At this point, the subgenre’s trend level has crested and most of what the specific style of music has to offer has likely been explored, but although it gets the ol’ eye-roll “not this again” treatment these days, it’s worth remembering that post-metal has produced some great, landmark albums, and that the bands who came after had solid reasoning behind being influenced as they were.

Blending post-rock elements with heavier, often crushing guitar work, the classification post-metal is as amorphous as any genre term. I’ve heard everyone from High on Fire to Ulver referred to under its umbrella, but I want to be clear that when I talk about post-metal, I’m thinking of what’s also commonly called “metalgaze,” the specific branch of metal heavily inspired by the bands below.

I wanted to do this Where to Start post not just for those looking to expose themselves to the genre, but also in case anyone who maybe is tired of hearing bands that sound like this has forgotten how killer these records were. Here’s my starting five essential post-metal albums, ordered by year of release:

1. Godflesh, Godflesh (1988): I saw the album art on hoodies for years before I knew what it was. 1989’s Streetcleaner was better received critically at the time for its industrial leanings, but Justin Broadrick‘s first outing after leaving Napalm Death has grown over time to be the more influential album. At just 30 minutes long in its original form (subsequent reissues would add bonus material), it’s a pivotal moment in understanding modern post-metal that predates most of the genre’s major contributions by over a decade.

2. Neurosis, A Sun That Never Sets (2001): Take a listen to A Sun That Never Sets closer “Stones from the Sky,” then go put on just about any post-metal record, and you’ll see many of them trying to capture the same feel and progression — if not just blatantly transposing that riff onto their own material. Say what you want about Neurosis‘ earlier material, I think if everyone was honest about it, it would be A Sun That Never Sets mentioned even more. An awful lot of the modern wave of post-metal bands formed in 2001 and 2002, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Read more »

The last time I decided it was a good idea to drive down from Connecticut to a show in New York, I wound up in sitting traffic for twice as long as it should have taken, only to get to an overcrowded Webster Hall and stand in the back while the Melvins stormed through a set I could barely see. How long for the lesson to be forgotten? Just under four months, apparently.

Fortunately, the ride this time wasn’t that bad at all. Two hours in the car is perfectly acceptable as far as I’m concerned; the trip has taken me that long from Jersey plenty of times, and hey, I go where the shows go. Nowadays, they go to Union Pool, so that’s where I go.

I’d never been there before, but it was Hour of 13‘s first show in the US, and I wasn’t about to miss that, remembering how much ass their 2007 self-titled CD kicked and hoping to pick up a copy of this year’s The Ritualist on Eyes Like Snow. They didn’t wind up having any for sale, but their set, which they played to a packed house of faces both familiar among the NYC doom faithful and not, was worth the trip anyway.

They opened with “Call to Satan” from the self-titled, and it was an appropriately ritualistic beginning to a set of occult doom worship. I knew that Hour of 13‘s core duo of guitarist Chad Davis and vocalist Phil Swanson had assembled a band around them, but I was a little surprised to see a second guitarist sharing the stage, as amiable a job as the neck-tatted Brandon Munday did. I guess something in me just always pictured Hour of 13 as a single guitar band, bringing out more of the desolate, abandoned feel. Killer tones all around, and I’d hardly call it a disappointment (hell, Judas Priest did it), it just wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

The rhythm section of bassist John Mode and drummer Dave Easter filled their roles suitably, not really breaking out into anything special, but not giving any sense they should have been, either. Hour of 13 evoke a very specific atmosphere, and if any one player, Swanson and Davis included, really stuck out and started doing rock star turns or showing off, it just wouldn’t work. Nobody takes a six minute solo, everybody dooms out. It’s a solid ethic to live by if you’re playing this kind of music.

It was certainly enough to win over the crowd. Approvals ranged from slow, matched-to-snare nods to full-on headbanging, and I’m sure I saw The Gates of Slumber guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon throw a claw or two down in front of the stage. It was hard to argue with any of it, as Hour of 13 pretty much killed it for the whole set, Davis checking in on the audience every now and again and smiling as Swanson kept an eerie presence behind the mic.

The Gates of Slumber closed the show, and as much as I wanted to see them with their new drummer, it was already midnight and I still had the two hours back to Connecticut to think about. I’ve little doubt they kicked ass, as that seems to be their thing, but as I got off exit 59 at quarter to two in the morning, it was still Hour of 13 I was thinking about, wondering if now that they’re signed to Earache and have gotten the first one out of the way, they’ll be playing more shows. Here’s hoping, because if there were, I don’t know, 16 or 17 more rounds of that on offer, I think I’d have to go for it every time.

