murdered By A Woman – ΜΔiden-ΜΘther-ĊrΘne (from Murdered By A Woman)
00:43:58 Divide And Dissolve – Black Vengance (from Basic)
00:50:01 No Home – Burning The Body (from Fucking Hell)
00:56:28 Pattie Rosemon – I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say (from Sorrow Come Pass Me Around: A Survey Of Rural Black Religious Music)
00:57:22 Aki Onda – Seoul (2010) (from Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking To Me)
01:03:11 Unknown artists – Gamelan Angklung: Margepati (from The Balinese Gamelan – Music From The Morning Of The World)
01:14:13 Ehnahre – Warriors, Columns Of Infantry, Warships (from Quatrain)
01:22:41 Nawaharjan – Umbibrautiniz (from Lokabrenna)
01:32:57 Emmalee Hunnicutt – Cirrus (from Wooden Hollow)
01:34:55 Mary Price – Dark Was The Night (from Music From The South Vol. 7 – Elder Songsters, 2)
01:39:26 Simo Lazarov – From Melody To Melody II (from The City (Electronic Music))
01:48:52 NYZ – CEZbulgan (from Old Trx (87-93))
01:55:49 Félicia Atkinson – This Is The Gate (from Everything Evaporate)

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Episode 116

 
How is the “no talk breaks” thing going? Does it totally ruin the experience or are you enjoying the show just as much?

The 3 metal songs are from 3 of the best metal records this year (M.S.W. is the Hell guy, Paysage D’Hiver should be obvious, and I thought Velnias was dead because their last LP was in 2012). The AWE track is from the upcoming final AWE record. RIP. Thankfully AW will still be active on his own and elsewhere. Backxwash is some phenomenal new horrorcore that I didn’t know I needed. And I am way psyched that there’s not one but TWO new Revolutionary Army records. We’re not worthy.
 
00:00:00 M.S.W. – Obliviosus (from Obliviosus)
00:19:38 Unknown artists – Rise And Fly (from Angola Prison Spirituals)
00:25:22 Plank & Ishq – Church Of The Holy Shale (from Nine Maidens Circle)
00:28:00 Robert Pete Williams & Tom Dutson – Dig My Grave With A Silver Spade (from Angola Prison Spirituals)
00:43:25 Backxwash featuring Malldate – Into The Void (from God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It)
00:48:58 Andrew Weathers Ensemble – An Unkindness Of Ravens (from The Thousand Birds In The Earth, The Thousand Birds In The Sky)
00:54:32 Caroline McKenzie – A Thousand Butterflies (from A Thousand Butterflies)
01:00:10 Tony Schwartz – Dog’s Life, Part 2 (from An Actual Story In Sound Of A Dog’s Life)
01:10:07 Paysage D’Hiver – So Hallt Es Wider (from Im Wald)
01:28:30 Unknown artists – “ベ平連” 街を行? (1) (from 新宿広場’69)
01:29:25 Unknown artists – Ceremonial Drums (from African And Afro-American Drums)
01:34:05 Zero Kama – Winged Eye Hadit (from The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H.)
01:39:16 Velnias – Oblivion Horizon – Null Terminus (from Scion Of Aether)
01:54:24 The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus – Opening (from Nocturnes)

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Episode 115

 
Goddamn this world is fucked.

For countless reasons, I’ve been absent from this site and my A Thick Mist radio show. The last episode was 3 months ago to the day. Before that, it was over a month. I’ve missed A Thick Mist a lot. It’s pretty much my only creative outlet and doing a live show is kind of cathartic. I’ve tried replicating the experience from home while the university radio station is closed but have been unsuccessful. That failure lead to abandonment. Enough time has passed that I’m now making another effort and doing it with different goals in mind.

I’m rusty. Hardly experimenting here. Nothing too weird. The main difference though is there’s no talk breaks. I know that makes this less of a radio show and more like a mix. But the talk breaks were getting in the way of making an episode, so I axed em just to get something done. Here it is. I think I’ll be able to do this more consistently now.
 

