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Relentless total war on metal journalism.
Episodes
Wednesday Dec 16, 2020
Wednesday Dec 16, 2020
On Episode 32 of Terminus, we've got another quintessentially Terminus lineup -- some true Finnish BM, some Russian DSBM, some stomping Yorkshire boot-black, aaaaand some technical brutal death metal.
We lead off with an in-depth review of Horna's massive new monument, Kuoleman Kirjo, their first record in 5 years and their most ambitious in 11. We place it in the context of Horna's lengthy catalog, and try to capture what's so new about the songwriting and album structure. Don't worry, it still sounds like Horna! Next up, we check out the melancholy, stripped-down Slavblack of Depths of Despair, which The Death Metal Guy hears as a distillation of how black metal has changed over the last ten years. But are these the changes that The Black Metal Guy loves, or the changes The Black Metal Guy hates?
The second half kicks off with a palm-muted 16th-note run, as we hit the next stop on TDMG's guided tour of that most misunderstood of subgenres, brutal death. He floats an interesting theory about the nature of the nowadays brutal DM band -- what could such a hideous alien assemblage have in common with a jazz quartet? Finally, we close with a lengthy conversation about the taciturn, stoically resistant spirit of White Medal's northern English punk BM. The Black Metal Guy feels like he finally Gets It, but will The Death Metal Guy be equally impressed? Let's find out....
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / interview plug
03:35 - Terminus News ft. Empyreal (Transylvanian Tapes) and Venus Star (Terratur Possessions)
16:54 - Rundown of bands and labels
21:15 - Horna - Kuoleman Kirjo (World Terror Committee)
01:04:15 - Depths of Despair - Мрак Пожирающий Реальность, or Darkness Devouring Reality (AuToDaFe Productions / Der Schwarze Tod)
01:38:21 - Interlude - Horna - "Merkuriana," fr. Sanojesi äärelle (Debemur Morti, 2009). There's also a 2015 CD reissue from W.T.C.
01:45:15 - Focal Dystonia - Descending (In)Human Flesh (Comatose Music)
02:21:19 - White Medal - Elmet (Altare Productions / Legion Blotan)
03:14:30 - Vrîmuot - "Wolffsangel," fr. O Tempora, O Mores! (Prophecy Productions, 2020)
Terminus links:
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Friday Dec 11, 2020
Friday Dec 11, 2020
Today we've got something special for you! It just so happens that Warg from desertified black/death metal band Heretical Sect is a longtime Terminus listener, so he's come on the show to crack a few very loud beers with the boys, and give us some insight into Rapturous Flesh Consumed, out today on Gilead Media.
In this free-flowing but focused conversation, Warg talks us through the historical and religious inspiration for the ghastly Southwest landscapes of this album, and tells us how a band started as a break from real life acquired an inexorable momentum of its own. A common theme throughout is Warg's commitment to the people and places of New Mexico, especially his beloved hometown, Santa Fe. This thoroughly colors Heretical Sect's lyrical themes and music, which Warg sums up as "a focused concept in relationship to environment."
00:00 - Brief introduction and origins of the Sect.
06:12 - "A serial killer going crazy" - Inquisitorial terror in the Southwest.
18:26 - "I can't wait to cover myself in blood" - why "Warg" put on the gallows hood.
24:32 - The Santa Fe scene - the city, the bands, the musical infrastructure.
31:15 - Warg turns the tables -- "What genre is Heretical Sect?"
40:42 - Heretical Sect - "Degradation Temple," fr. Rapturous Flesh Consumed. We talk over the track, then open up into a discussion of the album as a whole.
01:05:30 - Parallel universe metal scenes -- underground vs.... middleground?
01:12:30 - "A focused concept in relationship to environment" -- Southwest black/death and the Pueblo distro.
01:17:30 - Outro - Dysphotic - “Aether and Chaos,” fr. The Eternal Throne (Independent, 2018)
Terminus links:
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Wednesday Dec 09, 2020
Wednesday Dec 09, 2020
As the days grow short and the nights grow long, The Black Metal Guy drags himself out of bed to Storm of The Light's Bane and Welcome My Last Chapter, pulls up the hood on his wizard's cowl, and prepares for a Terminus write-up.....
