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hankwritten · 3 years

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Part of the DontNeedADiscord Pride Week, Day 6: Parade

“I’m really sorry Administrator,” I coughed into my tissue. “It really is- achoo-! It really is that bad. But at least it came after I got all that work done yesterday, right?”

The slightly pixelated Administrator on the other end of the Zoom call did not chime in in agreement. She narrowed her eyes, and I swallowed, hoping the sweat beading down the side of my face added to the charade.

After several tense seconds, the Administrator said, “very well. But I expect you early tomorrow morning to make up for the lost contracts.”

“Oh d-definitely,” I sniffed. “I’m sure it’ll be c-cleared up by tomorrow,”

“It better be. Administrator out.”

Her face hung frozen for a half second before the call dropped, replaced by a black void on my screen. I cautiously closed the webcam cover, just in case.

Then, I flew into a frenzy, wiping off the makeup I’d used put fake bags under the eyes. From my nose I removed two stubs of tissue, and took in a glorious breath now that I was freed from stuffy-nostrils. The sweat was real though. I’d never lied to the Administrator before, never to her face, and the sudden adrenaline as I realized what I’d just pulled off threatened to jitter me out of my skin.

“Yes!” I said, punching the air. “Ha! I did it!”

The exultation was short lived, as my head whipped to where my laptop was still sitting open. The call was over but…better be extra safe and power that off before I go.

I changed out of the grubby, sick-girl pajamas, and went to my closet. Habitually, my hand went to one of my numerous purple tops, but stopped just short of the hanger. Was this what I was going to wear, today of all days? Same boring work clothes I did for the other three hundred sixty-four days a year? I drew my hand back and frowned.

Screw it. Who knew when the next time I’d work up the nerve to do this again?

I began shoving hangers aside, heavy with their deep whooshing as I sorted through dozens and dozens of painfully similar button downs. Sometimes there was even a dress! How original! So I just kept searching and searching until-

There! Right at the back: an orange Hawaiian shirt I’d worn exactly once, back when I’d been forced to take my government mandated vacation. I pulled it on with gusto.

The tangles came free from my hair—I hadn’t brushed it yet that morning in order to give it that “sickly” look—and then I was in front of the bathroom mirror. Biting my lip, I looked down at the facepaints I’d bought on an impulse, thinking at the time I could paint little flags on my cheeks, but now that the time was upon me I wondered if it was too much. Already I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, how much more wild was I willing to get?

But, well, since I’d already bought them…

Fifteen minutes later, I examined myself in the mirror again, and gave a relieved sigh. Hadn’t managed to smudge a thing!

Sensible shoes, my bus pass, and then I was off.

The parade was vibrant, so much better in person instead of looking at YouTube clips later and sighing wistfully. My first day off to coincide with it ever, and all I’d had to do was a little office subterfuge. Now, as long as I didn’t end up in any photos, no one would know I’d been here at all! Everything was going to be absolutely-

“-Oof, entschuldigung, I did not see you there.” The man who’d just bumped into me adjusted his glasses. “Miss Pauling?”

“Medic?” I gaped. “What are you doing here?”

“I am here for the parade of course,” he said, gesturing around. He was dressed for it, his usual vest replaced with one of horizontal rainbow stripes. “As are you, I assume.”

“Yes but,” I stumbled over my words. “What about work?”

“Ah, the Voice? I simply told her I was sick.”

I felt my spirits sink. “Did you now.” I rubbed my face, only remembering to avoid the facepaint at the last second. “It’s fine. Great to see you actually. As long as no one else recognizes us I’m sure we’re-”

“Doktor! Miss Pauling!”

“Aw jeez.”

Pushing through the crowd to greet them was the Heavy Weapons Guy—even worse, Engie appeared to be tagging along behind him, discussing a brochure with a unicorn-costume clad Pyro.

“Did not expect to see you here,” Heavy said as he made it to our side of the street. “Thought little Pauling must work.”

“Could say the same to you guys!” I said, irritation creeping into my voice. “Don’t tell me you all just played hookey together?”

“Naw,” Engie replied. “Didn’t know any of these fellers were coming until we all ran into each other.”

“This is bad,” I began to titter. “If we’re here, then who’s at the office?”

“…Is this a bad time to tell you that Demo ‘n Soldier are coming at us from down the street?”

I whipped around. Sure enough, there they were: Soldier with rainbow-striped American flag tied around his shoulders, and Demo with his afro dyed a deep commitment to purple.

“Ahhhhh!” I couldn’t help but let out. “Why did you all have to skip work at the same time as me?”

“We all wanted to come to the parade, lass.” Then, noting my distress, Demo added with a wink, “don’t fret! The old woman won’t know a thing. Currently, I’m home in bed with the measles.”

“The measles,” I deadpanned. I turned to our now rather obstructing group. “And what did the rest of you say?”

“Gingivitis,” Soldier offered.

“Chicken pox.”

“Halitosis.”

“Cat Scratch Fever,” Scout said, taking a bite from a hot dog.

“Scout!” I demanded. “When did you get here?”

He shrugged. “Don’t blame me, I was just following Spy, seeing why he was sneaking around and crap.”

“And I told you,” Spy’s voice replied, “that I was merely following the bushman and seeing what he was up to.”

“Wankers.”

Maybe I should just stop turning around. Then my coworkers would have to stop randomly appearing behind me, right?

“That’s literally everyone,” I berated them all. This time, when I rubbed my palms under my glasses, I did end up smudging the paint, streaks of white and pink running up my cheeks. “Uhg, we’re so screwed. What is the Administrator going to think when she walks in to the office and sees-”

“Absolutely no one?”

Okay. It looked like I’d have to turn around in a horrified manner one more time.

The Administrator parted the crowd around her, not the least because her shoulder pads threatened to stab anyone who got too close. Everyone shrank before her, except for Heavy maybe because I don’t think he has it in him to shrink before anyone.

“Helen,” I started, then cleared my throat. “I guess you uh…took a guess where we all went huh?”