00:00:00 Amy Cutler – Vigil For Örö (One Month Of Fieldtrip Sounds – Radar, Bird Calls, Bunker Bell System, Ice, Rust, Swamp) (from Örö Tape (Fieldtrips Of The Damned))
00:04:08 Pale Cocoon – Aozora No Jikken-shitsu (from Aozora No Jikken-shitsu / Secret Sounds)
00:13:59 Burning Witch – Rift.Canyon.Dreams (from Asva / Burning Witch split)
00:26:45 Angel Rada – Mar De La Tristeza (from Upadesa)
00:34:59 The Gyuto Monks – Guhyasamaja Tantra. Chapter II (from Tibetan Tantric Choir)
00:37:51 People Meowing (excerpt) (from People Meowing)
00:59:33 Midwife – C.R.F.W. (from Forever)
01:08:01 Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes – Poème Non Épique (from N°2)
01:26:35 Hellish Forms – Gazing Upon A Forgotten Shadow (Descent) (from MMXX)
01:52:18 BERU – In The Red Thickness Of Your Skin (from Forgiveness Is Supernatural)

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Episode 114

 
This was the first at-home live broadcast I’ve ever done, so it might feel/sound a little different than the usual A Thick Mist episodes that are recorded live at WMWM. It worked out pretty ok, though, and I will definitely be doing more live shows from home, hopefully on a weekly basis. This episode aired from 8-10 (ET) on Saturday night and I’ll probably continue with that time. You can listen at mixlr.com/justinsnow

For those curious about the setup in case you also might want to try live broadcasting, I’m only using two pieces of free software: the Mixlr app for broadcasting to Mixlr and Mixxx for playing music which I basically just use to crossfade and stuff. Mixxx outputs directly to Mixlr so it’s super simple. I use an external mic but that’s not required.

Music-wise, this episode is pretty cool, with new Jeremy Bible (!!!!), the debut from Apologist, some classic Rev. Gary Davis, Aurora Borealis recordings, Indian chants, Tolowa dances, and some new killer doom out of Boston by Sea.
 

Air date: March 28, 2020

Background music: Nadi Qamar – Ode To The Shrines Of Buddha (from The Nuru Taa African Musical Idiom)

Talk break
Wolvserpent – Serpent (from Blood Seed)
Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz – Azax Attra (from Desert Equations: Azax Attra)
Talk break
Jeremy Bible – Human Savagery (from Human Savagery)
Stephen P. McGreevy – Eves River Auroral Chorus (from Electric Enigma: The VLF Recordings Of Stephen P. McGreevy)
Apologist – Haks (from Dirt Road)
Alison Knowles – Descending Clogs Event (from Frijoles Canyon)
Su Tissue – 2nd Movement (from Salon De Musique)
Talk break
Loren Bommelyn, Sam Lopez, & Walter Richards, Sr. – Ceremonial Dance (from Songs Of Love, Luck, Animals, And Magic: Music Of The Yurok And Tolowa Indians)
Nyrabakiga – Cor Corora (Long Version) (from Cor Corora)
Eleh – Overt Too (from Living Space)
Talk break
The Cult Of Brighter Death Now – Promises Of Death (from No Decency)
Sea – Penumbra (from Impermanence)
Reverend Gary Davis – Devil’s Dream (from Pure Religion & Bad Company)
Unknown artist – In Praise Of Guru Nanak (from Religious Chants From India: Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu)
Talk break

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I Have An Addiction And I’m Selling My Record Collection

Open house update: I’m postponing the open house. New date TBA.

I recently admitted to myself and my family that I have a compulsive buying disorder (aka shopping addiction). I racked up multiple thousands of dollars in debt, opened multiple credit cards, etc. On average, I purchased one record every day for 11 years straight. In 2019 alone, I averaged $1000 every month on records. So I’m selling my records in an attempt to recover some of the money I spent but never had to begin with and in the hopes of moving toward having a healthier relationship with music that doesn’t involve addiction.

This post serves two purposes. First, I want to be open about my problems so maybe others having similar problems can feel less alone or less ashamed. The more that people talk about things like this, the less stigma there will be, and the easier it will be for addicts to seek help. The second purpose is to let you know how I’m selling my records and how you might be able to buy some.

I’ve been quietly selling the higher-end items on Discogs for a few weeks. There are still some for sale there. Everything there is $50 or higher. However, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running a distro shop out of my house, so what’s on Discogs now is likely all that will ever be for sale there.