Though this week's show tends towards all sorts of swirling, low-end chthonic gloom, we lead off with a flash of sunlight on plate armor, and the gleam of a witch's eye from a scrying stone. After two years of silence and preparation, along with a pivotal line-up change, Mongrel's Cross return with a mighty work of effortlessly flowing, magisterial black thrash. The Death Metal Guy is a longtime skeptic of the Aussie sound -- can the soaring leads and viciously jabbing vocals win him over?
We follow that up with a close listen to a split from two German bands with intensely complementary takes on High IQ War Metal. Hadopelagyal channel their obsession with the ocean's deepest nightside zones into the "cavernous black/death" aesthetic, but show a greater interest in composition than guitar tone, and treat their extended atmospheric passages as real music rather than filler. Thorybos plays more minimalistic, barbarian attack riffs, but with equal if not greater influence by ritual-industrial sampling procedures. Between these two bands, there's real potential for a new sound.
On the second half of the show, we check out the debut EP from a rumbling, droning black/death band that bills its sound as "Hate Forest meets Bolzer." But if that's the conceptual starting point, what is this project actually doing? The Death Metal Guy has some interesting advice. Finally, we close with an even bleaker record, the blastbeat-driven funeral doom of Sweden's Gravkväde. I try not to call things "crushing" in these writeups, but it's pretty damn crushing -- and not in the way you expect. This leads us into a broader discussion on the coolness of classic 90s funeral doom, a sound yet to be processed by the modern underground.
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
02:58 - Terminus News ft. a Filipino band called Asgardsrei (Hessian Firm)
16:38 - Rundown of bands and labels
19:44 - Mongrel’s Cross - Arcana, Scrying and Revelation (Hell’s Headbangers)
01:01:58 - Hadopelagyal / Thorybos - Conjuring Subterranean Vortex (Amor Fati Productions)
01:33:43 - Interlude - Ayat - "Raw War (Beirut Unveils Her Pussy Once More)" fr. Carry On, Carrion! (Moribund Records, 2017).
01:41:31 - Catherine Wheel - The Procession of Flagellants (Blood Boiler Studios)
02:17:40 - Gravkväde - Grav|Ruin (Transylvanian Tapes / VGDK Records)
02:51:30 - Outro - Thergothon - "Everlasting," fr. Stream from the Heavens (Avantgarde Music, 1994). LP and CD reissue available from Peaceville.
Terminus links:
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Thursday Dec 03, 2020
Thursday Dec 03, 2020
Damn, well, it's the 30th installation of Terminus. That means 30 x 4 reviews / wk for a grand total of 120, plus a few 5-band shows and what we've started covering in Terminus News. Oh yeah, and the bonus episodes and interviews. At this point we're well out of The Shire, wandering towards Moria on our ill-advised quest to detonate the all-seeing Eye of professionally-credentialed metal journalism. And boy, do we have a show for you today, with a couple dark-horse last-minute candidates for year-end lists.
The Black Metal Guy leads off with two bands with Slavonic roots, both with pretty original takes on the idea of "black metal as heavy metal." Milwaukee's Prezir ("Scorn" or "Contempt" in Serbian) write ripping blackthrash songs shot through with floridly melodic machismo, and your hosts butt heads over exactly how to define it. Is Prezir the lordly scion of Ares Kingdom, or the underground answer to honest yeomanry like Skeletonwitch? Could it be both? We're more able to agree on Panychida, a veteran band from the mountain woods of southern Czechia. Though this record soars with the folk-black passion of a Drukdh or a Kroda, it often riffs like another beast entirely, with headbanging leads that'll make you want to slam 8 warm beers at a massive European festival.
In the second half we've got a dramatic, kinky role-reversal, as The Death Metal Guy answers with a brace of.... intensely Norsk BM bands?? He leads with some oddly faithful Unblack Metal from that hotbed of early Protestantism, the Netherlands. Duister Maanlicht revives a largely forgotten version of the one-man kvlt aesthetic, his hyper-minimal two-riff structures conjuring the bleakness of a forlorn winter shore. Finally, we're both left awestruck by the return of Norway's Gjendød, whose Angrep is a blistering and noble distillation of everything that made them -- and the masters of the Second Wave -- cool in the first place. Through this radical fidelity to origin, however, they've given form to something new and vital. The show culminates with TDMG waxing eloquent on Angrep's folkloric vision of the world, as TBMG sits back, grinning ear to ear.