“That I did.” She blinked down at her employees. “I must say I am disappointed. Of course, I expect something like this from these idiots, but from you Miss Pauling? Couldn’t even engineer a decent structural emergency in order to justify shirking your work. At the very least you could have flooded the building, or released feral opossums into the ventilation.”

“HEY NOW,” Soldier barked from the back of the group. “Have you been reading my itinerary? Because it very clearly says SOLDIER’S DAY PLANNER, DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU ARE SOLDIER OTHERWISE I WILL KILL YOU!”

“…Are you saying you wanted me to fabricate an emergency?” I asked, perplexed.

“It would at least have been more convincing than nine separate emails from my employees, all claiming different maladies. One of which was,” she looked at her phone, “‘A Case of the Mondays’.”

“It is actually proven that worker productivity is up to thirty-three percent lower at the beginning of the week,” Medic justified.

The Administrator stared at him. “It’s Thursday.”

“Alright, alright,” Engineer butt in. “I think we can all agree that we may have messed up a little. Told a few harmless lies about medical issues we may or may not have. But that ain’t exclusive to Miss P here! We all’ve been lying ‘round here, and it ain’t fair to single her out.”

“The laborer is right,” Spy agreed. “The blame should fall on all of us.”

One by one, to my amazement, the others spoke up, or nodded in agreement. When I glanced up at the Administrator again, she had an eyebrow raised, as though I had somehow orchestrated this as well.

“I could instruct you all to return to work, you know,” she said. “It is only fair that your recrimination should begin there. However…”

“You showed up, saw how sick it was, and decided you’re going to hang out and eat hot dogs with us instead?” Scout asked.

She glared at him. “I still have work that must be done before the end of the day. But, it appears Miss Pauling has tripled her workload in the week leading up to today, she has effectively removed any urgency from the rest of your duties. Thanks to her foresight, you are technically not needed at the office today.”

“Aih! Way to go lassie!” Demo said, squeezing me around the shoulders until only my toes were on the ground. Similar congratulations were offered, everyone getting in a pat on the back.

“You inspire great loyalty, Miss Pauling,” she said. “But do not let this happen again.” With that she turned, and disappeared into the revelry.

“Wow,” I said. “I think I’m going to have a heart attack now.”

“Have one when the parade is over!” Soldier demanded. “Look! Floats!”

There certainly were floats. As the chatter died down, and everyone celebrated their good luck, I was left standing among my friends with a new appreciation, these people who’d stuck by me when it’d counted. They were a bit of a colorful bunch but, hey, who better to celebrate pride with than them?

#dnadprideweek2021 #tf2 fanfiction

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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August 2020

Black Crown Initiate - Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape

Black Crown Initiate are one of those bands who have so much going for them in terms of their potential and so much about them on paper sounds like exactly the kind of thing I could nerd the hell out over, yet neither of the band’s previous two albums really made that connection with me or showed themselves to be anything other than respectful substitutes for albums like Cynic’s Focus, or Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name, or Opeth’s Watershed. Like The Wreckage of Stars and Selves We Cannot Forgive, Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape draws moments of exceptional strength from modern metalcore to produce a few highlights such as “Years in Frigid Light”, “Sun of War”, “Death Comes in Reverse”, and the closing solo of “Holy Silence”, but its awkward balancing of softer passages and smoother clean vocals just serves as a reminder of how easy Mikael Åkerfreldt makes it look. The band again certainly showcase what great talent they have and that they have the chops to hold their own with this sound, but until they take their compositional style beyond Soen-plus-death-metal, they will have a hard time escaping the shadows of the big names in their field.

6/10

Misery Signals - Ultraviolet

Misery Signals’ output has slowed with the NWOAHM it was borne from, but after only gracing the previous decade with a single full-length (2013’s ironically titled Absent Light) with members preoccupied with side projects, the band re-united its original line-up with long-absent vocalist Jesse Zaraska and a reignited commitment to the phased-out version of melodic metalcore that they sported at the movement’s height of cultural relevance. There are some bright spots of greater melodic vocals invigoration like “Some Dreams” and the quick “Through Vales of Blue Fire”, but Ultraviolet sounds as out of place in this decade as it would be obscured into the background fifteen years ago, serving less as a testament to the glory of 2000’s metalcore and more as a reminder of how saturated the movement became with recycled material.

5/10

Year of the Knife - Internal Incarceration

I missed out on it last year, but Year of the Knife put out their debut album, Ultimate Aggression, last February, a half-hour ripper of no-nonsense metalcore that embodies the current movement that has fixated on reinventing metalcore’s grooves while staying in line with its central aggression. While Ultimate Aggression indeed embodied its title thoroughly, I was hoping it would serve as a filling appetizer for the main course of the group’s sophomore album, Internal Incarceration. After such a promising debut, I have to say Internal Incarceration is a bit underwhelming. The band still flex their hardcore muscles to the point of bulging out of their t-shirts and provide plenty of slam-inducing groove, which there are a few especially good highlights of on “Nothing to Nobody” and the title track. Unlike the creative grooves Ultimate Aggression teased an expansion upon, Internal Incarceration is a more generic display of strength, which makes for this longer listen unfortunately much less exciting. It’ll still get the kids in the pit swinging and kicking once that gets re-instituted, but they sound more like your average local hardcore band who heard Knocked Loose than an up-and-coming powerhouse of the genre.

6/10

Mesarthim - Planet Nine & The Degenerate Era

I feel like such a fool for taking this long to catch on to the prolific Australian project Mesarthim, whose expansive catalog has been all over Bandcamp in the five years since the band’s first release, with this year’s The Degenerate Era being their fifth full-length and Planet Nine being their seventh EP! I may be late, but I made it to the party to see what Mesarthim is all about. I’ve seen a few bands on Bandcamp tag their sound with the “void metal” label, and of the bands I’ve heard, I’ve not really found it to mean much beyond atmospheric black metal with a bit of a space-related aesthetic associated with it, but after hearing Mesarthim, I can see now that this migh be a genuine sub-genre branch of ambient black metal, the subtle but fearless incorporation of shimmering, chime-like electronics and synthetic choral elements really does evoke the vastness of space and the divine wonder of the cosmos. And the band’s two-song EP release this year, Planet Nine, definitely captures that with its bright melodic progressions and expansive synthetic whirring. It’s definitely very atmosphere-based, very dependent on the lushness of the sounds, which are unfortunately hampered in a few of the softer spots by some messy production, but the band’s smooth transitions do help them make up for the flaws in production quality (which I’m amazed they haven’t ironed out this many albums in), and the fixation on gorgeous atmospheres and intentional transitions makes me strongly suspect they take some notes from fellow celestially themed black metal ambient innovators Alrakis.