Before selling everything to some record shop/dealer, I’d like to do some more direct sales with local acquaintances. So I’m going to be running an open house of sorts. Saturday, March 14th, from noon to 4. You can come to my house and shop through my collection. In general, prices will be 25% off the price of the lowest currently available on Discogs. I’ll take cash, PayPal, and Venmo.

I want to minimize the amount of time spent on packing and mailing records from online sales, which is why I limited my Discogs shop to more valuable items. However, if you’re not close enough to come to the open house, I will consider mailing records to you if it’s enough to make it worth my time.

I have a spreadsheet online that contains almost everything in my collection. It’s broken down by genre, albeit very broad, but it’s how the records are shelved in reality. You can take a look and see if i have anything you’d be interested in buying. I’m going to try to keep it updated by highlighting or removing items that have sold or aren’t available anymore.

I’m in Salem, Massachusetts but I’m not publishing my address publicly. For more info about my records and the open house, email recordaddict@antigravitybunny.com. If you can’t make the open house but still want to stop by, let me know and we can work out another time that works for you.

P.S. I still intend to continue A Thick Mist, it just won’t be a vinyl-only show.

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Episode 113

 
Did you know there’s a song with lyrics written/sung in Black Speech, the language spoken by the Nazgûl in Lord of the Rings? Because that’s fucking awesome. Also, the short-lived closing piece of martial industrial alongside Native American chants is pretty excellent imo.
 

Air date: February, 19, 2020

Background music: Unknown artists – Untitled locked grooves (from RRR500)

00:00:00 Talk break
Ilmestys – Demo 1 (from The Noose Hangs From Heaven)
Natural Snow Buildings – Kadja Bosou (from Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches)
Side B (from The Edge Of The Meadow)
00:32:30 Talk break
Catherine Madsen & The Greater Lansing Spinsters Guild – Menstruation Ritual / Kote (from The Patience Of Love)
Hama – Wassa (from Houmeissa)
Summoning – Mirdautas Vras (from Oath Bound)
Gandalf – The Keeper Of The Old Forest (from Visions)
01:02:01 Talk break
Aeoliah – Tien Fu: Heaven’s Gate / Mahavira (from The Light Of Tao)
Read by Zia Mohyeddin, translated by Swami Prabhavananda & Christopher Isherwood – Side B (excerpt) (from Selections From The Bhagavad-Gita: The Song Of God)
Bantu Glee Singers – Jim Takata Kanjani (from Mbube Roots: Zulu Choral Music From South Africa, 1930s-1960s)
01:29:15 Talk break
Agalloch – She Painted Fire Across The Skyline (from Pale Folklore)
Apoptose – Calanda (from Blutopfer)
William Horncloud – I’m Remembering You (from William Horncloud Sings Sioux Rabbit Songs)
01:56:55 Talk break

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Episode 112

 
New Panopticon, old Fred McDowell, Native American chants, new Post Scriptvm, old La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela, talking without a larynx, strange locked grooves, strange vocalizations, old fado, old Oliveros/Dempster drone, and all sorts of other cool shit.
 

Air date: February 12, 2020

Background music: Hototogisu & Burning Star Core – Side A (from Hototogisu & Burning Star Core)

00:00:00 Talk break
Panopticon – Rune’s Heart (from Nechochwen / Panopticon Split)
Mississippi Fred McDowell – You Drove Me From Your Door (from Long Way From Home)
00:27:20 Talk break
Pauline Oliveros & Stuart Dempster – Ione (from Deep Listening)
Unknown Native American musicians – Side B (from Chants Of The Native American Church Of North America)
Parabuccal Speech / Singing Voice (from Speech After The Removal Of The Larynx)
Post Scriptvm – Rat In The Crown (from Variola Vera)
Amalia Rodrigues – Sombra (from Haunting Fire Of The Fado)
00:57:50 Talk break
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela / The Theatre Of Eternal Music – Drift Study 14 VII 73 9 : 27 : 27 – 10 : 06 : 41 PM NYC (from Dream House 78’17”)
Roger Reynolds – Voicespace IV: The Palace (from Voicespace)
I. N. Marlor – Barbara Allen (from I’m On My Journey Home: Vocal Styles And Resources In Folk Music)
01:28:27 Talk break
Side B (excerpt) (from Tower Communications)
Unknown artist – Untitled locked groove (from RRR 100)
SubRosa – Stonecarver (from No Help From The Mighty Ones)
Terror Cell Unit – God Will Forgive Us But God Will Never Forgive You (from God Took Everything Away From Us & Now We Will Take Everything From You)
02:01:20 Talk break

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Episode 111

 
New Eluvium, new Turk Dietrich & Duane Pitre collab (First Tone), new Mamiffer, new Tim Macuga (HANL) project (Consumer), new age piano, Holocaust despair, Russian chorus, and Gullah sermons.
 