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
01:56 - Terminus news ft. Spider God (Death Kvlt, release in Jan 20201) and Dyfliza (Rat King Records)
18:15 - Rundown of bands and labels
21:33 - Prezir - Depredation (Independent / tape on Dread Records)*
01:00:30 - Panychida - Gabreta Aeterna (Folter Records)
01:38:13 - Interlude - Die Saat - “Sonnenzglanz,” fr. Niedergang (Independent, 2001 / Ewiges Eis, 2002)
01:45:58 - Duister Maanlicht - Over Zwarte Kunsten, Hekserij en Andere Dienaren van het Kwaad (Vision of God Records)
02:18:40 - Gjendød - Angrep (Hellthrasher Productions)
03:11:08 - Outro - Gjendød - "Når sårene er renset," fr. Krigsdøger (Darker than Black, 2018 / Hellthrasher, 2019)
*CORRECTION: In the first segment, TBMG erroneously suggests that Prezir is / was on Folter Records. There's a clear connection to that scene / aesthetic, but none of their stuff has come out on Folter.
Terminus links:
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thetrueterminus@gmail.com
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
On Terminus 29, we named Pneuma Hagion's Voidgazer one of the best death metal albums - maybe the best death metal album - of 2020. On this special episode of Terminus, The Death Metal Guy sits down with his old friend R., core member of Pneuma Hagion (and Intestinal Disgorge, and The Howling Void, ad infinitum), to try and trace the origins of this record's blastbeat beatdown onslaught. R. reveals much about his recording and riffing process, and shares a wealth of extreme metal reference points. But as the interview unfolds, the details gather inward round a center. There stands R., listening, contemplating "the sublime nature" of things that hover just beyond the gateways of perception.
00:00 - Introductions
01:45 - Evolution of Pneuma Hagion - what makes Voidgazer sound like an abyssal titan?
17:50 - The Voidgazer / hardcore connection - why does it sound so much like beatdown?
23:05 - Gateways to Annihilation - the influence of Morbid Angel and H.P. Lovecraft.
30:41 - "The well where I draw the riffs" - origins of P.H.
37:10 - Interlude - Pneuma Hagion - "Timeless Darkness," fr. Voidgazer (Nuclear War Now!)
41:00 - Subsumption of the self - R on his many, many projects.
47:34 - Working in the wake of "caverncore" - what is the difference between black and death metal?
57:14 - Gazing onward - where does P.H. go from here?
01:00:28 - Now listening - R shares what's on rotation.
01:07:57 - Outro - Noisy Neighbors - "Dead Serious," fr. the Competitive Victimhood split w/ Shit Life (Independent, 2020)
Terminus links:
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Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
It's almost Thanksgiving in the USA, and to celebrate we've brought you a rich bounty of big new releases! If you listen exclusively for the cryptic demos, don't worry -- we've got one of those for you, too.
The Death Metal Guy fires up the festivities with something that knocked us both on our asses. If the somnabulant haze of 2013 gave us Sunbather (lmao), the miasmal tempest of 2020 could only give us.... Voidgazer. On this supermassively dense, furiously grinding record, Pneuma Hagion seriously up the brutality wars, fulfilling an ancient Terminus prophecy regarding the future of death metal.
The only way to follow this is with something just as insane, and The Black Metal Guy does his damnedest with the return of Brazil's one and only powerlifting flamethrower death squad, GOATPENIS. We compare new tracks side-by-side with their old work, and try to figure out the secret of their unhinged energy.
And then, for something completely different, as The Death Metal Guy introduces us to Black Horizon Ancient Belial, a new necro-symphonic BM project from Japan. BHAB fires off blistering mid-90s Swedish riffs over song structures that sprawl like ruined cathedrals.... but might have something to do with hardcore?
Finally, we get to the thing you've all been waiting for: "what Terminus thinks of the new Inquisition record." Here, we lose all discipline, and a simple album review rapidly snowballs into an energetic back-and-forth on Inquisition's work thus far, their abiding influence by hard rock, and their central place in the canon of American black metal. Sick ultra-kvlt namedrops include AC/DC, Blink-182, and, uh, Bruce Springsteen?
