葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that.

Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial. Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own.

Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. Nowhere is this more evident than on the 21-minute long "梦邀 ( 广寒 / 仙游 / 南柯 )" "Sleepwalking (Moon Palace / Sacred Walk / A Fond Dream)".

Comments

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

2022 Year In Review

Yeah, I have been MIA for 18 months. So what? You don't pay for this blog, I do. And I've been really busy starting my permaculture farm / goat cult in the abandoned mountains of northern Spain. Now that things are appropriately sustainable and grim, I am back to vomit my opinions on music all over the internet some more. Let's dive back into things with a wrap up of 2022. Here are my favorite-ish albums of the year, along with why they are superlative. Best Aural Approximation of a Mental Health Crisis Chat Pile - God's Country Would you like to know what it sounds like to be stuck in a trailer in the middle of nowhere USA with none of the drugs you need to forget exactly how terribly and awfully fucked your life is? Are you interested in turning the collective despair of a small town poisoned by unregulated mining and refining into a howl of impotent protest? Would you like to peel back the facade of "faith, family, farm" to gaze at the raw and bloody dis...

Dødsferd - Skotos

Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

Trumpet of Amdusias

Search This Blog