Air date: February 5, 2020

Background music: Russell Haswell – Nutrino Hunter (from 37 Minute Workout)

00:00:00 Talk break
Vril Jäger – Celestial Bliss (from Celestial Bliss)
Mamiffer – Hymn Of Eros (from The Brilliant Tabernacle)
00:26:00 Talk break
Eluvium – Virga I (from Virga I)
Virginia M. Geraty – Rebus Tuh Rebulashun (from Maum Chrish’ Chaa’stun. A Gullah Story By Virginia M. Geraty)
Jay Arrigo – The Joy Of Being (excerpt) (from Organic Synthesis)
Side B (excerpt) (from Nights Of Love In Lesbos)
00:59:50 Talk break
Anhedonist – Inherent Opprobrium (from Netherwards)
Sarah Gorby – Tzien Sich Machnes Far Tribene (Marching Toward Death) (from Songs Of The Ghetto)
Consumer – In Computers Pt. 1 (from In Computers)
01:31:50 Talk break
First Tone – Reaction 2 (from Reactions)
Piatnitsky Women’s Chorus – The Gusli Serenade (from Russian Choral Music)
James Roosevelt – Side B (from A Fireside Chat On Social Security And Medicare)
Fleurety – Fragmenter Av En Fortid (from Min Tid Skal Komme)
Orthrelm – Untitled 1 / 2 / 5 (from Trans Atlantic Asthma Attack)
01:59:40 Talk break

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Episode 110 – Top Metal Records Of 2019

 
I played a bunch of my favorite metal records. The full Top 27 list is here, so consider this episode a 2-hour highlight reel.
 

Air date: January 29, 2020

Background music: False – The Serpent Sting, The Smell Of Goat (from Portent)

00:00:00 Talk break
Mizmor – Cairn To God (from Cairn)
Astronoid – I Dream In Lines (from Astronoid)
Nusquama – De Aarde Dorst (from Horizon Ontheemt)
00:31:00 Talk break
Big Brave – Holding Pattern (from A Gaze Among Them)
Ragana – Waiting / The Tower (from We Know That The Heavens Are Empty)
00:57:40 Talk break
Il’Ithil – Mother Protect Her From Harm (from On This Day We Were Reborn In A Shroud Of Light And Shadow)
Tvar – Палач (Executioner) (from Tvar)
Night’s Threshold – Feasting In Your Fears (from Deep Within The Night)
Borda’s Rope – My Axe Soaked With Paikra’s Gore (from Across The Black Deltaruin)
01:31:00 Talk break
Sutekh Hexen – Torrential (from Sutekh Hexen)
Crawl – A Broken Lich (from Necrotic Fear)
Bull Of Apis, Bull Of Bronze – What Awaits Us (A Void Is But An Open Mouth) (from Offerings Of Flesh And Gold)
Sadness – I Want To Be With You (from I Want To Be There)
02:01:30 Talk break

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Episode 109 – Top Drone Records Of 2019

 
I played a bunch of my favorite drone records. The full Top 27 list is here, so consider this episode a 2-hour highlight reel.
 
