Seedy cases

The Heathen Crusade was bad-ass. As promised, I will give you the details soon. I also need to rearrange those links over on the right. And I need to finish up my end-of-year letter for 2005. But right now, I want to talk about one of the best parts of hitting these all-day metal events: the vendors. First of all, if you only go to see music performed live when you have an assigned seat that you purchased months in advance, you're missing a crucial slice of the experience. At a smaller show - I don't mean setting up a mic in the corner of a library or coffee shop, but a "club" show as opposed to an arena job - you have to stand, but you can also get closer to the stage, to the performers and to their touring mechanisms.

It's a well-known argument for mp3 sharing that very few artists make money from album sales (people like Mariah or Kanye), and that if you want to directly support someone who can't recoup a major label's promotional expenditures by selling millions of discs and ringtone downloads, you're better off buying a concert ticket and some merchandise. The smaller the show, the less expensive these usually are, and you have a greater chance of handing your dough directly to a band member. You may even run into them hanging out in front of their van outside. Plus, at genre-specific events such as the Heathen Crusade, you've often got shops and labels hawking CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, etc. at reduced prices, and you can often make a killing. For instance, last weekend a Minnesotan I knew from when he ran a death/black metal shop on Lawrence Avenue in Chicago was standing next to me when he found an original Wrong Again Records pressing of "Vittra" by Naglfar (the Swedish Naglfar, not the Norwegian one linked a few weeks ago). Good luck finding that for less than $30 on eBay.