7/10

Clocking in at around 44 minutes, The Degenerate Era isn’t that much longer than its EP co-release this year, nor is it all too disparate in style, although the band do dip into more traditionally heavy black metal territory here and there, but otherwise it’s lots of expansive synthetic orchestral elements, lots of spacy guitar-playing, and a pretty gutsy dose of the kind of electronics that would send any already-squirming black metal purist over the top into a full blown temper tantrum. The greater range of emotional diversity on this LP in comparison to Planet Nine puts it a little bit higher for me, although both have a similar appeal and are indeed definitely worth checking out.

7/10

In the Company of Serpants - LUX

In the Company of Serpants continue their culinary tinkering with the latest melting pot of metallic styles on LUX, stirring various chunks of 90’s New Orleans sludge, modern death metal a la Rivers of Nihil, and even late-80’s thrash into a broth of atmospheric post-metal (which serves as a gratifying climax specifically to the opening track, “The Fool’s Journey”) that may not be the most groundbreaking dish in the planet, but the freshness of whose ingredients and the skill of whose chefs comes through in the good consistency of the project. I liken it to a soup in that it’s based heavily on atmospheric post-metal and that it’s hard to get a bite of this album without it, and that there are various pieces of meatier genres in there usually popping in one spoonful at a time. Personally, it’s a soup I enjoy and one I think anyone who enjoys some dynamic post-metal or likes their atmospheric metal with a spiritual feel would enjoy.

7/10

Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction

Terminal Nation are a five-piece from Little Rock, Arkansas who make their full-length debut through the excellent upstart curators 20 Buck Spin, and the band’s aptly titled debut meshes death and doom metal in a flurry more angrily condemning than the average record in the field, occasionally unable to keep from spiraling into grinding blasts of fury in their rage against the capitalism whose very design has oppressed so many and ushered in ecological catastrophe and a new wave of fascism. 2020 has made political commentators out of many, and Terminal Nation are not shy about where they stand and where they place the blame for our world’s ills, targeting the military industrial complex on “Death for Profit”, for-profit medicine on “Caskets of the Poor”, and capitalism as a whole on “Master Plan”. Despite the songs being easily stylistically categorized, the band refuse to let one hybrid genre label define them as a whole, exuding old-school grindcore through filthier guitar tones on songs like “Thirst to Burn” and “Leather Envy”, while slower tracks like “Cognitice Dissonance” and “Expired Utopia” opt for a slow roast kind of scorched Earth, borrowing the occasional nasty metalcore breakdown along the way. Covering a relatively wide range of styles and an array of apocalyptic topics, Holocene Extinction is as blunt in its delivery instrumentally as it is lyrically, and it hits as hard as an album of its nature should, setting this band up on a great start. Fight on!

8/10

Krallice - Mass Cathexis

Already the eight LP for New York’s prolific black metal experimentalists, Mass Cathexis finds the ordinarily forward-thinking band at a loss for major ideas beyond doubling down on he technicality of their sound to the point of stepping on a few of the land mines in the techdeath minefield. They still work in plenty their of their usual progressive song structuring and cerebral atmosphere, and I do enjoy it enough, but I know Krallice can do better than this. And I’m sure they will, and it’ll probably be pretty damn soon too.

6/10

Drouth - Excerpts from a Dread Liturgy

On their sophomore effort through Translation Loss Records, Portland-based quartet Drouth dress up their abundant competence with the basics of blackened death metal as a grander artistic statement than it really is with five epic, yet dragging, showy, yet shallow songs of rather generic material for the genre. I respect the band’s commitment and I give them credit for the performative abilities they showcase on their second album, but I can’t pretend to be wildly excited about 40 minutes of run-of-the-mill blackened death metal.

6/10

Faceless Burial - Speciation

This is the second full-length record from Melbourne three-piece Faceless Burial who have kept a pretty steady pace after their first demo release in 2015 and their independent full-length debut in 2017. Released through Dark Descent Records, Speciation is a refinement of the blunt, bellowing death metal that the band presented on their debut. Packed with delicious low-register guitar riffs, rumbly bass lines, and manic blast beats, Speciation is a candid portrait of much of what makes modern death metal what it is, and what makes it so delicious even looking up at its top tiers. I think Faceless Burial could certainly one day reach those top tiers, and Speciation is a strong step in that direction.