Air date: January 22, 2020

Background music: Jessica Ekomane – Solid Of Revolution (from Multivocal)

00:00:00 Talk break
Mára – Sangre De Cristo I-VII (from Here Behold Your Own)
00:27:48 Talk break
Efrim Manuel Menuck & Kevin Doria – Fight The Good Fight (from are SING, SINCK, SING)
Kali Malone – Spectacle Of Ritual (from The Sacrificial Code)
Maria W Horn – Konvektion (from Epistasis)
00:59:46 Talk break
J. Pavone String Ensemble – By And Large (from Brick And Mortar)
William Engelen – Announcing (from Today, The Organ Has Played Beautifully Again)
Sarah Louise – Late Night Healing Choir (from Nighttime Birds And Morning Stars)
Jen Kutler – Meg Noe (from Disembodied)
01:25:53 Talk break
Microtub – Chronic Shift (from Chronic Shift)
Ellen Arkbro – Chords For Organ (from Chords)
Mondkopf – Growing (from How Deep Is Our Love?)
02:06:49 Talk break

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Top 27 Metal Records Of 2019

I had a harder time than usual making this list. I mostly attribute it to the fact that there were so many labels and artists who were both prolific and at the top of their game and I didn’t want to clog the list with the same artists and labels. So I held back on Gilead Media (as usual), Mystískaos/Amor Fati, Sentient Ruin/Cyclic Law, Eisenwald Tonschmiede, Knife Vision… in order to keep the list fair and interesting.

Instead of uploading a song for each record like I’ve done in the past, I made sure the album title links to a stream (all but one go to Bandcamp).

Let me know what I missed and what some of your favorites of the year were.

As always: Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks for making incredible music.
 

 

27. Serpent Column – Mirror In Darkness (Mystískaos)

Serpent Column, who previously found his home at Fallen Empire, continues to be one of my favorites from that realm (which has now morphed into Mystískaos). His black metal is far more intense and chaotic than most of his peers and his newest effort, Mirror In Darkness, brings the song lengths down to a more digestible size (the longest is only 7.5 minutes and the shortest is just under 2) which makes things feel more claustrophobic and frenzied. This is noisy and bleak, just the way I like it.

 
 

26. Liturgy – H.A.Q.Q. (YLYLCYN)

I love Liturgy. I don’t care what genre you want to use to categorize the music, it’s phenomenal, dizzyingly precise, and fucking peerless. This certainly isn’t going to win any back any fans who left after Renihilation, it does harken back to the Aesthetica sound but still a super fresh experience and will probably please whoever didn’t enjoy The Ark Work (no friends of mine let me tell you). I can’t get enough of their sound, especially those killer breakdowns like 3/4s of the way through the intro song “HAJJ,” in fact give me an entire record of Liturgy breakdowns and I’ll just listen to that until the end of my days.

 
 

25. Crawl – Necrotic Fear (self released)
2019 was the year I returned to Crawl. I listened to his first (?) demo years ago and was enthralled but for some reason never kept up with his output and eventually just kinda forgot about him. I came across a copy of All Who Oppose Me at Armageddon Records this past summer and was instantly teleported back to his decrepit doom noise. Cue Necrotic Fear‘s release and here we are with some seriously disgusting black sludge that serves no other purpose than to remind you of life’s tragedies.

 
 

24. Brutalism – The Charged Void (Cloister)
The endlessly prolific Terence Hannum (aka Axebreaker, part of Locrian and The Holy Circle, and an accomplished visual artist and author) is always working on some new awesome thing, and this year it was his “brutalist black metal” project, Brutalism. Brutalism is only slightly more black metal than Locrian is, which is: not much. Hannum weaves dark ambient and industrial power electronics into his repertoire, ending up with a thick atmosphere that’s both black and metal, so all of you black metal fans who like your black metal as fringe as possible, get your fill here. Hannum never disappoints and The Charged Void is no exception.

 
 

23. Olhava – Olhava (self released)
Two side-long pieces from an atmospheric post black metal solo project out of Russia and it’s easily one of my favorite debut full lengths this year. Self-described as “blackgaze” (which I withhold for a different kind of post black metal found later on this list) this has some excellent shoegazey riffs, soaring, angelic, and bittersweet. Not the most original stuff in the world but it’s really well executed and an absolute fucking pleasure to listen to. Also, a few days ago they released a drone version of this record called Never Leave Me Alone which is awesome.

 
 

22. Slow – Dantalion (Aural Music / Code666)
At last count, Déhà put out 7 solo records of new music in 2019 under different aliases. It felt a bit unfair to have too many of them on one list, so I did my best to choose one. Here it is: Slow’s Dantalion, the sixth Slow record of torturous Belgian funeral doom, clocking in just under 80 minutes, this is some of my favorite in the genre, the weight of this music is painful but I just want to crank the volume and I feel like Giles Corey, just fucking crush me. And if funeral doom isn’t your thing, the 16-minute instrumental closer is mostly just acoustic guitar & pianos that will tenderly tear your heart out. Who doesn’t love that?