Me, I came home with three shirts which cost less than two you'd get at a stadium show. Some dudes handed me two free CDs, one a decent sampler of ultra-underground death metal I would never hear otherwise. Finally, I picked up some albums I'd wanted, all in the $10-$12 range, a steal considering the only stores near me which might carry these titles (Tower, Record Breakers) notoriously jack up the prices on indie releases. Read on for an alphabetical look at my purchases.
Benighted Leams - "Ferly Centesms": I love weird black metal, and I've wanted to hear this obscure one-man band for some time now because reviews always mention that this Kurtagic guy makes some incredibly bizarre, polarizing stuff. So I snagged this 2004 release, consisting of material "composed" back in '97 and '98, and while it's certainly not run-of-the-mill, I'm not especially thrilled by it. There's a difference between experimental form and sloppy formlessness, and I can't really tell which side Benighted Leams means to come down on. This stuff is incredibly random, with little in the way of melody or repetition to differentiate one track from the next. The major sound component is a very fuzzy guitar tone which tends to "sizzle" when he saws the strings too much, and occasionally he'll just stop playing for a while in the middle of a track. I think there are keyboards in these breaks, but they're mixed too low to hear over the analog hiss, even on headphones. Likewise, the spoken/shrieked vocals are so obscured this may as well be an instrumental album, and the drums (machine?), when they're audible at all, sound like they were recorded from the next room. The only thing I can remember after several listens is that part of the track "Orphny of Arain Blood" (if that's a white power thing, Kurtagic's impenetrable Ye Olde Englishe lyrickes totally obscure the point) sounds like "Hava Nagila" turned into a crawling doom riff. "Ferly Centesms" seriously sounds like a new band's rehearsal space demo, not the third LP by a label head. I'm all for unpredictability, improvisation and unorthodox recording techniques, but BL is a bit too much for anyone but the most jaded. I'll keep it around, but since I still like the semblance of songs at the moment, if I need to hear something in this vein I will probably go back to old Fleurety or Ved Buens Ende.
Enoch - "Graveyard Disturbances": Finally! Like the mighty Zombi, this is two guys paying tribute to horror movie music from the golden age - late '70s, early '80s. Considering one of them is Mirai Kawashima of Sigh fame, the other his Necrophagia bandmate and reknowned splatter movie afficionado Killjoy, I of course wanted to hear whatever creepy synthesizer madness was in store. And, whoa, is it ever messed up. While Zombi's a pretty straightforward - although damned good - Goblin worship act, Enoch has an avant-garde streak, with a more eclectic approach (they also claim Ennio Morricone, Fabio Frizzi and John Carpenter as influences) and various dissonant noises mixed in to add aural discomfort. Sometimes they drift into symphonics or soundscapes with chilly, layered sci-fi tones. Other times they utilize a lone piano theme reminiscent of those dreary, smeary, TV-movie-looking supernatural pictures that proliferated in the '70s. I like to deride the timidity of such flicks by pointing out the amount of flute music in them, but there are certainly no flutes here, and the piano sounds like it was recorded underwater. The Wizard of Gore said he heard an influence from the "Silent Hill" game soundtracks, but I can't verify this. All in all, not a disappointment in the slightest. I look forward to the promised sequel.
Green Carnation - "The Acoustic Verses": The first two tracks on this were previewed on the EP the band released at Day of the Equinox, one bopping away at a gentle stomp, the other a moody folk number with sparse, intricate guitar and sweet vocals which remind me of Nick Drake. The rest follows suit, allowing the Norwegian art metal collective to indulge its contemplative side. The biggest attraction of "Verses" is its platform for Kjetil Nordhus' versatile voice, which here ranges from a delicate croon to the more lively style he employed for much of last year's cock-rocky "The Quiet Offspring," where his nasal 'tude eerily sounds like Helloween's Andi Deris. I like this album better, as its subdued songs and rich textures sound more comfortable. There's no surprises, as it's very similar to the mellower material Green Carnation has written since its (recording) inception. Still, it's a nice respite from the pounding mayhem I generally prefer and another worthy chapter in the ever-morphing story of the great GC. The band is coming back to tour the States soon, but after hearing this release, the lack of a Chicago date is even more disappointing. Maybe it's already time to schedule another road trip?
Shining - "The Darkroom Sessions": There's one table that's always at these festivals. These dudes sell CDs for $10, or three for $25. A bunch of it's crap death metal and derivative black metal with illegible graphic design. But they've always got something cool, and I can always expect to walk away $25 poorer. Their selection was thinner this time... I was really hoping to pick up the second Ghoul album, but no dice. So this was my third selection after the Enoch and the Benighted Leams, a bootleg(?) of demos and rehearsal tracks by loved/hated Swedish "suicide" metallers Shining. Typical for the band, the disc is six tracks and more than 50 minutes long, but atypically, only the last song has Kvarforth's vocals. So what you get here are lo-fi instrumentals, and it's a case of a crappy "necro" sound working well for the droning, metronomic, nearly post-rock style Shining plays. I don't have the albums these tracks ended up on, so I have no studio comparison. But from what I can tell, older Shining is all pretty samey, melodic and hypnotic black/doom with an awesomely degraded guitar tone and miserable atmosphere. Like Italy's Forgotten Tomb, they remind me of old Katatonia stripped to the bare essentials, or maybe Bethlehem before they went all super-weird. If you don't like screaming vocals, this would be a good underground metal record to check out, because there aren't many. I'm glad I picked this over "Through Years of Oppression", which was also on the table.
Woods of Ypres – "Against the Seasons: Cold Winter Songs from the Dead Summer Heat": Recently remastered and reissued with new artwork, WoY's 2002 demo is indeed better than many professional metal LPs today. Then-drummer and current bandleader David Gold wrote these five tracks on his own, and although they have fewer acoustic sections and a bit more black metal speed in them than does his later material, this fits the demo's self-contained "winter" theme. He had two band members at the time, and here these guys split the vocals between standard harsh and brilliantly morose clean singing. Titles such as "The Shams of Optimism" or "Awaiting the Inevitable" point to Gold's bleak outlook, which is not so much a generic goth "woe is me" as a genuine portrait of disappointment and loss described in specific, very personal terms. The result's akin to older Opeth music with newer Katatonia lyrics. Gold's heartsick words are both direct and evocative, with "A Meeting Time and Place" having particular relevance for me at the moment. Best of all, none of these songs showed up on their amazing debut full-length, making it a worthy selection for anyone who would seek it out. WoY are quickly becoming one of my favorite North American bands... check them out, won't you?

You're a Romantic Kisser

For you, kissing is all about feeling the romance. You love to kiss under the stars or by the sea. The perfect kiss involves the perfect mood. It's pretty common for kisses to sweep you off your feet.

What Kind of Kisser Are You?