7/10

Avatar - Hunter Gatherer

Swedish quintet Avatar are nothing if not creative, and their decision to go all-in on the circus-freak aesthetic seems to have catalyzed the wildness with which they reimagine and remold melodic death metal. And they’ve certainly been actively prolific over the past decade that saw their emergence into the spotlight, releasing consistently every two years, and they’re right on time this year with Hunter Gatherer. Coming off of the bombastic tale of 2018’s Avatar Country and knowing that the band have a penchant for concept albums, I was eager to see what Hunter Gatherer’s might be, and while there’s no connective narrative, the album generally sticks to a theme of gazing into a chaotic future. The sensational Swedes kick off this year’s effort with its most uncharacteristically generic display, the standard melodeath “Silence in the Age of Apes”, but the album doesn’t take long at all to get to Avatar’s usual extravaganza as the second track, “Colossus”, immediately kicks of with a punctuated siren wail and from the get-go you know you’re in for a ride, and the track’s swaggering mid-tempo march is headbanging as fuck. Oh the invigorating melody just keeps coming too; “A Secret Door” balances alternative rock’s soaring triumph with the natural tendencies toward that feeling from melodeath. The song “Child” captures Avatar’s essential traits with its risky stage-production sway, its soaring chorus, and it’s rumbling low-tuned foundation that all serve the band’s grand ambition in spectacular fashion, and the subsequent “Justice” only soars even higher from there with its palm-muted-backed chorus and Johannes Eckerström’s absolutely fist-raising vocal melody. And the Swedes keep the high-stakes moves coming with the grippingly candid piano balladry of “Child”. As with every Avatar release, though, there are some songs that don’t fly over so well, but only two out of the ten. The band’s switch into half-measured seven-stringed eccentricity on “God of Sick Dreams” is just one of the moments that feels like it could have been a bigger display of creativity, while “Scream Until You Wake” is a clumsily cheesy collision of melodic heavy metal and arena butt rock that unfortunately puts the band’s theatricality in a bad light. The album finishes on two powerful notes, though, with the quick thrash of “When All But Force Has Failed” that immediately reminded me of Bullet for My Valentine’s “Waking the Demon”, and the epic eight-stringed cinematic finale of wormhole. While I still may not have been in love with an Avatar album from start to finish, I still look forward to reviewing their music whenever they have a new album out because even if not everything they do on a particular record, the group’s zealous drive to put on a good show always yields an eccentric and exciting track list and the enthusiasm the band has for whatever imagination it is they’re realizing comes through in their performances. So even if there are a few acts during the show that don’t dazzle me personally, I stay for the whole performance because there’s never a dull moment, and there really is nothing else like it, and Hunter Gatherer has proven sticking around to be worthwhile, because the band have struck their most consistent effort yet, and one I can say I really do love as a whole even with its momentary flaws.

8/10

Moloken - Unveilance of Dark Matter

This came out way earlier in the year, but this is the fourth full-length album from Sweden’s version of Ulcerate, Moloken. I totally kid with how reductive I’m being there, but I mean that comparison as a compliment because Ulcerate are one of death metal’s most interesting acts at the moment and their album this year definitely bolsters their already-high reputation for post-death metal alchemy, and I’d say Moloken’s new album this year showcases how they perform similar sonic sorcery with the vile, grungy sounds of old-school sludge metal, transforming the heroin-intoxicated street babblings of depression into a cleaner, progressive form. And while some of that hyper-perceptible mental anguish is suppressed in that evolution, there’s still enough vibrant torment there inthe clangy bass lines and the yowling screams of agony underneath the layers of more complex, heavy, and modernized instrumentation. I think the song “Hollow Caress” probably highlights the span of older and newer sludge elements on this album best out of the tracks here, but really this whole album is an enthralling window into the spasms of the tormented psyche that might look all too familiar.

8/10

Ingested - Where Only Gods May Tread

Ingested cook up nearly 50 minutes of crusty blackened death metal similar to that of Ancst with a punchy deathcore edge a la Despised Icon or Venom Prison on Where Only Gods May Tread, and for as predictable as the results are, they do pack a solid punch that presents the rhythmic battery of deathcore as a worthy tool of death metal aggression rather than a purist-discredited development. And the band have even tapped a few members of the new and old guards to endorse their metallic campaign through collaboration; Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein joins in on the sludgy barn burner “Another Breath”, while hardcore advocates Matt Honeycutt and Vincent Bennett contribute their talents as well. While it’s, again, not the most groundbreaking of releases, Ingested certainly get the job done satisfactorily beyond what any reasonable purist could gripe about.

6/10

Thou - A Primer of Holy Words

After dropping their compilation of Nirvana covers just a few months prior, Thou hit us again with another compilation of cover songs they’ve done over the years that exemplifies their greater aptitude for the cover song when it comes to styles closer to their wheelhouse like the hardcore punk of Minor Threat and Born Against and the doom metal of Black Sabbath as opposed to the lo-fi grunge of Nirvana, though the band still insist on trying their hand at sludgifying a couple of 90’s grunge classics on a misguided cover of Alice in Chains’ “No Excuses” and Soundgarden’s “Fourth of July”. Like Blessings of the Highest Order, A Primer of Holy Words more or less just runs all the songs on it through a Thou processor to churn out a rather homogeneous mush of sludgy cover material out the other end. It’s a more complimentary batch of songs to the machine the band puts the songs through than the Nirvana covers were, but it’s not something that revolutionizes the originals or outshines Thou simply doing their own thing enough to have me itching to return to it.

5/10

Halestorm - Reimagined

Halestorm take all the punch out of their best hits like “I Get Off”, “I Miss the Misery”, and “Mz. Hyde” in this unnecessarily partially stripped back, partially minimally electronic remix/re-recorded EP of their gutsy modern hard rock catalogue, along with a passable cover of Whitney Houston’s classic “I Will Always Love You”. The unplugged mix of these songs spotlights Lzzy Hale’s booming voice even more than usual, but, again, unnecessarily removes her from her most fitting and supportive context. The neutering of the songs’ instrumental rock swagger to back Hale’s attitude-rich vocal delivery has mostly unfavorable results, the still-vibrant swoon of “I Miss the Misery” coming out the most unscathed, but the most butcherd of the bunch has to be the band’s most storied hit, “I Get Off”, which is about as lifeless as re-dos get. Honestly, the only point I can imagine the band attributed to this project would be the center Hale’s already very centralized voice, which is, not to be a broken record here, just unnecessary. I doubt it was her actual motive, but it’s like she didn’t want anyone else around her sounding good too, so she could stand out better. But more likely it was just another poorly conceived misfire of an acoustic EP of many, not the first or last of its kind. Perhaps my sharp distaste for this one is the impressive display Breaking Benjamin showed on their acoustic re-do album earlier this year.