Congratulations to North Carolinian (?) traditional doomers Hour of 13, who it was announced today have signed with Earache Records. One wonders if Earache — having already long since cornered the market on re-thrash with the likes of Municipal Waste and Bonded by Blood — decided to take their retro obsession into new realms. If so, have I got a couple bands for you.

Hour of 13, apparently just back from Ireland, make their US live debut on Oct. 16 at Brooklyn‘s Union Pool alongside The Gates of Slumber. See you there. Meantime, here’s this off the PR wire:

Earache Records is proud to announce the signing of North Carolina‘s Hour of 13 to a worldwide recording deal.

Hour of 13 have built up a formidable reputation in underground circles for their potent brand of occult-inspired doom-laden metal. The band recently performed their debut show at the Dublin Doom Day festival in Ireland, to rapturous response.

Guitarist and founder Chad Davis commented on the deal:

“We, Hour of 13, are proud to have become part of the Earache Records legacy. The support the label has shown to a host of influential bands over the years has been essential to the growth of real, original music, and we could not be more pleased to have become one of those bands. This is a monumental step for Hour of 13, and we’re glad to have Earache on our side.”

Earache will re-release the band’s last album, The Ritualist, in early 2011, which will be supported by further live appearances throughout the year.

Though I?ve come over the years to appreciate the massive influence and impact long-running UK doom lords Cathedral have had on the international scene, they?re not really a band I listen to every day. Not so say I?m not a fan — ?twould be heresy — but I came late to the party and missed what?s widely regarded as their best era.

That era might be best presented in 1993?s The Ethereal Mirror, on which they kept holy the Black Sabbath while bringing more rock elements to their sound than there had been on the 1991 debut, Forest of Equilibrium. Frontman Lee Dorrian?s voice growled less (?disco supernova!?), the riffs were higher in the mix and the band, all around, seemed to have more focus. It?s an album well-deserving the reissue treatment Earache has already given Forest of Equilibrium and 1995?s follow-up, The Carnival Bizarre.

In a way, The Ethereal Mirror delivers the best and worst of the reissue process. Like Forest of Equilibrium, there?s a DVD included with a 40-minute interview about the album (actually, I think it was filmed the same day at the Forest of Equilibrium one — if not that, definitely the same bar), and even includes 1994?s Statik Majik EP, which is nearly 35 minutes of extra music. Would have been over 40, but ?Midnight Mountain,? originally the opener, is nowhere to be found.

Read more »

Fuckin? Iron Monkey. From their mid-?90s inception to their late-?90s end, they were always a litmus band, testing the scientific proposition, ?How much abuse can the human ear take?? Plenty of people out there say they like Eyehategod. A few of them might even mean it. But if you?re walking around with an Iron Monkey backpatch, that?s a different level entirely. You?d best be on board the whole way, lest the gods of sludgy justice deliver a boot-stomp ass-whooping from on high. Because that?s how they roll.

In their wisdom and might, Earache Records has seen fit to compile and reissue the two full-length documents of the UK outfit?s audio cruelty, taking the individual 1997 self-titled and 1998?s Our Problem and boxing them together with their final We?ve Learned Nothing EP (put out on its own and as a split with Japan?s Church of Misery by Man?s Ruin in 1999) and the cover ?Cornucopia? taken from Earache?s 1997 Black Sabbath tribute, Masters of Misery — which, if you don?t own, you should. Even over a decade later, the two-plus Iron Monkey albums are vicious and unfriendly, unbridled in their disgust and contempt for, well, whatya got?

Read more »

Start 1:10AM: There are almost no practical reasons for anyone to get involved in the trade inaccurately called “music journalism” despite having very little to do with either. The money (when you get any) sucks, and contrary to popular belief, finding out the vast majority of your rock heroes are morons, resentful assholes or both isn’t glamorous or enticing. It’s disappointing. The music industry, such as it is, doesn’t give a shit about you. People use you for what they can and are done with you, and you, if you’re good at it, are done with them too. There are good people and you make some friends, but mostly you exist in a cordial symbiosis. I need you and you need me. Until they don’t or you don’t, whichever comes first.

I’ve been thinking a lot about career lately. I’ve had time. The only reason I can come up with for doing this — aside from the “Aw man, do it for the love” line which is bullshit no matter what anyone tells you — is free goo. CDs and concert tickets. I’m 27 years old with a lifestyle and attitude unhealthy for me on almost every level and the realization I’ve been forced to come to is my entire professional life has been geared toward getting me free CDs and concert tickets. My mother used to tell me I had the potential to be anything I wanted, to do anything I wanted. Clearly she was lying.