 
 

21. Night’s Threshold – Deep Within The Night (Altare / Perverse Homage / Temple Of Wounds)
Here’s the one you can’t stream officially anywhere (that YT link is from a fan I think) and I actually can’t find out a fuckin thing about this guy. All I know is that Deep Within The Night is the first Night’s Threshold record and it fucking rules. Raw black metal like the good ol days where it sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well with the world’s shittiest TalkBoy. This is the kind of raw black metal that sounds like it could have been a Rhinocervs release, tortured howls, blown out drums, and murky shredding that all smears into a soupy plague of pain.

 
 

20. Nasheim – Jord Och Aska (Northern Silence)
I didn’t know about their 2014 debut Solens Vemod, so this record is the first I’ve heard of Nasheim (aka Erik Grahn) and holy hell this is some special stuff. He’s got all sorts of unexpected genres wrapped up in the Swedish black metal sound, like folk metal’s elegiac strings, doom’s plodding rhythms, post metal’s hypnotic and climactic riffs, making for two long songs (and a short one) that expand and collapse with ease, reaching for the skies in their grandeur and forging new paths in the expanse of the wild. This record is a fuckin journey and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to prepare for it.

 
 

19. Nusquama – Horizon Ontheemt (Eisenwald Tonschmiede / Haeresis Noviomagi)
This is Nusquama’s debut record, made up of people from Laster, Fluisteraars, and Turia. Their name is “derived from Latin and was initially used by Thomas More to refer to the necessity and impossibility of a hopeful alternative” and honestly that quote does more to describe this black metal than I could ever hope to. It’s perfect atmospheric black metal that does all the right things.

 
 

18. Black Earth – Gnawed Ritual Of Self Annihilation (Cyclic Law / Sentient Ruin)
This record almost doesn’t belong on this list because it’s so fucking ridiculous, the noise almost but not quite outweighs the metal in a WOLD-ian way, the Spanish trio enlisted over a dozen collaborators to come on board with strings and synths and saxes and make the most obscene noise metal imaginable, this is the sound of abject horror, sheer & utter chaos that threatens to destroy your speakers and/or ears if you turn away.

 
 

17. Tvar – Tvar (Anthrazite)
A killer debut out of Ukraine that’s far too short but seriously fucking good, blending post-hardcore, black metal, powerviolence, sludge, and everything else, Tvar rips out your throat and sets fire to your bleeding husk, this is fast and furious with blown out vocals, nonstop pummeling drums, and a wall of buzzing guitars, so so fucking good.

 
 

16. Dreadnought – Emergence (Profound Lore)
I stayed away from Dreadnought for years because their name and visual aesthetic didn’t appeal to me. Then I was listening to that Adult Swim metal compilation without really paying attention to who or what was playing. Then this one song came on and it immediately caught my ear, turns out it was Dreadnought. Then I sought out their new record, Emergence and was floored at how amazing and complex it was. Then I saw them open for Big Brave and was double floored because they were just incredible (just a small example: the drummer was playing saxophone and drums at the same time). So yeah, consider myself a fan. If you’ve stayed away like me and are into multi-genre extreme metal with proggy rhythms, non-traditional instruments (flute, mandolin, etc), both clean and growly female vocals, psych freakouts, doomed imagery, and the kitchen sink, then you definitely need this.

 
 

15. Borda’s Rope – Across The Black Deltaruin (Knife Vision)
One of two short sub-20-minute EPs of malefic raw black metal released by Borda’s Rope this year. No idea who they are but they’ve got this sound down pat, reminds me a bit of Sandworm where it’s not complicated, it’s some killer riffs that are occasionally melodic, straightforward rhythms that alternate between a basic kick/snare and a blastbeat kick/snare, and excruciatingly acidic vocals. This is the polar opposite of the previous record in this list (Dreadnought’s Emergence), everything stripped down to the bare essentials, then infused with pure misery and scorched to oblivion.

