Zatokrev- “Goddamn Lights” | The Needle Drop

Zatokrev- “Goddamn Lights” | The Needle Drop

As always, I love The Needle Drop for its honesty, integrity, and personality.

There's this band called Zatokrev that's fucking heavy, and TND is streaming it on his page right now.

It's really speaking to me. The vocals get a little old, but that's just me. I really love the instrumentation.

Steve Albini is an artist I like and treasure and cherish

For a guy who was doing this in the 80s:


And is doing this today:


He's doing pretty well for himself! And for once I'm not being sarcastic. He's always been true to himself and his values, and to sticking it to the man, and to doing things his own way. We learn from his example that personality and style, when strong and solid and stuck to, are just as important qualities to have in an engineer as in a band member.

I just want to say that I love you Steve Albany and I'll have your babies and deep inside of me every day before 9 a.m.

'cherish the love we have, CABLES, we should cherish the life we have, CABLES, cherish the love, cherish the life, chericsh the love we haaaaave, CABLES'

sEARch Engine Optimization time:
big black cables albini steve albini big black big black "big black" Big Black BigBlack bigblack songs about fucking "songs about fucking" songsaboutfucking shellac Shellac SHELLAC CABLES

Here are the lyrics to that song above, the song called Cables, by the band Big Black:

I don't know why we come here, guess I just needed the bang, walk in the beef and pull on the rope and then the hammer comes down. CABLES CABLES CABLES I guess they know, I ain't no company man, but I can pull on a rope and kill a cow fast as any other fucker can. CABLES CABLES CABLES

Metal Thru the Decades

Black metal is prevalent today because it's an answer to all other forms of metal that did not take the evil brutality far enough.

Metal, generally, is not supposed to be laced with flowers, but drugs and war. Black metal takes that and amplifies it to worlds exploding.

Since the sixties, metal has taken many forms, just like all genres of music.

Here's:

GLENN DOOM'S SYNOPSIS OF METAL THAT MATTERS TO GLENN DOOM THROUGHOUT THE AGES ORGANIZED BY DECADE

60s

The Beatles wrote Helter Skelter. Vanilla Fudge did some heavy covers. Jimi motherfuckin' Hendrix laid it down for all of you losers, Seattle's guitar king master samurai.

70s

Black Sabbath, Mötorhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and the fukkin' British New Wave of Heavy Metal.

80s

SPEED METAL BITCH: Slayer, Death, Metallica, Megadeth, Mercyful Fate, Exodus, Venom

Check out this cool list of cool metal albums of the Eighties, organized by year. Whether or not you agree with the guy, it's good as just a history lesson, and to maybe discover some metal gems forgotten by time.

90s

The Great Metal Slowdown of the Nineties: speed metal went thru a mid-life crisis and quit heroin, Korn and and Nine Inch Nails were on the rise and doing lots of acid, and Marilyn Manson was the most metal thing around, all coked up and God-like insane.

Cannibal Corpse and Deicide were kicking ass. As always, there was a lot of underground metal that was really awesome during this time, but got swallowed by the popular drivel (Nü metal) that was mistaken for metal.

Grunge is not metal, but Soundgarden was the closest (SEATTLE 4 LYFE). Long live Kim Thayil.

Green Jellö. System of a Down. Stone Temple Pilots. Sunny Day Real Estate. Orgy.

Type O Negative--some of the Nineties' best work.

Earth (SEATTLE, FUCKERS) makes Earth 2 (1992) and no one notices.

Sugar Ray just wanted to fly. Sublime didn't have no Santaria. No Doubt was telling people not to speak. Everclear. Third Eye Blind. Three Doors Down. Our Lady Peace. Disturbed. Staind. Creed.  Skull fucking. Fucking I hated the Nineties, when I was going thru pu-pu-pu-pu-puberty and high school, some very defining years.

And holy crap enjoy this page for all it has to offer.

00s

Britney Spears? Black metal starts to come out of its shell in the United States with the help of Leviathan and Xasthur, both one-man-acts out of San Fransisco.

Boris and Coffins bring some very varied metal from Japan.

Virus' The Black Flux blows everyone away with its new, weird take on metal. To me, it was a natural evolution from black metal.

Watain. Behemoth. Funeral Mist. Immortal. Bathory. Dark Funeral. Sunn O))). Burning Witch. Darkthrone. Ihsan.

Wolves in the Throne Room and Nachtmystium took black metal and made it psychedelic.