3/10

Batushka - Raskol

Despite being lambasted as frauds by most fans of the original incarnation of the band after the legally-backed and Metal Blade-released Hospodi was embarrassed by the rushed, but clearly more artistically sound, Панихида (Panihida) from Krystov Drabikowski’s unofficial version of the Batushka project, and more or less exposed as such through the side-by-side release of the two albums, Bartłomiej Krysiuk’s version of Batushka still managed to strike a deal with Witching Hour Productions to release more material this year. I reviewed both Batushka projects last year and despite Drabikowski’s album feeling a bit rushed due to the circumstances of its release, it still blew Hospodi out of the water. Whereas Krystov’s album captured the aesthetic and compositional essence of the seminal Batuska debut, Bart’s album sounded like a generic blackgaze imitation of the real thing, which put the debate to rest for me and most of the Batushka fan base as to who was the deserving artist of the Batushka name. Nevertheless, Bart is giving it another go with the Batushka project in an attempt to earn back the trust he squandered amid the feud that boiled over last year. Biting off a smaller piece of material this time with the modest half-hour slab of Raskol, Bart actually does refine his craft to a slightly more respectable level after shamelessly pimping the band’s name out last year. Fans embroiled in the feud on Krystov’s side seem to forget that even if he wasn’t the driving force of the band, Bart was a part of Batushka from the start and for a long time, so it’s not really that outlandish or surprising that he would actually get better at doing the Batushka thing. While it does still lean on standard shoegaze elements to bide time when Bart’s imagination (or whoever he might have brought on to assist him this time around) runs dry, Raskol is a vast improvement on the cheap, inauthentic-sounding Hospodi, feeling like a much more believable part of the Batushka canon. I still understand fans’ skepticism of the validity of Bart’s incarnation of the Batushka project and I myself still don’t feel totally comfortable lending my full support to a man who hasn’t done much to contest the allegations of unethical actions against him. If this is to be the legal version of Batushka, so be it, at least it’s a little more believable now.

6/10

Primitive Man - Immersion

Denver’s Primitive Man have been the poster child for gargantuan, muscular death-sludge-doom for their entire career, whether it be on their various splits and collaborations or on their full-length projects. The band have played around with harsh noise as a supplement to their absolutely merciless core metallic sound, especially on the lengthy demo, P//M, but the hulk-powered trio have largely kept their main projects free of bells and whistles, which has certainly not led them astray. The band’s 2013 debut album, Scorn, was a sweat-inducing warm-up of direct, no-nonsense, hate-filled sludge metal, and the band quite literally doubled down on it on 2017’s 77-minute Caustic, whose undeniably captivating and fearsome ferocity and tapped so simply yet so tangibly into the core ethos of metal music in this day and age made it one of my favorite albums of that year. This year, the band trimmed it back to six songs clocking in at just 36 minutes, and despite its relative shortness, Immersion spends its time savoring the band’s doom at its usual slow-burning pace. Aside from the noisy two-minute interlude, “∞”, Immersion is another unyielding slab of the vibrantly hateful doom metal that made Caustic such a monolithic album. Despite its being built similarly to it predecessor, Immersion’s half-length feels like a half measure, checking all the boxes, but not really giving the band enough time to vary up their very thick but very homogeneous style except for the harsh noise interlude and the anticipatory buildup of “Entity”. The band are definitely powerful enough to doom-slam their way to finishing the mission though, and Immersion is by no means a failure to showcase that raw power.

7/10

Atramentus - Stygian

Donning your funeral doom metal debut album with a Mariusz Lewandowski art piece after 2017 is a pretty gutsy move in at least that it immediately draws comparisons to Bell Witch’s masterful Mirror Reaper, yet that is the first move Atramentus have opted to take (plus it’s not like a hundred other bands haven’t commissioned the Polish surrealist since then), but they were a bet that 20 Buck Spin has had no problem pitching in to for the Québec-based band’s long-awaited emergence onto the scene. The band’s sudden arrival with a sole release deceptively suggests they are a super new act, but the project has been on the shelves of vocalist/guitarist Philippe Tougas since 2012, who composed the album and kept it in the vault until 2018 (perhaps inspired as many of us were by Mirror Reaper) to finally record it. Stygian is a less melancholic doom metal album than a first impression of the cover might suggest given how many bands have adopted much of Mirror Reaper’s aesthetics. Instead, the debut album’s three tracks offer a refreshingly frightful mix of thundering, mega-chambered drums, Halloween-ish organ hums, dark ambient echoes, and deep rumbling growls and augmented throat chants that are similarly hellish, but also divinely ceremonial hums and emotive soloing during the last of the three movements that serve to maintain the vastness the album invokes. Indeed, the third song (which is half of the album’s length) rolls back some of the menace in favor of some more familiar mournfulness. And of course, this is all delivered at an absolutely tortoise-ish pace as is the key feature of the genre (save for the final burst of blast beats three minutes before the album ends), and of course it can very easily be reductively summed up as a condensed version of Four Phantoms or Mirror Reaper but I really do think Stygian will stand out from the largely homogeneous doom metal crop for what it does do differently with its more ominous elements and hopefully inspire Atramentus to stay active.

8/10

Innumerable Forms - Despotic Rule

The Boston five-piece are back with a two-track demo after a smashing debut in 2018 that captured the vile sludgy doom of Primitive Man and the adrenaline of brutal death metal. The first song on this year’s short offering, “Philosophical Collapse”, explodes out of the gate with deathly quick pace and fury until like a fatigued distance runner after a minute-long burst of speed, it succumbs to doomed sluggishness for the bulk of its runtime. The second and titular track is based on a slower Iommi-esque doom riff that slowly takes the modernized sounds of Sabbath into thrashy territory over the course of its nearly five-minute runtime. Both songs capture the aggressive doom at the heart of Innumerable Forms’ sound that made me love Punishment in Flesh so much, and I hope these songs are at least a sign of what is to come from the band.

Innumerable/10

Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I feel like for power metal especially, putting out a boring record can be worse than an incompitent or poorly executed album, and Unleash the Archers definitely provide strong support that with Abyss, whose moments of mild euphoria (which is an extremely generous description) are much too few and far between the slog of totally formulaic and under-delivered melodic autofill. Vocalist Brittany Hayes showcases her capacity for power metal drama on the epic “The Wind That Shapes the Land”, which only makes her utterly bland, zero-effort delivery across the rest of album that much more offensive. Yeah, I’ll keep it short and keep myself from going too in on this album, because, yeah it’s just boring, which is a massive and avoidable mistake to fulfill an easy baseline requirement for power metal, which, to me, is grounds for failure.