 
 

14. Profetus – The Sadness Of Time Passing (Avantgarde Music)
I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on the fantastic Finnish funeral doom of Profetus for the past decade. The Sadness Of Time Passing is their newest and the first time I’ve listened to them and dear lord this is the kind of doom I’ve been needing in my life to fill the void when I need something to supplement Bell Witch. This is massive and epic with an impeccable balance between depressive and bittersweet vibes, with organs galore, clean vocals, and side-long tracks that don’t overstay their welcome, this is everything I want from a funeral doom record.

 
 

13. Body Void – You Will Know The Fear You Forced Upon Us (Crown & Throne / Dry Cough)
Nothing is heavier than Body Void. This is a record that, when you put it on, Satan’s like “damn dude chill out.” Crushing, monolithic, colossal, mammoth, these words piss their pants in fear when Body Void comes to town. And this is fucking angry music. Angry at garbage humans who treat other people and the planet alike as if they’re superior. “Everything is yours / Toxic, entitled / Raised with / Transparent obstructions / Keep us out with male violence / You’re not the default human / Waiting for appeasement / This is old / You think you’re owed / Fuck that shit / The bodies of others / Aren’t yours by right / Leave us alone / Castrate rapists / Instead of putting / Everything on women / We need to believe / We would rather abuse victims / Than risk a man’s reputation / We are done.” The world will burn and Body Void will be the soundtrack.

 
 

12. Sadness – I Want To Be There (Avantgarde Music / Flowing Downward)
The super prolific Sadness gives us another dose of his DSBM brilliance. This definitely isn’t for everyone since I’m sure some may find the vocals obnoxious, but I fuckin love em, they’re exactly what this brand of blackgaze needs, tortured and true, and the sound is full of that majestic Sunbather euphoria, an aesthetic I can always get behind. I’ll take this sad bastard screamo bliss over Blood Incantation any day of the week.

 
 

11. HWWAUOCH – Into The Labyrinth Of Consciousness (Amor Fati)
Hands down my favorite band in the Prava Kollektiv, the insanity of HWWAUOCH knows no bounds, they make wholly unique black metal that’s cacophonic, a dizzying maelstrom of wrath that’s noisy as fuck and absolutely insane, this is the stuff you listen to when you’re dulled by even the weirdest of the weird black metal, HWWAUOCH probably knew what black metal meant at some point in their lives but have since circled down a pit so perverted and depraved that the phrase no longer holds any meaning to them.

 
 

10. L’Acephale – L’Acephale (Eisenwald Tonschmiede)
It’s been 10 goddamn years since these twisted geniuses have put out a full length record and while we’ve have a smattering of EPs and splits since 2009, none of that compares to this epic monstrosity, 70+ minutes of bizarre black metal that is unequaled in sound and scope, they’ve brought in a lot more elements this time (spoken word, black folk) and take their already unreasonably awesome music to a whole new level of perfection.

 
 

9. Bull Of Apis, Bull Of Bronze – Offerings Of Flesh And Gold (A Moment Of Clarity)
Here we fucking go, the debut for the history books, incredible black metal that’s full of righteous hatred toward “those that only know how to consume and those that live off the backs of the downtrodden.” Three long songs of full on fury, the first two with lengthy Phurpa-esque dark ambient intros and outros, the last a 22-minute masterpiece that lets Bull Of Apis showcase their versatility, bringing in a cascading ominous riff around 75% in that sounds like its straight out of an NES boss lair, highly appropriate considering some of the lyrics: “A funeral for all these gods. / Set the fires, hear the screams. / Applewood, ash, and flesh. / The pyres will burn forever. / We will melt the thrones to cast bowls and spears. / So man may know the true god, themselves. / And none shall ever go hungry again.”

 
 

8. Sutekh Hexen – Sutekh Hexen (Cyclic Law / Sentient Ruin)
With their last full lengths being a live record in 2017 and a live collaboration in 2014, this their first normal record in 7 years and honestly it’s my favorite thing they’ve done since their first two LPs Luciform and Larvae where they had an almost entirely different lineup. These guys do black noise like no one else and this new self-titled record lets them unleash their power unbridled, unlimited, a new world of torment that’s as raw and tumultuous as their best work, delving deep into the black ambient abyss and exploding holes in the fabric of the universe with pandemoniac lamentations. If you loved Sutekh Hexen’s early work but stopped caring after 2012 or so, then this is where you return and rekindle that devotion. If this is your first experience, I envy you.