The point here isn’t to moan, only to point out facts. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t be doing it (likewise, if I didn’t love being miserable, I wouldn’t be), but in the words of someone wiser than myself, it is what it is. Usually it’s complacence. At least I’m not in the city every fucking day.

But on the topic of free CDs. Most of the “metal majors” don’t send out physical promos anymore. It’s all mp3s and album streams. So even that purpose is gone. Century Media used to ship their albums in cardboard sleeves, ditto for Nuclear Blast. Both have stopped, though the occasional care package from the latter is most welcome. Metal Blade sent liner notes, tray cards and CDs without cases, but that stopped. I don’t know what Roadrunner does these days. Relapse does streamers and sleeves, though they’re not always complete. If it’s a digipak, you get the disc and the liner notes. That’s how it was with the Voivod and Dysrhythmia records, anyway. I used to ask for the real deal retail versions from everyone when I didn’t get them automatically, as though I was entitled. Not anymore. Earache, on the other hand, just sent me a full copy — double disc jewel case and cardboard outer cover — of the limited CD/DVD reissue of Cult of Luna‘s last album, 2008’s Eternal Kingdom.

Read more »

Usually when an allegedly limited edition reissue comes out and it’s packing a bonus DVD, it’s a completely skip worthy live set shot on one or two cameras with crappy sound that’s boring as hell. That, or like in the case of Earache‘s tackling last year of Cathedral‘s 1995 classic, The Carnival Bizarre, it’s all previously released. Review-wise, the second disc obliges a mention and little else. For their remaster of the seminal UK doomers’ 1991 debut, Forest of Equilibrium, however, the label has included a new 40-minute interview with the band about their career and making this album. Previously unreleased and relevant.

Granted, it’s shot mostly on one camera — other footage is spliced in — and it requires serious attention paid to dig words out of those Coventry accents, but it was enough for me to at least check it out before doing the review, hoping I’d learn something. I learned the “Ebony Tears” video (also included) kicks ass.

The audio portion of the release includes 1992’s Soul Sacrifice EP as another bonus and is a landmark in doom. Vocalist Lee Dorrian (blah blah Napalm Death, blah blah Rise Above Records), guitarists Gaz Jennings and Adam Lehan, bassist Mark Griffiths and drummer Mike Smail created a seven-track classic that’s morose by any standard you want to apply — even in comparing it to what was happening doom-wise in the UK at the time with My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Anathema. Put it next to Cathedral‘s last release, 2005’s The Garden of Unearthly Delights, and it almost sounds like a completely different band (Lehan, Griffiths and Smail being long gone might also have something to do with that).

Read more »

Let’s face it: if you’re here, on this site, there’s a good chance that Sleep classic Sleep’s Holy Mountain is at least part of the reason why.

The album stands among Black Sabbath‘s Masters of Reality and Kyuss‘ Welcome to Sky Valley as one of the formative moments of stoner rock, but Sleep‘s approach was rougher, higher and had an almost punk sense of fuck-all that bled into the songs in a way that an entire generation of riffers has tried to imitate. And it’s true some have done very well at it, even going so far as to surpass Sleep in their own methodology, but like Sabbath before them, Sleep‘s legendary status is just as much due to circumstances and right-time-right-place as it is to Matt Pike‘s guitar, Chris Hakius‘ drumming and Al Cisneros‘ vocals and bass.

Sleep’s Holy Mountain was originally released in 1993, a year in which the pop mainstream was wearing flannel and hair product to make it look like it hadn’t showered in half a week. But Sleep were even dirtier. Hailing from Oakland, CA, they emerged on Earache Records with a sound that showed the likes of Pearl Jam and Nirvana for the polished major label fare they were. Drug metal, stoner metal, weed metal, whatever you want to call it, they were loud as fuck, bombed and unapologetic. And like a lot of great metallers, they didn’t get their due at the time.

Well, with that in mind and perhaps the notion of introducing Sleep to an audience 16 years later who might not have been there the first time around (and certainly giving completists some reason to grumble), Earache re-presents Sleep’s Holy Mountain in a digipak reissue that stays loyal to the original artwork and sound. By way of bonus material, a Sabbath cover of “Snowblind” is included, as is a Quicktime video for “Dragonaut.” And that’s it.

Read more »