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
01:13 - Terminus News ft. Azanul (Heidens Hart) and Zygote (Sunshine Ward).*
17:10 - Rundown of bands and labels
21:02 - Pneuma Hagion - Voidgazer (Nuclear War Now)
01:00:32 - Goatpenis - Decapitation Philosophy (Nuclear War Now)
01:36:00 - Interlude - Truppensturm - "Gustav, the Great," fr. Salute to The Iron Emperors (Van Records, 2010)
01:41:52 - Black Horizon Ancient Belial - A Winter Dead Wandering Forever (Under the Fog Records / Victim Records)
02:25:00 - Inquisition - Black Mass for a Mass Grave (Agonia)
03:03:45 - Outro - Arkha Sva - "49 Evil Spirits," fr. Gloria Satanae (Aura Mystique, 2007)
*TBMG accidentally says "Sunlight Ward" on air.
Terminus links:
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Sunday Nov 22, 2020
Sunday Nov 22, 2020
In Episode 27 of Terminus, we reviewed Forbidden Rites, the debut full-length of a band called only "Trash." Their chugging Florida-man thrash metal sounds like no single other band, but makes surprising connections between all manner of 80s and 90s filth.
On this special episode of Terminus, The Death Metal Guy shoots the shit with frontman Zach. He leads TDMG through Trash's unusual range of influences, as well as the nuts and bolts of their songwriting process, from the joys of sampling a hurdy-gurdy to the challenges of writing his unusually detailed, rhythmically tailor-made lyrics.
Throughout, they explore the differences between what Millenial and Zoomer metalheads listen to, how they get into it, and what they actually hear when they listen to it. Zach comes across as an understated, witty dude with a singular perspective on metal, and a fearless willingness to get raw.
32:16 - Interlude - Trash - "Wandering in Purgatory," fr. Forbidden Rites (Independent, 2020)
55:48 - Outro - Doomsword - "Soldier of Fortune," fr. The Eternal Battle (Dragonheart Records, 2011)
Terminus links:
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Wednesday Nov 18, 2020
Wednesday Nov 18, 2020
In Part I, the Black Metal Guy takes new releases from Germany's Azketem and England's mysterious Isenscur as examples of a sinister, "nocturnal" strain of paganish black metal, recalling the earliest days of the genre before the various themes were teased apart. Azketem conjures up moonlight mushroom journeys, while Isenscur sparks "holy fire" from fungally-infected grain.
In Part II, the Death Metal Guy takes us back to nowadays grit and misery. Hanging Fortress come out of Toledo, Ohio, and they play beatdown-driven hardcore songs with early-90s DM riffing -- or is it the other way around?? -- but not like you've heard it before! Should be of interest to death metal as well as hardcore people. And we close out with Glistening's left-field variant of anti-natalist DSBM, which cuts unusually powerful Finnblack riffs with jagged shards of straight-up indie rock and emo. This is one of TDMG's favorite releases this year, and a promising new project we'll be paying close attention to in future.
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
02:48 - Terminus News ft. Sordid Crest and Doldrum
16:52 - Rundown of bands and labels
21:02 - Azketem - Inzernznytazure (Independent on BC / tape on Iron Bonehead)
59:43 - Isenscur - Asyndrath (Barghest / Maleficentissimus Triumphatus)
Interlude - Verdunkeln - "Im Zwiespalt," fr. Einblick in den Qualenfall (Van Records, 2007).
01:57:30 - Hanging Fortress - Darkness Devours (Redefining Darkness)
02:32:03 - Glistening - The Antinatalist (Extinctionist Records)
03:11:13 - Outro - Martyrdod - "List," fr. List (Southern Lord)
Terminus links:
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Wednesday Nov 11, 2020
Wednesday Nov 11, 2020
As the Samhain moon wanes and the comet Atlas crosses Orion, trailing the doom of kingdoms in its wake, we're back with another sick, dank, crushing episode of Terminus! This one is a bit of a world tour.
In Part I, The Death Metal Guy leads us from Tasmanian desolation to American "working class bleakness." First, he introduces The Black Metal Guy to Carved Cross, whose barren, unsentimental DSBM grows from fascinating chord shapes and adventurous DIY production. TDMG sees it as heralding a new movement in DSBM, and TBMG makes some connections to early-90s UK sounds. Next up, we check out the baffling and brutal debut of Trash, a young band soaking in all manner of punk-metal "80s filth." We have a great time wading through the reference points, while homing in on the project's core idea.