A good time for metal, going deep into the rabbit hole.
Mastodon. Lamb of God. Eh.

Fucking DETHKLOK

10s

I don't know, we're only two years into this decade.

Deafheaven.

Justin Bieber makes us Beliebers.

Real Estate's Days (2011) is really awesome. Not metal, but for some reason I really love it, especially the opening track, "Easy." That one really speaks to me. It's a beautiful wash of sound, and it seems to me that this is exactly what shoegaze should sound like.

Spotify is showing me a lot about music in this decade.

SYNOPSIS OVER

Metal's been sounding better as recording technology has become cheaper and more accessible to the common musician. It's easier for those extremely noisy forms of metal to not sound like a warbling banshee tearing apart a kitten thru bad speakers.

Though, and black metal especially can benefit from this, sometimes the artist wants that lo-fi sound, to make it that much more brutal. Like, you're listening to it and you know it came from some poor, destitute fellow in his basement, summoning the dark arts and cutting himself at the same time.

Production value standards have been raised with this advent in technology. The more polished a metal band sounds, the better, and metal's becoming many things to many people.

† § †

The Tens were really awesome for black metal.


I'm really fucking happy about black metal's rise in the Tens. It was the next evilest thing to go to after every other genre of metal had its turn. We've gone from its birth in the Sixties, its toddlerhood in the Seventies, to its teenage years in the Eighties, and its awkward, annoying twenties in the Nineties, when all the adults were like, "Get away from me, you annoying twenty-year-old. Fuck off."

And then, in its thirties, during the Tens, metal started to get comfortable with itself. Metal began saying "Fuck you everyone." Metal in the Tens became really black, deathly and brutal, stayed out of the mainstream, and STAYED AWESOME, inspiring legions of metal fans who will one day take over the world.

Long live metal. And LONG LIVE SEATTLE. Metal is the Jarl of this Hold, I don't care how many shitty country and bluegrass bands there are around here.

Sleep, Live @ Neumo's, Seattle -- photos, etc.

Sleep played two nights in a row at Neumo's in Seattle on June 3 and 4.

I sure as shit went to see them. Monday night, baby.

From the front row, I used my 8MP digital camera with its built-in mic to record lots of half-good video of the show.

Meaning--the audio is really, really bad, but the video is good.

I'm going to contact Matt Pike and Al Cicneros to see if they would be amenable to lending me audio of their show, if anyone happened to record it from the sound board or anything.

If they let me, I'd like it to be an official Sleep-endorsed thing. Not as a DVD release or anything, cause the quality is less than stellar, but just to have something they can use, as archive video, or something to post on any one of any number of electronic social media sites they currently or plan on managing.

Helping this band would give me great personal satisfaction. Since I discovered them in 2007, they've been a big influence on me. Dopesmoker has always been one of my favorite LPs.

During the show Monday, I tried to keep my shots nice and relaxed, keeping lengthy frames, shifting the focus suddenly and with confidence, and sometimes letting the musicians frame themselves within the shot.

It's slow, methodical, unhurried. It works for the feel of the band's music. Sleep doesn't need videos with a lot of quick cuts and an MTV feel. Live is pure. Live is raw.

But live needs to sound good. Which is why I need to fucking get ON to contacting the dudes about this thing I have in mind.

Oh man, I should write about what happened during the show. Well, ... agh, later. Later.

I suppose I should upload the video I have to YouTube just to have it accessible, so I don't look like I'm full of shit.

More to follow.

Breaking News--Animals As Leaders wrongly arrested, abused by police in Boston

A band named Animals as Leaders ... what is that name trying to say? A band name ought to make a statement, you know. It wasn't chosen arbitrarily, to be sure.

It means our leaders are animals! Case in point, via Metal Sucks.

Who knew the band would be so prophetic?

I've had a disagreement with MS before, calling them out on some bullshit.

Now, let me reverse some of that and say, in true MS form: Thank you, Metal Sucks, for not sucking today.

This AAL-Cooley development is an important story, and it shows journalistic integrity from Vince and Axl for following it closely. I especially like how MS readers helped research the story, finding those court documents on Cooley's past shenanigans of illegality.

Band name manifested in attack against band.

Poetic injustice.

Review: Sleep - "Dopesmoker" reissue

reissue cover

Sleep's landmark, single-song, 2003 album Dopesmoker has undergone audial cosmetic surgery and is being re-released by Southern Lord Records. Awesome.

The Lord has got this sweet package where you get the double-vinyl set and a t-shirt. More info here.