 
 

7. Il’Ithil – On This Day We Were Reborn In A Shroud Of Light And Shadow (Vendetta)
I’m kinda surprised I only discovered Il’Ithil this year. It’s Blake Green’s (Wolvserpent) black metal solo project (not his other solo project, the drone-focused Aelter). I love Wolvserpent and their previous incarnation Pussygutt, and somehow the 2015 Il’Ithil release Ia’Winde escaped me. So here’s On This Day… and here’s me freaking out because this sounds like if Wolverspent were just black metal instead of experimental blacked doom drone etc. Two side-long pieces of breathtaking atmospheric black metal, bleak and cold, weird and calamitous. I think everything Green touches is gold, but even if I try not to be biased here, this is fucking phenomenal.

 
 

6. Dead To A Dying World – Elegy (Profound Lore)
I’ve got a big soft spot for dramatic doom with violins (RIP SubRosa), although Dead To A Dying World are way more than just doom with violins, their aesthetic is more of a blackened sludgy doom with heavy post metal elements and this time they’ve brought in a few pals like Jarboe and Dylan Desmond (Bell Witch) on vocals, Thor Harris for additional percussion, and some cello courtesy of Tim Duffield. Elegy is a huge fucking record with an emotional and sonic weight that defies its mere sub-50-minute running time, DTADW are masters at conjuring all sorts of sublimity and melancholy through blistering blast beats and False-ian growls, Tolkien folk metal interludes and crushing crescendoes. I can’t not love this.

 
 

5. Clouds Collide – They Don’t Sleep Anymore (War Crime)
Here’s some of that amazing shoegazey post metal that almost but not quite belongs in the black metal or shoegaze categories. Clouds Collide (aka Chris Pandolfo) rides that line and somehow manages to stay away from the blackgaze tag. There’s some wobbly guitars that remind me a lot of Asobi Seksu and then it effortlessly wraps in turn-of-the-century emo and again some Russian Circles with blast beats. Even though this is clearly an intensely personal record for Pandolfo, it’s endlessly enjoyable with bittersweet melodies, pained post hardcore vocals, and song lengths that offer just the right amount of growing room.

 
 

4. Big Brave – A Gaze Among Them (Southern Lord)
Everyone’s gotten on the Big Brave train now and I couldn’t be happier. The new drummer (Loel Campbell) hasn’t changed their sound much, with Robin’s & Mathieu’s apocalyptic and impossible guitar explosions alternating front seat with Robin’s shouting wail, which just fucking crushes me. It feels like there’s less breathing room on this record compared to their previous ones, just as massive but a little more dense, which is fine by me. There’s no other band that sounds remotely like Big Brave, so comparisons don’t matter, they’re inimitable and fucking perfect.

 
 

3. Astronoid – Astronoid (Blood Music)
Just because this isn’t at the number one spot like their debut Air was in 2016 doesn’t mean this record doesn’t kick all the asses. Like some heavenly collaboration between Alcest and Mew (neither of whom I really care about), this is the least black black metal you’ll ever hear with soaring falsetto vocals, infinite layers of harmonic bliss, and the most shreddingest riffs, I can and have listened to this on repeat for hours upon hours. Astronoid are taking metal to unseen heights and eschewing every pigeonhole known to man.

 
 

2. Ragana – We Know That The Heavens Are Empty (self released)
The shortest record on this list at just over 14 minutes, but it’s Ragana so it’s gonna be on my list. I can’t love Ragana any more, the tragedy and anger, the anguished screams alongside distorted riffs, the thick silence between doomed resonating tears. The all-too-short moments you spend listening will expose you to both frenzied dirges and elegiac black metal. I almost can’t handle how good this is. My body would crumble if it were any better.

Side note: if you’re like me and can never get enough Ragana, check out their split with Thou, their side is even longer than 14 minutes.

 
 

1. Mizmor – Cairn (Gilead Media)
I don’t think there’s anything that can be said about Cairn that hasn’t already been said by Liam (Mizmor), critics, or other fans. I can only say that Mizmor resonates with me so much more than any other music. This sound is in my core.

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