3/10

Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities

Good ol’ Incantation are back with another 45 minutes of doomy death metal, the likes of Ossuarium, for example, have harped on, which, to give a ratio for clarity, is like 80/20 death/doom. Definitely more death metal gusto than doom metal void-gazing to avoid that pitfall of lethargy, the trade-off for this clearly minimally ambitious album being the numerous pitfalls of death metal. Sect of Vile Divinities definitely gets the job done and it’s sometimes pretty savory along the way, but it’s definitely not an above-average slab of meat from this particular slaughterhouse.

5/10

Kolossus - The Line of the Border

Kolossus is the one-man atmospheric black metal project of Genoa-based creator “Helliminator”, who released this debut LP back in March to relative silence. And with how saturated bedroom ambient black metal is, I get how easy it is for things to get lost in the weeds, but for anyone who stumbles upon this one, it’s definitely a good few leagues above your typical atmospheric black metal release, and Satanath Records did well to catch wind of Kolossus after the independent split release with Manon in 2018. The Line of the Border is a confidently dynamic record whose fluidity in its shifts from acoustic melancholy to post-metal sludge and somber, yet seething, black metal agony showcases Helliminator’s and his collaborators’ compositional ability. It’s a hard album to sum up, and that’s a good thing for an album in a field so easy to reductively describe.

7/10

Humavoid - Lidless

Lidless is the patiently-awaited sophomore album from Finnish four-piece Humavoid, who’s 2014 independent debut album caught the attention of up-and-coming German label Noble Demon through its bold, progressive approach to experimental death metal that, when even just competently executed, gives off such a naturally heady vibe. But Humavoid are not about taking the path of least resistance and not about just creating the appearance of innovation with metal music, and their second record’s thrilling firestorm of Meshuggah-influenced djenty jaggedness that puts Veil of Maya and Jinjer to shame and jazzy eccentricity that fires a warning shot past Imperial Triumphant in the larger-than-life swirl of sounds that would make Devin Townsend cream his britches make for quite the decisive statement. Lidless may be comprised of very familiar ingredients, but the compositonal ingenuity the band wield and the constant headlong drive into the unknown make the combination of sounds on this album. The frightful, falling-stalactite-feeling piano-playing and synth work especially keep the mood of the album ever-shifting and the rest of the band excitedly on their toes, along with anyone hearing their overachieving madness. This is definitely one of the year’s best, and I am so eager to see what lies ahead for Humavoid.

9/10

Expander - Neuropunk Boostergang

Of the bands partaking in this past decade’s thrash metal revival Austin, Texas’ Expander are one of the less hokey, more serious-sounding bands to emerge recently, but of the handful of (2) EPs the band have released and the debut they put out in 2017, nothing the band has done has really sounded any alarms in my ears that they might be one of the bigger movers of the genre in the coming, now-current decade. Reliable underground curators Profound Lore and little-guy-supporter producer Kurt Ballou, though, disagree with my doubt in the band’s potential and have backed their sophomore release here, Neuropunk Boostergang. Harnessing some industrial elements and aggressive shouting that hearkens to American Head Charge and labelmates Lord Mantis and angular riffing reminiscent of both nasty sludge metal and crossover thrash with a more futuristic technicality, Neuropunk Boostergang is definitely a significant step up from Endless Computer, and an album that finds the band zeroed in on an attractive sonic identity. Not many thrash albums beckon the descriptor of atmospheric, and if so it’s certainly more of a generous way of saying it’s boring and blends into the background. Yet Neuropunk Boostergang manages to touch on meditative chords with its immersive and fascinating take on thrash metal, forward-thinking and avant-garde with an early version of the genre that most bands think simplistically to nostalgia-trip over. I wouldn’t have backed Expander to put out anything of major value based on their entire back catalog, and I wouldn’t have guessed that they would actually carve out a little niche for themselves to really blossom in. But the gnarly Texans (and Profound Lore) have proven me wrong in my favorite way with my favorite thrash release of the year.

8/10

Seether - Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Seether have not been doing so well, at least creatively, for the past several years, their last album before this one, Poison the Parish, being a completely unmemorable late-career display of the creative dryness within the band and the expiry of the post-grunge they capitalized in the early 2000’s. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum is not a full return to form, but it is a step in the right direction that the band desperately needed, which just comes from more meticulous songwriting this time around. The opening track “Dead and Done” is an energetic and vibrant start to the album and “Beg” revisits that “Fuck It” type of energy that the band need to embrace more frequently, while the silky “Wasteland” adds a scoop of Deftones’ shoegazy guitar work and captures the emotive potency that makes post-grunge so appealing when it’s at its best. The swinging “Bruised and Bloodied” offers a taste of the wackier side of Seether, while the more traditionally grungy “Pride Before the Fall” shows just how much the band appreciate Alice in Chains, and they actually help diversify the largely dragging energy of the album. Indeed, the bulk of the album is still unfortunately rut-entrenched filler that could have been better trimmed. It’s passable filler, but it just means that this album is still one that I’ll only be partially returning to to visit its best tracks.

6/10

Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

I have never been too big on electro industrialist project Powerman 5000, which wouldn’t even make a B-team picked by frontman Spider One’s own big brother Rob Zombie. My introduction to them was through their 2009 album, Somewhere in the Other Side of Nowhere, an astonishingly character-less and generic caricature of the industrial metal Zombie so exuberantly champions. The band have their better projects like Tonight the Stars Revolt!, but nothing they’ve put out so far has really ever convinced me that I should be paying them more attention. This year’s The Noble Rot is a pretty non-offensive outing, but also typically devoid of imagination. Not to stoke sibling rivalry that’s not there or anything, but it’s like if Rob Zombie were trying really hard not to upset suburban parents from the 90’s. It’s a lot less butt-rocking than the band have shown they can be at their worst, and it’s overall passably listenable. The metropolitan swagger of “Black Lipstick” is a notable highlight where Spider One’s sultry delivery actually works in the track’s favor. But unfortunately there really aren’t any other significant positives to speak of, and listenable is about as kind of a thing as I can say about this album.