I think I'm gonna go for the vinyl, man. Green.

I'll never forget playing Dopesmoker (not the reissue, mind you) in the car for my parents a couple of years ago. Dad couldn't take it for more than a few minutes, but mom said, and I remember this verbatim: "It's so heavy."

Truer words--never spoken.

Sleep goes for a Sabbath vibe, but simultaneously minimalises and amplifies it. Then, they stretch it out. The effect is deafening, the sound all their own.

Whichever guitar and bass Al Cisneros and Matt Pike played on the recording, they chose well. The sustain their axes give is evident throughout, and indeed critical to the piece. Their tone is nuanced and complex. It fills your head.

There are no stops in this song--no breaks. Don't expect to be let off the hook. Sleep challenges the listener--they expect more of you. It means you must rise to the challenge--conquer the mountain and stand tall at the peak. Then jump the fuck off, hurdle down headfirst like a missile, burst thru layers of crust, lithosphere, upper mantle, lower mantle, outer core, finally reaching earth's INNER CORE

Courage: Hakius
Wisdom: Cisneros
Power: Pike
(he so would be Ganon)

Lord, this album evokes strong imagery. And the re-release sounds good, man. The sound is clear! I think both the guitar and bass are distorted. You've got badass, earthy guitar and bass tones, combined with Chris Hakius fucking laying it down on drums right there with them, providing the third triangle to the Triforce.

Dopesmoker has a bit of a story behind it, which I won't go into.

I will say that the album itself is groundbreaking in that it's a single song, over an hour in length. It's relentless, slow punishment--exactly what true doom lovers want.

original cover (if you don't count Jerusalem)

It gets really, really repetitive. It will piss people off. All I'm saying is that it's not for the mainstream, which is good in my mind. Mainstream music has nothing to offer the underground.

Doom fans feel a source of pride in this. I do, anyway. It comes from the fact choosing doom--and indeed Dopesmoker, arguably the epitome of the genre--is indeed veering far from the mainstream, but not in a violent or douchey direction. It's all about slowing down, relaxing, and feeling heavy. Maybe getting mystical and casting a few spells.

It's also specifically about not being understatedly Christian or prioritizing glamour over talent, what the mainstream loves to do.

Doom musicians love to play in the mud.

This is not clean music. This is not pretty music. This is music of nature; of earth; of age and time, and knowledge.

And goddam if I don't feel on top of the world when Pike's first solo comes ripping in at the 14-minute mark. I fucking love this album.

Sleep is a band that had a big effect on me when I first discovered them. They'll always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you, Lord, for your bestowment of reissue.

Here's a good review of the reissue. The link takes you to blog named The Metal Minute and it's written by this guy.

I've always found Ray's reviews to be poignant. However, I will say that he goes off a little too long about the weed here--it's not obvious to me that the band was smoking their brains out the whole time, and I'm not sure they'll ever confirm or deny it either way.

However, it is called Dopesmoker. I mean, come on. They probably like to smoke.

As Stephen O'Malley said once, and I'm paraphrasing, the term "stoner metal" is kind of silly. It de-dignifies the songwriters and musicians who conjure doom.

Musicians don't want to be remembered as drug users, but as contributors to the vast musical spectrum.

So I call for an end to the terms 'stoner metal' and 'stoner rock' and 'stoner doom.' I'd call Dopesmoker a 'drone metal,' 'doom,' and 'doom metal' album.

And I hate 'psyche-rock', if anybody calls it that, I'll puke lava on them, full of igneous rock.

Gletalar's Roar

12.05.05 Plugging in My New Guitar for the First Time (At Home) by Hevvy Time Records

After the last MMS entry about my new guitar, I suppokkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk0]0]\0\000000--------------00-------5555555944444e (Lucy's edit) it would be prudent to show y'all how it sounds.

The purpose of these recordings is both archival, and exemplary--to give  an example of what all my words were saying about this guitar.

Also, there's a third purpose: "Hey look at my cool new thing I'm really excited about!"

All tracks above are solo recordings of me playing guitar. Improvisational jamming, mostly. All original material, except when I start singing and playing I Wanna Be Your Dog by The Stooges at the end of the first track.

I'm pleased with how the guitar sounds on the first track, when I'm going over those jazzy chords thru a clean tone, with delay and reverb.

There is much contained in these tracks that is difficult to sit through-especially the noodling on T4B. I don't want to necessarily challenge the listener--the music should speak for itself.

So if at any time it gets annoying, skip ahead. By no means do I expect total devotion.