In Part II, The Black Metal Guy leads us through the first installment of the Terminus Guide to Southeast Asian Black Metal.* One-man project Vong breathes a Vietnamese spirit into old Norse bones, drawing heavily on Darkthrone and Burzum without sounding like one of those "Burzthrone" bands. We went into this record hoping for a solid homage to the masters, but came out seriously impressed! At last, the Indonesian maniacs of Warkvlt flatten the whole battlefield with hyperminimal monolithic war metal. Their discipline begets a terrible beauty -- sunlight flashing cold through a blackened sky.
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
02:28 - Introducing Terminus News ft. new releases from Feral Heart Productions and Old Mill Artifacts.
16:38 - Rundown of bands and labels
20:08 - Carved Cross - Embittered Amidst the Ashes (Overuse)
53:37 - Trash - Forbidden Rites (Independent)
01:23:23 - Interlude - ADX - "Deesse du Crime," fr. Execution (Devil's Records, 1985). Last reissue was a 2017 tape run by Warlord Trinity Productions - now sold out. But ADX still puts out new music! Here's their Bandcamp.
01:28:41 - Vong - A Wander in Liminality (Analog Ragnarok)
02:02:35 - Warkvlt - Deathymn (Sadist Records / Kult of Belial)
02:34:04 - Outro - Mantash - "Samiri I," fr. Samiri (Kalacemeti Records).
*For more on the Southeast Asian scene, see T2 on veterans Impiety and Surrender of Divinity, and T23 on newcomers Elcrost (friends of Vong!).
Terminus links:
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Thursday Nov 05, 2020
Thursday Nov 05, 2020
If you've been with us since the beginning, congratulations, you're a half-year older and the world is still ending! It's our 26th regular episode and, quite by accident, one of our heaviest, most ambitious yet. The Death Metal Guy is going through some shit right now, so he's absolutely shitcanned throughout -- but remarkably coherent!
We start off with a close listen to August's Ifernach / Pan-Amerikan Native Front split. This will probably be remembered as a landmark release, consolidating the burgeoning North American Native BM scene, and carving out the beginnings of a northern-Native sound. We find plenty to talk about as far as songwriting, but this opens out onto an epic conversation on the complexity of heritage in the "new world," and the possible convergence -- both musical and spiritual -- between bands with markedly Native and Euro American sounds.
We follow up with some ripping semi-melodic Azagthothian death metal from San Diego's Conjureth, out on the finely curated Fucking Kill! label. The Death Metal Guy thinks it's pretty cool, and The Black Metal Guy loves it. But why does it sound so fresh to him? TDMG drags a couple embarrassing confessions out of him....
Part 2 is a much darker affair. As we listen to the bleak and disorienting DSBM of Negative or Nothing, The Death Metal Guy connects with the music on a profoundly personal level. He ties the music of NoN back to his earliest attraction to depressive black metal, as well as cruelly abstract, blasting brutal death -- metal rooted less in power and aggression than in suffering and fear. Be warned, this gets extremely raw.*
The depressive atmosphere carries over into our last band, Australia's Dearthe, who play an original and promising sort of post-Slavic BM. They draw freely on ideas from death metal and post-hardcore, but not for a facile "update" to black metal fundamentals. Rather, this allows them to reawaken the storming grimness at the genre's core.
00:00 - Introductory bullshitting
05:45 - Plug for Terminus Black Circle / Terminus Prime Content
12:31 - Rundown of bands/labels
16:29 - Ifernach/Pan Amerikan Native Front split LP (GoatowaRex)
01:15:04 - Conjureth - Foul Formations / Levitation Manifest (Fucking Kill Records)
01:47:13 - Interlude - Samhain - “Let The Day Begin,” fr. November Coming Fire (Caroline Records, 1986). Various reissues floating around the internet. There are used original copies out there, too.
01:50:50 - Negative or Nothing - Drowned (Careless Records / Wulfhere Productions / Depressive Illusions Records)
02:28:38 - Dearthe - Dispirited Obscurity (Bloodforge Distribution)
03:05:37 - Outro - Excessum - "The Mournful Held Within," fr. Death Redemption (Deathstrike - CD / Tour De Garde - tape, 2005). You can buy it directly from the band via Bandcamp.
ADDITION: We didn't realize until after recording that Dearthe's main songwriter is Desolate: founder of Austere, longtime guitarist of Nazxul, and current frontman of Temple Nightside, among numerous other Australian bands. Vocalist Mordance played alongside him in Temple Nightside, and served as live drummer for Mongrel's Cross, whose new record is due out in November (you can expect a review here).
*And be assured, TDMG is still among the living, fighting onward as he always does.
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