4/10

Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

San Jose’s Gulch definitely get points for their all-out work ethic and for leaving everything on the stage or studio, but the band’s sophomore effort this year simply echoes the same need for continued growth that their debut did. The group’s exaggerated but still-maturing take on hardcore punk is thrilling in the short moment it occupies, but entirely forgettable.

5/10

Venomous Concept - Politics Versus the Erection

Like Gulch, Venomous Concept definitely get points for the effort they pour into their very similar brand of aggressive, off-the-wall hardcore punk, but theirs turns out to be another similar case of too little of that effort directed toward really arranging their outlash in an efficient way. It works for the stages and getting kids kicking in the pits that aren’t around anymore for the time being, but only at that baseline level that all good punk music in this vein does. Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough creativity in this project, or traditional punk ethos done exceptionally well for me to be all too enthused about it.

5/10

John Petrucci - Terminal Velocity

Show-off.

7/10

Pain of Salvation - Panther

A lack of ambition has never been a weakness for Swedish prog zealots Pain of Salvation, who love biting off sometimes a bit more than they can chew with their consistently lengthy and overly galaxy-brained concept albums. I definitely respect the massive inspiration the band always seem to tap into and I find them quite capable of fulfilling their creative mission more often than being too heady for their own good. The band do insist on integrating a perplexing degree of early 2000’s nu metal into their sound, and including some rapped verses that seem like a quota they just have to check for some reason. And Panther is, for the most part, another solid display of talents from Pain of Salvation, whose impressive compositional prog chops do more than enough to obscure the odder choices that pop up here and there.

8/10

Ulver - Flowers of Evil

I don’t know why but for some reason I thought Ulver’s venture into synthwave was a one-day stop before they moved on to whatever was next for them. I wasn’t expecting the genre-polyamorous visionaries to make another album in the same synth-y new wave vein as 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, yet Flowers of Evil is an unexpected and welcome sequel to an album that opened up a whole new avenue of sultry smoothness for the band, and it’s just as cool as it’s predecessor. Are Ulver the new Depesche Mode? I don’t know, if they are, I’m okay with that.

8/10

Necrot - Mortal

Necrot are a recently established trio from Oakland, California who have certainly generated a lot of buzz around their sophomore LP release here since their announcing it a few months ago. I mean I saw memes about the cover relating to coming home and taking off your pants or bra after a long day back in July. The band’s straightforwardly deathly 2017 debut, Blood Offerings, certainly didn’t seem to drum up too much hype around the time of its release, but the band are certainly releasing Mortal this time around to quite a captive audience, and after all the anticipation for their second album, Necrot show the world that can definitely play some death metal. Honestly, I went into this with a pretty open mind and eager to see what Mortal would be al about for the new group with the spotlight on them, but apart from a more old-school approach to riff-writing that does indeed come as a breath of fresh air in today’s death metal landscape, I don’t really see what else about it is such a big deal. I’m not saying there aren’t some tasty grooves or even a good few attention-grabbing solos on here, but I really don’t get what the death metal world is getting all hot and bothered about for this album beyond its checking off all the usual boxes and maybe doing a little smoke and mirrors to present themselves like a modern incarnation of Death or Morbid Angel. I mean I like it as much as, if not a little bit more than, any other average death metal project and I really do like what they band are doing with vintage riffs in this context, but I just don’t see what it’s doing with the very typical elements of the genre that it employs so much better than their average contemporaries that’s ramped up such astronomical hype.

7/10

Pig Destroyer - The Octagonal Stairway

Probably the EP I have been the most pumped for, it’s nice to hear some new Pig Destroyer not so long after their 2018 release, Head Cage, which took some getting used to for me, but I can say I regard it pretty highly as a step toward a more full-bodied sound for the band. I mean they’ve never been short on the shrapnel-spraying volatility needed to wholly carry a project, their groundbreaking creativity with the building blocks of grindcore setting them at the top of their field to look down at the grindcore masses far far below, and J. R. Hayes’ impressive poetic lyricism being a hefty bonus, and Head Cage wasn’t really that big of a stylistic departure for them apart from adopting the sound pallet of their contemporaries. The Octagonal Stairway is definitely more of an interim project for the time being, the first three tracks continuing the band’s mass-building with their sound; they’re as hard-hitting and representative of Pig Destroyer as any song off Head Cage, the title track in particular. I can grant to the pickiest Pig Destroyer Fan that there still isn’t as much slasher-film gore being invoked through samples of such, overtly grotesque lyricism, or scraping guitar tones that mimic the sharping of rusty bone saws. The last 14 minutes of the 25-minute EP are consumed by sample-driven ambient industrial music that the group have definitely had more creative and immersive experiments with. The 11-minute closer, “Sound Walker”, has its flashes of cool industrial manipulation, but given how high Pig Destroyer have set the bar for their ventures into this kind of territory with the cinematic horror of Natasha and even Mass & Volume, this massive track, while a respectable slab of industrial noise ambiance that flows as well as the aforementioned projects, lacks that narrative immersion and grandeur the band have shown to harness so well to bolster their music. For what handful of their talent the band offer here, it’s just enough to remind us of their immense prowess and that they’re still there, watching, waiting.

7/10

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immaletyoufinsihbutonew · 8 years

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The “Yaoi” on Ice Discourse: Perspective of A Yaoi Fan

I am an avid fan of Yuri on Ice. It’s a great show from what I can see, and it does represent one gay relationship healthily in mainstream anime. I think it was incredibly created, and I really love it. But before I loved Yuri on Ice, I loved yaoi/yuri a whole lot more.That’s where the conflict starts. The main reason I didn’t jump on the fandom bandwagon was because there was this habit within the fandom to put the show on a higher pedestal in terms of representation. First off, there’s something fundamentally wrong with that. Yes, they did depict a healthy lgbt relationship, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only method or depiction out there, and that’s where yaoi/yuri comes in.

