Category Archives: Rants

A not-so-new newcomer

Coincidentally, today seems to be Norway day here on DoM.

I’ve superficially searched our archives and haven’t encountered the following name: Leprous.

Three albums already, starting with 2006 (their 2004 EP notwithstanding), with the latest, called Bilateral, released earlier this year. I have only recently stumbled upon them, and I think they’re interesting enough to grant them a spot on a massively popular metal site such as ours. They are currently touring Europe supporting Amorphis, so maybe after hitting the jump and hearing an example of what they do you’ll be tempted to check’em out.

Nektromantheon – Divinity of Death

Nekromantheon were formed in 2005 in some dismal corner of Norway, so I apologize for jumping on their bandwagon this late in the day, however I saw them play at the Live Evil bash at The Underworld in Camden (organized by Fenriz) and they absolutely blasted, so since then I’ve been meaning to pick up their debut album Divinity of Death, and now I finally have it.

When Slayer changed my musical perceptions all those years ago, showing me that there is indeed beauty in brutality I fell in love with thrash – it just seemed to tickle a part of my brain which is rarely tickled by any other form of music. But that was eons ago and over the years Decent thrash has become harder to find than rocking horse shit. Until now.

Divinity of Death really is rather good, and for a debut album it’s even better – yes I know they’ve had an EP and a couple of splits out, but I never heard them and this is their first full length product. Needless to say if you like thrash, you will like this album.

I don’t want to sound picky, but if Divinity of Death has one teensy weensy fault it’s that the singer has a very… Shall we say unvaried approach to his art. Doesn’t really matter as the album is only like 30 minutes longn and what he does he does really well, but it would be nice if he varied his approach just a tad, if only to prove that he can.

A jolly fine album, which easily warrants:

Reading material for metalheads

Sabbath’s music was a cornerstone of my existence growing up, so reading Tony Iommi’s autobiography as soon as it came out was a no brainer.

Overall it’s a pretty entertaining read, and I would recommend it to other like minded metalheads, even though in places it has rather scant detail. However, considering the Vast quantity of Charlie consumed by Tony over the years perhaps it’s understandable that his memory is a tad vague.

Obviously we all love the classic lineup, but Tony Martin was in Sabbath for 10 years (the same length of time as Ozzy’s first stint) so it would have been nice to read more about his involvement, unfortunately his tenure in the band coincided with a lot of hassles and even more drug use so I guess from Tony’s perspective what he’s written is all he can recount.

I remember seeing Jasper Carrot singing in a band on a TV clip once, and as the camera panned round I could have sworn I saw Bev Bevan playing drums and Tony on guitar, but the clip ended and I guessed I was imagining it, so it was nice to read in the book that they were indeed in a band (called Belch) and that they did play on TV.

So as the Ayatollah Khomeini said after reviewing The Satanic Verses, “A thundering good read.”

Lulu vs. Thirteen

Well, since Lulu and Thirteen (sorry, I couldn’t spell it the way Dave wants if I tried) have the same release date, I thought that the clip below, which is a radio rip and I hope it won’t go down in 2 days time, should help settle the score.

Of course, I’m fully aware that:

1) Lulu is going to sell heaps better than Thirteen
2) “Shut the fuck up already, faggot, Lulu is not even a Metallica album”
3) I’m a lobotomized ape who couldn’t understand intellectual music and profound lyrical meaning to save his life. Nonetheless, in my extremely biased book, Dave wins hands down this time.

In fact, there’s no contest at all. Yes, I’m self absorbed, pompous, thickheaded, a simpleton and all that… But however hard I tried, I am not a table.

Mine are the drums of God

A recurring theme likely to manifest in my posts is that I’m old, bitter, and, if I had a lawn, I’d want these stretched-lobed whippersnappers to get the fuck off of it immediately. I’m not trying to say that things were better back in my day… but if we’re speaking objectively, they definitely were. Especially when it comes to drums in metal.

Now that our fear of imperfection has eliminated the drummer’s groove by snapping every hit to the grid, disregarded their tone by replacing all their hits with samples, and crushed all dynamics through excessive compression/limiting, what do we have left but glorified drum machines? Do drummers even have personalities anymore? (If you know any drummers you already know the answer to this) Can anyone even tell modern drummers apart from one another?

Back in my day, not only did drummers have to carry their drums on their back as they walked 5 miles uphill through snow to the studio, they also had to *GASP* actually play songs all the way through in order to achieve a final take. Not just get ‘close enough’ for the producer/engineer to fix later. ‘Recording’ songs has given way to ‘constructing’ songs and what’s been lost is the sound of a human being absolutely destroying a drumkit in a room. It may not be “perfect” but imperfection is what makes it human.

With this in mind, let’s talk about one of the best metal drum performances/productions to ever be released… After the jump!