When I started being a fan, I was really deep in my sexuality crisis, and it made me really suicidal. Yaoi/yuri not only potrayed the relationships I envisioned romantically, it answered some of the questions I couldn’t dare myself to ask. Like, if I came out and I was kicked to the curb, do I need to stay with the partner I gave up my family with because that’s ethical? Or, can I possibly be someone who is respected and seen as moral if I was lgbt? Some did a good job and some did a bad job, but at the end of the day, these series saved me as a person, and helped me become an open minded being. To see a show that’s mainstream do that was really uplifting, but I wouldn’t say that it was the only lgbt show that ever did that. And when people like me started to say that, we got back the yaoi/yuri is homophobic message.

And when I got that, I was furious. Are you kidding me? The one thing that kept me from OD because of my sexuality crisis was now homophobic? So I made a post on my side blog about it, and I got actual death threats from people who never knew me or my background. All you cared was that hypersexualized myself apparently. Yeah, those series are sexual and can be fetishizing with the wrong author, but it also answered questions that, in all honestly Yuri on Ice could never have done. I don’t blame fans completely, however. I think the connotation yuri/yaoi had was always negative. But I’m here to prove that it isn’t the case. Since I see most people calling out yaoi instead of yuri, I’ll use yaoi as an example. I’m going to be recommending series that I found helpful during my sexuality crisis, but only the yaoi end of the stick. If you want yuri reccs, please shoot me as message. Without further ado:

LGBT Friendly Yaoi ( Top Five, Not in Order)

1) Soubi Yamamoto Films - I feel like these films fit the taste of Yuri on Ice fans best. They are films that are absolutely stunning in art and style, and they are rich in depth and beauty. They also depict healthy LGBT relationships quite well, even though in all honestly, only 3 have come out. They don’t discuss hard hitting topics like homophobia or abuse that much, but they do discuss things like moving on in relationships and just a lot of very... human themes. And they don’t, or rarely talk about sexual behaviors if the sex isn’t your thing.

Piece I would reccomend: Kono Danshi, Ningyo Hiroimashita (very gorgeous, helped with insecurities and the fear of rejection from people I loved, doesn’t try to make any character feminine in order to fetishize)

2) Orgretsu Tanaka Manga - the main complaint I see with Yuri On Ice fans is how they feminize the bottoms in order to fetishize gay relationships. This author is probably the best at denying that claim, and also one of my favorite manga, and I mean manga in general, artists of all time. They don’t shy away from topics like abuse and the causes of it, they don’t shy away from homophobia, and they don’t shy away from BDSM or anything that would be considered too taboo. In this author’s eyes, or pen, human beings are complex beautiful characters, and they don’t hesitate to show you that. Topics like abuse and homophobia are addressed and not romanticized. The abusive, homophobic people are still human and you can still see that, but their actions are never forgiven by this author.

Piece I would recommend: Sabita Yoru Demo Koi wa Sasayaku (discusses homophobia and abuse without romanticizing it, if that’s what you’re looking for, very meaningful) (WARNING: ABUSE, HOMOPHOBIA)

3) Shungiku Nakamura Works - to be honest, the reason I recommend any of her works is because she is one of the few authors who are actually popular in certain pockets of mainstream anime. Even though I find her pretty average in her more popular works, she does discuss things in her pieces that helped me as not just someone lgbt, but someone who was growing dependent on romantic relationships. She writes about topics that I wouldn’t normally bring up when discussing lgbt rights. She talks about the pining you felt towards a straight person, if you identified as someone who wasn’t. She talks about how homophobia can be tragic, and she describes the loss of love so touchingly. Her peices actually have anime adaptions, so if that’s more appealing to you compared to manga, go for it.

Piece I would recommend: (this is hard, because I personally identified with Hybrid Child, but when talking to my friends, they found The World’s Greatest Love better representation) I’m going with my gut instinct, and putting... both lol. Although I would say that Hybrid Child was richer in serious topics, and really helped me out. Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi (The World’s Greatest Love) was more for... feel good vibers.

4) Harada - in the yaoi fandom, this author is NOTORIOUSLY known for writing psychological horrors. The last thing they fear is discussing controversial topics. Almost all the characters in their series do something fucked up, and the main goal is to see how fucked up can get. But what I really liked about Harada is that, when I was younger, I excused some of my not so amazing behavior on things like homophobia. I was very possessive of the people I couldn’t have and did a lot of shitty things. Harada showed me how that was dangerous. I’m not saying all people are like me, but Harada humanizes the worst kinds of people without romanticizing them. So I would totally recommend. Although I the recommendation I make is a little more vanilla compared to their other works, because I’m not gonna throw people in a ring of fucked up mentalities that quickly lol. This recommendation is probably the least happy recommendation of them all, but it’s realistic and it will gut you like a fish if you happen to think saying you crushed on your friend’s love interest in order for your friend not to go out with them. Because your friend was straight and you were attracted to them. (me)

Piece I would recommend: Yatamomo (WARNING: child abuse, rape, mental illness)

5) Historical Pieces - call this cheating, but I REALLY mean it. Historical pieces in any yaoi will give you a sense of the struggle in homophobia, or at least a decent lgbt relationship. I find that a lot of the male yaoi mangakas like to fall in this realm because it’s a way to prove to people that being gay wasn’t just a modern century thing, and it was a part of your lives, whether you liked it or not. There are literally so many to chose from. Brownie points for the ones that are tagged with tragedy, because those REALLY portray homophobia well.

Piece I would recommend: Est Em’s Carmen (truly tragic) (WARNING: homocide)

This took me awhile. Please don’t let this post flop lol. My main point is that yaoi isn’t just a 30 second clip of Boku No Pico. It’s a evolving genre that’s bustling with writers who experience their own struggles with homophobia. Love your genre, but please don’t shit on someone else’s to put yours on a higher pedestal.

And these aren’t the only ones. You can explore yaoi/yuri as genre yourself, but please keep in mind that it’s a genre, not a whole entire piece.

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